At about 10 p.m. I was looking about between Polaris and the Big Dipper, which was to the west of Polaris. I saw a bright fireball moving downwards toward the northern horizon.
Are the Perseids starting already? The peak is August 12, but maybe you caught part of the early show.
Could it have been this?
It did not look like other meteor showers I have seen. It was a fireball, with orange and green color, not just a white streak. I don’t think the position is right for being a Perseid, either.
I don’t know about a tool bag lost in space. The expected time of that is different than my observation.
A fireballpeen hammer!
I must be missing something.
A hundred grand? What the heck kind of grease guns are those?
It was a $100,000 Gucci handbag. The grease gun was only $5.
Fireballs are really cool to see. I saw one while driving home once in Albuquerque. At first it scared me, as literally the entire night sky seemed to light up. Once I realized what is was I was just in awe. I have sat through some pretty impressive meteor showers in the middle of nowhere with perfect dark sky, and those weren’t nearly as awe inspiring as this fireball in the middle of a light polluted city.
Ones that work in a hard vacuum.
Why would a standard grease gun not work in a hard vacuum? Viscosity keeps the grease in (or put a cap on it), until you squeeze handle and cylinder forces grease out. Simple, cheap, easy – like using a pencil in space.
If I recall correctly, most types of grease are a combination of heavy oils and a carrier. In a high vacuum, the lighter viscosity elements of a standard grease will outgas, possibly contaminating test equipment and leaving a bunch of dried up grease in any case.
I’m not sure what type of grease that they are using, but a small bottle (1-3 ounce) bottle of Torr-lube (kind of the high vacuum equivalent of Three-In-One Oil in my industry) costs around $1000. It’s a lot easier for us to get to the equipment though, so I’d assume that the grease that NASA specs has a much longer servce life.
The grease guns are probably custom built, with dissimilar materials in every place that cannot be allowed to freeze up. On earth, most/all metals quickly develop a thin layer of oxide on the surface, and this oxide layer keeps parts and tools from siezing together. Without oxygen, any metals used in space will not develop the surface oxide layer and things tend to get stuck.