The very best chance for a picture for me was coming into Tulsa from Enid. and I was tired, so I let Debbie drive to her folks house. I was watching a formation of Navy Biplanes in blue with a yellow starburst pattern, and I looked past them an saw a space shuttle on the back of its carrier airplane circling to land.
So IF I had a camera, I could have snapped a picture of the entire span of aviation in ONE picture! Biplanes to space ship...but no camera, SMH!
:'(
Hey, @smithlabs:
Okay. That would have been awesome. :) Just thinking about it, picturing it in my head, is awesome.
But what's the odds of that even happening. At least with the balloon, I know there's a possibility it's going to come over. How do you know that biplanes and a piggybacked space shuttle are going to converge?
Unless you can find it online somewhere, my guess is, you weren't alone in the sans camera department that day.
It was the most stunning sight I have ever seen! They were both in town for some air show, and the shared air space was accidental, but WOW!
I got to thinking about My Father; and I realized that HE had lived through every bit of what I saw that day! The Biplanes when he was a kid, and the reusable space craft when he was an adult!
What an amazing time we live in!
:DThat's very true. It is an amazing time, and I'm afraid too many of us take it all for granted. I've been around for just a little over a half of a century and the changes that have been made in that time period are mindboggling. The amount of technology that has changed over the last 10 years is phenomenal, and it just keeps accelerating. We're supposed to be nearing a giant leap of technical innovation. We may have already reached it.
Meanwhile, we're using it to create Crypto Kitties and places to stash our selfies. :)
The first computer I used in lab experiments was tube type. My first home computer was about 50% home made; and the original 2k memory I upgraded with a wire wrapped 16K expansion! I built my keyboard, and monitor; but it was not very portable!
I have equipment now I would have given my left arm to have when I was in school!
I consult, so I have to stay current, but the mix in technology out in industry is stunning!
I put in the newest gear that is available, but I have repaired and maintained tube type equipment that is currently used in aerospace testing. I have to keep thousands of tubes here for repair work, a well as a tube tester. I have to span 50 years of technology to be the "go to" guy for any repair!
:)We barely got a computer lab when I was senior in high school. When I say computer lab, I mean about a half dozen Macintosh computers lined up along the far wall. You can imagine how that class filled up really quickly. :) I remember watching the 'smart' kids trying to create something on them, but I don't think I ever got to try one.
My first computer was a Tandy I bought at radio shack that was obsolete long before I took it home. Unfortunately, I didn't know that. I just wanted something to replace my Brother word processor. Don't remember the specs on it but it was laughable probably then, and certainly would be now.
I ended up building the next one. Boy was that a pain. Nowhere near as easy as I understand it is now. Talk about stress. Spending money on something that I had no idea if it was going to work.
When I got into newspapering, we had all kinds of different windows machines. For a while, my partner and I were upgrading every one two years, going from large tower desktops to laptops. When we split, I eventually made the switch over to Apple, and ended up with various iMacs, a MacPro, and a couple Macbooks, including a Macbook Pro. The first time they started using solid state drives. Holy cow, did that make a difference.
You keep going, you'll be spanning another decades' worth of technology, which means you'll be repairing AI androids and human/machine interfaces. :)
They're using equipment with tubes for aerospace testing? What's the reason for that? Must be some kind of efficiency deal or problem with working in the vacuum of space, maybe?
Less impressive than that, it costs millions of dollars to validate a new testing set up, so they just keep making the old ones.
I am using learning programs in controllers (A.I.) right now. I also use the P.I.D. (Proportional Integral Derivative) Loop tuning for process control. Couldn't even do that 20 years ago....
My first computer used cassette tape for storage. I build all of my current ones, but I run Unix. I have used Mac, but I can't get Engineering Software for a Mac; I have three Windows units here. I have a large SSD for my next one. I will build it soon (gotta find time, ROFLOL).
I maintain a CNC Grinder that is a mix of technology, that will grind the OD of a 13 foot Cylinder.
Last Thursday I worked on a 500 gallon plating tank, that used 60 gallons of Cyanide as a wetting agent, so it varies a lot!
:)