darthgently

Excellent, I hope you all have a great time. I wasn’t meaning to be condescending, just a sincere and friendly caution having seen some taken aback. On another note, the Riverwalk in San Antonio, if you get the chance and haven’t been there, is very unique with a lot of restaurant choices if it fits your travels or maybe on another trip.

TX is a very big state and Brownsville is way down in a corner so plan accordingly if you aren’t specifically moving near there. The distance from Dallas to Boca Chica is about the same as Norfolk, Virginia to Cape Canaveral in Florida

Um, sort of, but not officially? I advise stocking up on popcorn

Any where in tornado alley, the gulf or East coast hurricane zones, New England and upper Midwest harsh winters bring down many power lines. During hurricanes they often bring the power down intentionally to mitigate problems. We were without power for 3 weeks at one time. Gasoline genset kept freezer and fridge going and charging cell phones. House solar with a powerwall would have been nice

More confirmation, like it is needed, fwiw

If each home or local area has decentralized weather energy and perhaps even some storage, mostly with robustness during emergencies in mind, combined with a centralized throttling nuke base load then it could be a good setup for everyone involved

Whatever the politics for space, it’s best to just make the best of whatever the situation is to advance space

That first pic looks halfway to the moon

I did watch this while making breakfast the other day and must have missed that info, will watch again, thanks!

Assuming we needed to redirect it, the most effective redirect would be when the asteroid is at apoapsis between Jupiter and Saturn orbits but that would require the most lead time and props to get there. Periapsis is inside Venus’ orbit so no cake walk there either for a fast trip sans multiple gravity assists. Does that leave us with trying to use more brute force at a less fruitful point in its orbit? Ideally, I’m thinking we’d change its inclination at aphelion such that it was outside Earth’s orbital plane when inbound and outbound at 1 AU. Merely raising or lowering the apsis, which would take less redirect dv, could just create another collision risk down the road

Wot? I’m not talking about a replacement for civilization, just a very local community ready to deal with a flood or hurricane or whatever until the larger apparatus at county and state level get spun up. I’m responding to the comment about neighbors taking your stuff: not a worry if they have their own stuff. There is no rule against neighbors helping less fortunate neighbors find good deals on stuff or on sharing stuff. Keep it real

One of the best approaches is to get together as a neighborhood and form your own local “FEMA”. Everyone is prepared. And everyone knows the price of not carrying their weight. Like an HOA, each member is expected to have made certain preparations for emergencies. A genset and fuel, x weeks of food for all household members etc. Storing concentrated solar heat as molten salt, or even just in sand, in a huge insulated underground chamber has been tossed around. That way solar balances solar. Not a portable solution but interesting.

Yes, that was covered but also some other interesting observations from the guys with solid backgrounds wrt pilot training and such. The fire response team was right on it and had the plane foamed in record time apparently

Asteroid 2024 YR4 update, nice details as much as can be expected at this point https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/02/the-odds-of-a-city-killer-asteroid-impact-in-2032-keep-rising-should-we-be-worried/

Rumors

Toronto jet landing crash analysis by a Navy pilot and a former NTSB investigator

This would be the most excellent result just from a KSP seismological science points perspective. But seriously, we could study a very fresh impact and probably the make-up of the asteroid, velocity and pattern of dust and ejecta as well

Another first for SpaceX coming up

I’ve been wondering the same thing for two years. I’m glad someone stepped forward to collect the receipts

Every rocket company should sell swag pens that look like their rockets and made of the same material with working landing legs as appropriate. So when bored at the desk one could do barge landings on yellow legal pads

I still don’t see the use case. Our rockets will get better and better with increasingly massive payloads. It allows iterative improvement. That project has a few iterations until it becomes something that just has to be lived with as designed. What are the maintenance costs? How much will it cost to decommission when every part of it is at end of life? I’m just not seeing it as feasible from a budgetary and ROI perspective. It would take a multitrillionaire on a mission to do it. Any government would be foolish to attempt this using taxpayer money.

Zero dysfunction with the erector, all norminal

We already do make use of the excess heat in smallish ways. Cabin heating and defrost in an ICE vehicle is taken for granted. I would not own a Tesla, for example, in a blizzard prone area in winter without a small diesel cabin heater and a few gallons of diesel for battery emergencies. Here is a cheap Asian knockoff of what I’m thinking of but the $elect $pecial brand name$ are: Webasco and Eberspracher https://www.amazon.com/ChuBu-12V-24V-Upraded-Consumption-Heating/dp/B0C696B6V2/ref=mp_s_a_1_5?sr=8-5

For anyone who saw the “what happened to the orbit lowering burn?” reeeeing prior to the last update above: