DDE

The construction methods are there: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9780470015902.a0027771 It thus becomes a problem of design, which is comparatively easy to solve with a sufficiently large collection of germs as inspiration.

Why steal when you can sell? https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/man-who-sold-eiffel-tower-twice-180958370/

Do not underestimate the mass of machinery that goes into the manufacturing of "simple" metal parts, or overestimate the ability of 3D printing to replace it.

Reuse of salvaged parts involves you accepting the unpredictable risks that come with that. Producing new parts from scrap materials, meanwhile, involves setting up the spaceborne equivalents of massive industrial chains of production involved in modern electronics.

There's also the problem of transformer oil theft. Most of such publications refer to Africa.

Historical popularity of flat earth belief in Europe is extremely inflated.

Scrap is scrap. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shukhov_Tower_on_the_Oka_River

The primary functions of a space agency are to conduct space technology development when/until the private space sector becomes sustainable, and to serve as a customer for unprofitable space research. That second function, yes, makes their soft sci-fi counterparts the various exploratory and survey agencies. By contrast, in the US model space agencies tend to have little to no regulatory power. Airflight safety agencies have absorbed that into their mandate. And the military has crept into the coast guard role. That said, it's not terribly unusual for the military (Navy, specifically) to settle into exploration. The Soviet space program was a bizarre dance between the Ministry of Defense, the quasi-independent KBs without a governing agencies, and the Academy of Sciences. Bad comparison. NRL seems to be a basket case of various theoretical science and prototyping projects. Actual naval architecture is handled elsewhere, without stable development agencies (again, a contrast with the Soviet model of standing naval architecture KBs).

The radiation on Io's surface is about 36 Sv/day. This is comparable to being briefly exposed to an unshielded fission chain reaction at an arm's length, give or take (15 Sv to 100 Sv depending on the incident). Needless to say, this would be utterly fatal - bad enough to literally scramble all your chromosomes.

It was never advertised as anything else.

Instead they made the Soviets giggle with an implied maternal insult.

@steve9728, I'm basically done trying to dig into this, there's too much opinion swirling around and some critical facts are missing or unconfirmed (for one thing, Where in the World is Nursultan Nazarbayev?) Should let the dust settle for a few weeks. One thing I wanted to note that, for a classic color revolution, it lacked the slickness, the branding (you know, the specific color that earns the phenomenon its name), a presentable picture of noble and peaceful freedom fighters standing opposite a row of faceless riot police. Instead it almost immediately erupted into something more akin to the KwaZulu riots last year - the same kind of "decentralized leadership", a political position boiling down to rage against The Man, and chaotic property destruction. Anyway, Baikonur's beginning to take measures, introducing a nighttime curfew and lockdown, banning sales of liquor, and raising neighborhood watch units to bolster patrols for the durat6 of the national state of emergency. https://tass.ru/mezhdunarodnaya-panorama/13369453

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_syndrome

So, The Sun claims HMS Northumberland has lost a towed sonar array to a Russian sub. https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/17243613/royal-navy-warship-hits-russian-submarine-atlantic/ They're lucky the array didn't get caught in the sub's propeller. In October 1983, K-234 cleverly "collected" USS McCloy's "tail": The cruiser in the above picture demonstrates how anxious the US were to get that piece of kit back. The Victor-III had to be towed to Cuba for untangling. Worst thing is, Victor-IIIs are one of the few boats with coaxial contrarotating propellers... oh joy. Meanwhile I've seen claims that the Royal Navy submariners chased after a Polish subhunter with some sort of an infernal scissors attachment to the same end.

Interesting factoid: according to at least some sources, the person to have first called for a CSTO intervention is Toktar Aubakirov, formerly the cosmonaut-researcher of Soyuz TM-13 (callsign "Donbass"), presently a socdem politician. https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/5156017

Late in WWII the Western Allies decided to try and forego the usual mess of shipping fuel to the frontline via tanker by laying down a pipeline from Britain to France. This involved a flexible pipe rolled off a large drum. In a fit of terrible originality, the vessels were known as HMS Conundrum.

From what I've read over at Kaspersky's ATP blog, it's enough to leave a covert raspberry pi device on the premises and let it make friends with the local wi-fi for a while. Not to mention it's a bit naive to think blacklisting Russian IPs is an effective counter-hacking or counter-DDoS measure.

"You may fry when ready"

Energomash showed off a kerolox subscale demonstrator (Ifrit) half a decade back, too. The rhetoric is that it's all-around better - more thrust, better combustion, smaller chamber - but the specific impulse reported was a measly 290 sec. https://fpi.gov.ru/projects/fiziko-tekhnicheskie-issledovaniya/ifrit/

Reportedly one Spetsnaz company from the 76th Air Assault Division and the one from the 45th Special Operations Brigade, with additional Spetsnaz and mountain rifle units on alert. An An-124 (RA82014) and additional Il-76s are already converging on Moscow for the airlift. Meanwhile I'm chasing a bunch of ground support machinery on the northern apron of Domodedovo which for some reason is broadcasting on ADS-B as civilian aircraft with RA500xx series of tail numbers, That is the billion-rouble question, of course. Right now, it's not certain who's plotting against whom, there's been a vigorous shakeup among Kazakh leadership - Nazarbayev, who'd been a president for 29 years, got stripped of all authority by his hand-picked successor. There is also confusion as to what the protesters want, as no clear leadership hasn't been identified; apparently, all of the various opposition forces are moving in, but they're just reacting to a situation they did not seem to create. Worst-case scenario would probably involve cutting away the majority of Kazakhstan's 20% Russian population into a "South Siberia"; a few guys were charged with trying that back in 1999. For reference, Baikonur is in the south-western quadrant of the country.

I'm going to make a risque post, but, instead of Yuzhnoe, look in the direction of Baikonur. A military Il-76 has already flown to Alma-Aty from Moscow, and now a government Tu-214 appears to be en route... certain quarters are already beginning to celebrate, whereas Western media seems to be a bit at a loss. Upd.: the President of Kazakhstan has officially requested CSTO (inter alia Russian) support amidst parallel reports of a full-on armed insurrection. As of tonight's evening it looks like we're about to see a full-on military intervention. https://www.rbc.ru/politics/05/01/2022/61d5e5cb9a7947499455195e All is quiet in and around Baikonur, at least for now. https://www.rbc.ru/rbcfreenews/61d5767a9a79472c62d16067