Hackaday Links: August 25, 2024

The Sun has been remarkably active lately, so much so that it might have set a new sunspot record. According to the sun watchers at the Space Weather Prediction Center, on August 8, the Solar Dynamics Observatory snapped a picture that was positively bedazzled with sunspots. Counting methods vary, but one count put the sunspot number at a whopping 337 that day. That would be the largest number since 2001, during the peak of Solar Cycle 23. The sunspot number is highly correlated with solar storms and coronal mass ejections; more spots mean more magnetic activity and more chance for something to go very, very wrong. We’ve been pretty lucky so far with Solar Cycle 25; despite being much more active than the relatively lazy Cycle 24 and much stronger than predicted, most of this cycle’s outbursts have been directed away from Earth or only dealt us a glancing blow. Seeing all those spots, though, makes us think it’s only a matter of time before we get hit with something that does more than make pretty lights.

Having done our share of roofing, we can safely say it’s a pretty tough job. Everything is heavy, it’s either boiling hot or freezing cold, and one moment’s inattention can make for a very bad day. Plus, the fiberglass shards in your skin at the end of the day can be incredibly annoying. On the other hand, a good roofing job is a thing of beauty, and there’s immense satisfaction in having been the one to do it. But, with apologies to Steve Miller, time keeps on slipping into the future, humans are expensive and unreliable, and someone will eventually try to automate humans out of pretty much every job.

It’s roofing’s turn now with the aptly named Rufus auto roof robot. It’s a hybrid robot with a base unit containing a hopper for shingles and a SCARA arm that positions, aligns, and nails down the shingles. The base unit, in turn, is moved around the surface of the roof by a capstan-drive cable robot, with cables anchored to the corners of the roof.

It’s an interesting idea, but one that’s going to take some development to make it practical. For one thing, we can see safety regulators having a fit over those cables, which will be a tripping hazard for the workers who have to keep the bot fed with shingles and nails. Also, a roof that’s completely free of obstructions like vent stacks, skylights, or chimneys is a rare roof indeed, and it seems like the cable system would foul on such obstructions very easily. Still, you’ve got to start somewhere, and it’ll be interesting to see how this develops. Or maybe we’ll just throw Atlas at it.

Head up, hams — another spectrum land grab appears to be underway. This one is a little hard to follow, but what we see is that a company called NexNav, which is currently licensed for a Location and Monitoring Service in the 900-MHz band, wants to split the 902 MHz to 928 MHz band and start blasting out high-powered signals on the upper part of the band, apparently for a new 5G position system that will serve as a backup to satellite location systems like GPS. The problem is that amateur radio operators have a secondary allocation in that band, which, despite the company’s unsupported claims to the contrary, will most likely be swamped by their 2,000-watt effective radiated power signals. LoRaWAN fans might also take note of the proposed change, which would likely make life difficult for them and other ISM-band users. It might be time to write some strongly worded letters.

And finally, what a time to be alive! While Boeing has figured out how to turn the ISS into a low-earth orbit Gilligan’s Island by unintentionally extending an eight-day visit into an open-ended stay, down here on Earth, we’re tackling the real problems, like how to safely eat Doritos in space. Luckily, the food scientists at Frito-Lay put their top people on the problem and came up with “Cool Ranch Zero Gravity Doritos,” which substitute a flavored oil spray for the normal finger-staining powdered spice blend that would get everywhere in an environment where gravity doesn’t pull it down onto your shirt or into your neck-beard. And to keep cornmeal crumbs from getting loose, they shrunk the triangular chips down to about a third the size of a regular Dorito, so you can just stuff the whole chip in your mouth without biting it first.

We have many thoughts on this, primarily that being unable to stuff at least three regular-size Doritos in your mouth at one time should be grounds for disqualification from spaceflight and that they literally could have chosen any flavor to send to space, but they had to make it Cool Ranch, which raises many questions of its own. But mainly, we’re just sad that this is what has become of spaceflight — and yes, we know about Tang, but this seems a lot worse.