Hello, Brain!

What Were You Thinking?
If you read this blog with any regularity then you know Conrad's thought processes baffle many people, including himself at times.  This is most often seen when a phrase or word pops up in his mind for no good reason - "Rhodomontade" anyone? - and he clucks about it on the blog.  There is still that mysterious acronym from a couple of years ago that has never been resolved, either.
     Here an aside.  Another touchstone for your humble scribe is the weekend morning cryptic crossword, the solving of which allows his brain to gradually get up to speed as tea and toast are imbibed and ingested.  Not today!  Art?

     

     I beg your pardon, I'd no idea it was upside down, and it's taken longer to correct it than it would have done to pop downstairs and take the photo right way up.  Also a bit blurrier than I'd have liked, though hopefully you can see that Friday's cryptic is the same as Thursday's cryptic, which I'd already done (without cheating on the internets either).  Thus the day got off to a bad start.
     Anyway, I was looking at the notes made yesterday as prompts for typing all this out today, and the sixth entry made me frown.  "Neo-Cam & N.E.O.s - 1 x Gig".
     "What did I mean?" pondered your modest artisan.  Of course we all know that "N.E.O.s" refers to "Near Earth Objects" - obviously! - but what is "Neo-Cam" and why is it gigging?

NEOs.  "Fahsands of 'em"

     Aha.  It transpires that Neo-Cam is a proposed space telescope tasked to discover and track potentially dangerous Near Earth Objects, those larger than 140 yards diameter, which is the lower end of the danger spectrum when it comes to these things falling on your head.  "Proposed" only as it's not been approved for funding yet.  I mean, it's so vitally important that "Strictly Come Dancing" keeps getting budgeted instead, isn't it?*  Then, when you've only got 3 weeks to live before Object 4855NJT impacts the Eastern Pacific, you can go out tangoing, can't you?

Neo-Cam
CAUTION!  Cannot teach you the salsa.

     Now to put the motley in a fat-suit and roll it onto the bobsled slalom course!**

Capri Cup's Christening
How's about that for alliteration?  In a frankly pathetic and desperate attempt to fill space and increase the tally of words piece of late-breaking news, I have officially used my souvenir coffee cup for drinking espresso.  I had unofficially used it with water to help swill pills.  Art?

With objects for scale.
(Or I'm too lazy to tidy up)

     Thing is, I only have a LARGE espresso maker, so your talented typist is now wound up like a watchspring with his caffeine crank.  Hopefully this will wear off by midnight.

Loft In Space
No!  Nothing to do with attic conversions or that place where bats and wasps nests congretate.  "Loft" as in "To propel an object upwards".

Doctor Smith approves.
(Do you see what - O you do)

     For yes, we are back on the topic of 'Space Elevators' again.  We left them yesterday on a cliffhanger, since it's physically impossible to build a tower reaching 22,500 miles high, or, if you like, 1/10th of the distance to the Moon.
     The current idea is to use a cable instead, which was also problematic until recently, as no material strong enough to sustain the stresses of such loading existed.  Tah-dah!  Enter carbon nanotubes.  They might be capable of doing the job, although your modest artisan is unaware of any proof-of-concept projects being undertaken with mile-long CN cables under test.  Watch this space.

Going up.  And up.  And up.

     There are a few problems even if CN cables can do the job.  Micrometeoroids for one; can the cable sustain a hit and either self-repair or keep functioning so that some Hom. Sap. engineers (probably on insanely high levels of danger pay) can come along and fix it?
     There's also a risk of collision with satellites or aircraft, meaning some people have suggested the cable be tethered to a floating anchor, so the whole array can be warped out of harm's way and thus avoid an impact in the first place.  Of course that adds another set of problems with waves and tides and hurricanes ...

... not to mention KILLER EELS!***

     One sci-fi author posited using quote "self-repairing anthrax bacilli" as the substrate for a cable, which makes your humble scribe pause and wonder - yes, the cable might be able to 'heal' itself, but that means any damage is going to cause it to rain anthrax!
     I dunno.  Human ingenuity, eh?

Right, we are indeed at count, at which point I need to post this, take a comfort break and trot manfully into Royton for my daily constitutional.  Later, Hom. Sap.s!


*  I know one is NASA and the other is BBC and they're completely different, but I'm on a ranting roll here.
**  Not while they're bobsledding, obviously.  That would imperil the bobsledders.
***  You didn't think I'd forgotten mankind's deadliest foe, did you?