sevenperforce

The one thing about this that he doesn't seem to be accounting for is the impact of hospital overload.

Wouldn't a truly experienced starmariner be able to tell the depth of the gravity well by holding up two drooled fingers, thus determining both the gradient and the normal vector?

I thought this was very good: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/a-comic-strip-tour-of-the-wild-world-of-pandemic-modeling/ Using the data from the Princess ship may have skewed CFR because the demographic likely skews older. 300x more likely to catch than the flu.....wow.

Yeah, a simple spring with weights at each end ought to be able to do the trick. Measure length with the spring perpendicular to the BH's normal vector, then turn parallel to normal and record the new length. If you know the spring constant you can solve. Direct observation of your orbital period may be tricky due to probable apsidal precession, particularly if your periapsis is low (the lower the periapsis, the more angry the time goblins become and the more precession you get). If your tidal-measurement spring is sufficiently sensitive, you can measure the change in tidal force as you rotate around the BH and thus determine both your apsis and periapsis so you can calculate your orbital period that way, no direct observation required.

Of course the sun's Schwarzschild radius is 3 km so if you are less than 9 km from a stellar-mass BH you will already have problems.

Quick question: what does this mean? Does it mean launching initially with half of all tanks emptied?

My ship has hit orbit a second time with 25% of my props remaining...lemme see if I can get to orbit a third time. UPDATE: Ended up 178 m/s shy of a third orbit with my SSTO on the first test flight, so I am pretty sure I can get there if I clean up my ascent profiles, remove one of my intakes, and perhaps throw on a little extra fuel. I was sporty off the runway at launch so I should be able to handle a little more weight. 68.78 tonnes with twelve engines and a fair amount of clipping.

Love it! Working on a submission.

You need to set your photos to public

I knew a guy in college who had been stationed on both nuclear subs and on aircraft carriers. His descriptions of both made me think crewed long-term spaceflight will be much more like a sub than a carrier or other surface ship.

I'm not the mission creator so I have no idea; I just like seeing successful abort tests.

Impressive mission! Did you test the abort motor on the pad and in-flight?

Figured people would.

Whoa. Let's get that serological testing going. Speaking of, I just got my stimulus payment! IRS has a site set up for you to figure out when yours should land.

Just read it. I'm fascinated. I saw the unification of QM and SR before he described it, which really impressed me.

Just pulled this off in a TSTO that should take Ruby Star for at least a day or two, at 2104 funds before recovery, but still working out the kinks in the descent profile.

Hart Island has historically been used for unclaimed bodies, homeless people, etc., yes, but not in mass graves. The bodies were stacking up too fast. They brought in refrigerated trucks to hold the bodies but those ran out of space, so they started with the mass graves, and they'll allow family to exhume and rebury whoever they want after the fact.

Makes sense. It will be amusing, particularly in the US, if a certain herb turns out to be critical as both a prophylactic and a therapy.

Once you get really close (e.g., orbits deep within the radius of the former sun), things get wonky, but the gravitational field of the Sun at any appreciable distance IS the gravitational field of a stellar-mass BH. Same with Earth. If Earth suddenly collapsed into a black hole, it would be about the size of a dime, but the moon and the ISS would continue to orbit unchanged.

I disagree. I think we saw thousands of cockroaches in the basement, so we fumigated the entire house, and now it's time to open up the upstairs but we should keep the basement locked and fumigate it repeatedly for a few more weeks. We've blunted the curve (not as effectively as we should have, but that's something to deal with in November). Good. Roll out widespread serological testing and allow everyone who's immune to immediately return to work. If two weeks pass with no surge, allow low-risk individuals to return to work. Wait for the second surge, then allow the rest of the population to return to work after it crests. Exercise caution until we get a vax.

Damn, I like the look of that.

A recoilless rifle does not use rocket exhaust to impart impulse to the projectile. Rather, the projectile is fired using explosive pressure out of a rifled barrel in the same way as a conventional gun. The difference is that there are openings in the back of the barrel which allow a portion of the exhaust gases to escape out the rear of the gun, producing forward thrust to the gun (not to the projectile) to counteract the recoil "kick" from the shot. The primary job of the exhaust gases is too push the projectile down the barrel so that's what the system is optimized for. The holes which allow spent exhaust to escape rearward and counterbalance recoil cannot be optimized for thrust, so the escaping exhaust is never "choked" as in a conventional rocket engine. It has more in common with air escaping from a balloon. Note that despite the appearance of an aerospike producing a straight column of fire is deceptive; it is less efficient at any altitude than a conventional nozzle sized for that altitude.

I was discussing with my wife the high likelihood that we will see fewer-than-expected total deaths across the board. As you have pointed out (repeatedly, I've noticed), many of those who are susceptible already had a higher-than-average chance of dying in the next six months. Reduced driving and other activities correlates to fewer accidental deaths.

I think one of the things that makes this so legitimately terrifying, over and above the raw R0 numbers, is the astounding range of health outcomes. You can have one person who catches it, is an asymptomatic carrier, and is in fact spreading it to other people while testing negative. Another person right next to them will catch it and be dead within days. Yes, there are broad correlations to pre-existing health conditions, but they aren't exclusive to people with health conditions. The uncertainty is horrifying. It's like if pet cats suddenly began turning feral overnight and started ripping out their owner's throats...it wouldn't be very comforting to hear "Don't worry, this will only affect one in 500 cats and we have a good idea about which ones a lot of those will be but no idea how to predict for sure the rest."

The difference between a nuclear saltwater rocket and an antimatter rocket is NOT an issue of poor thrust on the latter's part. AM still needs propellant. Saltwater is much better as a "get to orbit" propellant than hydrogen, if you're heating it up at antimatter levels.