CatastrophicFailure

Not holding my breath tho...

Friday's closure has been cancelled, so that's either really good... or really bad...

I wonder how much, if any of this, is related to Bezos’ pending retirement from Amazon to spend more time on Blue? Perhaps he plans a little less graditam, a little more ferociter? The longer the delay to their debut after Starship and Vulcan become operational, the tougher their business case seems.

So this is interesting, apparently in Boca there’s a SpaceElevator...

I think that’s a bit unfair. Elon doesn’t run SpaceX in a vacuum (har har), not even Shotwell does. Before they ever started bending metal for StarLink, he had to convince a lot of other people (including actual Rocket Scientists™️) that it was worthwhile. From my understanding, they did take impacts on astronomy into account, what with low orbit choice and what not, but perhaps didn’t realize the magnitude of the effect, which has since been largely corrected (good luck seeing a StarLink anywhere now, except maybe under ideal conditions). As they say, hindsight is 2020, and with engineering as with anything, sometimes you have to actually make a thing to fully realize the problems. I would argue that it does have to include StarLink, or something very like it. The system’s value was already demonstrated during last summer’s wildfires. A massive earthquake could cause region-wide disruption of land-based communication, leaving satellites the only option. Information is becoming as crucial as food and clean water during such disasters.

Nitrogen. Freaking. Glaciers. And someone pelted with a Plutonian snowball. This. Whether Starlink happens or not, the night sky will look very different in a hundred years, or a thousand. What happens once we start building orbiting megastructures visible to the naked eye? Progress demands change. Visual astronomy may not seem so crucial some future day when one can buy a cheap ticket and go setup a telescope on the dark side of the moon... ...or Pluto... Can’t find it, of course, but there’s a tweet upthread mentioning Starlink will shortly be upping to like 300mbps. *raises hand* And it’s not even that remote. I don’t even have reliable cell service, I’m dependent on the internet or the (lousy) local phone company for communication. And that’s shown no signs of changing in the 14 years I’ve been here, there’s just no market to support that kind of infrastructure upgrade, and if anyone tried the local NIMBYs would go apoplectic. There’s “supposed” to be gig fiber in my area “soon,” but still waiting, and same lousy local phone company to deal with. And will probably drop out in a power outage, and CERTAINLY in an earthquake. Satellites don’t do that.

See, now, I halfway wanna cringe my way through crap like this yelling at the screen, but I don’t want to give such creators the benefit of the view clicks.

The wife and I spent the weekend setting fence posts: ...and the hole time she was singing this:

Did anyone catch the “stage 1 FTS has safed” call?

I hope it ended with “fly, you fools!” too.

Um... booster telemetry just dropped out... Seagulls are unperturbed too...

Yesterday was the flock's first real snow day. And they were having NONE of it. The chickens just sat huddled in the one little corner of the run that wasn't snow-covered or hid in their heated (!) roost. The ducks, as usual, gave no... cares. Opened the door to the paddock and the ducks waddled right out, grumbling under their breaths the whole time, as is their way. The chickens just... pouted. So, like any responsible flock-keeper, I did the only decent thing I could do at that point. I rounded them up and threw them out. Gotta build character, y'know? And here's where it got interesting... and funny. 2020's birds, the Peeper Trio and the Tiny Velociraptors, they adjusted pretty quick once they realized there was food to be eaten, but the OG chickens from the year before, they just kind of... stood there. Like they were, well, frozen. Just look at this majestic, tailless, Flock-of-Seagulls-haired ball of anger and aggression: He never lets me get that close. At least not without a fight. I couldn't even herd them back into the run, they stumbled one step at a time or jump-flew, as if they couldn't figure out they could walk in the snow. I had to grab them one at a time and move them back inside. Where they went back to huddling and pouting. Except the ducks, who just went to sleep on the snow. Also, this: tho I can't take credit.

Hmm. Makes a certain amount of sense, especially with batteries that thin, twice the size means MORE than twice the amount of electrolyte, since there’s no terminal metal/structure between two cells. LEDs can usually handle lower voltage, up to a point, without dimming too.

Perhaps they prefer the very MODel of the MODern major MODerator?

We’ve! Got! HARDWARE!!11!,!! ...and the crowd goes mild...

Never know when a sticky-fingered space shuttle might start creeping on you, Ivan...

Now, where I am that’s actually extremely competitive, I pay Comcast around $180 for cable and broadband. Local phone company has options from $60-$90 but, well, they suck too. Did your buddy get the same “mid to late 2021” estimate? Same for you, eh? Maybe that timeframe is just general and they’ll actually be shipping to early orderers sooner? As I understand, and I could be wrong, StarLink should not really be affected by weather much, as the frequency it operates at can get through clouds/moisture, and the phased array antenna can compensate a great deal for any wind jostling of the dish.

Starlink is now available to the general public! ...sort of. Its very limited, first come, first served, and according to the info won’t even be in my area til mid-late 2021. Thats... really disappointing. I would’ve expected to be higher up the list just based on latitude. Same cost as mentioned long ago, $99/mo, $499 for hardware + $50 shipping, taking a $99 deposit now if you’re area’s not served yet.

Could they shield the nosecone with simply different sizes of tiles? There’s pictures on NSF of SN11, below the big tiled area are smaller patches of test tiles and one such patch does indeed have some smaller hex tiles one the edge. There’s some obvious gaps but not bad.

Slush box. A stick would at least be entertaining to drive. Everything else in this bracket I’ve driven has either had a CVT or a truly silly number of gears. Which I suppose is what a CVT is, too. Give it a few years and pretty soon a steering wheel will be, too.

Jelly. My old truck just crapped out for the umpteenth time (with a load of dump crap in the back, of course), bleeding coolant like a stuck pig. So now I’m stuck in a rental Dodge Journey, quite possibly the most underwhelming and uninspired vehicle I’ve ever driven, and that includes my buddy’s 90-something Taurus. This is a brand new, <4000mi 2020, and it’s got a four-speed transmission. I didn’t even know they still made four speed transmissions, at least in the domestic market. It’s got one single, solitary, very lonely USB port, and guess where they put it?

Maybe something to do with the polar launch dogleg? What’re the numbers from that first polar flight a few months back?

Funny you should mention that...

Apparently all that static firing broke something.

The weather here is disgustingly mild, rarely snows, rarely gets super hot, never a hurricane but we usually get a few nasty windstorms every fall/winter. This one just surprised the L out of everyone, no one saw it coming. We had a mild wind advisory to start then out of nowhere there were 100kph+ gusts in places. What we do have lots of around here, are trees, they don’t mix so well with aerial power lines, especially when the ground is so saturated it’s basically mud and they can just flop over. One of those “perfect storms” I guess. Would love to have a wind/solar system, where I am if the sun’s not shining the wind is usually blowing. Then again, I’m having enough conniptions with this brassafrackin propane gennie at the moment. Apparently, possibly due to my nonstandard wiring setup, the starting battery doesn’t charge when the generator is running. Must be making the controller wonky cuz the generator shut down in the middle of the night due to low coolant... It’s air-cooled...