Why is this impressive? Either they beamed it out through satelites, which is notoriously hard from an unstable platform on big waves, or they recovered the saildrone and obtained the footage directly which is equally impressive in or around a hurricane.
All around if the dating of the footage is correct it is very impressive to me.
Key Features:
* Robust, Light-Weight Communications for at Sea Operations
* Certus 700 Services (352 kbps Up/704 kbps Down & 256 kbps Streaming Capable)
*100% Global Satellite Coverage and Low Latency for Critical Data and Voice Communications
1. https://blogs.nasa.gov/earthexpeditions/wp-content/uploads/s...
2. https://www.thalesgroup.com/en/markets/market-specific-solut...
3. https://www.thalesgroup.com/sites/default/files/database/doc...
4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iridium_satellite_constellatio...
5. https://seatech.systems/product/thales-vesselink-700-for-iri...
From my impressions, NOAA is a very useful agency that delivers on its mission pretty well. But I never interacted with them directly.
Right here is a link to the web site: https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/
Their forecasting graphics (probability distributions of tropical cyclone tracks, wind speeds, rainfall, et cetera, all overlaid on maps) are direct and easy-to-read, and do a good job of conveying the uncertainty of the behavior of these storms in a way that's legible to a lay person.
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-06-14/trump-s-p...
But well, there are still ten years to go until 2031, let's hope we still won't be enticed to think about an F-6 by then...
(I actually live in Chelyabinsk)
That must have been absolutely amazing.
Did you see the initial airburst itself? What were your thoughts / how would you describe your reaction as the event unfolded?
Thoughts, 'WOW', 'COOL', 'Did somebody film that??', and, of course, the rest of the workday was not very productive. It was nice to see that so much footage made.
One thing footage doesn't show is, however, the heat: the radiation was intense and open parts of the skin did feel hot, like , REALLLY BURNING HOT. Had it lasted longer, there would be burns on everybody.
I found the data to be of good quality, free, and a simple interface to interact with.
One day I went to export data from their web portal and it never seemed to be ready. I shot an email off with no expectation of a response, but a little while later I got a nice response from their system administrator that they were doing an upgrade and some jobs got backed up in the queue. My limited experience with them has been all positive.
I'd think that a larger impactor or one that survived further into Earth's atmosphere (and closer to the surface) might have changed that experience markedly. You're informing my own advice-to-self as to how to respond should I see a very large airburst at some point. "Stay away from glass" was already part of that, as well as "expect the shockwave after about 90 seconds". I think I'll add "avoid direct thermal exposure if it looks to be large" to the list.
If you've not already seen the Sandia Labs modelling based on the 1908 Tunguska event, the shockwave dynamics suggest to me why and how the multiple shockwave arrivals at a given point on the ground occur:
https://newsreleases.sandia.gov/releases/2007/asteroid.html
Particularly this simulation: http://www.sandia.gov/videos2007/2007-6514Pfire.hv1.1.mpg
With that amount of money I'm sure the system would be able to grow to accommodate (including sending up more satellites) if only to make sure the money doesn't go to another competitor.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iridium_satellite_constellatio...
2. https://www.satphonestore.com/tech-browsing/satellite-intern...
The Thales VesseLink modem they used consumes 65W nominal/120W maximum. It offers a connection speed of a couple hundred kbps, so sending up a video file of a fixed size will require it to be on for quite a while - Assuming 200 kbps average, and a 360 MB video, that's 4 hours of uploading or 260 Watt-hours. Also, it's 12x9x2", and weighs 7.5 lbs; this is a boat not a hobby quadcopter. 260 Watt-hours is a lot; that's like 3 laptop batteries, but that's still smaller than the modem itself.
Starlink does consume 100W, but offers a connection speed of about 200 Mbps. The 360 MB video upload could complete in 14.4 seconds, which consumes 100 W * 14.4 seconds / 3600 seconds/hour = 0.4 Watt-hours. It is significantly larger, and it would probably have a harder time handling rough seas (not to mention saltwater intrusion), but that's a lot less power.
Whichever modem you're using, you'd want to turn it on infrequently.
Edit: The Saildrone product brief is here:
https://assets.website-files.com/5beaf972d32c0c1ce1fa1863/61...
It describes a 23' or 7m boat. The 33'/10m larger version has 300W continuous sensor power/2kW peak available from the solar panels, which appear to be of a comparable size to those on the Saildrone.
