He was the Time Person of the Year, he hosted SNL, he was in freaking Iron Man 2
He has a larger Twitter following than the President of the US, the NASA Admin, Tory, and Bezos combined
But instead of using that platform to get people excited about rockets he’s just a troll
As someone that works every day to get people excited about aero and diversify our mostly homogenous field, it is so utterly disappointing
I imagine that for every crypto bro that’s a space tech fan because of Elon, there’s a girl that sees confirmation space is a “boys club”
It’s such a shame because SpaceX (and Tesla) are doing such incredible work. The attention they receive is warranted. It should be an inspiration to EVERYONE. But Elon has to be…the way that he is. And there’s this toxic cloud over the whole operation.
By the way, I’m intentionally skipping my half-joking “disclaimer” that I often post to keep some of the fanboys at bay. I hope this makes them mad. Everyone should be mad. I’m furious and @elonmusk needs to do better for the future of the entire space industry. STEP UP
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This is really bad but unfortunately not surprising
And we all know it’s not just SpaceX
Without a massive cultural shift in our field, aero will continue to suffer from a woeful lack of diversity that holds back the entire industry. We need to do better
Not my usual aero content but we often rely on cameras in wind tunnel testing. Camera f-number is calculated w a simple formula:
focal length / aperture diameter
As f-number ⬆️, image brightness ⬇️ & depth of field ⬇️
This is a good viz of the effect
Here’s a few other nice figures summarizing f-number
How do we get the common “f-stops” seen in the images (f/1, f/1.4, f/2, etc)?
These are powers of sqrt(2) so that light intensity changes by factors of 2 between f-stops (because intensity scales w area which goes as d^2)
Want the best of both worlds, or just have trouble deciding what you want?
Use a plenoptic lens, which relies on a “micro-lens array” to image the entire 4D light field. This enables refocusing, changing f-number, and slight tilt adjustments in post processing!
The semester is quickly winding down & I figured the @UTSA students in my undergraduate Measurements & Instrumentation class could use some extra credit, so I had them make memes about the class!
Main rules were to keep it clean, relevant to the class, & fun
Needless to say, as this class involves a lot of circuits & statistics, not all of our Mechanical Engineering students are starting from the same place...
Hey @TelegraphNews the correct answer to your poll is "none of the above" because hypersonic speed isn't defined by Mach number, it's about changes in flow chemistry, heating, thin shock/entropy layers, etc.
@TelegraphNews One of my favorite graphics summarizing what truly defines hypersonic flow, from J. Anderson's "Hypersonic and high-temperature gas dynamics"
Hypersonics is definitely having a moment as part of the zeitgeist (seems to happen once or twice a year), but for everyone reporting on this stuff I wish the opening chapter to the Anderson hypersonic text were required reading