Discover Pandipedia
A growing directory of useful answers selected by the Pandi community. Search the collection or browse the latest discoveries.
2272 entries available
A home that starts by changing the river
A beaver’s home is more than its lodge. In Wood’s account, the dam comes first: logs, branches, earth and mud form a barrier across the stream, holding back water around the dwelling. The dam and lodge are distinct structures, each with a different role. The lodge’s passage leads down into the water, with an entrance deep enough to stay below surface ice. Its dry chamber connects to an underwater approach. Read together, the structures show how the lodge depends on the water held by the dam.
Let's look at alternatives:
- Modify the query.
- Start a new thread.
- Remove sources (if manually added).
One roof, many front doors
Let's look at alternatives:
- Modify the query.
- Start a new thread.
- Remove sources (if manually added).
The leaf with a seam
Let's look at alternatives:
- Modify the query.
- Start a new thread.
- Remove sources (if manually added).
Escape without breaking the cocoon
Wood found an emperor moth in its cage, though the cocoon looked unbroken. He thought it had come from elsewhere and waited for the cocoon to open. A year later, he cut it open: inside were an empty pupal shell and the caterpillar’s shrivelled skin. At the neck, stiff crossed fibres yielded to pressure from within but pressed together under pressure from outside. The moth had escaped without leaving an obvious break.
Let's look at alternatives:
- Modify the query.
- Start a new thread.
- Remove sources (if manually added).
Rooms that grow on trees
Let's look at alternatives:
- Modify the query.
- Start a new thread.
- Remove sources (if manually added).
A forest that turns with the story
Let's look at alternatives:
- Modify the query.
- Start a new thread.
- Remove sources (if manually added).
Gemini Ten: Photography on the Climb to Agena Eight
Transcript
On July nineteenth, nineteen sixty-six, Gemini Ten was climbing toward Agena Eight. The day before, Michael Collins and John Young had docked with Agena Ten. A trajectory correction had left them with only half their planned fuel at docking, and they repeatedly fired Agena Ten’s engine to match orbits with Agena Eight. Collins’s first planned spacewalk was a stand-up EVA: he remained at the open hatch rather than moving away from the spacecraft. It lasted forty-nine minutes. With a seventy-millimetre camera, he took twenty-two ultraviolet images of the southern Milky Way. As the docked spacecraft entered daylight, he also photographed a coloured plate to test how accurately film recorded colour in space. For the planned second EVA, Collins put on the ELSS chestpack and unstowed an umbilical, a line carrying oxygen, communications, and nitrogen. The nitrogen was stored under pressure in the adapter section and would power the hand-held maneuvering unit, a small device for moving an astronaut with gas thrust. Fuel remained scarce. The crew rendezvoused with Agena Eight about ninety minutes before the planned EVA, shaping the timing of the next spacewalk around the mission’s limited fuel.
Let's look at alternatives:
- Modify the query.
- Start a new thread.
- Remove sources (if manually added).
The Marshall study, and what the source does not establish
After November 1964, budget pressure and NASA’s choice to emphasize crewed Earth-orbit missions sharply reduced piloted Mars-study activity. A Marshall Space Flight Center team still examined a Saturn-and-Apollo-based Mars flyby, but it remained a study concept, not a funded direct-landing program or a flown mission.[1][2][3]
| Period | Reported Mars-study activity |
|---|---|
| 17 months before November 1964 | 29 piloted planetary mission studies, costing $3.5 million.[4] |
| November 1964 through May 1966 | Four contracted studies, costing $465,000.[5] |
The change accompanied a policy shift: NASA assigned low priority to developing a new rocket after Saturn and proposed concentrating post-Apollo crewed flight on Earth orbit, using Apollo-developed technology. The later study count and spending show how markedly Mars-related study work contracted during that period.[6][7]
The Marshall study, and what the source does not establish
Separately from the general count of contracted studies, a Marshall team led by Ruppe examined a crewed Mars flyby using Saturn launch vehicles and Apollo hardware. Its February 1965 report judged such flybys technically feasible in the mid-to-late 1970s, using a modified Apollo command and service module, a pressurized hangar, and automated probes.[8]
The source mentions four later studies but does not identify them as contractor studies or describe their architectures. It therefore does not provide enough detail to compare contractor designs with Marshall’s concept. Nor does the feasibility assessment establish an approved, funded direct-landing effort or a mission that flew: it documents a study, not a flight program.[9][10]
Let's look at alternatives:
- Modify the query.
- Start a new thread.
- Remove sources (if manually added).
When flowers ran warm
Let's look at alternatives:
- Modify the query.
- Start a new thread.
- Remove sources (if manually added).
Farmyard Mothers on Guard
Let's look at alternatives:
- Modify the query.
- Start a new thread.
- Remove sources (if manually added).