JoeSchmuckatelli

Eels do it

Apparently the Space Police are in the orange ship firing on the blue and white one... Or else the future is a lot more dystopian than I have been led to believe

First time I saw a Vandenburg launch was from Rocketship Park just after Regan took office. It absolutely freaked me out. Actually, it was two launches - the exhaust plumes were notably distinct from regular contrails. Just the week before, we had had our annual 'duck and cover' drills... so I was primed to freak. Wasn't until later that my mom (who worked in aerospace) told me that it was probably a US Airforce launch from there. ... For anyone who's never been: its a fantastic place to see LA and the beach. rocketship park torrance - Google Search Side note: the original 'rocketship' structure got taken down at some point (back when people were taking down 'old' rickety structures and replacing with the uber-safe and boring stuff currently in playgrounds). The rocketship was fantastic, wobbly and very scary for a little kid. We loved it. The local community complained so much that eventually the city dug up and re-installed the original rocket structure. Years and years later I took my own kids to the place - and it freaked them out, too. The original steel slide got put back too: and steel slides are waaay faster than the plastic junk in playgrounds today. Many a kid has a skinned elbow or knee to remember that place It's great! MKI --- Really hope you see the launch: please take pics!

I wonder if Netflix is going to gloss over the personal sanitation concerns of 4 people spending 3 days in a vehicle with the interior space comparable to a Toyota Corolla... especially when said vehicle was designed to get its cargo to and from the ISS in a matter of hours, not days.

Dating the local apparatchik's wife? (I hear pilots are often cavalier about such things.) A man of a hundred carefully executed details rarely is. On another note: how happy was the one guy to have his friend squeeze his pudding box hard enough to splat the sidewall of the craft? (15:53 - 16:30ish) Again - they fly just like skeeters - almost as if they had a mind of their own. Never been to Kazakhstan,.. but Bloodsucking Mosquitos (Culieidae) of southern Kazakhstan. (cabdirect.org)

I took my car to the shop to have a simple repair done (fix a broken door handle). They told me that I needed to schedule the repair - so we did that and I brought my truck back two weeks later. Figured it wouldn't take long for them to fix it, so I asked what time I could pick up the truck. They said they would call me. So for the next 4 days we had daily conversations about how they had almost gotten started with my scheduled repair. Makes me wish I had just bought the specialized door panel tools and done it myself. The 'convenience' of the dealership proved inconvenient. Guessing ULA feels a bit like this now.

Glenn saw fireflies. 'Official' interpretation was condensation. Since the Soviets would no more fake that video (in a place where skeeters fly) than the Americans would fake a moon landing... We should presume tiny chunks of ice?

What kind of environment are they designed for? Useless adaptation unless most surfaces are ferrous. Stainless is generally not very magnetic if at all, plastic not at all. Magnetic only really benefits if the surface is smooth and otherwise untraversable. If not smooth - then friction is likely better than magnetic

SpaceSkeeters?

That's the point that is not immediately obvious. ... These guys ... ... Wow

Yes - but you are unlikely to find a no atmosphere planet at 1g

Color me perplexed

Also - grid fins should be stowed for launch n'est cie pas?

Thanks for the link and info - you introduced me to a new term. 'Galactic Center Radio Transient' Never heard of those before ... Okay - I have an esoteric 'expansion' question. I've often read people writing about an image of a galaxy 1million LY away, that we are seeing the galaxy as it was a million years ago. But are we? If expansion is happening to space, isn't it also happening to time? The light from the galaxy starts heading towards where we will be when it gets there, and during the transit the space and time between us expands... We say the light is redshifted - but is it also timeshifted? What would that look like?

Huzzah - the ice pack is saved! https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/10/weather/hurricane-larry-forecast-weekend-snow-greenland/index.html

Absolutely agree. I've not heard him oppose - but chafe? Yeah. .. And I absolutely agree that the purpose is to force SX to become as glacial and typical as the other players in the industry - where their contacts will be once again king in who gets the manna from the congressional teat

Sarcasm and literalism . . . - this won't end well

Teleportation?

He wants to be able to pump and throttle and turn off the gel like a liquid while retaining the advantages of solids.

