Other restaurant owners are determined to celebrate the day, even at a cost to their bottom lines. “No one else can join us anymore after Labor Day, because they are still open and busy,” he said. Roth has limited the party - which has taken place later and later - to in-house staff. “It was like a day to let loose, and people went all out.”īut because of ongoing remote work trends, inspiring many people to stay in their vacation homes into the cooler months, the tourist towns of Eastern Long Island are still as busy as ever, and the notion of Tumbleweed Tuesday has gone from being a beloved, robust tradition to an endangered one. “I remember as a kid, when I was bussing tables, all the servers and bartenders would go to Montauk Highway with signs that said, ‘See you next summer’ or ‘Thank God for Tumbleweed Tuesday,’” he said. After a party reclaiming their territories, of course.
Typically, the vacationers and second-home owners are supposed to depart, leaving the year-round residents who work in the hotels, bars and ice cream shops to enjoy some peace and quiet. And every year, he and others in the service industry have looked forward to the day after Labor Day. Sign up for EXPRESS SCIENCE NEWS deliveryĪ payload carrying instruments such as cameras or a water-seeking radar could be held in place by tension cords at the tumbleweed's center.Mike Donelan has worked in restaurants in the Hamptons and on the North Fork, the popular Long Island destinations for summering urbanites, since he was 12. When it's time to stop for a while, perhaps to study an interesting spot or to wait for the wind to change direction, mission controllers would simply command the ball to partially deflate. Then, when it's time to move along again, the ball could be reinflated to roll on toward new frontiers.
"This is preliminary work," Jones cautions. But he is enthusiastic about the promise this technology might hold for exploration of Mars and other worlds with thin atmospheres such as Pluto, Neptune's moon Triton or Jupiter's moon Io.įor now, though, the focus is on Mars. Much of the Martian terrain is sloping and littered with boulders, which makes tough going for most vehicles. But researchers were encouraged by the results of tests this summer with a 1.5 meter-tall version of the tumbleweed. Their experiments in the Mojave Desert confirmed that 6-meter diameter balls should be able to climb over or around one-meter rocks and travel up slopes 25-degrees and higher in the thin, but breezy Martian air. View a video of the test narrated by Jack Jonesīelow: To a certain extent, a "tumbleweed" rover would be at the mercy of the whimsical wind, but it would have the ability to "throw anchor" by partially deflating.
Large tumbleweed gif driver#
"It went a quarter of a mile in nothing flat," recalled technician Tim Connors, who quickly saddled up with the driver of a passing all-terrain recreational vehicle to chase down the runaway sphere. The moderate, 20-mile per hour afternoon winds drove the ball fast and far. When one of the wheels broke loose during a test, it traveled across the terrain only too well! Left: The spherically-wheeled rover that inadvertently gave birth to the idea for a giant tumbleweed ball. Watching Connors in hot pursuit, the researchers marveled at the speed of the rogue sphere and the ease with which it moved across the desert, unimpeded by boulders. "Tim was flying over the sand dunes trying to catch it," he said. "The ball went up steep, steep cliffs of sand. "And therein was planted the seed," said Jones, "that if we make these things big enough, nothing will stop one." Nothing stopped it." Until Connors, on the borrowed ATV, was able to catch up and corral the escapee.
Large tumbleweed gif full#
In a lab that appears to mix serious R&D with the ambiance of Santa's festive workshop, Jones and his colleagues are surrounded by shiny Mylar balloons of various sizes, pink and yellow beach balls, heavy-duty nylon tumbleweed ball prototypes, tall tanks of compressed gas and worktables full of mechanical and electronic devices.
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