Paul M

I don't remember buying any of this stuff! Oh, hold on it's not me

My old dad was G3YGU, he maintained his license even after many years of radio silence. He was strictly HF only and talked to the States frequently. When He died I had a serious trip down memory lane as I cleared the remnants of his shack. I kept his old station log books and his framed RAE certificate, which are still at the side of my bed still. I still hear the heterodyne whistle and smell the solder when my mind wanders back to my childhood, looking over his shoulder. I passed the RAE in '81 when I was 16/17 but never took up a license for various reasons.

What a thread! As per a poster above, I too have an old Vista lappy (Dell) and I'm almost inspired (it might even be an Inspiron!!) to have a go at getting a Linux install on it. Not even sure what flavour to opt for. I delved in to my RasPi a while ago but never really got beyond paddling ankle deep, maybe that would be the best flavour of Linux to carry on with??? I'm ok with ISO's but the second the installation requires a grain of knowledge or experience of Linux I'll be on the rocks I don't hate Windows, but I like the idea of breaking free of it's grasp (maybe in the event of nuclear war, Windows will stop working ) but mostly I love planetarium software and really like the look of KStars. Don't need it for productivity but potentially for scope control. So after re-reading this thread, I might just have a go during the up and coming cloudy winter!

It's getting too easy now. Amazon will be selling Falcon 9 kits before you know it. Well, actually cheap Chinese copies Need more boosters returning in unison or maybe a "Houston, we have a problem" moment. Ways off that though!

That sounds like a beast of a scope. Do you have any pictures? Don't hear much about Fullerscope's refractors. I suppose there weren't many made relative to the reflectors.

Oh, by the way, due to increasing demand and with immediate effect, my price for disposing of high end fracs has increased to £30. Mounts, NEQ 6 Pro and above can also be disposed of at sender's expense

Indeed, and if that experience pleases you then it was the right scope at that time. Still never seen Albireo look so good through any scope as it did through my poxy old 60mm refractor in the late 70's. It's a voyage of discovery, why rush it?

Yup, that's the fella. Send it to me. I'll give you £25 to cover costs. The tube will make a few Irnbru cans and the tatty old lense will maybe go towards a gin bottle.

I think they are useless too. I'm currently offering a free disposal service. Send your refractors to me and I'll get rid. For high end refractors, Tak's and the like, I'll pay carriage upto £25. But seriously, a good quality 90mm refractor will serve you well. I'm talking myself into buying just such a scope. 90mm is a bit small for a Mak . Maybe usable on the Moon and planets but not a lot of light gathering for a compound scope. My friend got a celestron 127mm Mak and I was a bit disappointed for him. At that aperture I think they are limited. I briefly looked at your linked page and gave up after a few sentences. An 8 inch Mak is a nice scope for quite a few targets. I wouldn't buy 90mm mak for anything other than birding.

I think this was a demonstration of ability as much as a test flight. Actuall it would have been a test flight if it failed and a demo flight if successful The ability for Falcon Heavy to launch an interplanetary or even interstellar payload had to be demonstrated. As Mr Musk said in one interview, it could deliver an interplanetary payload without gravity assist flybys. So the performance of the second stage was a critical aspect of this flight and might as well be done if all that rocket fuel is being expended to prove the launch vehicle.

Every time I watch that there car, with Earth as a backdrop, I can hear Bowie singing about his Starman. I know there is no connection and the timing is all wrong but I bet Bowie wouldn't have minded leaving this world inside that space suit. He could have paid his passage too I suspect. Who wouldn't?

The US government put a lot of stuff up there while testing and flying Apollo and its predecessors. Other countries have left their share of junk too. I'm more positive about future exploration now than any time since Apollo. Imagine what could have been done with the money spent on the Shuttle program and so much of its activity was little more than pointless missions to keep it moving and justify NASA's existence. Oopss!, sorry getting near the boundaries of forum rules!

Talking about the boosters being returned reminds me of the various abort modes for the Space Shuttle. While the boosters were still burning there was no abort option, there was a narrow window, after booster separation but before the shuttle had too much energy, where the shuttle could RTLS, return to landing site. It was never used and most astronauts considered it an improbable survival mode. The first ever Shuttle launch was originally intended to be an RTLS for no better reason than to examine its feasibility, commander John Glenn said words to the effect of "not on his watch"! Other abort modes included aborting to designated landing sites on the east side of the Atlantic and aborting to Orbit. Abort to Orbit was used a couple of times after shuttle main engine failure, the missions continued to a stable but lower than scheduled orbit. After the Challenger Disaster a crew escape system was introduced but never used. The crew would climb out to the end of a deployable escape boom and parachute down to the Atlantic. Only a very narrow window of viable usage and very limited survivability even then. Not sure I fancy being strapped in the pointy end of a huge great rocket!

