JoeSchmuckatelli

@DDE & @kerbiloid Totally off topic - but hear that WG has sued a bot coder in Russia for allegedly driving players away from WOT. You guys have any info? (WOT forums notably hostile to non Russian speakers - hope you don't mind me asking, here)

Kinda my point. Notice who gets the street cred, tho. Pretty easy decision.

You would have to understand American politics to know how remarkable that is (was). His 'enthusiastic support' speech assured its survival and success (from a financial /politics standpoint - enabling the technical). Funny thing is that Democrats forget that Kennedy was even more of a Cold Warrior than Reagan. ... I think you are missing something simpler - remember, "When you hear hooves, think 'horses' not 'zebras'! " You should remember that the 70s was a relatively stagnant economic time. Major transitions afoot. Democrats shifted to the naval-gazing strategy of domestic policy and the Republicans followed suit later with the 'me, me, ME! Look at how RICH I am!' stuff of the 80s and the Evangelical religious culture war with the rest of America ramping up. Reagan/Bush did not start a revolution - they were the culmination of the old way. Some legacy policies did get finished - but by the mid 90s America was almost exclusively naval-gazing. Anything that did not advance one sides' domestic agenda or the other was a side show or prestige piece. Even 9-11 could not shift that.

Deployment Explorer Webb/NASA You can click through the deployment steps and timeline

Hush! The bean counters will hear you Kind of thing you usually admit AFTER wowing your audience with amazing pictures of the cosmos.

I'm not sure Pluto has put much thought into it

Do you still execute the losing team? Edit: 'sacrifice' ...sorry - being culturally insensitive. It's an offering, not an execution Still, Vegas will love the brutality, but hate that there are limits on the stats due to player retention and longevity

I did a quick Wikipedia search to compare payload weights. (Looks like I'm exposing my institutional ignorance!) My curiosity is based on the SLS discussion and knowledge that we send Mars stuff out regularly... Never thought about look at dry mass vs wet. Thanks for pointing out what must seem obvious! <Resident Neanderthal stumbls back into the cave, muttering >

Man - I wrote that wrong. Webb weights more - 6500kg vs 4300kg. Again - if Webb outweighs Lunar Lander - can't we use ESA to throw rocks at the moon?

If Webb weighs less than the Lunar Lander... why are we not using Arianne for lunar missions?

Completely different in kind. Passenger safety over testing w/o passengers. Similar to how Tesla should be raked over the coals for the autonomous driving system but Oshkosh should be able to develop their military prototypes off civilian roads

Borg

A Mars 'colony' (or other extra-terrestrial outpost) will only ever be an Ark - and never, truly a colony. Humanity's first true colony won't exist until we find an earth-analog to exploit (and the colonists enjoy the option of wandering off into the wilds and saying F* those guys back 'home'. *Fuggitabout

February 28... ;/

Is that because (like Webb) the design originated before what we are seeing in development at present? Or is there a requirement that you only design for currently proven tech in existence at the time? Surely (unless contracts are already signed) the designers could adjust part of the design to accommodate developing trends and increase the working life of a billion dollar project? This is is interesting. They always want Webb on Earth /Sun side of the 'flat' part of the gravity potential hilltop of L2: https://blogs.nasa.gov/webb/2021/12/27/more-than-you-wanted-to-know-about-webbs-mid-course-corrections/

Heh, my Russian friend... You know the words but aren't listening to the tune! Profits, profits, profits. Remember, Corporation is not Co-op. That only creates a parallel species. If we each can only live where the other cannot - there is no real competition. Or reasons for collaboration. Go back to first principles (or Blade Runner). Unless we create a descendant capable of and worthy of replacing us (aka a "child") all the genetic manipulationl will be for the creation of slaves. The literature and our history should be caution enough against this.

@Spacescifi - let's ask this question: should humans (as we now know them) create an offshoot that is more successful than ourselves, wouldn't they eventually honor us as we do the Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon? Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio; a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy; he hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! My gorge rises at it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? Your gambols? Your songs? Your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar? Would not these Children of Men be entitled to inherit? To walk where we merely crawled?

Frankly, this concept is relevant: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cio.com/article/190888/5-famous-analytics-and-ai-disasters.html/amp I think the obvious counter-arguments are here: https://www.google.com/amp/s/climate.nasa.gov/news/2943/study-confirms-climate-models-are-getting-future-warming-projections-right.amp The problem lies in hidden bias. Watched a fascinating piece about the limits of machine learning, focusing in part on the work of Joy Buolamwini If you've not heard of her: https://www.media.mit.edu/posts/media-lab-student-recognized-for-fighting-bias-in-machine-learning/ The thing is, with the sciences you can hope for and expect a measure of reliability on the data. Can the same be said of social constructs like economics and psychology? With economics we already run a risk of self fulfilled prophetic AI driving changes in the markets - which, while not classical manipulation, still results in artificial behavior.

Isn't a phrase that makes sense.

it's a 1.25. Aperture is 100mm (4 inches) so... I'll go with the 1.5x. Thanks for the tips! Any brands you recommend - or ones to stay away from? ... Oh - follow up: the Jovian moons had noticeably changed positions. Daughter thought that was really cool. FYI - Jupiter is about to leave the nighttime skies for a bit; Saturn, which we saw last night is already down with the sunset. Super glad to have had this opportunity with her. Sad thing is that my part of the country is known to be 'gray' from now till spring. We've fought clouds for a couple of nights, and still seen cool stuff. Hopefully we get a few clear nights over the next few months! S/F ALL!

Comms was the second deployment after power - which we saw deployed shortly after separation. Next will be the long, multistage sun shade deployment and tensioning. Apparently if this does not work, neither will Webb as the instruments will never be cold enough. There is a video on this and a graphic. I think they start to deploy the mirrors and major parts of the telescope after the sun shade and then the insertion burn(s) followed by waking up the major systems of the observatory, testing and initial science - reveal sometime in June followed by the work scheduled ... Anyone know the research schedule? I know many want deep scans and origin work, but I really hope there are some surveys of sunlike stars vis 18 scorpii in the first year.

SOONTM

One of my favorite characters from my youth!

How?!? ...oh, yeah. ... We need a new paradigm for space exploitation

Ah. Well... given that Webb was designed at a time when lift was expensive and capacity smaller than we anticipate it will be in 5 years... perhaps the prudent thing to do would be to build, in 5-7 years a New Webb that can be emplaced by something larger like SS or other in-development rockets?