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Elrond Cupboard

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Everything posted by Elrond Cupboard

  1. Elrond Cupboard
    It's most likely tidally locked around a flare star. What was wrong with mars, at this point?
  2. Elrond Cupboard
    I'm 56, the only way I'm going to see it involves biology, not physics.
  3. Elrond Cupboard
    Thing is though, orbital vs sub-orbital looks like an either or; what DO you call a flight, it's under propulsion, so definitely a "flight", that isn't orbital and doesn't pass the Karman line?
  4. Elrond Cupboard
    All of its flights were sub-orbital. I'll grant you it never climbed above the Karman line though.
  5. Elrond Cupboard
    If it's hot enough (or cold enough) anything will be an issue. Not really comparable.
  6. Elrond Cupboard
    Dinitrogen tetroxide is fun, sort of goes with hydrazine too, Doesn't cause horrible burns if I get it on my skin, though.
  7. Elrond Cupboard
  8. Elrond Cupboard
    The thread title reminded me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface_Tension_(short_story). A great yarn, easy enough to find as a PDF on the net.
  9. Elrond Cupboard
    Strangely fitting, given Osiris Rex.
  10. Elrond Cupboard
    Yup, same reason the moon appears to be upside down.
  11. Elrond Cupboard
    That mission was such a total disaster that it was miraculous he lived long enough to be killed by chute failure, but yes, sort of... Actually "miraculous" is unfair, the poor [redacted very minor expletive] was a damned fine pilot who managed to get out of everything recoverable, but short of repacking his own chutes, in flight, he was screwed.
  12. Elrond Cupboard
    If we wish to discuss this, we should probably read Popper's "The logic of scientific discovery." Which is the seminal work in the area. It's easily found in PDF, but, although out of copyright in most sane countries, it still labours under copyright law in the U.S.; I have a link here, but I can't post it. annoying.
  13. Elrond Cupboard
    Given what an unforgiving target Mars can be, that's kind of good; maybe four will make it.
  14. Elrond Cupboard
    I could speculate pointlessly, but frankly there are only a fairly small number of entities that I could give a damn about, and all of us will be dead, so... To date smart humans have tended to be herded by dumb humans; I have no reason to believe that will change, at least in any timescale that I can imagine.
  15. Elrond Cupboard
    That's getting horribly close to positing a preferred frame of reference.
  16. Elrond Cupboard
    Is the LOX at the top or the bottom?, Black wouldn't be good for boil-off.
  17. Elrond Cupboard
    They're getting the hang of it now, there'll be more, then it'll be commonplace, then you'll be calling them out when it fails.
  18. Elrond Cupboard
    It's a lolcat, isn't it? Be honest now...
  19. Elrond Cupboard
    Pi is irrational. It cannot be expressed as a ratio of integers. It is also transcendental, and thus would make a pretty poor choice of numeric base. However, with the proviso that the 0.5s in the original diagram are out of place base Pi makes the scheme complete, if pointless.
  20. Elrond Cupboard
    To be fair, the 0.5s don't work in base Pi. 0.5 is only a half in base 10.
  21. Elrond Cupboard
    They work if your base is Pi.
  22. Elrond Cupboard
    When we have a form of electricity storage with a better energy density than cordite.
  23. Elrond Cupboard
    Yup, if you need to deliver a significant amount of energy cheaply and efficiently, hot lead (or depleted uranium) travelling supersonically is a pretty good method.
  24. Elrond Cupboard
    Well, you might need some serious thermal underwear.
  25. Elrond Cupboard
    Being a computer programmer I work in base 16 a lot of the time, you get used to it.
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