PB666

The BFR fuselag is 30 feet in diameter, there is virtually no way to get it from McGregor to BocaChica. They will have to fly it somehow.

The only instance were we can raise the question of impossibility is between Classic Neandertals (in the strictest sense) and AMH (~30 to 40 kya) and even that is tenuous. There is almost no chance fetal remains from an admixture would persist. In essence if we assume for example there were say 30,000 HN in europe for the last say 200,000 years it means that 6 billion people, of those there is maybe representation in the fossil record of 10-6 to 10-7 most of the individuals were between 13 and 20 years of age, very few younger or older. The smaller a bone or set of remains are, the less likely it is to survive. Ancient DNA is particularly hard to obtain from non-hardened bones, the preference is the tooth or the hardened parts of the femur. Erik Trinkaus is an expert on the evidence for admixture between Hss and Neandertals, however he is rather overconfident and some of his datings (like Oase1, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14504393, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14580595) are probably underdated and outside the window of admixture between HSS, but not betweeen HSI and HN (based on the lack of confident dating of the purified collagen). There are some that claim that widespread evidence of admixture within Europe itself, if so virtually all of these admixtures were eliminated from the population either by failure to produce offspring or some sort of population failure. One study of the Neandertal components in the human genome suggest that DNA around genes is removed more rapidly than expected, however this observations could be due to a improperly used time of admixture (admixture is older as many believed). There is lots of talk, I basically only adhere to what the molecular genetics allows, and when there is a death rely on accurately dated archaeology. Indonesia is a tough example of human evolution, the country is divided by the Wallace line, which through the history of human evolution was crossed by multiple species on multiple occasions. The last and more recent of which was Hss ~50 kya (±15 ky). The problem of assessment here, for example Homo florisiensis appears to be an erectoid derivative with pre-erectine plesiomorphies and a few derived apomorphies. As far as we can tell Hf never contributed to the human population, there is reason to believe that all other versions of H. erectus died out before the arrival of Hss on the Sumatra, (all the continent was connected prior to the current interglacial). But as I made the comment in the post on PaloeAnth history, dating is a weak point in many studies, the older the study the weaker the point is. It is sufficient to say there were many calvara all indicative of a near classic erectine presence as late as 50 kya. (redating places these at 250 kya). In American everyone is crossed, I have genetic ancestry going back 2000 years that covers the entire region from Mesoamerica to east Asia and in Europe from Ireland at least to the middle east, one parent carried a variant of a asian haplotype that probably introgressed into Europe as the glaciers declined, both parents carry a haplotype modal in the near East. Another haplotype appears according to one paper (its a disease allele unfortunately, I got a double dose of) evolved from the recombination of a iberian haplotype and one of the quintessential early European/Eastern European haplotypes. I don't have any recent African ancestry to speak of, but if I have iberian ancestry dating from the last ice-age, its a pretty good assumption that I also have NW African ancestry from just before the end of the last ice-age to about 8000 years ago. I can probably rule out ancestry from S. India, S.Africa, Australia, SE Asia. Doesn't leave much of the world. The idea of race in the Victorian sense is an illusion, the barriers that we perceive don't exist, there is a certain sharpness between geographies but there are almost always gradients somewhere in between, this is a characteristic of the modern population. This is why it is conceptually hard for modern humans to understand that in the past much much sharper barriers exist. But that is not the end of the story, Denisova child has mtDNA suggesting admixture between Eastern Neandertals of that type with Homo erectus (or some other species, the mtDNA is not informative since we have no mtDNA from erectus, all hope of that was lost with Zoukoudian samples during WWII). It is potentially true that Neandertals eliminated all H.erectus except Hf, meaning they eliminated all that they did not interbreed with. Don't take this as stock, but the initial characterization of Denisovan and comparison with human suggests that humans got none of the erectine DNA, in Addition the denisovans that humans mixed with apparently had other Neandertal content that denisovans of the cave did not have. So very complex. Seems like Denisovans split one mixed with more modern Neandertals and went SE the other mixed with erectines and went north. In terms of the _new_ admixture in the N.china Sea/Amur river region (notable by HLA variants) the information is not yet descriptive enough to conclude. Science at this level is an empirical process with theoretical implications, we try to ascertain what happened based on what is observed. The problem is that the process is in-determinant. It could be as simple as he liked this one and but no other hes liked any of the other shes. Who knows. There is but one thought process that we often fail to consider. We often treat modern homo sapiens as the core species, during the middle stone age and early part of the late stone age Subsaharan Africa may not have been a core area but a peripheral site of human evolution, other than N.Afr-ME hominims SSAs may have been a daughter species, capable only of admixing with the parent or those that also recently admixed with the parent. In that realm there are diminishing probabilities with added distance from the region, but as the human population grew in Africa, and appears to have absorbed part of the core and mostly eliminated the rest, this created nascent barriers in the human population that probably decreased probabilities. SW asia is complex and hard to explain why the percentage introduced is so low in this context. One model is demic diffusion, cycles of replacement (which is not evident in the mtDNA).