I ran into several Army Staff NCOs on Fort Knox who had discovered the power of using regulations to stop innovation and trying to do new things. Regulation had given the guy who's usual job is to figure out 'how' the ability to just say no. It was maddening. At the time, I was a young Captain tasked with teaching newly minted Army Lieutenants how to wage war professionally. It was a subject I took a lot of pride in and was enthusiastic about the opportunity of sharing my experience and my Service's approach with these guys. The Marine Corps has a very different philosophy from the Army when it comes to training. We know the stuff in the manuals, and we teach to that - but then we go out in the field and create our own scenarios - which can look like 'winging it' - especially because we embrace chaos (no plan survives first contact etc.). We expect our officers to know what is inside the box - and then we deliberately throw them into a situation where they have to think for themselves - including sometimes thinking or doing something outside of the box. This key to our success was something I Iooked forward to doing with these young lieutenants - who had thus far only been taught in classrooms by Army Staff NCOs. We got going and were finally getting to the good stuff - when things go wrong and the lieutenant is forced by circumstances to make decisions on the fly. This is a key factor in how we do what we do. We actually let the officer and troops experience a helmet fire in peacetime training so that they are prepared for when stuff hits the fan in the real world. The Army SNCOs called the entire training evolution to a halt - because we had gone off script. (The Army, at least at the time, trained to 'standards' and ran set piece Tables) ... There was no room for innovative thinking - going off script was a safety violation. They got range control to shut us down. Despite fact that we were not running a table in the first place. The lieutenants learned nothing - except, perhaps, that strict adherence to regulation is the only way forward. So - I have some appreciation for Musk and SX's opinions. Regulation is a good starting place - but its use by spoilers who want nothing more than comfort and conformity is the literal death knell of innovation. Bezos may succeed in taking the wind out of SX's sails - but will anyone benefit if he succeeds?

Sure - but the test for whether someone is an employee is really light. The government (and thus the law) actually wants to find an employment relationship exists more often than not - to make sure that they get the tax money.

Turns out, these questions don't matter. Family business is totally allowed to hire an idiot nephew and call him Vice President and Chief Flight Officer - even if the only thing he's good for is peeing in the flower pots. He gets taxed on what he's paid. some perks like 'private plane flight' might be viewed as a benefit of the job and thus income. But change the job. Now the idiot nephew is 'Purser' on the mega yacht and his 'job' is scuba tours and jetski adventure hosting. He still only gets taxed on the pay and perks unique to him - but not for taking paying customers out for fun. Thus no cost of the mega yacht is considered income. Actually - this is the kind of thing that can pass a legal test. C. McAulliffe was a NASA employee who would have likely only done one space flight. She wasn't chosen for mission critical skills - but rather for the educational and PR aspects. No way in hell she'd have been taxed for any value of the cost of mission

Astronaut pay is not related launch to cost per kilo. They get taxed as per the income they get as cash payments - not on the value of the work they do. So - if they form a company and are paid as employees (remember they have to do a lot of training - so at the very least need a furlough / sabbatical from their regular jobs - let's say the going rate for astronaut is $100k /year - then they pay their own taxes on that not the amount SX would charge another space tourist. Here's a likely scenario: billionaire guy approached SX to find out how much it would cost to get a trip to orbit. They brainstorm this and come up with a way to make it not so 'playboy billionaires doing outrageous things - esque". They hand it off to the lawyers to make it work (and they have good lawyers) - so the tax angle is considered. The tiny writing of the "contest" is a chance at an offer of employment - pending certain qualifications (like passing a physical). The actual flight is a joint venture between SX and the billionaire with both sharing costs. The passengers are employed by the joint venture. So they get normal income with the flight as part of the job. No Canadian problem

Well - think about this: you have a wealthy friend who, to celebrate her 50th birthday, takes you and several friends on a two month mega yacht cruise of the Mediterranean. No one would ever consider that income to you. The Cirque du Soleil thing was the CEO claiming a business expense? So he claimed it was related to work, and thus taxable. But a vacation paid for by a rich friend, acquaintance or even perfect stranger? Very gray area - especially with the 'win a contest' angle.

Again - not a tax lawyer - but I don't think it works that way entirely. What you write sounds simple, but I think there are more hoops (i.e. like making CEOs pay on income, rather than letting their compensation be 'income plus taxes' from the company they're running). Lots of things have been tried - but I think you have to look at the recipient and find a way for it to be a wash. Mind you, I am recalling this from one class a decade and a half ago.