Dear PT5
How are you doing? All set for the trip? Before you go, let me show you the UFO I grew up under.
Image: http://www.island-images.co.uk/2023/2302/230209164910.html
This is the VOR/DME beacon at Cregneash on the Isle of Man. Don’t google ‘vor’, trust me. Besides in this instance it stands for VHF Omdirectional Range (VOR) with Distance Measuring Equipment (DME). The VOR allows planes to take a bearing to or from the beacon. The DME provides the slant distance between the receiver and the station. Slant distance is the distance between two points. if they’re on the same level, the slant distance equals the horizontal distance. If it doesn’t, then it’s different. Anything after that gets to the sort of math(s) that makes me want to change my name to Raoul and become a knife thrower so we’ll leave it there.
I spent my childhood on Victoria Road in Port St Mary on the Isle of Man. The VOR/DME beacon is at Cregneash, which is a village that doubles as an open-air museum. Manx Gaelic held out here as a language for a long time. Several of the cottages are thatched in the Manx style and for a while a friend of mine’s job was to live in one. To, essentially, live in the past.
And right next to it is a flying saucer.
And we finished growing up just as The X-Files hit at the end of the Millennium.
It’s always refreshing to look at where you came from and think ‘Oh THAT’s why I’m like this!’
By the way that white patch has nothing to do with the beacon. It’s a pile of scallop shells. No one can remember why they’re there.
Welcome to the Isle of Man!
In the ’60s, the last time you were here, the Corona Satellite System was the US’ cutting edge spy satellite network. It included 144 satellites which were parked over the exact sort of places you’d expect. This being the 1960s, camera technology needed a system of fixed points to focus on. This being space, those points needed to be pretty big. This being the cold war, the US Army Map Service bought areas of land in the Arizona desert for ‘office space’ and proceeded to pour very large, cross shaped offices that it just so happens the Corona satellites could see from space.
The process is still used today, by basically everyone who has satellites or aircraft to steer. It’s also a technique used for environmental science, and the salt flats at the Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia tend to get used. The Salar de Uyuni is a massive salt field the size of New Jersey. It’s one of the flattest places on Earth and it’s been mapped to ridiculous levels of accuracy. Sites like this can be used to measure solar radiation, greenhouse gas emissions and all sorts of other vital information. A technology that started out based on espionage, re-tooled to spy on the damage we’re doing to Earth. And also spying, of course, but bright futures are built one lightbulb at a time right? It’s why I like this one so much.
Image: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/landscapes-made-for-satellite-eyes-calibration-targets-resolution-tests-and-giant-desert-compasses
This is the World’s largest compass rose. It’s 4000 feet wide, it’s accurately inclined towards magnetic north and it was built in the 1930s when ‘Paint an enormous, accurate compass rose on the ground so pilots can steer onto the right heading’ was the height of technological innovation. It was made a National Historical Landmark in 1985 and honestly, I see why. Technology and art and assistance, written onto the desert with the careful precision of a World’s Fair.
Calibration points have been on my mind recently. Today is the 27th anniversary of my best friend dying. For years, we coped with that by tying one on, huddling together inside our loud bubble of revelry, shouting down the grief until it faded into the darkness again. That helped, enough, for enough time. These days we all grieve differently, memorialising through making. We build things. Lives. Memories. Art. Something positive borne out of something tragic. A calibration point putting us back on track, honouring the past by building the future in a unique, odd, brilliant ways. Like writing letters to a temporary moon as it heads back out into the night.
Thanks, PT5. Have a safe trip and we’ll see you back in 2055.
References
Objects and Locations Visible from Space
- Calibration Targets for satellites
- Artificial structures visible from space
- World’s Largest Compass Rose
- Uyuni Salt Flat
- Edwards Air Force Based
Science
The Isle of Man