Please remember me when shopping online and use my affiliate links. US HERE – UK HERE WHY? This helps to pay for health insurance (massively hiked for this new year of surprises), utilities, groceries, etc.. At no extra cost, you provide help for which I am grateful.
Hey sr****31@gmail.com! My thank you for your monthly donation got kicked back. New email?
Click!
When I was young I would stay up late or fall asleep on the couch in front of the TV during Gemini and Apollo missions. Of course all of us a certain age have clear memories of the first lunar landing. Tonight I stayed up late hoping I might from distance catch something of the launch of the Intuitive Machines-1 launch to the Moon via SpaceX Falcon Heavy from Cape Canaveral. Weather and clouds cooperated for the most part, though some clouds did obscure a little. Alas, all I had was my iPhone as a dashed from my desktop watching the live feed to see what I could see. I also discovered that there is a delay in the “live” feed. It is good I got out there when I did. Toward the end you see the Main Engine Cut Off and then the Backburn that brings the Falcon Heavy back to the ground to land.
Video NOT from the World’s Best Sacristan™.
The video of the launch and follow up is HERE.
This is all part of the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS). NASA has teamed up with commercial companies to put stuff on the Moon. This mission is to put a company called Intuitive Machines which built a lander called “Odysseus” with a bunch of instruments on it. On 22 Feb Odysseus will land on the southern part of the Moon, the South Pole. There are now 14 companies working with NASA and SpaceX. Pretty exciting. It’ll be these USA’s first lunar landing since the Apollo program in 1972, and the 1st commercial lander.
SpaceX… will you please take over the USPS? Thanks in advance. How about the DDF, too?
A screen grab of the separation of the IM-1 Lunar Lander – Nova C – separating from Falcon 9’s second stage. Now the Lander – going 10km/second – powers up, slows its spinning, looks at the stars and figures out where it is. It then communicates with mission control (BIG APPLAUSE). Like Superman Nova C gets some juice from the Sun and then heads off to the Moon. 6 days to get to the Moon. Then it has to land… softly.
Meanwhile, white to move and mate in 2.
NB: I’ll hold comments with solutions ’till the next day so there won’t be “spoilers” for others.
In chessy news. Semifinals at the German 960 Spa, the 2024 Freestyle Chess G.O.A.T. Challenge. Fabiano Caruana and Levon Aronian had a war – SEVEN HOURS – SIX GAMES – all the way to Armageddon (very fast chess where you bid on time and the lowest gets black, but a draw is a win for black. Carlsen squished Nodirbek Abdusattorov. The Final will be Magnus and Fabi, back together again. I am rooting for Gukesh to defeat Alireza Puer Firouzja for 5th. I’m still sad about Ding Liren.
Meanwhile, on chess.com – did I mention I am now an affiliate? HERE – Hikaru Nakamura broke 3400 in Blitz with a high of 3408, 28 higher than Magnus. There are different formats of fast, speed chess. Rapid, is longer than 10 minutes per player, like 30/0 (minutes/no addition of seconds for a move) and 15/10 (15 minutes and 10 seconds added to your clock when you move – what FIDE uses for World Rapid Championship. There are custom formats too. Blitz are 3 or 5 minutes per player. On Chess.com there will be over 3.5 million blitz games a DAY. The most popular are 5|0, and 3|0, and FIDE uses 3|2. There is also Bullet, which is insane. Second most used time controls on chess.com, over a million games a day. The most popular time controls for bullet are 1|0 and 2|1. As I watch any of these really fast games I can’t believe how fast they use the mouse to move the pieces. Over the board… you wind up knocking things down in time scrambles.
I am now a chess.com affiliate. So, click and join! Maybe we can build a fun and active Catholic Chess Club within Chess.com. Priestly chess players, drop me a line. HERE
CLICK!
