JoeSchmuckatelli

I get it. And if you've read my past posts on my amazed appreciation for the fact that they can land a spacecraft on a barge, it might bring my snark into context. I actually appreciate SpaceX's aggressive 'lean forward' development strategy. But that said - I'm a bit skeptical about the aim of landing between towers. That plan takes absolute precision - whereas a flat barge (or reinforced structure atop a platform) allows for some wiggle room.

... Okay. ... I'm not a rocket scientist. But it seems to me that when you can't yet stick the landing on a parking lot, to say you plan on landing a rocket on the helo pad of an oil rig (and between towers, at that)... Ya might be a bit daft. Because I'm not sure how many crashes into the oil rig it takes to destroy said expensive man made island - but I'm guessing it is close to 'one'.

That was worth a laugh

I've read that - it's interpreting the answer I'm asking about. Is it a background that's believed to be behind what we can see? Like the inside of an expanding shell? Because a fog that we cannot see through beyond a certain distance could give a similar impression of uniformity.

CMB question: From what I understand, we have looked in every direction and detected the Cosmic Microwave Background everywhere. Are the interpretations of this that by measuring the CMB that we are seeing 'the end' of the universe, or is it more like the CMB is a fog, and that's merely how far we can see through it (i.e the distance at which it becomes opaque from our point of view)? I know there is more to the world than this... but this is as far as I can see. (Is this 'trees in fog' a good analogy to understand the CMB - or is the interpretation that it's a skybox beyond which lies nothing)?

Anyone ever tried or had any success in noise cancellation of jets via negative waves? Insert obligatory "The Dude" meme

Nerds

It certainly could get them away from 'local population' concerns... but there is a huge cost associated with major retrofits like they are doing, without a real way to recoup those costs. At least not any time soon; perhaps if they get to launching every two weeks from each of them that might make sense. I wonder how many launches they'd have to do to reach 'break even'.

Those oil rigs seem like a mistake - unless they use them to extract oil /natural gas.

We'd get some hellaciously tall BBall players; of course, they could only play home games.

So - I'm playing WOT, which actually has some pretty impressive lighting effects. Shadows look cool; they move if you knock something down, so I don't think they're baked in. The dappling of light is really well done... but what caught my attention today was seeing 'Sunlight' reflect off of a pool of 'oil' as I moved the camera around. It had a very specific relation to the sun in the skybox. Pretty nice.

How do lights reflect off of 'liquid' textures (or other 'reflective' textures) in games that do not have Ray Tracing?

I'm old enough to remember us catching rivers on fire (in the US). I also remember the fear that if we did not take steps to stop the population explosion and cap population at 4.5 Billion, we would see mass death from starvation. History books tell me about the horrors of London's past Air pollution, the Great Stink & the Great Smog | Museum of London but it's not such a bad place now. While 'people' may have created many of the problems people face in our environments, people are also proving (time and again) to be the solution.

Look at 0:35 -- looks a lot like dried mud... and not far from the landing site!

History is a funny thing. We tend to forget it. And then, when something happens that has happened before, we are surprised and liquided about it. Texans are liquided about the cold snap and failure of power, gas and water to mitigate this; but they forget the decades of decisions leading up to where they are now. Italy wanted to prosecute (hell, they did prosecute) scientists for failing to predict with precision that a volcano would erupt. And yet, people who lived in the area knew they were building and living on a volcano - but were surprised and liquided when it killed them. Thing is - there have always been natural disasters. There always will be - as long as we live on a dynamic wet rock capable of producing and sustaining an atmosphere. But - I would argue that 'disasters are worse now' not because of our technology, economy and exhaust... but because we have more people. So, it makes sense to have policies that protect those people and anticipate recurring, if unpredictable with precision problems. But refer back to what I wrote before: the selfishness principle will always favor decisions that bolster short term profit at the cost of long term good. We just need enough other people to selfishly guard their interest in a clean environment and healthy children to offset the bastads who want to dump PCBs into the water supply because its cheaper

Got enough to share? Dis gonna be good!

Weather is not climate. The engineering requirement and economic cost to protect Texans from Once-in-a-Decade events is far less than the same to put even 1/10 of the population of Texas into space. Note: I'm not arguing that continued pollution of our environment is acceptable.

The direction of the climate change is unlikely to drive people to flee the planet in any conceivable 'short term'. The presumption is that our political unwillingness to reign in industrial and commercial pollution is causing a warming trend. For humans, this is generally a good thing. Or at least far better than a cooling trend. Whether you look at the Medieval Warm period or the Little Ice Age, people seem to handle warm far better than cold. Further - if you look at Siberia and Canada - those are two places that will actually benefit from higher global temperatures - at the cost of some low lying islands and coastal terrain in other parts of the world. The economic impact of forcing migration to other parts of the planet is far less than trying to move significant numbers of people to space. The 'selfish' principle basically shows that people will basically go where they have the greatest chance to improve their self interest. And I do not think that space is going to be more attractive than recently thawed permafrost any time soon.

Have you seen the surface? Concrete bunkers and subterranean tunnels would likely be a better fit. Aside from putting up small research stations - I think it unlikely to colonize Mars. We've certainly not colonized Antarctica (and are not likely to, any time soon). I understand the desire to have a breeding population on another rock - but as others have mentioned, people do not upend their lives and move to unbelievably different environments for simple egalitarianism. Now, if Perseverance discovered a vein of Impossiblium that will power FTL drives, and it turns out that people willing to do incredibly dangerous mining are certain to get rich... An entire economy of support and prey will spring up over night resulting in a colony.

What would it do?

Quick question - would Mars be an environment where in an emergency, workers could just pull on a hooded helmet, gloves and boots that seal to a regular work uniform* and bail outside temporarily - or do you need a full, pressurized exo-suit? Not cotton or spandex, but something flexible and comfortable that can be used for emergency egress

Yeah - that's a very interesting question - whether any other substances' solid form would float in its own liquid form. I know Iron does not. I don't believe glass does either. Kind of intriguing - we have bountiful liquid water and ice - but not much else that can be in both liquid and solid states at the surface. In fact I can't think of anything where I'm familiar with the liquid and solid forms occurring naturally on the planet. Well, lava. But I don't think you can count oil seeps and plastic.

I have a strong suspicion that it may be optimized for the new Consoles - because money. (Would also be a reason behind the last - minute shake up and delay in release) Meaning that any relatively good PC should be fine.

If the Kerbals are this advanced... I'm starting to fear them.

Quite poetic - but alas, I must trouble; Regolith is shattered space-borne rubble.