PakledHostage

Anton Petrov has posted a new video on this topic. I haven't had a chance to watch it yet, but I'll leave the link:

There was this article about 6 months ago about a potential new technological solution to the problem of boiloff: https://www.nasa.gov/general/electro-luminescently-cooled-zero-boil-off-propellant-depots/

And crashing into the ballpark fencing as it runs while totally focused on making the catch?

I should add that I went flying yesterday evening and it seemed to be messing with the VHF reception. We could hear ATC and ATC could hear us, but we couldn't hear any other aircraft on the frequency. I was talking to a HAM radio guy today and he agreed that the solar storm was probably to blame. This event was clearly extraordinary, but how does it stack up compared to something like the Carrington Event? During that event, auroras were also reportedly visible into the tropics. This must have been close in some regards?

I had to get up early for a lesson that I couldn't be tired for, so I had to sleep through it. The internet abounds with beautiful photos from the local area, so it was clearly a good show.

Also helps if you're at a high magnetic latitude. Much of Manitoba is at a higher magnetic latitude than even Alaska. Minnesota often sees them for that reason, too. There's extremely strong activity as of this writing. Minnesota and the Dakotas would have a good view at the moment if there are clear skies. https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/aurora-30-minute-forecast

I wasn't. I was talking about grass roots advocates who go onto coment threads about everything they see as a threat to the status quo, and shriek "I'm melting!". Change is happening. Maybe more slowly than it should be, but it is happening.

While that's true at the corporate level, with companies like Royal Dutch Shell rebranding themselves as "Energy Companies" as they diversify into renewables, it hasn't reached the grass roots level. That guy in the pickup truck coal rolling the Tesla behind him at the red light isn't bright enough to have the corporate foresight of the industry's leadership.

[The internet]: EV's have the potential to significantly reduce our reliance on fossil fuels for transportation. [Oil industry advocates]: "I'm melting!!!" (a la the Wicked Witch of the West, having been doused with water)

Current generation batteries (such as Li-Po batteries) have problems, it is true. But that doesn't mean we should throw the baby out with the bath water. New battery technologies are being developed because there's money in doing so. Solid state batteries are an example. Flow batteries are another.

The thing that irritates me about hybrids is that the designs are all so stupid. Why does a RAV4 family hauler need a better 0-100 kph time than an '80s super car? I get that electric motors have a lot more torque than a gasoline engine so it's not a completely fair comparison, but it illustrates a point. Back in my '20s, one of the things we'd do on road trips was coast down hills in neutral to compute the power required to go terminal velocity for that hill (knowing the grade of the hill and the mass of the vehicle). The amount of power required to maintain highway cruising speeds was always surprisingly little. Why, then, does a plug in hybrid version of the RAV4 need an engine with about 150 hp? A small fuel powered generator to augment the battery would be sufficient to give an electric powered SUV all the range you're ever going to need. Its ability to accelerate (for things like hills, or pulling out to pass another vehicle) is already demonstrated in its 0 to 100 kph time. It can run on the battery and electric motor with the small generator serving to provide enough power for maintaining nominal cruising speed. A friend of mine works for a company that makes fuel cell transport vehicles (busses and trucks). Their design basically works as I have described. The fuel cell provides electricity for the vehicle's electric motor via a battery buffer. Those vehicles can drive off the battery alone; the fuel cell just augments the range. If I could buy a car with that concept that's big enough for my family, I'd buy it tomorrow. I instead, I wait and hope.

Being a whistle-blower would be extremely stressful. That's sure to have mental amd physical health implications. One doesn't need to subscribe to conspiracy theories to find plausible explanations for these unfortunate deaths.

I like that "machete order" for the original 6 is: 4,5,2,3,6. (Note that 1 is omitted.) Still doesn't fully solve the problem of metaclorians, but it's better. And it's probably best to just pretend that 7, 8 and 9 don't exist; they throw so much cringe into the series anyway. Rogue One was good, and most of the streaming series are good too, but 1, 7, 8 and 9 are "#2", if you know what I mean...

We're totally off the topic of "A city on Mars", but the east/west demarcation was laid out by the Treaty of Tordesillas, shortly after Columbus' first voyage. That demarcation is the reason why Brazil is Portuguese speaking while the rest of Soutn America is Spanish speaking. It's also why Magellan, who was Portuguese, was considered to be a traitor by Portugal. He set out west to reach the Molaccas because, based on the European understanding of the size of the Earth, the Moluccas should have been in the Spanish "half". The Moluccas (Spice Islands) were known to be far enough east of Europe to be in the hemisphere west of the demarcation (if the world was 26000 km around), but the world turned out to be 40000 km around. Later, the British tried to find a sea route around North America ("The Northwest Passage"). The disastrous Franklin Expedition (one of whose ships was recently found) is an example of how that effort didn't end well.

Sorry. I wrote 26000 km in diameter. I meant 26000 km circumference.

Please see my post earlier in this thread. Europeans believed the Earth to be about 26000 km in circumference until Magellan's expedition sailed across the Pacific 25 years after Columbus. Magellan himself expected the Pacific to be a small sea separating the Americas from Asia. It scared the *crap* out of them when they ended up sailing for 40 days across it to reach more familiar lands. (Magellan's slave could speak Malay and found that he could speak with some of the people where they first made landfall, near the modern day Phillipines, so they knew they' d reached somewhere close to the Malaccas.)

Columbus didn't, and it's true that he died convinced he'd found Asia, but several Icelanders made pilgrimages to Rome in the 11th century, with knowledge of the existence of lands to the west. Gudrid the Far-Traveled even became a nun in Rome after having given birth to the first European in Vinland (which was likely located in modern day Nova Sotia or New Brunswick). If the church was paying attention, they would have known of the existence of North America, 500 years before Columbus. (And they probably were paying attention, but were like "meh"...)

I grew up with the original trilogy. When the Phantom Menace was released, I was super excited and rushed out to see it. I just about walked out in disgust when metaclorians were introduced. As many flaws as the series has, that was by far the stupidest decision. Bringing back Palpatine in The Rise of Skywalker is a close second.

Coming May 15th, for the Lego/Artemis lovers here:

Recognizing it's just a story and without giving too much away, the topic of slavery does figure into the movie "Quest For Fire" (set about 60,000 years ago). It ends up working out well for them.

As an aside, they kind of did. Almost 2000 years earlier, Eratosthenes correctly estimated the size of the Earth, within about 1%. Then 300 years after that, Ptolemy redid the calculation incorrectly, but his answer stood as valid for 1500 years because the church liked Ptolomy better than Eratosthenes. So when Columbus came along and wanted to reach Asia via a "shorter way" than by going east, it was reasonable to go west. It was only after Magellan's flotilla first sailed across the Pacific 25 years later that they realized the Earth was a lot bigger than Ptolemy had estimated.

Richard Branson's quip about how to become a millionaire ("Simple: first become a billionaire and then start an airline") springs to mind about airlines...

In my own experience watching nieces, nephews and my own kids grow, kids much younger than 7 regularly express concern for the wellbeing of people and animals around them. I would be worried if they didn't.

This. Looks. Awesome. (found in comments in an article about the repairs that are the subject of this thread)