MRO in Orbit

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter completed it's main engine burn Friday afternoon and is now orbiting the red planet. I love to follow these kinds of things at www.spaceflightnow.com. They usually give live updates to launches, landings, and other important spacecraft happenings. They also inject a lot of enthusiasm into their reporting. Here is a sample from Friday's MRO mission status log:

2124 GMT (4:24 p.m. EST)

MOI IGNITION! Flying backward with the Red Planet looming near, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has ignited its cluster of engines for the 27-minute orbit insertion burn. This engine firing will slow the spacecraft's speed by 2,200 mph, enabling the planet to capture the probe before sailing past.

2216 GMT (5:16 p.m. EST)

CONTACT! Communications have been restarted with the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter!

When reading the updates live, I really get caught up in the exitement.

Supercomputers

It seems like every time somebody jams a new processor or bunch of processors in a desktop computer, they call it a supercomputer. Remember Apple's Power Mac (what was it a G3 or G4 at the time) advertising campaign? Well, these guys have now come as close as anybody, jamming up to 8 dual core Opteron processors and 64G of memory into a machine not much larger than a desktop PC. I assume the Opteron is manufactured in a 90nm process. Companies are already selling devices at 60nm, and 45nm test chips have likely taped-out somewhere. So this thing could have 64 cores in under two years. Now that is desktop power.

Time Travel Short Story

If you enjoy time travel stories as much as I do, here is a link to a good one. The author is Michael Swanwick, who also wrote the time travel novel "Bones of the Earth".

Some Life Lessons

I don't want this to turn into some sort of gay blog, but I found this post to be worth reading. Even if you're the type of person who never follow links, you should read this one.