StrandedonEarth

Well, the second OLM/tower is going up nicely. They’ve had enough hi-energy events on the first OLM to have an idea of what is vulnerable. And in the worst case, they’ll gain more data on what needs hardening. I think the chance of an actual explosion is pretty low, just a rapid combustion of the remaining propellants.

Well, there are other companies intent on competing. It’s not Spacex’ fault the others are way behind. They are even launching competitors’ netsats!

I feel a great disturbance in the Force, as though billions of fans cried out at once… https://variety.com/2024/film/news/james-earl-jones-dead-darth-vader-lion-king-1236138656/

“If those [first] landings go well…” Yeah, good luck with that. And then two years between iteration attempts, unless they send a trio of different designs to see what works best. It seems to suggest that ISRU equipment would have to be on those first flights, to fuel later flights for the trip home. Unless the plan is for one-way trips from the start, lol

*coughBoeingcough* They can’t seem to touch anything these days without it being fubar’d

It would become a choice between mass starvation or strict birth control. The young would revolt against the ossified ideas of the elders, who would face constant threats of assassination

I wonder if, by the time approvals come through, they’ll have a booster and/or starship powered by Raptor V3s ready to go..

One of the Civ games (6, I think) has an achievement for clearing nuclear fallout with a Roman Legion…

Mount the wind turbine blades to a fuselage to provide lift, and fly it to the site. Truck the fuselage back to the factory. Or use the fuselage as the mast. The turbine can provide power for flight. Batteries become storage. Quite elegant, actually. But the devil is in the details…

The "King of Daytime TV", Phil Donahue, has died at 88. Long Live the King!

The mighty Martin Mars water bomber, Hawaii Mars, has completed its last flight. Her sister aircraft, Philippine Mars, will make its final flight to the Pima Air and Space museum later this year. May they rust, er, rest in peace, not pieces.

There's more cosmic radiation at the poles, due to less protection from Earth's magnetic field. I suppose that's why it hasn't been done before...

I probably shouldn’t post memes poking fun at poor Starliner, but I can’t help myself. But I’ll acknowledge that the situation isn’t as bad as depicted…

There’s a book called “Dragonfly,” about life on Mir

Deep space is the only real option for constant LOS and power production, Presumably around an L-point

Pipes in part walls is really leveraging the capabilities of 3D-printed parts, which I know they use.

Rebar made of spun basalt is a thing…

I dunno. Only way to be sure is drop it into the Sun. Or a black hole…

When it comes to recycling plastics, the biggest challenge is getting clean, sorted feedstock. Human nature being what it is, there are many places where people are too lazy, too rushed, or simply don’t have facilities available for proper cleaning and sorting. So I say cut to the chase and just pyrolyze it all back into crude. It doesn’t matter how mixed or contaminated it was s then. Contaminated compost could be thrown in too. Of course, this apparently is only practical when the thermal energy is cheap enough.

There’s more to it than that. Legs act like fins; rockets head for landing tail-first. Massy engines first is good, but draggy stuff first is bad so while fixed legs would be good for stability on ascent, modern rockets don’t need that help, and it would need more control authority during descent. Ever try to land something too long behind the inflatable heat shield in KSP? Same problem…

Hmmm, enough batteries to provide 800MW for the night… 10GWh, at least? That’s a honking big battery. The ideal site is desert next to mountains with convenient pumped hydro reservoirs

Running more numbers, using 14,114 MWh per ton and sustained max production of 432kT/yr yields 6.1 TWh per year. 800MW for a year is 7TWh. @AckSed, your article says 2000GWh, so 2 TWh. out of 8sqkm of solar in a prime location. PV is a good use of otherwise useless (ecologists my beg to differ) desert, while agrivoltaics allows for dual0use of land.

Well, a little googling on the aforementioned Kitimat smelter gives me two link: https://www.northernsentinel.com/local-business/rio-tintos-kitimat-smelter-returns-to-full-capacity-6834462 which gives a capacity of 432 kilotons a year. Wiki gives https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kemano_Generating_Station#:~:text=The smelter at Kitimat consumes,sold to BC Hydro's Powerex. which says: So figure the smelter consumes up to 760MW to produce 432kt per year. But that still won't give the number I want. Try again: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1116216/aluminum-smelting-energy-intensity/#:~:text=In 2021%2C globally averaged%2C primary,one metric ton of aluminum. 14 MWh for one ton. Yeah, ouch.

Steel is an iron-carbon alloy, so it requires a source of carbon and energy to reduce the iron ore; coal works nicely that way but electric arc furnaces and direct hydrogen reduction is gaining steam. If ‘green’ hydrogen is available then it’s a carbon-neutral process Aluminum smelting is an electrolytic process, requiring only electricity. Lots of electricity, hence the nickname “frozen electricity”. To run a smelter on solar/wind, simply overbuild the renewables and store the excess with pumped hydro for nighttime. Another instance of placing a smelter in a remote area near abundant hydropower is Kitimat in northwestern BC. It required boring the penstocks through a mountain range…