Happy winter/summer solstice, everybody!

[redpoint5]

Jupiter, I'd like to fly by. Born too early I suppose, though the movies said we'd be there in 2010.

[freebeard]

I just finished watching Mars And Beyond With Dr. Robert Zubrin from 2018. Dr. Zubrin lays the blame on Richard M. Nixon. Said nations decided not to compete and join forces, and all the progress stopped. Said there could have been a generation born on Mars graduating high school.

(As if Mars will even have high schools)

Jupiter is interesting for the moons outside it's intense magnetosphere, but my desire would be Iapetus.

Like duct tape Iapetus has a light side and a dark side. Like a walnut it has an equatorial mountain range. It's orbit is tilted to provide the best view in the Solar System, of Saturn.


io9.gizmodo.com: How the solar system's strangest moon, Iapetus, lost its rings

Did I mention that instead of spherical it's faceted?




tywkiwdbi.blogspot.com: Iapetus, a fascinating moon of Saturn - updated

[Ecky]

Originally Posted by redpoint5

Jupiter, I'd like to fly by. Born too early I suppose, though the movies said we'd be there in 2010.

The books said it would be Saturn.

[Xist]

The sequel book was a follow-up to the first movie.

[freebeard]

Three different representations of 2001's early monolith ...
https://www.reddit.com/r/StanleyKubr...f_2001s_early/
Seemingly because although Kubrick originally designed the monolith as a tetrahedron, the most basic geometric unit of the five Platonic solids, he began to notice that people he showed it to didn't appear to know what it was (as it is formed entirely from just four equilateral triangles, it's very different to the Egyptian pyramids at Giza, which have a square base below four triangles, half ...

Monolith (Space Odyssey) - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monolith_(Space_Odyssey)
The first design for the Monolith for the 2001 film was a tetrahedral pyramid. This was taken from the 1951 short story " The Sentinel " that the first story was based on. A London firm was approached to provide a 12-foot (3.7 m) plexiglass pyramid, and due to construction constraints they recommended a flat slab shape.

11 Things You Didn't Know About '2001: A Space Odyssey ...
https://www.history.com/news/making-...-space-odyssey
The mysterious black monolith began as a translucent Plexiglas tetrahedron, which ultimately assumed a monolith shape because Plexiglas cools better that way. ... 2001 ended up becoming the ...

10 Behind-The-Scenes Facts About The Making Of 2001: A ...
https://screenrant.com/behind-the-sc...space-odyssey/
Originally, 2001 was set to end in the same way the novel does. Instead of the Star Child descending on Earth, the finale would have featured Bowman finding the third monolith on the surface of Saturn's moon Japetus.

A lost of mis-information circulating around. People are ignorant of the tetrahedron, else 60 degree angles are harder to cut than 90 degree corners, else tetrahedrons overheat.

And Iapetus is spelt with a J...

[Piotrsko]

60 degree is much harder than 45 or 90, probably because you generally have to set it up yourself then build an angle checker to see if you did it right. Repeatable is an issue also.

This may not apply to Kubrick, he had money to spend.

[Xist]

Originally Posted by freebeard

A lost of mis-information circulating around. People are ignorant of the tetrahedron, else 60 degree angles are harder to cut than 90 degree corners, else tetrahedrons overheat.

And Iapetus is spelt with a J...

Are you using lost as a noun now?

Oxford, Merriam-Webster, and Collins disagree with you regarding the spelling, although I have seen both spellings.

Searching for Japetus mostly returns Iapetus results--except for in fiction.

[freebeard]

A lot of mis-information circulating around.

The spell checker catches some grammar problems, but it has it's limits.

First I'd heard of Japetus,

[MetroMPG]

(from https://www.solsticeforum.com/media/snow-goin.6442/ )

... or happy sunny solstice to the few members down south!

Did anybody spot comet Leonard? I didn't try.

Coolest celestial thing I've done recently was showed someone how to spot Venus (naked eye) in broad daylight a few weeks ago. It always blows my mind slightly to be able to see it when the sun is up.

[Gasoline Fumes]

Originally Posted by MetroMPG

Did anybody spot comet Leonard? I didn't try.

I tried. The clouds were lovely.