SOXBLOX

I haven't seen anyone post this: https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/asteroid-2024-bx1-from-a-dot-of-light-to-fireball-to-rocks-on-the-ground/ Basically an asteroid (~1m diameter, IIRC) was detected a few hours before breaking up over Germany. Great footage all around & fragments recovered!

Congratulations, you have described the Raufoss round, choice ammunition of American snipers working with .50-cal rifles. Is it destructive? Well, they don't call them "anti-materiel" for nothing!

Ooh, I know that one! It was proposed as a solution to the competitions the Great Powers at the time were holding, but Harrison's chronometer made the method obsolete. Dana Sobel's Longitude was a fantastic read, and short, too. You should absolutely pick it up at the library or HPB.

And when Apple stops pushing updates you can put Linux on it and run it another 20.

https://spacey.space/@nyrath [Mastodon profile link] And Atomic Rockets is up for me...

"Suppose you were a member of Congress. And suppose you were an idiot. Ah, but I repeat myself." --- Mark Twain I am mildy awestruck that we are able to waste our time on this.

I got on here looking for opinions on that paper; it came up in my Mastodon feed when Winchell Chung boosted something related to it. I'll bet the paper's written by a chatbot...

I was in a chat group online where they started talking about the universe's expansion for some reason, and I remember that Mr. JoeSchmuckatelli and I were interested in findings about inflation, dark matter and stuff. Someone dragged out a paper from May 11th of this year that discusses re-casting cosmology in Minkowski space to gain insights into current problems. It sounds like the author is proposing that we can interpret apparent expansion to be mass and distance scales changing over time, though I probably mis-interpreted that... The math looks mind-killing to my untrained eyes, but I was hoping someone might be able to skim it, or see whether anyone they know of has something to say about how reasonable it is. Thanks in advance!

*Art student grins*

Yeah, what's the limiting factor? How fast the droneships can 'sortie', or turnaround time on the rockets? Is it integrating payloads? I wonder what SpaceX's theoretical bottleneck is...

I saw an article that compared AI to a graduate student. "Well read, occasionally insightful, and perpetually sloppy," or something like that...

I haven't used a chatbot like ChatGPT since I tried it out a few months ago. There is no use case for me. After asking it for instructions on configuring something in Linux, I got useless garbage. When I need a specific piece of knowledge, I construct a search query for Google or Brave using logical operators, and Ctrl+f through the webpages I find. It's fast, and much less likely to turn up nonsense, IMHO.

Nice to know I can run KSP on an actual operating system, even if the devs are more concerned with Windblows. I'll give this a shot as soon as I have a GPU up to the task.

The FAA never applies lax standards. Just sayin'. Just because they're making sure they know what they need to know about modern propellants doesn't mean we need an "independent study," whatever that is.

*teacher voice* "I'm taking off 10 points for you leaving out the units. Units are important for blah blah blah..."

This one is well-written, even though I don't believe communism works, and don't speak Korean. One of my favorite YT channels, BTW.

Thinking about an older Dell workstation with an RX 580. I can do 32 GB of RAM and stay on budget. It would be my first PC - before, I was playing on a mobile workstation from 2013. Anyone have input on better graphics card options? That's the area I know the least about. Trying to stay below 200 USD...

I wasn't judging. As the article says, the US used hypergolics in Titan-derived LVs and predecessors before the Chinese even had spaceflight. It's just preferable when leaders avoid letting rocket stages fall on inhabited areas.

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/why-chinese-rockets-spew-toxic-bright-red-gas-clouds-on-launch The War Zone features Scott Manley's video on hypergolics in an article on old Chinese launch vehicles like the LM3B. I like to reference them here a lot, and now they've turned around and referenced one of our own. Sometimes the internet is a small world! EDIT: Finished reading... Plus two more!

Update to the above article quotes the DoD saying it was to be a hypersonic weapons test, but was canceled due to something in the pre-flight checks. Associated with the LRHW program for the Army.

Couple of MDA Gulfstream jets in the air not too long ago, plus something near the pad. These guys think it's a mobile launcher... https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/mysterious-launch-out-of-cape-canaveral-appears-imminent

Sounds like a great idea! This has my seal of approval!

[See signature below.]

It seems like the entire reason for this capsule is to avoid flying on American vehicles. Somehow I doubt that that will be a strong motivator.

@JoeSchmuckatelli These were some of my favorite videos! Like an Irish version of Bob Ross, with "happy little planets" instead of "happy little trees". There's a lot more on his channel worth watching; both the new and old stuff is good. Enjoy! The second vid should have more resonance stuff.