JoeSchmuckatelli

Too late

You have laid out this argument quite persuasively. I'd never really thought about nuclear power (and weapons) being an almost inevitable discovery Probably because Freshman Chem was a 300 person lecture by a disinterested Grad Student who barely knew his stuff and had no idea how to teach. (Also - I was 18, an indifferent student and easily distracted by the bounty of college life)

To be fair - I only trust intuition in the rare few fields where I have some experience based expertise. Thus it's really 'using the currently available evidence combined with experience' to make a decision. It consistently fails elsewhere - like anticipating the Market - something I only have passing familiarity with. Is actually dealt with quite well if you are the kind of person who is OK with admitting you were wrong. That is apparently hard for some people

I posted a thread a while back looking for the 'killer app' of the current period (much like the railroad, electricity, internal combustion engine and microchip were the killer apps of decades past). The technology had to be disruptive but also allow / enable advances in other areas - as well as being able to mature and permeate the economy. The consensus was that AI is the likely candidate. With people harnessing AI, we may indeed see advances in the technologies you mentioned - or we might not. Hypersonic is a solution to the desire to get somewhere faster - but it's not the only path to that end. With fusion - I agree that it is exciting to live in a time when major advances are likely in the next 10-20 years

This reminds me of an Officer friend who hated my reliance on intuition. Exactly because I was more often than not 'right' in what he called "guessing". For some reason that annoyed him. He kept trying to pin me down on how I knew the answer - especially when the answer was predictive of something that hadn't happened yet - and (when it did) I was still right. He wasn't satisfied with the fact that solid intuition is based on a lot of study and observation and simply paying attention. We were both Jarheads, so the word 'heuristics' never came up... But he was a guy who had to have objective facts laid out before him to make a decision - when I was a guy who spotted trends and predicted outcomes. To him, trends were not facts. Ultimately an unsatisfying conversation - we effectively were speaking different languages. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/can-we-rely-on-our-intuition/ https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/intelligence-of-intuition/heuristics-the-tools-of-intuition/8D68CFA2E526EF5FFA296FBA1A6D8B45 ... And, for some reason, we are no longer friends.

Well - to be fair, I visited Disney World 20 some odd years ago with this hot chick I knew (lawyer, not a weather girl) and now we have kids. From this I can deduce that Disney isn't just family oriented but it may in fact be a leading cause of Families.

Likely the only entity that could without risking a serious eye roll cramp. Ambitious but not absurd

"rather than the traditional process of countless engineers spending months, even years manually engineering a model in programs like CAD, this one was designed in two weeks—thanks largely to AI." Copper seems initially like an odd choice for a rocket engine given its low melting point, but apparently it enables "compact high-performance engines" when actively cooled. The engine is designed to produce 5 kN of thrust (equivalent to 500 kg/1120 lbs of lift mass or 20,000 horsepower), and Leap 71 says it would be suitable for the final "kick stage" of an orbital rocket https://www.pcgamer.com/hardware/this-20000hp-ai-generated-rocket-engine-took-just-two-weeks-to-design-and-looks-like-hr-gigers-first-attempt-at-designing-a-trumpet/ ... All PC Gamer rocket news is good PC Gamer rocket news

Or just adapters? Are the seats too specific to SX suits that no one else could ride? - I know a Cosmonaut has ridden Crew Dragon... Did he have a SX suit?

Larch apparently protecting the ice and preventing incursion from other trees https://phys.org/news/2016-06-siberian-larch-forests-linked-ice.html#google_vignette Or, if you read a different article, maybe not https://phys.org/news/2011-03-russian-boreal-forests-vegetation.html Or maybe it is https://phys.org/news/2007-09-peat-forests-permafrost.html Panik? (btw - if you do lose the Larch, we'll have to rename the Taiga to "Dark Forest" as the undergrowth will be much denser)

Summer Solstice, heat-wave, Full Strawberry moon https://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/2024/06/20/summer-solstice-june-2024-followed-by-full-moon-during-heat-wave/74155767007/ Massive heat wave this week - and it's a full moon? Coincidence? I think not! Wear your SPF tonight! (Have a little fun with this - bring on the correlation = causation fun!)

Actually not far off if you think back to Curie et al grinding pitchblende. https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24532740-400-radioactive-review-a-reimagining-of-marie-curies-luminous-legacy/ There is a scene in the movie that was (God, please forgive me)... Illuminating The problem with learning how to do something difficult is that later on you forget how hard it was to learn in the first place.

