Colorado Power Ball
NIST Proves It: The Ball Does Curve
To stretch supplies of rubber, the American and National Leagues substituted balata cork centers for the rubber-cushioned cork centers that had been used in baseballs before World War II. The impact on the ball's resiliency was not known. The switch to an all-cork center was a boon for pitchers, as reported by Briggs in the January 1945 issue of the Journal of Research . "A hard-hit fly ball with a 1943 center," he reported, "might be expected to fall about 30 feet shorter than the prewar ball hit under the same conditions." ... [Read More]
Energy Services Bulletin
When ARPA renews its contract with Western in 2004, the power authority will be looking at a reduced hydropower allocation. Western must periodically reconfigure its resources to accommodate new customers. Drought conditions and reduced Federal spending have also affected the availability of hydropower. Although this renewable resource will continue to be a central block in ARPA's power supply, Henderson insisted, supplemental purchases play a larger role in the latest IRP. ... [Read More]
Denver Severe Weather Page
OPEN FIELDS, BALL PARKS, ... In the United States, flash floods are responsible for more deaths thanany other thunderstorm phenomena. Year to year in Colorado, onlylightning is more deadly. Flash flooding usually is the result of veryheavy rains in a short period of time over a small area which causessmall streams to turn violent. It is hard to understand the destructivepotential of moving water, but the result was clear to see after the BigThompson Flood of July 31, 1976. That flood killed 145 people,destroyed 418 homes and 52 businesses, and resulted in $35 million indamages. Survivors spoke of a wall of water, a very rapid rise in waterlevel, and a loud roar. No wonder flash floods are referred to as the"Awesome Power". ... [Read More]
Closed Circuit newsletter, Nov. 7, 2003, Western Area Power Administration
"Personally, this event opened my eyes to give me an idea of what people in wheelchairs have to go through," Reyes added. "It's amazing what I take for granted and how fortunate many of us are in our ability to perform routine tasks in our daily lives." Other activities included a Frisbee throw, a basketball free throw and a 100-yard dash. These with the 0.85-mile lap, made for a "Quadathlon" of learning. ... Eastern Colorado Division Maintenance Manager Kevin Howard , left, prepares to pass the ball to Public Utilities Specialist Bob Porter as he gets into free throw position, while RM Maintenance Manager Clark LeDoux waits his turn and RM Regional Manager Joel Bladow monitors the contest. ... [Read More]
24th National Veterans Wheelchair Games
This brand-new relay will allow motorized wheelchair-users to participate in an exhibition relay race. Each team will have three athletes, team member using different types of power wheelchairs including hand controlled, “sip and puff,” and a chin/mouth controlled. The distance for the Power Relay will be 800 meters. The first and second leg will be 200 meters run in assigned lanes. The final leg of 400 meters will be run out of lane (each competitor can go to lane one to finish the race). The three competitors on each team can decide who runs in which leg of the race. ... [Read More]
ICESAT Home Page
NASA selected Ball Aerospace to adapt its Ball Commercial Platform 2000 (BCP 2000) spacecraft bus for the laser altimetry mission. The entire satellite will be assembled at Ball facilities in Boulder, Colo., and will be controlled on-orbit by the University of Colorado. ... The spacecraft is a fully redundant design that provides a probability of success of >86% for a 5-year mission life. The spacecraft bus and payload are powered by two single-axis articulated solar array wings, consisting of three winglets each. Two star trackers provide precision pointing and stability. A fixed X-band antenna is mounted on a post to provide a high bandwidth downlink. Spacecraft command and telemetry uplink/downlink on S-band frequency allows for simultaneous command and telemetry operation. The attitude control and determination subsystem is designed to allow payload operation from any orientation, and provides rapid slewing, tracking of targets, and minimizes vibrations and induced jitter. Two BlackJack GPS receivers from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory provide precision orbit determination, timing and geolocation. A hydrazine propulsion system corrects for any launch insertion errors, and maintains the correct orbit for ground track repeatability. ... [Read More]
VLSI Summaries
The Northrop Grumman Free-Space Optical Interconnect Accelerators (FSOIA) team will develop reconfigurable routing and switching for future multi-processor systems in the 0.1 - 10 Tbit/sec range. The team is comprised of the Optoelectronic Computing Systems Center at the University of Colorado, Picolight, Optivision, and the University of Southern California. The integration of free-space optical interconnects with advanced semiconductor packaging and innovative switch design will enable a 100X improvement in performance, 100X decrease in power consumption, and lower cost when compared to systems using only electrical interconnections. ... [Read More]
Wind Energy Resource Atlas of the United States
Table D-3 gives the number of sites in the UnitedStates for which the difference in wind power class (measured minus estimated)was a given amount. At 65% of all new sites, the measured wind power waswithin one power class of the estimated power, and at 30% of these therewas no difference in the power class. The measured wind power at 35% of allnew sites differed by 2 or more classes from the estimated power; approximatelyhalf of these were greater and half less than the estimated power class.For special new sites (those sites installed specifically for wind energypurposes), 26% of the sites had the same class as the estimated power and57% of the sites were within ± 1 power class. Thus, 43% of the sites differedby 2 or more power classes from the estimated power class. ... [Read More]
Closed Circuit newsletter, Nov. 7, 2003, Western Area Power Administration
"Personally, this event opened my eyes to give me an idea of what people in wheelchairs have to go through," Reyes added. "It's amazing what I take for granted and how fortunate many of us are in our ability to perform routine tasks in our daily lives." Other activities included a Frisbee throw, a basketball free throw and a 100-yard dash. These with the 0.85-mile lap, made for a "Quadathlon" of learning. ... Eastern Colorado Division Maintenance Manager Kevin Howard , left, prepares to pass the ball to Public Utilities Specialist Bob Porter as he gets into free throw position, while RM Maintenance Manager Clark LeDoux waits his turn and RM Regional Manager Joel Bladow monitors the contest. ... [Read More]
Flight system
TRW Space and Electronics Group (Redondo Beach, California) built the Spacecraft Module.It comprises 7 major subsystems: 1. The Pointing Control and Aspect Determination (PCAD) subsystem performs on-board attitude determination, solar-array control, slewing, pointing and dithering control, and momentum management. 2. The Communication, Command, and Data Management (CCDM) subsystem performs communications, command storage and processing, data acquisition and storage, and computational support, timing reference, and switching of primary electrical power for other AXAF systems or subsystems. 3. The Electrical Power Subsystem (EPS) generates, regulates, stores, distributes, conditions, and controls the primary electrical power. 4. The Thermal Control Subsystem (TCS) furnishes passive thermal control (where possible), heaters, and thermostats. 5. The structures and mechanical subsystem encompasses the spacecraft structures, mechanical interfaces among spacecraft subsystems and with ... [Read More]
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