JoeSchmuckatelli

So... If there is surface liquid, there is an atmosphere. If there is liquid and atmosphere, there is vapor and thus, clouds If there is an atmosphere with clouds - there should be precipitation. If there is precipitation, there is weathering / erosion... So... Do you want to see Gurdamma reworked with an atmosphere and clouds and weathered craters - or just let them finish the game with a pretty, but pretty wrong place to visit?

Had a very interesting argument with my son about the definitions. Context: you would always hear 'third world country' describing a place like Ghana. Then, back in college (80s) an economics professor argued that the 'First - Third' world definitions were insufficient and that scholars should look at nations in a 'First to Fifth World' framework (First being the economically developed leading Western Democracies (US, England, France, Germany), Second being highly developed but not leading (Canada, Four Tigers, Russia, Belgium etc) Third being Developing economies (Mexico, Greece, Turkey, Philippines etc) on down to Fifth being economies with major problems (Mali, Afghanistan Somalia, etc) Blithely told my son that the First - Third world definition was economics based... Only to be corrected (he's 14). First = NATO aligned Second = USSR aligned Third = not aligned How I never understood that remains a mystery. https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2015/01/04/372684438/if-you-shouldnt-call-it-the-third-world-what-should-you-call-it#:~:text=The First World consisted of,has always had blurred lines.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/04/weather/earth-dimming-climate/index.html Likely relevant here - Earth's albedo has been decreasing the last 3 years. Retaining an extra 1/2 watt per square meter over baseline measurements for the last 20 years. Due largely to changes in cloud cover over the Americas

Low cloud cover like that is cool - I've seen some very interesting light shows in similar conditions. (Some man-made, some natural}

Shhhh. There is no spacecraft. Nothing to see here Nothing at all

So much unrealized truth to this. FWIW - things like 'landing a probe on the Moon and returning a sample' or a 'lander on Mars' are just as much a reminder to others that if you can hit far away targets - you can hit close ones. It showcases mature technology and command and control. Oh, yeah, and science

Cost Plus I don't think this is it. I think that there are few people who are actually brave enough to be entrepreneurial and smart enough to be rocket scientists... And they got us to space and the moon through those failures. However, literally as soon as things become even a little routine all the business school grads came in to make a buck. There is a serious problem in corporations where people don't care about the company or the future - they want to meet short term goals (regardless of long term cost), look good, get promoted and do it again.

Yeah - I'm probably praising the icing - but the cake is 'in-house, cost-oriented and highly productive'. Can't imagine succeeding with iterative rapidity if you are buying the stuff that you break from someone else.

Let's hope that the 'special effects fluids' are added in post.

Customer focused - if the customer wants to wait - okay, the ship will be ready when they are ready

"SpaceX is also known for iterative design, a process by which engineers spend less time studying and designing problems, and more time building and testing solutions.... While it may produce spectacular failures... iterative design generally allows for a program to move more quickly, and by seeking faults during real-world tests, results in a more robust final version of a vehicle" This feature of SX should not have been buried so deep in the article - I'm convinced it's one of the signal differences between SX and what the rest of the industry has morphed into since the first Apollo landing

I really hate to do this - because I think the artwork is gorgeous - but this is something that's been bugging me. Can an airless planet or moon have surface liquid? Take this video for KSP2: It's beautiful - and clearly airless and mostly dry... except that there are seas, lakes and filled craters. From what I know - if you have liquid seas - you're likely to have an atmosphere (presuming, at least that whatever liquid boils off will either form vapor (clouds/haze) or break up into its constituent atoms/gasses - which should then stick around as an atmosphere) until the atmospheric pressure is sufficient to allow the warmed up ices to remain liquid at whatever surface temp found there. Certainly I can imagine an impact liberating frozen sub surface ices that liquify and flow into the crater... perhaps even faster than they will evaporate, filling the crater or a local basin - but for how long? When we see the surface of Titan: ...we don't get massive craters; instead we see a landscape of hills with obvious river and creek channels. So on to the question: while my KSP skills are so poor I'm not likely to ever visit Gurdamma - for those of you who can... if I am correct in my assumptions above - would its appearance (shown in the top video) in game as a cratered, liquid bearing airless planet bug you? Would you prefer more weathered surface - and perhaps even haze like Titan, or even methane clouds (or whatever would be appropriate given its distance from Kerbol)?

When do they mount the payload?

I appreciate the update - but it's like they have Al Gore as the person writing the 'interest' pieces. - is there any phrase less exciting than, "...successfully completed a countdown test"? "...4, 3, 2, 1. Yep - the numbers are still in order. "

For those interested in all the 'Touchy Feely" stuff, here's what's going on: https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/04/health/nobel-prize-medicine-physiology-winner-2021/index.html

SNL is blocked on YouTube in Canada? Weird world

Can't believe this is not posted yet...

