lajoswinkler

Peter Higgs died yesterday. https://www.ed.ac.uk/news/2024/statement-on-the-death-of-professor-peter-higgs

My heart just skipped a beat.

Richard Truly (1937-2024), NASA's astronaut and 8th administrator.

They are mining argon from Mars, purifying it and delivering it to Ranger. For what other purpose could it be used in amounts of hundreds of tonnes if not propellant? As for the type of nuclear power, I really have to check. Compared to typical soft SF crap in entertainment industry, this show is superb in how highly accurate it is in terms of science and technology. To ignore it just because it isn't 100 % correct is a common fallacy that happens when something is near perfection (on the contrary, stuff with low accuracy is taken as is), and it diminishes the work of people involved in the project. Of course it aims for scientific accuracy, but sometimes full accuracy would get in the way of the format and optimal storyline length. Typical example is compressing time needed to do some chemical/computational/engineering analysis. Nobody wants the show to be composed of scenes of people yawning for 10 min in front of a computer hooked up to some device. As for the rest, sometimes I felt the episodes were way too much about social stuff and politics, but I figured out it had to be a production budget problem.

This show burns slowly and then it ramps up near the end of each season. I love it. One of the best SF works out there. I was thinking about one detail in the last episode. (spoilers ahead)

Yes. I've lost hope KSP 1 (AKA KSP) will ever truly become a completed game (because it's not, whatever the developers say), and I really never had hope for KSP 2 to begin with, assuming present situation will easily occur.

Out of all the things the console version lacks, you want that useless gimmick? Priorities.

If there was only one thing, my priority (by far!) feature would be life support and ending passive immortality of Kerbals. Basically what Kerbalism with Kerbalism simplex configuration yields. No complex resource loops. Just four key things: air - to prevent suffocation; bare essential snacks - to prevent starvation; bare essential volume of space - to prolong mental health; becomes important with increasing mission time shielding - to reduce exposure to ionizing radiation (which is itself a highly educational add-on and makes Kerbalism worth having); becomes important with increasing mission time Kerbals who require sustenance and care transform them from being nearly useless puppets to active, precious payload. I will be honest - the game still has loads of unfinished things, both functional and cosmetical ones. Releasing a v1.0, in 2015, was a public relations stunt haphazardly made at the time when interest in KSP started dwindling. I thought that by now, EIGHT years later, these issues will be solved, but virtually nothing has changed. It is still a game lacking so much and with so much to offer. Proof? Still a huge number of active mods, and I'm not talking about highly customized, cosmetic things liked by few tens of players. I've been a long advocate of tapping Kerbol as a resource of gameplay. It's a star, it offers stellar storms, ionizing radiation, there is a photosphere to be examined, but in over a decade it merely stopped being a cold picture in the sky. Truth to be told, I've lost hope. Financial and human resources have been shifted into pouring towards KSP2 which has so far been an failure, as expected. Graphs on Steam tell a realistic story. KSP still has fairly regular, oscillating interest, and KSP2 is at its deathbed like a Petri dish of germs starved of nutrients.

KSP2 is flatlining, not KSP.

There has clearly been an update. Now that there is a sidebar, everything has changed. Parts are no longer green ghosts in front of Kerbals that you can orient around. They have controls similar to VAB ones. My Kerbal engineers can now place things on the ground if I click on the large menu that opens by clicking the gear icon on the right side of the screen. Click on the part in the inventory, orient with WASD, click on the ground to place them. But once they place it, that's it. Nobody (engineer, scientist) can pick them up or interact with them or start experiments. Nothing. Right clicking on experiments shows no useful buttons. All needed parts are on the ground. Station, RTG, communication, experiments. Literally nothing works. I tried looking online but this DLC has been pretty much ignored. I don't understand why this has to be so complicated.

David McCallum (1933-2023) https://edition.cnn.com/2023/09/25/entertainment/david-mccallum-dead/index.html

Special operation crater.

Professor Melnikov, chief researcher at division of Roskosmos and a helping hand of NASA's scientists, died at age 77. Apparent cause of death: two week struggle with mushroom poisoning. Remember, kids, be careful with mushrooms.

That was not excitation. That was pure, unadulterated dorkiness and shows poor media management. It sounded really, really bad. Even worse than Modi's authoritative yelling after the landing. But of course I'm happy for India. This is a big thing.

Yes I know what it means, but why saying it EVERY time he starts talking? The female announcer wasn't saying it, but the dorky male one was. Imagine a SpaceX transmission of landing on Mars with some goofball saying: "God bless America" every time it was his turn to say something. It doesn't have to be anything religious or political. Literally anything repetitive will sound stupid after few times.

Can someone please explain why does this superannoying male announcer keeps repeating "jai hind" each time he starts speaking? Is it some kind of superstition?

Some half hour before landing. I hope it all goes well.

AI is a bunch of software. Cyborgs are humans with artificial body parts. You are comparing apples and oranges.

Same researcher already had one retraction after bad paper. For now it seems he's making the same shoddy attempt. https://www.science.org/content/article/spectacular-superconductor-claim-making-news-here-s-why-experts-are-doubtful

"layered salad composed of diced pickled herring covered with layers of grated boiled eggs, vegetables (potatoes, carrots, beetroots), chopped onions, and mayonnaise. Some variations of this dish include a layer of fresh grated apple[3] while some do not." There isn't the amount of apples in the world that would make me want to eat that.

Different? How old are you? This has an interesting plot, but it's so poorly executed. I am sick of extremely loud films with Hollywood clichés. I just hope trailer is nothing like the real thing (as it usually is the case).

No, it's not an envelope. It is the pressure vessel. 12.7 cm thick layer. Fiber "reinforces" epoxy resin. I've put reinforces in quotation marks because it played minor role in strengthening the structure against outside pressure, despite what Stockton Rush was saying. Thick epoxy resin was holding back bulk of the force. I'm not sure what the envelope was. Perhaps a sheet of titanium wrapped around the cylindrical body, preventing seawater from touching it.

I've seen the alleged transcript. Some people on Youtube are already cashing in hard on the transcript analysis like vultures, it's disgusting. I tend to lean towards it being fakery plopped by some weirdo. Nobody reacting to a very fast descent is highly implausible. We all know now that the company was stingy, but this is their boss in the submersible, one would think that such situation would provoke a reaction. Deducing from the fast descent and very slow ascent alone, one could easily reach the conclusion that the preparation was so poor because of poorly calculated buoyancy. That's below capabilities of average science fair students in elementary school. It's really leading us to such conclusion and that raises suspicion if you ask me. Too blatant, too obvious. That's why I think the transcript could be fake. The only other solution is that Oceangate is on the level of papier-mâché, crayons and plasticine...

There wasn't a jackhammer inside. Who would hit it so hard? What is there to explode? Fire would be consumed very fast, way before affecting anything. No, there is not just 1 and 0. It is a composite, heterogeneous material that had sensors inside, material prone to delamination, material that produced audible cracking on previous missions. This is not a homogeneous material that shows no signs of stress and suddenly gives in. Thick-walled, homogeneous, one-body steel spheres do not produce any sounds. Elasticity graphs for steel and composites are very different. I am talking about seconds between alarms and implosions, not the scenario where the vessel is slowly squashed. It would be a fast, exponentially worse material tearing and then water hammer pulse.

It doesn't have to leak for the emergency to be high enough to drop the ballast. It's a composite material and will not suddenly cave in without any warning (the problem is that such warning would be perfectly useless since time until disaster is so short). Hull had sensors and I'm pretty sure there were several seconds between first alarm and ballast being dropped automatically or manually by the operator. What could happen inside for the hull to be compromised?