payload

SpaceX achieved a potentially stupendous milestone for rocketry and space exploration by successfully and safely recycling the spent stages of a recovered booster rocket, which always seemed like a big waste as they peeled away. If this feat can be repeated—which seems likely, it will significantly reduce the cost of putting people and supplies in orbit and beyond.

bauarbeit oder all in all, you’re just another brick in the wand

Though certainly more palatable than the choice of say the Binladin Group as building partners, two German construction firms are willing to court massive public-relations blowback domestically and abroad and perfectly illustrate how the failure to learn from history dooms us all to repeat it by submitting contract bids to build Dear Leader’s wall, the Local reports. What do you think? The contract is supposed to be awarded in mid-April.  This partition is other than the frontiers that divided post-war Germany and Europe but seems to strongly go against the narrative of integration over nationalism and protectionism and Russia was willing to tear it down once before.

cloud atlas

For the first time in three decades the World Meteorological Organisation, Kottke informs, has added several new formal classifications for cloud formations—called species, and their supplementary features. The gallery of images is quite striking and worth perusing. First published in 1896, these compendia were important training tools for predicting the weather and developing a standard nomenclature to communicate forecasts without always having the pictorial key at hand, much like the complex and exacting language of vexillology.

happy little clouds

Via Nag on the Lake, we learn about a dedicated curator has compiled an unofficial site which features all four hundred and three landscape lessons taught by Bob Ross in thirty-one seasons on PBS’s Joy of Painting.
Formerly a master sergeant in the US Air Force, Ross often found himself in screaming-matches and situations that called on him being anything other than meditative and reflective. One day, however, he caught an episode of the Magic of Painting that inspired him to champion the same cause and vowed never to raise his voice in anger again. Named after the two inch background brush that was the go-to brush in the artist’s quiver, the site is not only a fine nice tribute to those awed by the creative process and his calming demeanour but also a resource for those aspiring to learn to paint.