RL: Most spectacular thing you have ever seen

[BlackBat242]

Thanks a lot, Mickazoid... I had managed to put that part of my life on the back of the shelf... now I feel the need to renew my certification before I go to Houston in November.

Repetitive dive... 60' for 20 minutes, followed by 90 minute surface interval, followed by another 60' dive... what is the "no decompression" duration limit?

 

[Mickazoid]

not to get too off-topic but

Hi BlackBat!

According to the NAUI tables (I'm NAUI-certified, currently in my Master Diver classes), your first 20 minute 60' dive puts you in Letter Group D. Waiting for a surface interval time (SIT) of 90 minutes reduces you to Letter Group C. Your Adjusted Maximum Dive Time (AMDT) for the second dive to 60' will be 38 minutes. Any more than that and you will have to decompress to be most likely to avoid decompression sickness. Add your Residual Nitrogen Time (RNT) to the total time of the dive. So, if your second dive was 38 minutes (it's not safe to push the tables to their limit) you would have a Total Nitrogen Time of 55 minutes for calculating the required surface interval before, and the maximum depth and duration of, your next dive.

Tables here:
http://orgs.bloomu.edu/scuba/divetables/divetables.html

 

[BlackBat242]

Thanks... It was just an "atmosphere" question.

I could have gone out to the shed, and dug my PADI books/dive table out and done it myself, but...

PADI Advanced certification... 1994, including Altitude certification at Bear Lake, Utah... elevation 5,924 ft (1,805 m).

Unfortunately, I got married shortly after, and combined with a lack of discretionary funds I haven't dived since.

Divorced now, and with a little more available funds... but not really enough to do what I need to get back in the water properly.

 

[Mickazoid]

Chuckle

hehehe - very funny pun... and I figured Traveller fans would also appreciate the straightforward rules process for figuring out how not to die while breathing immense quantities of Nitrogen while SCUBA diving.

You've got to get back to diving! I'm hoping to do my certifying Master dives in Palau in the autumn.

 

[veltyen]

hehehe - very funny pun... and I figured Traveller fans would also appreciate the straightforward rules process for figuring out how not to die while breathing immense quantities of Nitrogen while SCUBA diving.

While threatening to drag this thread even more off-topic.....

Definitely appreciate. SCUBA is about the closest any of us will get to the maintenance of an environmental control suit. It is a good reminder of how much maintenance and monitoring are required to keep an ecosphere that small balanced.

 

[Mickazoid]

Another spectacular sight while diving...

...diving a deep wreck (120 feet) in Key Largo, Florida called the U.S.S. Bibb. The ship was intended to be sunk to form an artificial reef but it broke free of the tow ship and sank in deeper water than expected, on its side.

The spectacular moment (unlike a later terrifying moment on the dive) happened when climbing down the lead rope into the deep blue darkness. My buddy and I began the dive - which would prove to be my most dangerous by far - and as we got deeper and deeper and the light blues faded to darker and darker hues. Barracuda hovered ominously around us, seemingly motionless and aligned in the current like seagulls sitting on a beach.

Then, out of the deep blueness below me, giant dark blue letters spelling out 'COAST GUARD' slowly appeared across the bow of this now-sunk cutter. We moved deeper still and entered the wheelhouse, and began to explore the ship's confusing and dark interior.

We would have only 12 minutes to explore before we surfaced. Unfortunately, that would prove to be not enough time.

Intense.

 

[Burocrate]

Somewhere around 1977 or so, family vacation driving east across Texas. We stopped in Lovelady, TX for lunch and gas. I noticed the locals were pulling in anything not nailed down and closing all shops; it was about 11:30 in the morning. My old man is a native of Texas and knew what was up; a fair sized tornado was coming to town. We were in a 1976 Volkswagon Van with a top speed of 65 mpg. The radio stations were playing live commercial spots; "After this storm settles, come on in to Big Larry's Used Car Lot and see what I have left!" We drove due east at 65 and that damned tornado followed us at 60 mph through several small towns for the next 2 hours. We were out on a flat, flat, FLAT part of land when day turned quickly to night. On the horizon, two giant soild black cloud fronts closed in from the north and south. It was a Hollywood perfect setting. The road stretched straight to the horizon and the two fronts closed right over the road. It was pitch black within seconds and then the hail began. The roof of that VW van took some minor damage, the windshield cracked some but we knew if we stopped the tornado would catch us out on that barren plain. Luckily, the storm blew south before we ran out of towns and gas.