Well - you are correct about that; any 'Company' of soldiers (regardless of branch) could, once they secured a population capable of providing food and warm beds, quickly pacify the local area. Another feature of any future Prodrazyvorstka is that, while brutal, likely results in a shortening of the timeline and return to centralized government... although it could again result in lingering economic stagnation. When all your choices are bad...

Interesting read. I wonder if Russia had had a rural population as heavily armed as America's whether the result might have been different - especially as Russia was and remained a State with an Army as the crisis occurred. Guessing the Army could have sorted that right quick. Contrast this with @SunlitZelkova's scenario the remaining city dwellers (while numerous, and probably - at least in the case of US Citizenry - likely to be partly-armed) will likely be isolated from the pre-existing government's agencies of control.

Ah - but don't forget that you get a ready-supply of labor and fertilizer (people and used food), and yes, far, far fewer mouths to feed. Peeing everywhere solves the phosphorous problem, too.

@SunlitZelkova Good morning! So - first things first: in the popular imagination, people VASTLY overestimate the efficacy of nuclear weapons. We think in terms of completely destroyed cities and seas of glass and irradiated wastelands un-populable for centuries. Get that out of your mind. The primacy of how you view a nuclear exchange should be as bombs. Full stop. Look primarily at the explosive effects, from cratering to burn zone to concussion zone. The 'scary stuff' (i.e. radiation which no one can see and few understand) has either very short term effects which are rapidly attenuated by weathering, distance or decay, or very long term effects that are effectively ineffective. This is not to minimize the threat; when you look at just the bomb aspects; they're still incomprehensibly brutal. I posted above that the US has 310 cities and 19,500 towns (many of which are clustered around the cities). You can overlay the effects of 2k bombs of various yields from Russia and China atop those cities, and just looking at the 'bomb' effects eliminate a significant portion of the population... but you need to anticipate that most outside of the impact devastation survive - at least for a while.* No one survives the crater zone. A rare few survive the thermo effects, for a short period (think people in deep basements or reinforced concrete structures). Absent almost immediate outside medical intervention, most of those burned die - but some will linger. Some rare few will recover. In the concussive zone, depending upon building materials** you get an expanding ring of survivors. Outside the concussive zone, most people survive. (I say 'most' because you get a few who just decide to not go on, and some who die by accident or civil disturbance or even shrapnel/debris) The radiation will get a few: Crater/thermo people also get the most radiation, but they're likely killed by mechanical injury. Some few people in the concussive zone, and a rare few just outside it who get a full dose (i.e. they're completely exposed, watching it happen) will get irradiated and die. Note: these people are almost all within 1km of the impact/detonation, and have a direct line of sight to the explosion. People outside of 1km ( and esp. outside of the concussive zone) who witness or are exposed the explosion likely survive.*** People in the concussive zone, but indoors/behind a structure likely won't get the killing dose of radiation. Fully exposed people who escape the concussive effects can still be casualties of thermal radiation (burns) - but most people inside buildings are shielded. In the aftermath - some rare few will eat food or inhale dust contaminated with radioactive fallout - most of these will get sick but many can recover. People merely exposed to fallout who take care not to ingest radioactive material and who clean themselves are generally fine. Those who remain indoors in intact structures survive. People who remain too close to ground zero (heavy concentrations of irradiated fallout resistant to weathering) for too long will get cooked - like standing in front of an open microwave - but those areas are in or adjacent to the craters. Those effects are almost completely mitigated in a matter of years (not decades). "Fallout Plume" maps show places where people will have a higher than normal chance of getting a cancer sometime in their lifetime; read w/in 70 years. You should largely ignore those. Okay - for story purposes, you've dealt with Day One. While on a global or regional level, there may be 'secondary salvos' or follow-on waves of launches... at this point, none of that really matters to individual survivors. You either got a Day One event or you did not - and if you get a subsequent bomb, that's your own personal Day One. ... So - you have people who survive Day One. Their next day is measured in individual hours. Each hour is a survival event. Time for people in crisis flows differently than for those of us experiencing bland normality. I don't care where you are in the world, you are in shock. Survival mode. Survive Day Two? Your life is now measured in Days. Each Day seems an insurmountable, confusing Event. Survive the first Week? You are still counting Days, but now those are used to measure Weeks. You find yourself breathing and mourning and planning. Survive the first Month? This is now your life. The fear is less immediate - but its a presence you still feel and taste. The future is actually a thing you can comprehend. You still have to survive the oncoming Seasons, but if you do... if you make it to a Year? Congratulations, you are a Survivor - and have fully adapted to your new reality. LIFE GOES ON. ... I think it is likely that we in the Northern Hemisphere overestimate the degree to which most of the world has integrated to and relies upon the Global Economy - for anything other than 'nice to haves'. A fair analogy is that the US, Canada, Europe (including Western Russia) and the strongest economies of East Asia are 'cities' that rely upon the rural parts of the world for goods and services; but to think that people in the 'rural' areas need the cities to survive is a fallacy. Sure, they like phones and XBoxes and Tractors - but do they really, really need financial services, retirement advisors, marketing departments, research universities, lawyers, economists or government agencies to go on? Think about the 'Arrogant American General' meme - the guy who wanted to bomb the Taliban back to the stone age, only to discover they were already there. (This analogy requires appreciation for a simple fact: modern humans are not stupid - whether the Sioux & Comanche, the Viet Cong or Taliban - not having technological equality to your foe does not equate to an instant loss. "Stone age" is an economic feature; take a time machine back and rescue Otzi before he died in the ice... he'd be using cell phones and driving within a year of being brought here.) You should look up Eastern Pakistani weapons market info: blacksmiths were forging replacement parts to AKs and ARs to get them back into service, and people were soldiering and taping phones back into action. These are examples of humans' smart, tough and resilient traits. Guided bombs are nice-to-haves. Famine will be a feature of the aftermath of a global (Northern Hemisphere) nuclear war. It will be concentrated around the city-centers and littorals of the Northern Hemisphere - and occur on certain islands and parts of un-bombed Northern and the Southern Continents that are overly dependent on foreign food (think over-populated Middle Eastern / North African areas and major cities of Africa and SA.) Those people I mention above who survive the First Year (esp. teens & 20-somethings) - get to see their grandkids. So what's a fair number to speculate? I think you get decreasing rings of famine radiating from each city; those in the most rural/self-sufficient parts of the world remain largely unaffected. Those who need food brought to them? They are in trouble - and yet some will be so tough and resilient to survive in every zone. So what is that number of Day One Surviving city-dwellers who subsequently perish to famine? 