StrandedonEarth

The Book of Boba Fett is pretty good after two episodes so far. I’ve avoided posting about it cuz spoilers

Apparently it’s Bob Saget at only 65

You know what show I've never seen? The Beverly Hillbillies Having just watched the pilot, I Know what we'll be binging for awhile. It does not seem as dated as other old shows. Incidentally, my nephew loved the show when he was young, and named his firstborn Jed... And Elly Mae, oh my...

See the turtle, ain’t he keen? All things serve the freakin Beam (Turtle was once my nickname )

Finally, I have a sense of how big the thing is. Truly amazing! From https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/01/remarkably-nasa-has-completed-deployment-of-the-webb-space-telescope/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_source=twitter&utm_social-type=owned&utm_medium=social

Trying to find a word for human-made small debris in orbit, not so much derelict craft or spent stages. Scrapperoid sounds more like a gladiator-sat. Junkeroids and mini-junkeroids? That's what you get when the German Junkers company moves into the spacecraft business, if the haven't already. Shrapneloids...? That sounds descriptive enough, yeah, shrapneloids, that's the ticket, yeah!

Yeah, that about sums it up. Put that way, it sounds like there should be a screenplay (soon to be a major motion picture!) in there somewhere. Unfortunately, I have neither a chainsaw, a shotgun, nor Ash available to me. Not even a Necronomicon. Hope the power doesn't go out while I'm reading it, given the snow and ice storms parading through here. It's like wintering at the Overlook Hotel here right now...

Whoops, yeah, Google first, crow later google.ca https://books.google.ca › books Resurrection and Reclamation: The Collected Works of S. Darnbrook ... Elrod Stanton — 2005 · Fiction I probably should have seen the ending coming 'round the Junkeroid Belt of Venussian Maggnuis, but I didn't and that's a plus for you (nice touch, . So maybe I can’t claim it, but it needs to be popularized!

So for Christmas, my daughter and her bf bought me a few books: The Apollo Murders (which was a great read; highly recommended for space fans), as well as Doctor Sleep by Stephen King. I just picked that one up when I only now notice that it's a sequel to The Shining, which they also gave me. It's been decades since I read that one (scared the crap out of me the first time, just like The Amityville Horror did) and it's not on my shelf so I put it there for future reading. But now I see I need to read that one first. So here goes....

The biggest difficulty of orbital salvage is the dV required to rendezvous the bits, especially between different inclinations, as hinted at by kerbiloid. So the best place for salvage is from the geostationary belt, for a few reasons: 1: It's a common destination for most commsats, with plenty of large, retired assets Many of them simply have no more propellant and/or dead batteries (wait a sec... GEO birds should need smaller batteries than in LEO sats. wouldn't they? Any shaded periods out there should be much shorter, I would think). 2: In a nice, co-planar belt 3: "Relatively easy" (YMMV) to reach from other orbits, using a lunar assist. Unfortunately, the most problematic space junk consists of smaller fragments in the 1g-10kg range (my own guesstimate range, sounds about right to me) in medium orbits in the (guessing again) 1000-10,000 km range that don't decay very quickly. So the reward is small and the dV to gather most of it is high. Possibly the best thing to do with that debris is to hit it with high-power lasers in the right spot at the right time to cause some ablative retro-thrust, accelerating the orbital decay. OTOH, there should (data needed) be some larger bodies in that range, probably mostly spent stages. These objects are the ones that, if struck by the smaller fragments, could spawn thousands more small, hard-to-track junkeroids** crossing the lower orbits of crewed vessels. If an omnivorous* engine could be developed, perhaps part of these larger pieces could be used as propellant to power a tug back out to the "salvage station" parked in the graveyard belt above the GSO belt. Or perhaps a solar-sailing tug could be developed to provide a substantial portion of the dV. *Omnivorous engine meaning one able to use many materials to generate impulse ranging from a mass driver to whatever can be vaporized and fed into an ion engine. But there would be risks shooting raw mass around, and I'm not sure if flinging a lot of metallic ions around is a good idea either. **Junkeroids... I don't believe I've heard/seen that word before, so I think I've coined a new word. What would be the best way to get this word popularized to refer to small pieces of human-made junk in space, wherever it orbits?

It seems there was a simpler solution, although the payload capacity is minimal. Too bad it's probably faked

Another reason why I keep saying that the Arctic needs floating PV arrays to soak up the sun before it heats up the water. It can also serve as artificial sea ice for the polar bears and seals!

Sorry, I don’t mean to plug anything, but this old dog learned a new trick. I made my first instagram reel ever, in support of my wife’s Pampered Chef sideline! https://www.instagram.com/reel/CYaRYKvpGX3/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet Hmm, needs some work on embedding, at least from mobile

People say my ideas are crazy. But history is littered with people who had crazy ideas that turned out to be genius. Therefore I must be an undiscovered genius. There must be a catch somewhere. Oh right, I need to make my crazy ideas work to be recognized as a genius. Or convince someone else to make it work. But then they would get the credit, oh well... Why doesn't anyone want to try to make my crazy ideas work?

Cats have those times when they don't want to be inside or outside, they just want to be between

Never noticed before, the SoSL predates the development of the NACA cowling

Clutching, free-wheeling, or simply moving the tires against/away from the drive path/friction ring

Snow day! Getting cavities filled usually isn't too bad; sometimes dreading something can make the experience worse. The main thing to be careful of is after they numb your lips/cheek; I once chewed the crap out of my lip because I couldn't feel them.

That spawns an idea for rotating sections; it would be a throwback to the old trireme rowing ship days: Using stationary bikes to spin up / spin down the rotating section. "RIDE, ye curs, ride hard, I want this barrel up to 2G for calisthenics or it'll be half water rations!"

Hey, it mentions the ISS, I can post it here, no?

Yes, you do. Is the cue ball thrown, batted, or shot from a handheld tube?

I could reference a certain DeLorean. Or a spacefaring Winnebago… But oh yeah, this thread is for real life contraptions

My kids were supposed to be back in school this Tuesday, but the Pause button has been pushed for a week while the schools switch gears back to online

Yup, many a Saturday morning glued to the spider-tube. And even then I was wondering just what some of those webs were hanging from... Also wasted my Saturday mornings on...