 

[JustinInOz]

Barely on the planet

Crossing from Chile to Bolivia through the Salar de Uyuni. This is a huge salt pan from an ancient lake. It is so wide that it is hard to see the mountains that surround it. Even though these mountains are los Andes. It is blindingly white. You need sunglasses to avoid blindness. It is geometrically flat. When our guide learned that I did not have a license to drive, he put me behind the wheel. There was not way to hit anything. It had been recently raining. There was a thin film of water on the surface. This refelcted what clouds there were in the surface. As we drove to the horizon the mirrored sky opened up. It was as if we were driving into the heavens.

I broke off a chunk of the Salar and cooked with it for months.

 

[Commander Truestar]

We were on the way to Pennsic...
Not your modern day 10-15 thousand people Pennsic but one of the older ones where very little modern stuff was apparent.

It was a cooling night as we drove in the dark under the clouds of a cold front but the road was swift and well traveled so the mist did not close in on us until we got to the camp ground's entrance drive.

Then the mist welled up around us and thickened the deeper we passed into the woods...

Until we passed through a seemingly solid mist wall into the clear air of a huge 11th - 13th century war encampment. We just stopped and stared as it appeared we had traveled time back to the middle ages....


Halo jumpping at night.
Sitting in the cargo bay hearing the engine's drone and feeling the aircraft's vibration. Not talking much as everyone watched the red light or stared out the open back of the plane.
Then, very quickly, we were over the excersize site and the light passed to green as we, now on our feet, moved to the edge of the deck and jumped.

Falling meant nothing in a world of rushing air and little apparent movement. Laid out below in darkness was a broad wide patch of land and though it was rising...it felt so completly different than falling. The sparce lights were at first dwarfed by reflective water moonlit patches. And as we fell and the land rose the lights multiplied and the water faded in comparison to the man-made starscape.

Then, all too soon, it was time to release our droge chutes to slow down before popping our mains.

Two experiences that were not mostly man made which I will not forget.

Nothing like the later life experience of being so close to the huge twin towers...so close you felt you could tough them... Only now, first one wobbled and you really felt they were gonna land on you. Then the first one fell and you were covered in dust and debris...

Not natural, not wonderful, but unforgettable

 

[Darkhstarr]

Spectacular. Hmm. I would have to say two very different experiences that happened years ago. The first, was Lake Superior as a child. I've never felt so small & helpless, even at the ocean.

The second, was when I was unemployed back in the 90's & was doing landscape work for pay. I was moving tires to where I was going to dig them in for a friend as planters. Saw a grey of fly past me. Turned around, and it was my friend's declawed cat attacking a boxer that was about to attack me. Gave me enough time to grab a shovel to defend myself. By then the cat had let go of the dog's throat & escaped up a tree. I never saw anything like that in my life.

 

[Stormraven]

1985, as a Weather Observer in the USAF, watching a cloud build from cumulus to cumulo-nimbus before our very eyes.

1989, still a Weather Observer, watched a wall cloud sweep towards my post. Seriously impressive.

 

[Plankowner]

530am:

I was dropping my youngest kid off at daycare and it was still dark and overcast to the East.

Suddenly, out of no where, there was a beautiful rainbow, even though it was still dark.

Yes, I saw a Rainbow in the Dark.

I called to the day care director and we got all the kids outside to see it. My son still remembers it.

Also, I saw a Full Annular Eclipse once. It was spectacular.

 

[ThunderChilde]

1st, this is a very cool thread

Back in 77 my Boy Scout Troop hiked 300 miles of the Applacian Trail, many were the wonders we saw, but one stands out. We ran out sunlight and camped on a flat spot. Myself and a friend awoke before dawn in a dense fog, we got the fire going and walked up the slope where we could see a brighter spot as the sun rose. We walked out of the cloud deck and stood on the summit, all you could see was clouds and a few trees off in the distance that seemed to just be suspended in the clouds. It was the most silent awe inspiring thing I have ever seen.

I have work nights most of my life and I have seen all manner of shooting stars, weird glows, fireballs and just freaky things, like a still steaming stripped carcask of a deer, no blood, on a Januarynight. Still no freaking idea what was up with that, just not a realistic or reasonable thing, yet I and my loader saw it.

