StrandedonEarth

Every future manned space mission should carry at least one towel per crew member…

They were welcomed home by some finny friends... (Above video queued to visitors)

I have to think new ideas had problems that were thrown away because they realized there was a problem. Is there a methodology for documenting and subsequently searching out these cases? Because I have to think there were cases of ideas conceived and then tossed for problems, and then reconceived and implemented without realizing there were issues with the idea…

The ones that are only a few km across should probably only be classified as captured asteroids. To be called a moon, it should be big enough to be spherical. IIRC that requires a diameter of about 100km…

Well. The plot thins. It appears Gene Hackman's wife died up to a week before Gene, from hantavirus pulmonary syndrome. Gene may not have been aware of her death due to advanced Alzheimer's, but given where his body was found, it's possible he was finally seeking help when his heart gave out. A sad story.

Especially considering that root systems, especially mycorrhizae fungal root filaments networks, can span huge areas. The largest known system (according to Google) is the 106 acre Pando aspen forest.

I bet a wet dress rehearsal would have caught these issues…

I thought hydrogen burned blue if not colorless. Running extra rich?

More vaporware...

Yes, the Hackman deaths have been deemed suspicious, and they had been dead for some time. One dog died (it was in a kennel) but two survived. Definitely weird

I heard she had health issues, including a recent liver transplant, so probably complications. Agree about Lex Luthor Carbon monoxide is my guess too. Could also be caused by a cracked heat exchanger in the furnace.

Whoa.... https://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/actress-michelle-trachtenberg-buffy-dies-1.7469130 https://people.com/gene-hackman-wife-dog-found-dead-santa-fe-home-7502751

And how well do lasers penetrate smoke? Laser combat would bring a new, defensive meaning to the “fog of war”

The biggest advantage I see to home PV installations is redundancy in case of disasters disrupting the utility supply, if a major storm destroys transmission towers, for instance. Available power may be limited in such cases, but it’s better than having the contents of fridges and freezers spoiling during a lengthy outage, or having to find fuel for generators. Of course, no solution is perfect.

I see solar as complementing baseload on hot summer days, using the excess solar to power air conditioners. But I suppose it would be little help in the evening and none at night, without some form of storage. I suppose a liquid-based hvac system could pre-cool a tank during the day when solar is plentiful, to be circulated at night to keep things cool. Sort of the opposite of concentrated solar-thermal power, which heats molten salts enough to keep generating power at night, but that only really works in areas with few overcast days. Modern photovoltaics still work on overcast (especially lightly overcast) days, when it doesn’t even really matter which way the panels are pointed.

I also heard that a medevac chopper was ready to take off so it only had to make a short hop to also be there in presumably record time

Didn’t watch that clip, but from what I saw/heard on the news, the pilot didn’t flare and landed hard, collapsing the starboard gear and tearing off the starboard wing. The lift from the left wing then rolled the fuselage over. Amazing nobody died, and only one person remains in hospital.

SuperfluousJ and Rocket-propelled Cat have good advice. I'll just add a few bits for docking: There are different mods for docking port alignment, I like "navball docking port alignment indicator". It just adds a red circle on the navball; aim at that and the docking port axes will be parallel, but not necessarily lined up. Another trick is to make each craft target the other craft's docking port; be sure to also "set control from" each docking port. This will make the docking ports point at each other, but they may still want to drift apart, causing one or both craft to rotate. This isn't actually necessary; it works well with small craft, but not when docking with a large station. Finally, I made this handy graphic years ago; play around to see how the how the translation controls (IJKL, H/N for fore/aft) affect the different markers on the navball. Which brings up another point: make sure your RCS is balanced around the CoM, or positioned over the CoM (you can check this in the VAB, with different propellant loads. Don't forget to refill the tanks before launch!) Also, using CapsLock turns on fine control for RCS, and helps balance it so your craft doesn't rotate when trying to translate. When docking, you really don't need to look at the space view, the navball provides all the information you need, and is all you really need to look at once you have control and targets set. Before long, you'll be building crazy stuff like this...

For all your upcoming launch needs… https://spaceflightnow.com/launch-schedule/

Hydrogen for energy or for storage has been thoroughly debunked. Airlines have given up on it. Michael Barnard has several articles on it, here’s one… One possible exception is a large reserve of “white hydrogen “ or fossil hydrogen, found in France. Fossil hydrogen is common, but usually heavily diluted with methane and other gases. The French find is unusually pure. But then, all the problems of handling it still apply.

Just like how ULA builds Atlas V and Vulcan…

Also, lithium ferrophosphate (LFP) batteries, while not as energy dense (that’s improving), don’t have the thermal runaway problem of other chemistries. They can also cycle a lot more over their lifetime. One advantage of base load plants with EVs is that charging at night keeps the plants more utilized. On the flip side, daytime charging can absorb the glut of peak solar power. With V2H, the vehicle can power a house at least until baseload power is cheaper at night. Although I don’t know how the economics will actually work out with such a complex combination. I’ve also pondered how solar works at higher latitudes, with the winter shortfall. Could solar-powered summers reduce hydro reservoir demand, saving the water for winter? But they can only store so much, need minimum flows for fish, etc. Very complex and probably not do-able…

BC has relied on hydro for decades, but now drought has thrown a spanner into things. I know this is bordering on conspiracy theory, but is there any evidence or proof that the anti-nuclear movement was funded by fossil fuel (coal) interests?

Hopefully they can send some sort of probe to explore that…

Wow, sounds like a mega-sized version of Vancouver's Bloedel Conservatory. A good history in that link From a separate website: To stay on topic, it seems like a quite do-able size for a heavy-duty dome.