We can still appreciate that as a mind-blowing achievement! And it might put a damper on the enthusiasm for a delayed video of a wet drone.. :)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet_Shoemaker%E2%80%93Levy_9
The biggest downside is the buoy's are rather old so you don't get a lot of data. Nowadays we could design a buoy that streamed back all of its raw data. But the buoys are designed with bandwidth constrained hardware so they do the analysis on the machine and return the summary results infrequently. It really limits what you're able to do with the data. Especially holding back from machine learning capability.
It is still very costly on a dollars per MB of data transferred basis.
The main problem with it is the very high dollars per megabyte cost. If you're a billionaire or a nation state with a $30 million Gulfstream jet and an Iridium terminal on it you probably don't care. But it can be cost prohibitive for any appreciable amount of data transfer from remote scientific systems.
For a 10mt explosion at 20km height it shows a third degree burn radius of 27km. Chelyabinsk was ~0.5kt at 29km. Larger objects are expected to penetrate further into the atmosphere before exploding: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteor_air_burst
I'm not sure how much time you'd have to evaluate size or distance, videos of Chelyabinsk show it pretty bright just a second or two after becoming visible. Length of infrared exposure determines severity of burn, so reacting early is helpful.
Out of curiosity, what have you been using buoy data for?
Being impacted by the Morris Worm, and having a (text-based) copy of the Pons-Fleischman paper, both circa 1988, via the uni Unix server, was pretty cool.
But Chelyabinsk was a massively-shared instance, where a random news event in a place that was absolutely not a media centre, was still accessible in very short order with multiple coverages.
Sci-Hub / LibGen give a similar feeling, though in a different sense. Wells's World Brain and Bush's Memex, delivered. Even if the Establishment is being dragged kicking and screaming.
I am old enough to remember rotary phones and I am not that old.
It will be a life-changing event for maritime robotics, assuming they don't get too greedy.
"Do not gaze upon meteorite armageddon through window with remaining face."
I'm unaware of something like that in locations which suffered from large explosions around a similar timeframe.
or very shortly before that on a promotion, on the new high speed track between Cologne and Frankfurt.
Gently sloped up- and downhill, sometimes right next and parallel to the Autobahn A3.
At 331 to 333 kph. Not shaking at all, and relatively silent.
Looking out of the window, seeing Porsches, Mercedes-Benz, BMW
trying to overtake slower traffic permanently blinking left, flashing their lights.
Appearing almost stationary.
Thinking: Who needs Transrapid?
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/5633081_The_Halifax...
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=eye%20surgery%20halifax...
You'll need to retrain your instincts to instantly close your eyes and flinch away in response to bright light, then judge the "looks to be large (or not)" through your closed eyelids. This should work fine as I remember reading that some observers of the Trinity nuclear test blast saw the bones of their hands through their closed and covered eyes...
Alternatively, make a habit of wearing welding glasses with 100% UV protective glass that will auto-darken to Shade 14++
&yes, those Sandia Labs simulations are really amazing!
If you're close enough to a fireball that you're instantly incinerated, you might as well just enjoy the show. There's nothing you can do.
If you're within the zone of survivability, then there's cause to take action, and responses over seconds, minutes, and hours can make a difference. A 20--30 mile airburst gives 2--3 minutes before he
The prompt heat flash lasts several seconds. Ducking and sheltering quickly behind any shading barrier will provide protection. Infrared is no penatrating radiation. And bollides as blackbody emitters release mostly IR and visible light. Short-term flash-blindness, likely, permanent blindness ... probably not?
Blast effects lag blast by seconds to minutes. A 20--30 mi altitude bollide burst (32--48km) gives 2--3 minutes before the blast will hit.
Fragments might be another risk. Again, they'll lag considerably and arrive with fairly low terminal velocity for any likely impactor.
TL;DR: Killing effects cover several modalities and don't arrive instantaneously or simultaneously.
Totally agree on the survivability. While most ppl just immediately think 'it's a nuke/meteorite, you're just fried', even a quick look will show that the lower effects zone is at least 10x the area of the 'you're fried' zone.
So yes, just instantly closing your eyes & looking away, stepping away from the window, behind a tree or lamppost, etc. can do a lot in the first 5 seconds, then using the next 10sec that get behind something to be on the leeward side of the shockwave, and you'll be way ahead of the situation. Probably best measure is to avoid important cities.