The only aurora I have seen here was low on the horizon, all the way around, looked like the world was aflame, flickering red fire like tendrils.

Amusing aside, at a cook out in Mau Chunk State Park in PA, 35 or so people attending. My cousins famous marinated deer haunch had just been taken out of the cooler, and the top taken off the tub it was in to go on the grill.When suddenly, a bear tore through the crowd, reached out a paw, snagged the haunch and never slowed down; throwing marinade on 11-12 people. People were scared, kids screaming and my cousin cussing a blue streak chased the bear into the scrubby woods. He came running back out a minute or two later.
He couldn't figure out what ailed him enough to chase a bear into the woods with nothing more than his bare hands.o:

 

[morfydd]

Spectacular

Seeing the Southern cross for the first time in 1988 while in the south Atlantic on board a Frigate at night ..we went to full darken ship (not even running lights) for about an hour so the entire crew could see it in all its Glory.

A sand storm in the middle of the Persian Gulf during the desert sheild. Ocean as far as the eye could see all around then minutes later a cloud of rolling sand and Zero visablity on all sources except sonar..Radar "snowed" out ..Infared nada..just sonar (not a good thing in the northern PG in 1991 on a small frigate)

Dual sunset in the Sinai desert fall of 1992.. the suns image reflected in the heat shimmers off to the east while the sun set to the west.

march 1986 watching a tornado in southern Indiana Destroy the barn 200 yards from the house and leaving a pathway 800 yards wide...<from the safety? of the root celler thru a small opening made to be able to look and see> the sound was just overwhelming the sight was a bit sureal..

The Morning after Hurricane Hugo Friday Sept 12th 1989...seeing a huge barge Stuck in a square downtown Charleston SC ( none of the roads were wide enough to even allow the barge to pass on edge so it had to come in above the buildings)

and the Kicker had to be the most spectacular sight I ever saw was in a Hospitol in 1991 a small (8lb 6ounce bundle) greeneyed and loud when the Nurses let me hold my son for the very first time (all the other experiences paled I remeber them but none can hold a candle to the joy i felt that day so long ago)

 

[saundby]

Natural:
Mount Diablo burning. The mountain stands high above the Diablo valley, the summit of the mountain is at 3250 ft., about 3000 ft above the valley floor. The flames seemed to reach at least as high above the mountain as it rose above the valley. We sat out and watched it burn all night. The next day I got a new perspective that let me see I'd underestimated the height of the flames before.

Looking down the face of Half Dome while we were under the visor. The face became a floor, the ground an oddly intersecting world like something out of an Escher painting.

A friend stored his wonderful new 13" telescope at my place since his new car was too small to haul it (he'd bought the biggest scope his prior car could carry two weeks before it got clobbered by a truck while parked.) I was told to do regular "maintenance" on it by catching starlight. I took it out one night planning to make a quick stop at M-31 (Andromeda Galaxy) before moving on to more challenging objects. I lived at 2500 feet. The sky was wonderful, mag. 6.3 stars stood out clear and sharp. I went to M-31...and never left. I spent the entire night looking at the things _in_ M-31. M-31's nebulae, globulars, open clusters. It was incredible.

Not so natural:

Standing a quarter mile away outside on a clear path while we tested a Titan IV first stage to the highest thrust level we'd ever gone for--over 600,000lbf. It wasn't as loud as some others I'd been outside for, but the subsonics were unlike anything else. You could feel your different organs inside moving independently as they responded to the different frequencies. Made me wish I had had a chance to see a live Saturn V. Or that we'd finished the ALS/NLS rockets (1.8Mlbf/chamber.)

Very black rocket test, the sort where you have a blackboard with updated overflight times so you can throw a tarp over when something can peek under the test cell's roof. The oxidizer is a substance that I didn't even know could be stable above absolute zero until I saw a truck driver unloading K-bottles of it at the test stand. It thinks O2 is _fuel_.

The fuel was so reactive it thinks steel is an oxidizer, and even after passivation the lines have to be kept at cryogenic temperatures so that they will last long enough to get the fuel to the thrust chamber for 30 seconds before they start to burn.

On test day the control room was filled with physicists, governments wheels with the right clearance, and the crew it took to manage this test. We had rules that only let us blow up so many people at a time, so after a warm discussion we managed to get some of the gold braided lookiloos to let the physicists stay.

