Good tip.
I may apply for the job of "Hibernation Trainer."
I discovered that listening to the voice of John Kerry induces instant sleep.
It would be dangerous to link an audiofile sample, it would put this whole forum asleep.
Bringing part 15 to Mars will be a first objective.
I forgot who John Kerry is
but if you can't explain it here -
because it's... oh, wait. Now
I remember who he is. OK.
But I think this space stuff is
really really exciting.
Listening to the International
Space Station on the VHF radio
is really fun, too.
The "tracking transmitter" is still
running. In 15 minutes it will
be 24 hours.
The 555 idea sounds like a lot
of fun to reduce the duty cycle.
I think I heard somewhere that
there are more 555 chips in
the world than any other IC ever
made.
Bruce
I have a 555 chip that was for an experiemnt in 1970 that I never did.
The Mars thing has at least two parts, maybe more...
Part 1 is the long trip to Mars, how long? Several years?
Part 2 is being on Mars. You might stand there realizing that you miss the long rocket trip and you'd become depressed just wishing you could be back in space riding that smooth rocket.
Part 3 could be the return trip, during which you suddenly missed Mars and had fond memories of those days standing on a giant red color sample.
Part 4 would be "Return To Earth" and all your old family and friends would have moved on and you'd be in a homeless shelter thinking everyone else was so stupid because they don't believe you were ever on Mars.
Part 5 woulds be managing to have enough whiskey to see it through.
The 555 chip would still work just fine.
I guess a 555 led flasher circuit
is the place to start to turn a
transmitter on and off, if it's
just 6 volts, and about 20 mA.
I think with that current and voltage,
you won't need another transistor
to switch the thing. Changes would have
to be made, or course.
On the Mars thing, I could talk about it for
hours. It's human pioneering stuff, that
we don't even know about yet.
Bruce
P.S. I guess a transmitter on the
FC BCB would need less current, too.
The wife says the Mars trip is one way since they won't have the booster rocket fuel to escape Mars gravity.
Thanks for the info regarding the
tracking transmitters. The 49 MHz
transmitter was easy to track, but
it ran out of power less than 48 hours
after I turned it on.
The batteries I used were from a pile of
AAs. I tested them after the transmitter
ran down. One was dead and most of
the others had pretty good voltage, so
I guess I'll have to try this again with
fresh new batteries all of the same brand.
It was fun, though.
On the Mars thing, the "One Way Trip" movement
seems to have died down. It's probably a lot
harder than anybody really knows.
It took zillions of shuttle flights to build the
international space station. What a fantastic
milestone! But they have to bring supplies up to
that thing quite often so the crew can have what
they need to live. So would a manned Mars spacecraft
have to be that size? You know - like the ISS with
a propulsion system attached to it? Where would you
keep the food, water, oxygen, batteries, fuel, and radiation
shielding, plus an engine and fuel to bring it back? Would
the crew quarters be as large as those in the ISS????
What about artificial gravity like in the 2001 movie?
Some kind of spinning compartment or whatever?
Don't get me wrong - I think this is incredibly exciting
and cool. But how?????
Believe me when I say I know NOTHING about this -
but it's been said an electric plasma engine is a
good idea. (????)
In any case, these times are way way way cool.
It's kind of like the 1950s and 1960s
again. My 4th grade teacher in 1964 said
we would have people living on Mars by 1985.
The entire class of 9 year olds gasped with
excitement. We were so so into it then.
I took 2 funnels from the grocery store and
made them into Gemini spacecraft "models"
and hung them up with strings. When Gemini
6 and 7 made their historic rendezvous with
each other in 1966,
I was moving my funnels hung by string closer
and closer together in the cellar. I called it
my "simulator." My parents hated it. They
wanted me to do more outside.
Later on I built an Apollo spacecraft from paper,
plastic, cardboard, paperclips, and some other
materials. What fun! NOW, there are so many
different spacecraft that are making history
as we speak. We can't buy models of these in
stores. Maybe it's time to get the cardboard and
the other stuff out again.
Bruce