JoeSchmuckatelli

I look at all those engines... and now I know why KSP 2 was delayed.

I followed that link and now I get spammed by some guy who wants to play me at Tic-Tac-Toe...

Nuclear scares people because they don't understand it.

Looks like the KSP Art Department took a little field trip: NASA rover spots 'whimsical' rock arch on Mars that's defying wind, dust (msn.com) (Okay, yeah, I know it's not Percy... but c'mon!)

Sounds like LA. Was that way when I left 30 years ago. If they work these costs into commercial and industrial insurance... Things are gonna change. However I'm more confident that they will just continue to screw the little guy - and nothing will change until enough little guys demand changes

On another note: https://phys.org/news/2021-07-apollo-ascent-stage-orbiting-moon.html

Y'all don't spray WD-40 on everything when working on bicycles to carburetors?

I've just spent half an hour trying to figure out why the US was buying rockets from Russia for the Atlas - and in one paragraph you explained more than the articles I read. Still - its amazingly disappointing that we did not have a parallel development program. So given that the US has at least a trifling knowledge of rocket design - why hasn't Lockheed Martin / ULA / etc kept pace... And why is BE-4 the only egg in the basket?

Be honest - who else did not know that WD-40 was developed as rocket grease?

Got some early money from DARPA - but damn near bankrupted by Falcon 1 failures. I just read through the Wikipedia article and can't believe how little I knew about the founding and early years of the company. There is good mention of Musk's hiring and promoting key people - so it's nice to see that it is not just 'lucky boy genius makes good' . Looks to me like the early government money was get off the ground to break even stuff - but commercial contracts pushed them over the top. NASA confidence has to be the biggest selling point for prospective customers, too.

I would not land anything but a small helo on Deimos at this point. I've been poking about and can't figure out what the problem is with those. I read that ULA is losing patience... but why can they not, between them, figure the thing out?

Of interest - w/r/t glacier melt: Melting glaciers reveal lost mountain pass and artifacts used by Vikings - CNN Apparently a pass, used during the Viking period (which coincided with the Medieval Warm Period) was lost during the Little Ice Age. Retreating glaciers have revealed tools, horse shoes and etc. On a different, but similar note: recent study on Earth's energy imbalance: Earth's energy imbalance removes almost all doubt from human-made climate change (nbcnews.com) This kind of argument has appeal. While that article does not mention it... other articles about Climate Change like to bring up the argument that global temperatures and sea-level rise and corresponding loss of glacier/ continental ice mass has been growing since the advent of the Industrial Revolution (nascent mid 1700s to mid 1800s). Temperature models supporting the alarming heating of the earth like so show temperature variations from the late 1800s till today: Video: Global Warming from 1880 to 2020 – Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet (nasa.gov) One problem I have with using this as an alarm; the Industrial Revolution happened (the nascent period, at least) during the latter part of the Little Ice Age (mid 1300s to mid 1800s). It's unlikely that the few factories churning out coal smoke in Europe and NA were the cause of the end of the Little Ice Age... and yet the warming period began back then. You end up having people using the start of the Industrial Revolution as the beginning and cause of Global Warming - and while the two might have occurred similarly in time, it is unlikely that one caused the other. It's not a good 'alarm' signal -- and one that if someone does just a little digging appears discredited at the outset. Thus, as alluded to above - arguments like the energy imbalance as a result of pollution seem stronger to me than 'we've been killing the Earth since the start of the Industrial Revolution'. This is one of the reasons I prefer the 'we live here, quit trashing the place' school of thought. ... Also: Trust in science can be risky without critical mindset - Futurity

AFAIK diesel submarines are boats that use batteries for a while each trip. But as above - probably a weight size issue keeping it from happening - along with how you charge it

Thanks for this!

How much gimbal does it take to flip a ship as long and heavy as SH? - won't that also limit payload b/c needing to save fuel for the flipslam? (My initial understanding was that SH would follow a similar flight profile as Falcon and it made sense to land in the 'proven over and over again' method rather than the - 'whew! We did it! ' method)

Seeing as the flip is... fraught... Shouldn't they go for bigger fins and maybe a chute or two - and then land like falcon

This level of straightforward honesty is unbelievably refreshing from someone in the Aerospace industry. Oh wait. 8D ... (It's why we forgive the failures - tell people up front that it's hard, might not work, and yet is worth doing??? Brilliant) Others should copy his style.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2021/07/31/arctic-climate-change-jetstream-winter/ Relevant article

Well... This is going to be exciting to watch.

...would be a stupid vanity project. I can see fitting and testing... But I hope they don't try to fly that way (besides - won't they have to unstack to replace the 'for show' fins with working ones?)

He's actually correct, but contextually it's not something people think about often. To analogize - my first year of law school the professor tried to explain the definition of 'property'. For most people, that is a simple thing to understand and does not require much thought - but that is thinking within a certain system where people in the system agree on rules. Believe it or not - in legal terms, defining 'property' is difficult. The actual explanation is that society defines what is property by granting and protecting a bunch of different rights to those who own property against those who don't. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundle_of_rights I came away with the understanding that 'property' is whatever someone (or a society) strong enough to enforce their rules says it is. Think about the classic story of buying Manhattan for a handful of beads. One society believed in the ownership of land... The other did not view land as property. Each thought the other was idiots in the exchange... Except that one side ultimately had the power to enforce its particular understanding of 'property' against the other. In the US we like to say that people enjoy certain inalienable rights - but those rights are not recognized universally. Think about how many countries view the rights and responsibility of citizens differently. So - technically 'natural rights' in the US is whatever we say they are, so long as we can enforce it - and we are strong enough and have enough friends who agree with us that we are able to push the concept onto the other societies... To a degree. A certain powerful and insular country in Asia comes to mind as the obvious example of the limits to Western ideas on natural and inalienable rights.

Here is an article that analogizes my concern about the language used when discussing climate change and how to respond. https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/30/media/variant-media-coverage-white-house/index.html In this article on covid, they explain how hyperbolic headlines and statements lacking in context actually serve to harden resistance to change - when more informed and truthful reporting can better sway people to become part of the solution rather than remain part of the problem. Thus 'drastic action' to avert 'certain doom' hardens resistance to change when 'simple changes' to reduce the likelihood of 'a range of possible adverse outcomes' might be more influential to the skeptic. One is hyperbole, the other reasoned discourse.

Yup Adjusting works. As does Ranging or "Bracketing" in context - if I understand the term correctly.

I think you are really underestimating just how stuck in the old patterns much of aerospace is in the US. Honeywell bought Allied Signal using Allied Signal's own money and proceeded to stop innovation and just plod along getting its share of the pie via pork Bezos hires an old school Honeywell guy and BO just slowed right down

Did anyone ever explain why it costs more to build the second / third reactor of the same design?