Aka 'the internet'

Hence the character development arc of KSP

Also - this is a feature; "A number of prominent environmentalists – among them Whole Earth Catalog founder Stewart Brand, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jared Diamond, and Gaia-theory promoter James Lovelock – have come out in favor of atomic energy as a response to climate change. Among mainline US environmental groups, there is nearly unanimity that nuclear power remains as bad an idea today as it was during the heyday of the Diablo Canyon protests. But at the grassroots level, opinion is split. As one green blogger has written: “We environmentalists must rethink our opposition to nuclear power. Those who have opposed the building of new nuclear power plants in the US over the past twenty years have actually forced the use of a filthy alternative – coal combustion – that releases millions of tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.” https://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/magazine/entry/will_nuclear_power_split_the_green_movement/

I think it was found out in its own time. There is a thread of talk among the sci-fi / fearful / weird crowd to the effect that 'humanity is destined to destroy itself'. The companion to this is 'the reason we don't talk to Aliens is that they've all destroyed themselves.'. Apparently (according to the line of thought) once a species acquired nukes it is inevitable that they will destroy themselves. That is probably hogwash. The '23d century tech' bit is the key: they think that somehow, magically, by the 23d century that we would be so enlightened as a species that we could handle the awesome responsibility of having such terrible weapons. If you recall your Star Trek canon, there was a terrible nuclear war, which humanity survived, and two centuries later we were bigger and better than ever. (might also be hogwash)

That's really been the key. 20 some odd years ago I was on BadAstronomy boards, where if you didn't have a Ph. D. in astrophysics or cosmology any question or misunderstanding garnered scorn (and those who had the sheepskins were practically required to cite sources or be prepared for a flame war). Reminds me of the first PM I got when I joined these boards - from @Snarktelling me about the culture and how to get along / be a contributing member. His admonitions worked and, yeah, I love this place!

I've always assumed that phrase meant 'duration the rocket would be lit during a launch' - so, like, a little over 2 minutes for a Falcon. Doesn't that allow them to make sure the engine won't eat itself before stage separation?

He also discredited belief in DNA, didn't he? Edit - among other criminally stupid things. Just looked him up and reminded myself of this period in history. Stalin and cronies. SMH.

Timeliness of this article is eerie. https://www.theguardian.com/books/article/2024/jun/17/the-big-idea-can-you-inherit-memories-from-your-ancestors The title is misleading - no heritability of memories, per se, but stress response? Yes. This challenges a very early, cornerstone precept of the neo-Darwinist thought - the Weissman barrier. (See above post re: standard model). https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7602088/#:~:text=A cornerstone of early neo,acquired characters could be inherited. See also, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weismann_barrier What caught my attention {prompting this and the post above} was a line in a video about the misdirection of resources and research in genetics, especially the medical application of our understanding of genetics. With the exception of about 5% of our genetic code, merely deactivating a known 'switch' for a disorder does not provide a cure. The body has a way of bypassing the deactivated segment and continues to exhibit the trait. (Exceptions are for things like cystic fibrosis which have extremely specific genetic causes). The new approach if adopted would allow / require looking at the whole individual, including environmental factors when seeking genetic cures. The problem for the neo-Darwinist is apparently the idea of 'purpose' - as in it's not just random chance and mutation in the germ line between generations that drives evolution - but the experience of the cell / organism and its purpose to survive and procreate that can drive genetic changes (evolution) within the lifetime of the cell/ organism and be passed on successfully to the offspring. In other words, the experience of the individual and gene expression via environmental stress / success can be passed back to the germ line to the following generations - it's not just random. Evolution could be purposeful and happen in a lifetime. That is apparently as dramatic a statement to a biologist as challenging determinism to a physicist.

Re-imagining Forests (Germany) TLDR: decisions made after WWII resulted in monoculture forestry - which has become susceptible to drought and infestation. Massive die-off of trees resulted. Newer techniques, mixing up the forests is happening.

Evolution May Be Purposeful And It’s Freaking Scientists Out https://www.forbes.com/sites/andreamorris/2024/06/14/evolution-may-be-purposeful-and-its-freaking-scientists-out/ I'm finding this line of inquiry very interesting. If you recall the 'Selfish Gene' line of thinking - where everything in biology is determined by DNA (predestined, if you will)... This is *sort of* the opposite. The 'standard model' is that DNA is determinative and that the germ ( reproductive cells) is isolated from the rest of the organism, such that over time (millions of generations) variations in the combination of germs from the successful individuals drives the evolution of the species - regardless of events within the individual's experience / lifetime. It's a very binary theory - successful individuals survive to procreate, failures die, and the successful genome (established before birth) is passed on (in combination with another successful individual) to succeeding generations. This is the standard view of evolution. Iconoclasts are making waves. They start with the notion that the germ isn't isolated from entity and that experience within the lifetime of the organism can rewrite portions the germ DNA. This makes sense to me - especially in light of research I read decades ago regarding heritability of stress response: parent generation experiencing great stress can pass on heightened stress response to the next generation. Serious consternation is ensuing - as is publication & counterpublication. MIT just published some of this for anyone willing to shell out the $75. Anyway - interesting developments in biology afoot

They don't want the hot, rapidly cooled bells... They want all the fiddly bits above the bell. Given that SX had a video of the Booster landing... I'm guessing they had the ability to recover or ensure sinkage. The big unknown is SS itself.

Naw - I think you're on to something... All we need is Ozzy and a dog to 'Bark on the Moon'

Obligatory quibble: Sharks are not older than the North star - but they are older than the star being North. I think I get 2 @kerbiloid points for that one!