1/3? 1/2? I don't think it's more. The family willing to walk 75 miles into the most rural area and collapse at grandma's house? They make it. Why? That's pretty bitter. Even after a total collapse, people will find that working together enhances their individual chances of survival - but I think your question is larger than that; I agree that what comes after won't be a carbon-copy, but on a fundamental level I do think that you get cities again and along with that economic and political structures that are analogous to what is currently in place. The names and causes will change - but the structures are simple and thus will be there. Here, I have to question the time-scales we are discussing. Within the first year, you very easily get city to county level governments up and running, and in many places regional powers that resemble states. So, what then does the next decade or so look like? Big question. We could end up with a bunch of Feudal states like Japan and Europe had for centuries. But - those arose out of societies where basically Mafia/Gang/Tribe warfare was the norm and family political power was everything. I'm not sure that comes back. Places like the US and Canada are saturated with representative government as the norm - you could get a few 'Strongman States', but I think you get more variations on elected governments (ala Western US Territories - perhaps rampantly corrupt, but at least initially set up with the structures of democracy). Sadly I don't know enough about China or Russia today to predict what happens to them once Central Civil Oppre-ahem-Authority is lost. Does China revert to warlords and Three Kingdoms-style or do local collectives form and spread - or is the fear of chaos so great among the Chinese that they band back together into a One China no matter what personal cost (and regardless of what form/economy that government takes)? Does Russia get a Strongman / Tsar or does it rise again as independent successor-states? I think you have to have an appreciation for the regional collective imagination, fear and mythos to predict those answers. (This is why America does not get 'Kings') The Wild West thing wasn't related to the state of survivors in the immediate aftermath, it was about how civilization would ultimately end up- relatively modern amenities spread here and there, but no nation level cooperation and also frequent lawlessness. Again - on what timescales? I refer you again to the Pakistani blacksmith rebuilding factory-built arms using a coal forge in a wood and cloth structure: that's happening in the First Year. "Prior Authority Figures" - yeah, I'm with you on this: they're either dead or no one trusts them. At best they get to be a 'local strongman' (presuming they land on a military base that survives and are not killed out of hand)... but they're done. Exception being Southern Hemisphere and 'Rural' world leaders; those who survive the First Year likely see their power increase. Nation/State/Province sized organizations re-occur within the First Decade. Out of necessity. It's a way of protecting your border and extending your authority. Towns will band together into economic, political and military unions and grow and absorb others until they are matched - those become the new borders. Then, those states will either band together or contest one another in the coming decades. W/in 50 years you get nations again, with sizes that resemble today's. (Sure, a continent-wide nation like the US might initially break up and then reform into 3, 5 or 7 independent nations... but for how long? The memory of America will be a fond one, the 'Good Ol' Days' and the evil Enemies who did this to us a threat answerable by collective government and plural/integrated economy - the West will Rise Again!)**** Also - people WILL resettle the cities. Because, for no other reason than they're already located on the best water sources. People live in the Littorals and Riparian areas for a reason - and something as inconsequential as a war will not change that basic need. The road networks leading to those places survive. Finally - vis, the "Wild West". This is a 30 year period rife with beautiful and romantic imagery - for the 'winners'. But it wasn't so rigidly contained in time. It's the culmination of 400 years of replacement population (emigration). You have to appreciate a few things; the 'wars' between the various Native Nations and the uncontrolled horde washing across the continent always had an inevitable conclusion. By 1860, there were 31 Million people east of the Mississippi that called themselves Americans. West of the Mississippi there were approximately 300,000 members of various Native Nations that had neither the population, or the technological or economic structures to resist this flood of humanity. By 1890 there were 90 Million Americans, and still about 300,000 Native Americans contesting for control of an area of 1.8 Million square miles. The result was foregone. Factually, the people moving into the West from the East were literally walking into the Wilderness... the fact that other people lived there before them and might want to continue to use and control the land in their traditional ways was 'background' information and anecdotal. FWIW - the only way to 'win' Afghanistan would have been for something analogous to the American West to have occurred, whether by the Russians or the Americans; no one was interested in doing that, however. So there might be a period of time where 'wild-west' style anarchy / freedom reigns in places; I just don't see that lasting more than a few decades before the inevitable blanket of 'civilization' reasserts control... and once that happens? We're back to the races. The NEW 'modern' post-war NORMAL. * This site: NUKEMAP by Alex Wellerstein (nuclearsecrecy.com) presents data slightly differently than I do. I tried to do St. Louis - but it wants to kill Lexington (for me). I used a Chinese Dong-Feng 5 as the weapon. The 'Airburst' map contains the crater and what I call 'thermo' zone in the fireball, with what I call the concussive zone as 'moderate blast damage'. The site's 'thermal radiation / 3d degree burn' radius is for people out golfing or otherwise outdoors - those indoors are protected. **Japanese cities' abundant use of wooden construction meant that the thermo-effects created a conflagration which extended past the thermo zone, and those same structures were less effective at withstanding the concussive effects - whereas newer concrete and brick structures (factories) remained, surviving both. Modern buildings will increase the survival rate of future victims. *** These projections are pretty good - but need to be adjusted (slightly) for the yield. If the cratering/thermo zone extends beyond 1km, they still apply to people in those particular bomb's concussion zone and those outside of it. ****Okay - Rome (as an empire) did not return once destroyed, but the successor states incorporate many of the ideals valued by the Greeks and Romans - and those survive. One might argue that it took 1600 years for Rome II (America & Pax Americana) to arise again - but it did) VC-Nuclear-Safety-18pp-Education-Guide-Downloadable-FINAL.pdf (pcdn.co) Ask yourself whether a Pakistani-Indian Nuclear Exchange would leave cities that resemble Japan's, given the differing building materials.