I loved all of yesterday's coverage but must admit that I didn't really know anything about Elon Musk until Space X's most recent successful ventures made it into the media. Ok, he's a really rich businessman who but he's also a true visionary. I like to think he'll continue to use his wealth and vision to focus on "good things" Like some others have said already, getting a man to Mars now looks possible in my time. The final frontier just reopened with one huge boost! I know, he'll promote the Space X vehicles for both commercial and military use. He needs to make money to keep it all going. I'll just put my fingers in my ears and make la-la noises when they're doing the less exploratory launches... I'm no snowflake but I'd be sad to see a great visionary's view obscured by the same-old same-old space race.

The simultaneous booster landings were surreal, like an animation. Well, done that team. They made it look easy!

There is some utterly spectacular high definition video of Apollo launches on YouTube. Nothing will ever tingle my spine in the same way as a Saturn V launch. Fill your boots, while remembering 3 blokes were sat on top of this thing!

Looking good so far! I guess there is no 1 stage recovery because so much of the vehicle is taken up by a large second stage to gain Geostationary orbit as compared LEO vehicles that don't need so much, err...ooomff!! So smaller 1 stage?

I've watched that a number of times. The contrast between characters of two brilliant minds is very prominent. One a very British eccentric, often alone in his ideas, the other a very different ecentric, a true genius. Yet often distracted by his very human frailties. I sometimes wonder what Feynman would have/could have discovered if he had focussed his entire being on Physics.

I was aware of this issue when I bought my NEQ6 Pro because it was a very hot potato here on SGL at the time, with various mods being shared and offered. So I was well prepared for taking it easy on the dec adjusting bolt. I circumvented the risk of bending the bolt by backing off the unstressed bolt and physically lifting the strain off the loaded bolt then just turn it half or quarter of a turn before letting the load rest against it again. More or less using it as an adjustable stop, never moving it while under strain. I set up and break down after every session and don't find it too much of a chore (then again, my polar aligning is dog rough! ) Let's remember that it's been one of the most successful and affordable goto/tracking mounts ever in amateur astronomy. Compared with my old Fullerscopes MkIII mount, it's a stunning piece of kit!! Having said that, I fully appreciate the OP's point. It's a bit of a bother that such a long standing design issue hasn't been corrected or improved by a factory installed mod. In his position I think I'd be talking nicely to the vendor about changing it for the newer mount.

Oh darn it!! Do you know that I spotted that so deleted that image, squared the cap up and took another picture. However, I composed my post on my laptop having took the pictures with my phone which is set to upload them directly to my OneDrive. So it looks like the bad picture got uploaded before I could delete it and the re-try hadn't yet been uploaded when I composed my post. I attached the wrong one! Oh the shame of it!! I Just nearly fell into that huge yawning gap between the 28mm and the 11mm. Gonna have to bring home the 20mm from Cumbria or do some more buying Edit: here it is!

Now then, I can play too now: The 5 on the left are my newly acquired eyepieces (thanks JOC!) alongside my other two randoms. I do actually still have the 3 eyepieces that came with Ye Olde Fullerscope last century but they live up in Cumbria at our luxury villa with said same Olde Fullerscope. Hactually I think it's a lovely family portrait

Oh dear, what a scruffy assemblage. I'll give you £90 for the lot. Set you up for a fresh start ?

Burnham's are a rare delight. It's many years since I looked through them but I suspect that as an observer's guide they are timeless. They look impressive on any bookshelf too!! Some books I've felt honoured to just hold and thumb through. Burnham's and Cosmos are among them. Others have blown me away. I've maybe mentioned before, a book by Hoimar Von Ditfurth; "Children of The Universe". Perhaps it won't stand up to modern science so well but back in the day it struck me with cosmic awe.

Prior to 2003 I had over 100 astronomy books but donated them all to the local library when we moved house and my interest was on the back burner. I only kept two that I can find (three if you include the observing log I kept as a boy), Moon, Mars and Venus (Anton Rukle??) which was a collector's item even then and Sky Atlas 2000 (Tirion). I really should have kept my hardback copy of Cosmos (Sagan) amongst others...Burnham's Celestial Handbook (3 vols) .. Star and Planets Spotting (Peter Lancaster Brown) which still had my 1970's pencil marked planet positions for Mars, Jupiter and Saturn on the star charts... I wonder where they are now.

That's a nice, simple "grab and go" permanent pier! I'm heartened by your enthusiasm for this scope. A while ago it was my good friend's 60th birthday and his good lady asked me to recommend a nice telescope for him. She told me about how much he enjoys me showing him the night sky up at our rural Cumbrian get-away. Even so, he'd never looked through either of my scopes and I know it can be difficult for a newbie to develop the skills. So I recommended the SW 127 mak on the alt/az goto mount. Wish I'd recommended a Dob now. We've had a couple of sessions with it and he's really not taking to the setting up procedure. I'm hoping that this winter something will finally "click" and he'll be on his way. Either that or he says "here, you have it"!