This week, Elliot sat down with Dan for the penultimate podcast of 2023, and what a week it was. We started with news about Voyager; at T+46 years from launch, any news tends to be bad, and the latest glitch has everyone worried. We also took a look at how close the OSIRIS-REx mission came to ending in disaster, all for want of consistent labels.
Elliot was charmed by a Cthulhu-like musical instrument, while Dan took a shine to a spark gap transmitter that’s probably on the FCC’s naughty list. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishably from magic, and we looked at the laser made possible by the magician-in-chief himself, C.V. Raman. Why would you stuff a PSU full of iron filings? Probably for the same reason you’d print fake markings on a 6502 chip. We also took a look at the chemistry and history of superglue, a paper tape reader that could lop off your arm, and rocket gas stations in space.
Grab a copy for yourself if you want to listen offline.
Voyager 1 In Trouble As Engineers Scramble To Debug Issue With Flight Data System
Boeing 737 Pressurisation (site appears to be down at press time; hopefully it comes back up)
Guess the sound for a chance to win a Podcast T-shirt!
The Trans-Harmonium Is A Strange Kind Of Radio-Musical Instrument
Emily Francisco – Operations and Maintenance
Supercon 2022: Chris Combs Reveals His Art-World Compatibility Layer
Modern Spark Gap Transmitter Uses A Rotary Gap
Homemade Raman Laser Is Shaken, Not Stirred
Raman laser – Wikipedia
Open Source Raman Spectrometer Is Cheaper, But Not Cheap
TSP #230 – A Real-Life Tricorder! Agilent Raman Resolve Through-Barrier Chemical Analyzer – YouTube
Cheap Computer PSU Puts On Weight With Box Of Iron
ThunderScan: The Wild 1980s Product That Turned A Printer Into A Scanner
NASA Blames Probe Chute Failure On Wire Labels
Elliot’s Picks:
LED Art Project Is Geometrically Beautiful
Hilarious Security Flaw In Counter Strike 2 Is Now Patched
Raspberry Pi Changes HATs
Dan’s Picks:
When Is A 6502 Not Quite A 6502?
Fast Paper Tape For The Nuclear Family
Can’t-Miss Articles:
Tech In Plain Sight: Super Glue