We made the final preps on the stand during the safety sweep, making sure the propellant lines stayed really cold so that the propellants would stand a chance of making it to the thrust chamber. We went inside, buttoned up, and opened the valves.

We saw flow on the flowmeters, which was a relief. We weren't sure if the propellants would turn them or consume them. We opened the chamber valves to let the propellants meet inside the rocket...and nothing happened.

Two substances that are hypergolic under any conditions short of total stasis, that will burn if even mentioned in the same sentence...failed to light.

We then had to close everything up and run out to the stand as both were burning their propellant lines rather handily.

As if that wasn't amazement enough for one day, you should have seen the fight among the physicists later on!

 

[Patron Zero]

Parallels

I have two both natural but each at the far end of scale of perception.

The first was a lifetime back while serving in the military, huddled in a huge section of bleachers with hundreds of other boot camp trainees awaiting a night firepower display. In the cold clear air of Kentucky December darkness I glance upward to see more stars than I believe at that time I had ever seen.

Above me was the template George Lucas used as inspiration when dictating to ILM of the dramatic starfields he wanted depicted in the first few moments of his original classic film.

All that was missing was the You Are Here text to show me my place in the comos.

The other was many years later and not far from current times. It was a stormy Midwest summer day, tornadoes were popping up all over the Bible Belt, where I lived was no exception.

I had just glanced at the live weather radar the breaking-news bulletin was displaying and was puzzled by the color purple on the Doppler graphics. I stepped outside onto the second-story open air walkway of our apartment complex and was suddenly enthralled by what I saw in the sky.

Directly passing overhead was an F4 tornado barely more than fifty feet above me, my ears popping was the snap to bring me put of my state of tharn as well as the sudden realization such was going to make landfall in the nearby housing development of small homes next door.

Yes, it does sound like a passing freight train and all the depictions of destruction in the film Twister are no exaggeration. I saw one home literally erased off it's foundation in a blink of an eye, my perception of time made such seem to last much longer though.

Other than an absence of bicycle riding witches-cum Margaret O'Brien and flying monkeys, my experience was in Technicolor not black and white, if for only just a moment I was not in Kansas anymore.

 

[Anthelios]

I come from the Northcoast of California, up all the way in the redwoods along the coast and mountains near Oregon. The whole area is beautiful and I realise now that I've moved away that I left a place that had spectacular beauty daily. Without city lights to spoil the sky most nights were clear, with the stars sparkling like brilliant pinpoints of light. I have some really spectacular memories though.

The town has a beautiful fourth of July display, and two years ago my friends and I all went out to the beach furthest from town. Since the town is on a crescent into the water the beach had a beautiful view of the pier, but with no-one else out there. The firework display was amazing, with explosions of color in the air, but the real beauty appeared after it was over. A moonless night, far away from the glow of the city, with our huge bonfire the only source of light. A thick fog rolled in, disappearing into the dark, with the gentle crashing of ocean waves in the background. It was beautiful, our own little island of light in the darkness.

Up in the mountains there we have massive redwoods and crystal clear rivers. This is the area where Return of the Jedi was filmed, with all the giant green trees. One night while camping I saw a large meteor shower streaking across the sky, framed by the massive redwoods and mountain. It was breathtaking.

On another note, Lunar rainbows are quite common up there. Beautiful.

 

[Peter Newman]

Real Life (as descriptions might come easier)...what is the most spectacular natural wonder you have ever seen.

There was this young lady I knew in a few decades back who, how should I put it without violating forum guidelines, had the two spectacular natural wonders I have ever seen....

If however we're excluding people from 'natural wonders' I'd have to go for the Grand Canyon at sunset from the South Rim lying on the ground with my head dangling over the edge.

 

[Rupali]

Well, for me, that would be walking down from the high fells in the Lakes in the middle of massive storms. Seeing all these lightnings coming down around us was really cool even though we were nervous getting hit. The winds howlings and the rains freezing, it was neat (later of course).

 

[Valarian]

The two most spectacular natural things I've seen were on a holiday to the Massif Central in France. Being somewhere where it's dark enough to see the Milky Way and a proper night sky. The second event was a thunderstorm that set the next hillside alight. We had a great view of the planes and helicopters flying down to scoop water out of the lake in the valley, then circling around behind us and coming around to drop water on the next hill.