At the Not-So-Total Eclipse Event at UCF with a student team building an educational version of NASA's RASSOR (lunar mining robot). It is 3D printed plus simple electronics for elementary schools & up. UCF students are adding machine vision and a robotic arm. Florida Space Institute (FSI)

Exhausted. I wrote the charts for 3 talks today. Will give next week at Earth & Space 2024 conference:

1. Sublimation of ice from lunar drill cuttings

2. Predictive theory for erosion of lunar soil under a rocket

3. The cost of lunar-mined vs. Earth-launched propellant

Florida life. My personal record.

Australia signed up early and got the most eclipses.

My thought on the eclipse:
It gave me a strange feeling of the awesome power of these objects in their orbits. We puny humans are utterly incapable of stopping them. Somehow seeing the disk of the Moon roll across the Sun gave me that feeling.

Great visual of the eclipse.

Despite not having totality, it was a great afternoon!

Thank you to everyone who came out for the Florida Space Institute (FSI) 'Not So Total Eclipse' event 🌘

We'll be out here 'til 4PM at the UCF Reflecting Pond — can't miss us!

Awesome crowd at the eclipse event at UCF.

Big crowd at the “Not-So-Total Eclipse” event sponsored by Florida Space Institute (FSI) and UCF. The Hawking Center and CLASS are doing plume crater experiments and demo’ing a 3D printable robot for classroom education.

I wondered why Orlando wasn’t in this list so I looked it up. Orlando had 135 million visitors in 2023. 🤷‍♂️