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Animats
No mention of Saydean Zeldin, her partner in the Apollo effort and Higher Order Systems?

(I met both of them a long time ago, in my proof of correctness days.)

daveslash
Not related to the Article really, but in those photos there seem to be fires at the base of the Ivanpah solar collector towers... what's going on there?
learnfromstory
Just looks like high pressure sodium lights to me.
daveslash
Thank you. That makes sense. I appreciate the answer. I camp outside that area sometime -- I'll try to get a good look with my binoculars the next time I'm there.
learnfromstory
Note that they _do_ heat the plant with natural gas overnight, so there is a huge fire in there somewhere.
daveslash
Oh really? Why? Is it to keep things at a nominal operating temperature in prep for the next day, or is it to continue generating electricity once the sun has gone down (or other reason)?
learnfromstory
The steam cycle has to be up and running before sunrise so they can meet their generating obligations, so they have to ramp up with natural gas while it is still dark. The facility is also capable of operating as a dispatchable "peaker" power plant.

There's a huge amount of right-wing disinformation about solar power so if you just Google for "Ivanpah natural gas" you'll get an outpouring of stupid blogs, but reading them will get you close to the truth.

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cedricium
Not fires--seems to be the lights from the buildings surrounding the towers.
creeble
Same tangential relation: Ivanpah is amazing. Note that the tribute mirrors are just 1/3 of the total installation.

Had a partial tour of it a few years ago, before they accidentally focused the mirrors below the steam boxes and destroyed the towers. They rebuilt with molten salt so they can supply the generators at night.

hi41
I noticed that the stack of folders almost exactly matches her height! Amazing work!
pronoiac
I'd read about her daughter's fault-finding skills before, and the same bug _was_ triggered by astronauts, on "the very next flight, Apollo 8..." And _then_ the safeguard got added before Apollo 11.

* https://wehackthemoon.com/people/margaret-hamilton-her-daugh...

slg
It turns out that children are inherently well qualified for the job of chaos monkeys.
Sharlin
I wonder how much the ”everyone knows not to do that” attitude to safeguards has cost in total, in money and/or human lifes.
gundmc
I used to drive past this facility often. The towers are shockingly bright from the highway. Never thought about using the mirrors for an art installation, really cool idea!

I wonder how Google convinced Tonopah to be onboard.

reaperducer
That's the Ivanpah facility south of Las Vegas, not the ones in Tonapah.
gundmc
Oops, you're right! That's the one I was thinking of, just got the names reversed.
ketzo
Dang, I was hoping the blog would go into a little bit about how they accomplished this! Either way though, insanely cool tribute.
mjtlittle
I agree! There must be some sort of program written that allows them to put any image on their solar display :)
prashnts
Agree! It looks great — I assume they did it pretty much how DMD (Digital Mirror Device) chips in DLP projectors work. The mirrors already have a mechanism to track sun (mentioned in the article), and adjust the direction its reflection should point. they could activate tracking partially to create the image.