CatastrophicFailure

Getting off topic here, buuuuut... having been thru it myself recently, on the offhand chance this oft-unknown piece of information helps someone, 811 ONLY locates utilities from the street to the meter. If the meter is not on your house, or you have outbuildings, you need to call a private utility locator. And pay them. Pay them well. Because... reasons. Well it's California, so...

I’m reading into it what’s there to be read. There is implicit bias in how it’s phrased. Yachts and private jets aren’t anything new, they’re offshoots off the exclusivity that such travel once was, because there are mass options available today. Exactly. And so something needs to interrupt that loop, if only a little. Right now, today, the only way you could Maybe go to space is to pay the Russians dozens of millions, at what, two or three trips over the last couple decades? Now come along Blue and Virgin, offering (or at least planning to) dozens of trips a year for a few hundred thousand. Even half a million is way, WAY less than the current market. Blue and Virgin have presumably done their homework, and figured they can make their systems work for a few hundred thousand per ticket. The respective Grand Poobahs may have their flaws, but they are not idiots. If their adopted business models are indeed successful, then those early high-margin half-million tickets fund the construction of more SpaceShips and New Shepherds, and eventually they can sell lower-margin tickets for “only” a hundred thousand, because they’re flying a hundred times a year now. They’re smart people, and smart people tend to employ other smart people.

I’ve been following the progress of the old Excursion I traded in a few weeks ago, since I’m too lazy to cancel the mobile security access. It went from Tesla to a big auto wholesaler auction house, then to a used truck dealer down in Seattle. It’s now one of their featured rides and they’re asking over $29,000 for it. I only paid $20,000 for it... in 2013. And the listing says “no mechanical defects.” Something something glitch in the Matrix... But, in other news, this still works! and the rooster hates it.

Sounds a bit judgy to me. The super-rich are the target of “affordable” because the super rich are the only ones who CAN afford it until the prices comes down because the super rich HAVE afforded it.

No, I’m saying each company probably has an entire department of CPAs or folks with other various economics degrees saying, “ok, if we charge x-000,000, we can potentially attract y number of customers, at z revenue. Now, if we change x+100,000, our customer base shrinks too far to be profitable, if we charge x-100,000, we have tons of customers but we go bankrupt in the process.” Dig? I just get really tired of this “it’s only for the super-rich, so it’s bad!!1!” nonsense. Yeah, it’s for the super rich, cuz it’s freaking expensive, cuz it’s brand new. So were cell phones, automobiles, big-screen TVs, etc. SOMEone needs to foot the bill to start the price rolling downhill for the rest of us. ‘Member that line in Back to the Future? “Pfft, NObody has two TVs!”

Gee, if only their plans didn’t also incorporate hundreds of other people in order to work at all, some of whom may be there specifically to proffer economic reality checks about potential market sizes... Ok that came out a bit snarky, but seriously, these guys don’t run their operations in a vacuum. They have people to tell them where that merge between “affordable” and “actually funds the operation” is.

Each Axiom module will be an independent spacecraft, able to maneuver and dock on its own, so can probably launch on anything big enough.

This is interesting. Also, wild Thwomp sighting.

I deny any and all responsibility. The Story was already there, I just gave it a quick poke to keep it going straight. It’s a good and solid work, and most definitely Worth Seeing. But I shan’t spoil. Bit late to the discussion, I suppose, my own muse remains on a bit of a hiatus after the last year or so. I do not (yet) profess familiarity with the work, but I certainly can’t be one to complain about references, given how many I myself have blatantly ripped off word for word um... borrowed. I would say let The Story lead you where it will, every bit of the same you’ve ever consumed will nudge you along this way and that, whether or not you’re aware of it. For my own mush, I’ve just found it helpful not to resist and just hang a lampshade right on ‘em, imitation the sincerest form of flattery and all that, each blatant plagiarism subtle allusion cast down with love, which I suppose is what makes all the difference. ...which will probably do nothing to sway the judge and I should have just settled out of court. I really can’t complain on “dark,” either, life is imitating art a bit much lately. yeesh.

Pfft, now... <actual FAMK> spoiler

When did this happen, and why wasn’t I notified?

Launching out of Vandy to nick a Soviet spy satellite then using those big silly wings to land back at the same.... ...er, waitaminnit... ooh, new emoji!

Tried to replace a toilet today. Which of course went right down the s— did not go as planned. And all the hardware stores are now closed. The cat is extremely upset, as he’s now been deprived of his water bowl. He has a stupidly expensive (for what it is) carbon-filtered USB-powered decorative cat fountain, but insists on drinking from the toilet. And then looking abashed when he gets caught doing so.

Then it ends up like this....

The Derp is strong with this one. Also, absolutely relevant...

I think there were labeled parts spotted for them at some point, but no idea what’s happened since.

The sample tubes on Perseverance. Along with Perseverance itself, and Curiosity, Spirit, Opportunity, Pathfinder, Sojourner, the Vikings, and enough rock and regolith for a proper full-accuracy display exhibit at the Smithsonian.

Someone just HAD to go and use the R word...

Watching For All Mankind and seeing again the controversy over active/passive docking ports for Apollo-Soyuz (which I think is historically accurate), there may be some, er, virile symbolism here, given the current state of geopolitics... And the geopolitical symbolism continues, if perhaps unintentional. Let’s hope life does not imitate art...

The tingle tells you it’s working.

That being the problem. While orbital re-entry is a pretty well understood thing, this kind of flippy-sloshy slightly insane aerobatics is not, and that makes it very difficult to model. SpaceX is having to figure it out as they go along because there isn’t data to go on, or not very much that’s relevant.

SpaceX’s modeling of the whole belly-flop thing thus far appears to be spot-on: the SNs have been rock solid and 100% under control the whole way down, it’s reasonable to assume their models for the re-entry process, having lots of data from others to glean from, will be equally accurate. It’s the whole “never done before” flip thing at the very end that’s proving a bit... squirrelly...

Gateway starts to look reeeeealy silly tho, stuck there as a little dot amongst assorted docked Starships, each several times its mass...