They must be shipping by barge. If I understand correctly they are building somekind of facility on the Port of Brownsville, which is the southern Endpoint of the Intercoastal canal. I looked on google maps nothing, but then again all they show is a dirt heap for the launch facility at BC.

How come this looks like someone made it in KSP

I thing electromagnetic railgun would only be used as an augmenting device. Chemical propellants typically have much higher energy densities available. There is one reason I could think of for a railgun and that is your powder magazine is essentially a self-destruct button your enemies can push.

I don't want to be too presumptive here but how much damage could your average crumple front car do to a Merline 1-D engine, each engine can produce upwards of 900,000 N of thrust before being damaged. If you hit that rocket at full speed I doubt the driver would immediately know that he had been hit. I've seen a few Tractor trailor-car accidents . . . .its often difficult in the end to recognize the make and model of the car afterward.

Summary: So what caused this leaky barrier. It was unlikely between male and female reproductive biology per-say. We have to assume all the parts were compatible. A more likely area of problems is the receptivity of eggs with sperm. Given the evidence above it seems that male archaic sperm was compatible with Hss eggs, the vice-versa may not have been true. There could have been developmental abnormalities in the fetus that cause 9 or 16 week spontaneous abortions (possibly a false signal). Or there could be something about the offspring that did not allow them to survive the first generation without extended intervention of some form. IOW the reason why this was not common is more or less implicit in the molecular genetics observation, there is nothing about morphology separate from the Archaeology (e.g. Denisovan cave, Vdijna Cave) that gives us reason to believe that productive cross breeding could not be common. And herein lies the core of the debate between molecular genetics and paleoanthropology that started with this small paper 37 years ago, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6251473 But was noted that something weird about human population. . . https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/4120260 Its a good reason in science to postulate that good hypothesis are held up by several diverse legs, relying too heavily on one line of evidence can lead one down scientific dead ends.

But your asking the question is it able to support itself sideways at 22.5 tons when its full dressed weight on the LP 31 tons and when fueled is 550,000 tons (24x) that weight. Of course it can support itself, Remember when that callout says 'pushing downrange' the force of the engines on the rocket is around 1.3g the same sideways is experienced with a turn 1.7 degrees off vertical. Even without turning, there is significant horizontal component to bumps that are not vertical. If their are nine engines, eight of the engines are not under the axial line, those engines when they 'bump' the rocket create horizontal stress. Unfortunately one can derive from telemetry the only vertical stress on stage 2. But you can imagine it as such for a rocket at just prior to pre-Mach throttle down, most of the force that imparted by the rocket (1.3 TWR, 13 meter/sec2) is absorbed by the S1. 4/5ths of the rocket is the 1st stage, therefore 4/5ths is absorbed by S1 as it is accelerated. To know what these stress are you would need accelerometers at two orthogonal positions on the skin of the rocket.

Dont' forget that most of the energy flow in most systems is in the microbes and stuff you don't pay attention to. Soil insects, saprophytic fungi, soil bacteria (species we know, many we don't). Primitive herbivores could not capture much of the calories in their food, most of the calories were excreted as cellulose and other undigested products in the waste. In addition plants and trees that die much of the biomass is underground or compost when the plants die.

How do the plan to get BFR from Texas to its launch sites?

I think the core only weighs 22.5 tons, as for a tractor trailer this is not particularly heavy. A tractor trailer's legal weight is 40 tons. (before needing an oversized tag) So with trailer, tractor, rear wheels probably close. Maximum weight on trailer is 34,000 lbs (15,454 kg) for normal sized load.

Picture yourself in the VAB with a long sponge mop and a bucket of soapy cleaning the soot off of recycled cores for the next 30 years.

That's the picture of the day, there. East bound and down.

How do they exactly get the cores from McGregor of Canaveral?

I would think they finished test firings by now. Is this a test bed or is it going to be launched with a PL?

I think there were many attempts at interbreeding, most unsuccessful, so it was not particularly naughty. Also I would point out, that on the north end of the range, given that most HSS traveled most of the time through the tropics and semitropics, that it was selectively beneficial to interbreed if you are moving into regions with less than tropical climate and risks. This has been expected for more than 30 years, and could have been predicted based upon the distributions 15 years ago (even though MPI claimed based on the original desinovan that there was no reason to believe other admixtures occurred). From the south there are is one, maybe two immunological genes evident, from the northern part of the range there are potentially three from a single locus. One of these B48, carried over into the new-world (western populations). The barrier between humans and other late hominims was sufficient to prevent productive hybrid formation, but it leaked, either on there side or hss side or both. It takes two genetic changes to form a barrier but it only takes lapse on one or the other side to negate that effect. If the formalizations are not fixed in one or the other population, then this can explain the general failure of admixture, but the occasional success. I think a much better question is, with H.s.s. branching for H.s.n and H.s.n.d so recently why there was any impediment to admixture at all.

The economy is in shambles, growth in legacy industries no specific plan to innovate.

I think what you mean is there is intelligent life is silicon valley, not necessarily on the Potomac.

Are you saying this is the reason the FCC refused the license, as far as I know the reason was not given.

Of course you are going to start close to the low end of the range and clean upwards, make sense because your ellipse is in the 120 to 500 range so clean that area up first before moving upward, plus that currently is the range of manned space flight, so yeah 250-500 for starts. But a 250 km orbit is a trivial clear since apogee is low you need only to remove 25 m/s and release, the higher the object is the lower the perigee needs to be to bring its apogee down. Plus, as I said, you want to test flight systems. you don't want to be harpooning satellites in ISS orbit in your trial phase, that would be dumb. I said in the beginning, during the training period you needed to practice on objects that would clear anyway. As I demonstrated numerically it takes 109 m/s to cross the range, so you want to first work on things that anything you do will be less than 25 m/s as not to throw them back into the range that might collide with important stuff. This brings up another problem as you mention the why. The why and the how are connected, not only do sats need to be brought down, they also have be brought down in one piece, but also from orbits where they may not be interfering with other craft, crossing orbits that may interfer with other craft. For example a sun synchronous orbit has may craft in it, if you slow it down a bit other craft may start passing the craft, so the best way to handle that is to burn retrograde at perigee and then burn at apogee just to get it out of the path of other similar orbits, then deorbit by burning from apogee.

Atomic Bears!!!

What did I say? http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/deadthings/2018/03/15/interbreeding-denisovans/#.WqsdGech2Ul As I stated in the other threads, these outlier genes were noted years ago, people have kind of ignored them. It was kind of odd also that Japan and Korea has such high Neanderthal contributions, this might explain at least some of that. Of the particular genes that I questioned the highest frequencies were in the Orochon, so its would be interesting the see the gene contributions to this particular population. Molecular genetics rules! Expect more like this in Africa . . . .Extreme South Africa and West Africa. Here's another paper reinforcing something I mentioned about 2 months ago concerning Europeans (and the general problem of publishing new molecular genetic ideas concerning Europeans because of the underlying bias in archeology and anthropology). Alot of the articles are old hat, Spanish molecular geneticist noted waves of migration from Africa direct to different regions of Europe, the conclusions did not suit well at all with archeologist. The most profound was the highly apparent founder affect in the settlement of Sardinia, which archeaologist concluded was settled by the eastern mediterraneans. Nope, first colonized be NW Africans and that DNA compliment is still significant part of current population.

This is the one from NASA, most of the satellites are very close to what I said. The earth is 6,371 km, 500 km is one twelfth, the desities start around 1/15th of the radius or 450 km, targets at 500 km are choice because these will soon cross the path of the ISS. as these are depleted they could progressively go after more distant satellites. But examining the density of craft at the poles. Again one does not have to drop the satellites, the tugs could thus take them to stations where they are combined and sent into a burn-up orbit by occasionally launched spacecraft like F9. The point is that its not hard to remove most and the most dangerous junk (that which is in highest density).

Infinte improbability landing?