JoeSchmuckatelli

Yawn. WenOrbit?

Done!

I am so going to use this!

...and, well great, it's an election year - so someone will spin this into a signal from the illuminati. Meaning I will have to explain to my students that no it's not aliens just science.

2 successes - which I hope for the love of Gawrd someone records and uploads to YT at 4k. (specificity intentional)

Late to this party - but I've long had this idea that once space travel becomes a thing to the extent that people are regularly traveling between planets - that the only way to really enjoy it will be the Disney Cruise version. They will do it right.

Not in the slightest. I will never go to space, but I will watch cool launches and deployments over and over.

How do I send a thumbs down to RLab? Don't they know the purpose of space launch is to entertain me!?!

Resident Cave Man Lawer here - and while your technology frightens and scares me... When I say venue I'm wondering about State / Federal jurisdiction and where I can get the most compensation for emotional distress due to bad comedy. Dad jokes and puns? Oh the pain!

What venue?

...a parasol. Very fashionable.

I don't disagree. I was using 'billionaire tourism' to distinguish a subset. 'Adventure tourism' is also distinguished from the Adventurer in my mind by the level of preparation each might do. The next level mountaineers I'd run into while hiking or climbing on Shasta or Raineer or in the Alps had a level of technical competency where they could be self sufficient and contribute to the groups they climbed with. To my mind, the Adventure Tourist or Billionaire tourist may not. They often hire competency to 'sherpa' them through the adventure. (Certainly there are billionaires who can do the thing - but they are themselves a subset) There is an analogy, perhaps, to skiing in NA. I remember the ski bum days when the slopes were covered in poor college students and locals. Private Equity now owns most of the slopes and some ski towns are so expensive that professionals can't afford to live there - Now its the designer see and be seen crowd. Dunno - just grousing. But back to your point - yes, for a city on Mars to enjoy real tourism it would need something on the Disney model: be a self contained adventure that, while expensive, is attainable by millions of of people annually - and that would drive inadvertent colonization as permanent support staff and supporting industries establish themselves and expand. Similarly, some kind of permanent scientific or resource extraction outpost or production model could contribute. But just altruistic 'go live there... Because' won't

It's my personal prejudice showing. I used to do rock climbing and mountain climbing in the 80s and 90s. I'd occasionally bump into people who were serious about it - talking about moving up to summits on known mountains on multiple continents. Everest was something to be achieved by only the best with great training and after some serious money raising. The common theme from those guys was 'respect for the mountain' (and a certain amount of spiritualism). The billionaire tourist doesn't fit that model. (flip side is more money is flowing into Nepal these days)

Billionaire tourism would certainly contribute to semi permanent service workers. <eyeroll > What would be best is some sort of boom economy coupled with something still profitable (sustainable and survivable) on the back end. Ala the gold rush towns of the West - while leaving ghost towns in many places did pave the way for more permanent settlement. I think that's kind of the point. Billionaire tourists are flexing on each other with what they and their kids do - to the exclusion of normies who couldn't possibly afford the trip, much less the catering to. Everest really is a good example. The flex of having so much money that you can walk away from everything (/ 'work remotely') for that length of time and be one of the few humans in existence to have EVER done a thing? It will happen. There is already a waiting list for orbit and the moon.

It will happen. Not as a dedicated Colony; that would be miserable. But someone will start a science outpost, ala Antarctica, then there will be a few, then some people will stay past a transfer or two and decades later (presuming they find something worth doing there) there will be a permanent outpost. Given enough time? It will look like a colony. (It took decades for the Virginia Colony to get going - and that wasn't a particularly inhospitable place)

The MIT article is interesting - they talk about how... difficult... it is to get funding/be taken seriously when trying to explore that theory, then point out that it's not so loopy after all. The concrete, if true, would be poured with a jello like consistency that for *reasons* cures in a way that avoids shrinkage common to other concretes. It's an interesting theory. Back to moving logs with mechanical advantage - this one is interesting. The use of the bipod is totally different. With the rope at the top of the bipod and the fulcrum forward of the log, they just pull it up and over. Side note - I got the funding to try this with my students. So later next week I'll report back on how it went. Using 2x4x10s, making some beams from 2x6x12s and a few other things. Should be fun!

That is a new one. At least to me. I'll look into it. I remember shows from the 80s where they demonstrated possible technology including the use of logs, ropes, people and animals. All very advanced! Here's a newer one

There is another vid I've seen where the rope is lower. Funny thing is that I want to do it because I got asked about Aliens the Pyramids and Stonehenge. My reply is that people are way cooler than they think - so I plan to take them all outside to move heavy things.

@Gargamel - because I do not have access to S&Sf sub I need to post a question here. Will you move it to the appropriate sub? Question about 'Paring Ladders' - can anyone help me with a project for school? I want to teach students about paring ladders and moving heavy loads. I just Don't know how to figure out how much a paring ladder with 10 foot legs might pull Any help appreciated!

Old and new. All you need is the doohickey called a gunners quadrant. Russia used the Armata this way so they could say it was 'combat tested' without risking any. We could do it with Sherman or Abrams. Hell, we can do it with a M240G or a. 50 cal. No time to Google but if memory serves - aren't ramjets inefficient in lower atmosphere? So won't the ramjet penetrator idea be an airlaunched platform for guidance and speed that then gets ejected when the kill vehicle goes to terminal phase?

Ofc we'd need to get hypersonic engine tech miniaturized

FWIW - because tanks have huge guns they don't really need an engine to get the penetrator up to speed. Big boom = fast round. Where you might want to get a hypersonic engine strapped to a penetrator is a future manpad scenario where active protective systems can defeat the top attack HEAT / HEDP systems (aka Javalin) and need to revert to kinetic kill techniques.

TheSaint's analysis sounded sound to me. The only ramjet penetrator thing I've heard spoken about in any terms that seem remotely plausible is as a strategic rather than a tactical weapon. Given that APFSDS works - why strap an engine on it?

Anyone know why a USB DAC with both a pink and green input won't communicate with the computer that a microphone is connected? Headset works with the pink and green connectors directly to the back panel sound ports - but I bought the USB DAC for the convenience... Would like to be able to easily unplug the headset and have the speakers kick in. (my old DAC did this just fine for Corsair headphones - but it was a single connection whereas the new headset has separate pink & green. FWIW front panel audio ports don't work requiring the USB DAC. Thoughts?

Yep! Wow!