The glacial retreat issue is an interesting one - while potentially alarming if measured from 1850 levels - it should be recognized that was also the end of the Little Ice Age... so is that the best measuring stick? Every retreat is also revealing evidence of human activity in the passes and valleys these glaciers occupy. At a minimum, it is a boone to archeology https://www.google.com/amp/s/theconversation.com/amp/melting-mongolian-ice-reveals-fragile-artifacts-that-provide-clues-about-how-past-people-lived-164657 https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/04/15/world/viking-mountain-pass-norway-scn/index.html https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/glaciers-retreat-they-give-mummies-and-artifacts-they-swallowed-180955399/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/2000-artifacts-pulled-edge-norways-melting-glaciers-180967949/ ... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retreat_of_glaciers_since_1850

Morning laughter achieved. Level Up! +1 @SunlitZelkova-we gonna have some fun quibbling later, when I can devote the time your post deserves. For now, I'm going to eat chili and shoot guns 'Murica!

Amid a record hot summer in large parts of Northern Hemisphere,... The average temperature at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station between April and September... was the coldest on record, dating back to 1957. This was 4.5 degrees lower than the most recent 30-year average. ... The temperature averaged over September was also the coldest on record at South Pole... The extreme cold over Antarctica helped push sea ice levels surrounding the continent to their 5th highest level on record in August, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center https://www.adn.com/nation-world/2021/10/01/south-pole-posts-most-severe-cold-season-on-record-a-surprising-anomaly-in-a-warming-world/

Imagine yourself in someone's home in France or Japan and there's no paper - just a bidet or techno-toilet. The funny look on your face when you come out of the necessary will get some chuckles.