walden

@walden@wetshav.ing

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I replaced my truck's rusted out muffler⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  Sometimes it's the only way to really figure out what's broken.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I replaced my truck's rusted out muffler⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  Nice work. I've replaced the wrong part before, but I learned a lot from it. Something was dripping on the exhaust manifold, so I replaced the heater core because it was in the right place, and coolant runs through it. It turned out to be the head gasket that needed replacing, so I got to do that, too. I'm in a different place now financially, and will never do either of those jobs myself ever again.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Caption this.⁩ ⁨⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  Finding the Center of Gravitas.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Quantum alternative to GPS navigation will be tested on US military spaceplane⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  It's recommended to not begin boarding until it's finished, but one person moving around, gusts of wind, etc. don't bother it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Quantum alternative to GPS navigation will be tested on US military spaceplane⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  I've been trying to think through how it would determine longitude based on rotation of the earth and I agree, that's not really possible. I wonder what other tricks it uses to find the initial location.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Quantum alternative to GPS navigation will be tested on US military spaceplane⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  This sounds pretty fancy.

  Commercial aircraft get their location from multiple places including GPS, ground based facilities (VOR's), IRS, etc. IRS is what I'm used to calling it, but it's the same as INS, which is what this article is talking about.

  It determines location by keeping track of rotation, acceleration, etc. It's often called "dead reckoning" because it just gives the best guess, and you don't know how accurate it is. There are multiple of these devices on each aircraft, and they compare their locations to the other sources and if one is drifting way further than the rest, it gets ignored. That's a very basic explanation because how it really works is way above my knowledge level.

  It's very cool how these devices find their location, though. When you first boot the system up, it spends about 5 minutes measuring the rotation of the Earth. For this reason, you can't reset it when in motion. Based on what it feels it can determine your exact location on the surface of the earth.