Daily Archives: July 18, 2016
Merlin and MECO . . .
It turns out that there are a lot of ‘closet’ Murdoch Mysteries fans out there. I’m just disappointed that it took Jan and I so long to discover it.
It’s a really fun show and we’re happy to see that we’re only watching Season 4 right now, while they’re presently filming Season 10. So we’ve got a while to go.
I’ve penciled in tomorrow evening around 7:30 to do the initial prep work for my AC evaporator coil cleaning on the roof unit. I’m going to remove the 4 bolts that hold down the shroud, and the 4 remaining screws holding the evaporator sheet metal on. Only 4 here because didn’t put all the rest back in before.
I’ll also pull the hose and spray nozzle up there so all I to do Wednesday morning is uncover the AC, mask off the air return opening and then start spraying and cleaning the coil. Then I’ll use the spray hose to rinse it all off.
I plan to do all this Wednesday morning before it gets too hot, as it still should be in the high 70’s – low 80’s then so not too bad.
I hope.
We had originally planned to go to the Fayette County Country Music Opry up in La Grange, after eating at the nearby Whataburger. But Jan was a little under weather this afternoon, so we didn’t do the Opry. But just because she was a little sickish, didn’t mean she didn’t still want Whataburger.
So around 4:30 I drove into Columbus to pick up dinner at that one. And this time they actually got the order correct. Delicious as usual.
But as I was leaving the park, I discovered I have another AC problem, this time in the truck. The AC blower is dead.
Hopefully it’s just a fuse, since I replaced both the control resistor pack and the blower motor last year. I guess it could possibly be the control knob itself, but if that were the case, probably only one speed would be affected, not all.
So I’ll check it out tomorrow.
Wrapping up for today, I thought I’d post this amazing long-exposure shot of the recent SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launch to the International Space Station.
The straight line on the left is the rocket launch itself, disappearing through the clouds. I haven’t been able to find out what the bright spot near the top is.
The Falcon 9 doesn’t do a post Max-Q throttle up like the Shuttle did, and I think it’s too early for the MECO (Main Engine Cut Off) and 2nd stage ignition. So I don’t know and Google hasn’t helped.
At the very top, to the right of the main track, you will see a couple of small streaks. That is the Re-entry Burn of the 1st stage as it moves out of the way of the 2nd stage engines and sets up its return as it now heads back to Earth for landing.
The 1st stage free-falls for 6 to 8 minutes, depending on launch angle, and then the landing burn initiates, which is where the burn restarts in the photo, all the way down to a soft landing.
Previously I’ve posted a video of the Falcon 9 1st stage soft landing on a barge out in the Atlantic. The barge landings will be necessary depending on the launch angle needed to reach the correct orbit. Under some conditions, the 1st stage won’t have enough fuel to reach the land-based touchdown point. So then they’ll use the barge.
One other neat thing about the 1st stage is that it uses 9 (Yes, 9! ) Merlin 1D engines. And these are powerful enough so that even if two engines fail along the way, the rocket can still make orbit and complete its mission. You gotta love redundancy.
Thought for the Day:
“For it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ ‘Chuck him out, the brute!’
But it’s “Saviour of ‘is country” when the guns begin to shoot;” – Rudyard Kipling
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