StrandedonEarth

Okay, I'm going to want one of these when they become available. The downside is that the list price is more than we paid for our travel trailer. It would also work well on the back windows of our townhouse lol. But all that power! One point twenty-one kilowatts! https://xponentpower.com/

While the provincial govt here just had an update on their climate action plan, I find it amusing but disappointing that all they seem to talk about is carbon tax. Nothing about reining in the oil/gas industry, or solar anywhere. But with all our future hydro from an under-construction dam megaproject, of course they don’t want to talk solar or microgrids, as much as it makes sense… Nothing to see here with our heads in the sand, move along….

IIRC, it was hoped to not need tiles if they went with a double-walled belly cooled by methane transpiration through pores in the outer skin, but eventually went with a more traditional approach (KISS). That said, steel needs no further protection on the lee sides, unlike aluminum which needs thermal blankets. So the steel approach is still simpler overall. Mmmm, glue….

Well now, ain’t that a….

Hertz makes an order for 100,000 Model 3's worth $4.3B, which is the largest EV order ever. That'll make the waiting list grow a bit longer...

A blast from the past: (known as Jefferson Starship at the time)

All hail the sledge-o-matic! Or is that the Ban-o-matic ?

Welcome to possibly one of the friendliest forums on the web!

Serious KSP vibes from that video… The more LEO destinations the better!

Picked that up and read it recently. It was an engaging read; I finished it fairly quickly, and I don't find myself reading books so much these days in this age of smartphones, I thought it was pretty good, and not as predictable as I thought it was going to be.

Assuming the usually glacial regulatory pace, once they get permission to fly they'll have lots of hardware ready to fly. Hopefully they won't run into any early lessons that force them to scrap existing hardware.

The original "MOAR BOOSTERZ!"

News just showed a neat website: global wind speeds, and it's clickable! Lots of data available by clinking "earth =" on the lower left I suppose this was probably posted before; I haven't read the whole thread

First it was a summer of "heat domes," then transitioning into an atmospheric river coming through, and now a second, bigger "bomb" cyclone (a deep, steep, atmospheric depression; this one is a record low) slowly approaching the Pacific Northwest. Vancouver Island is about to get a heavy lashing (the surf is already getting heavy at Tofino), but fortunately I think I'm far enough up the Fraser Valley to avoid the worst of it. The real fun is out in the Juan de Fuca Strait / Salish Sea. A container ship lost forty containers overboard in the rough seas during the first cyclone, and a container still aboard believed to contain mining supplies has caught fire. And this ship is stuck in the path of the storm. This will be... interesting.

Tory Bruno has been running some classy PR on Twitter for years now. He hasn’t let himself be dragged into the alley with Muck and Bozos. You can send anything reasonable to his Colorado office, and he’ll sign it and return it on his dime. I got a history of flight coffee table book signed by him for my son. ULA also sends out birthday swag if you give them or Tory a shoutout on Twitter on your birthday.

Well, it is a pretty spectacular thread... Static fire is nice and all, but let's see those chopsticks in the air!

Totally frustrating that SNL on YouTube is geoblocked in Canada. Probably streaming somewhere. But anyways….

Sorry for the necro, but I didn't want to start a new thread for this, and it is related. https://www.spacedaily.com/reports/To_watch_a_comet_form_a_spacecraft_could_tag_along_for_a_journey_toward_the_sun_999.html I think the researchers at UoChicago have spent too much time catching comets in KSP, and now have figured out how to try it for real. Catch a comet at Jupiter, as it gets slingshotted inwards? That's a three-star mission!

Yeah, that one comes to mind. Almost as bad as...

Thou shalt not release the launch clamps before igniting thy engines, and running said engines up to full thrust.

My wife has had another active day chasing down another bratty kindergartner who hasn't learned how to accept not getting his/her way, which also includes accepting "No" as an answer. I feel the problem boils down to the lack of effective disciplinary tools in schools today. When corporal punishment isn't an option (for good reasons; as the boundary of what if anything is acceptable is extremely hazy), what is a teacher to do when the kid refuses to go stand/stay in the 'timeout' corner? I think teachers should be armed. With squirtguns. It won't hurt the kids, but it will sure get their attention! I'm reminded of an exchange from the The Chonicles of Pern: First Fall: (paraphrased; I don't recall the exact quote) @adsii1970, care to weigh in on this? I know you teach at the other end of the grinder, but I value your input....

Oh look, another pit to shovel money into. See, they're going to decompocatalyse the dollar bills to make hydrogen to fuel the RL-10s....