I mean fuel as the payload, to be used as fuel for future missions via something rendezvousing with it in orbit and picking up the fuel. You could think of it as one more stage, mathematically that's how you might treat it, but from an engineering perspective it's a qualitative difference versus what we have now.
Yes and no. They're lifting fuel into orbit, but all at once. That has three implications of needing more thrust for the engine than if we did it in multiple trips
That's true, but there is extra energy cost associate with putting it in orbit and then breaking orbit. Orbital calculations are about velocity, and delta-velocity, more than they are about height-above-ground.
Getting above the atmosphere is a big win, and may well make it worth it to do the final fueling from orbit. But in the end, getting to orbit may be as little as 100 miles of a multi-billion-mile trip.
I find it weird how your first paragraph is correct, then your second paragraph kinda seems to ignore it?
The whole reason I'm interested is obviously not that lifting fuel a vanishing fraction percent of the distance is helpful. The whole reason is that with a full fuel tank that's already in orbit, a probe ought to be able to take off straight for a planet without having to wait for an energy-impoverished orbit to be available. Or take off on a much more energy-intensive orbit that involves more aggressive slingshot maneuvers, or whatever else; having more energy doesn't preclude using that energy cleverly as well.
I also find myself curious about what we could do with an ion drive... or set of ion drives... fed with lots of fuel. And maybe an RTG for power, or some other real power source other than solar (which isn't much of a source out there in the gas giants). Or fed by solar cells, but first it takes a swing around the Sun for the almost sole purpose of gathering solar energy and driving the ion drives with it. All sorts of interesting things become possible if we can just use multiple lauches.
Russia has has something 130,000 troops positioned just outside Ukraine's borders and in Belarus. They have tanks, missile systems, amphibious landing ships, medical units, established supply lines, etc.
They actually invaded Ukraine in 2014 and took Crimea.
I mean, the possibility of an invasion is not exactly far-fetched.
This. I live in Madison, Wisconsin (aka, the "Berkeley of the Midwest") where tattoos and facial piercings are absolutely the norm - even my kids' daycare teachers openly sport them.
When I return to my small Mississippi hometown, only "rough" people openly display tattoos, and generally only a small minority of men are not clean-shaven with short haircuts. Male jewelry is minimal, things like facial piercings are heavily frowned upon, etc.
The United States is still the only country in the developed world without a system of universal healthcare.
Breathlessly comparing the USSR's economic policies with the raising of taxes to cover such a fundamental service betrays a staggering ignorance of economics and history.
Oh, I happened to live on both sides of the globe and have a fairly sound explanation. Europeans (that have the only universal healthcare system of comparable quality) have a concept of doing your duty. It's when a tool manufacturer won't deliberately put shittier wiring to make the motor fail short after the warranty expires. It's when a dentist won't claim you have 3 extra holes and then keep pretend-drilling your teeth for 30 minutes and bill you for it. It's when an advisor will actually try to find a solution fitting you the most (as opposed to the one paying the highest commission). U.S. culture is different. Like it or not, it's about making a quick buck and hopefully not ending up in prison. That's great for startups and high-risk ventures, but it will never work with setups when you just assume people to do their job well and not try to stiff you in some way.
Russian culture is very similar, so when USSR implemented centralized planning, people resorted to just stealing what they could. Like literally, your way to get some meat for the lunch would be to know the guy that works on a sausage factory, who would steal a piece for you in exchange for some vodka your cousin stole from the distillery. This eroded the trust between people to the point where you cannot start most types of business because your employees will randomly steal shit from you no matter how much you pay them. Hence, high petty crime. Hence, endless feuds between neighbors. You have no idea how low the ship can sink without people realizing that something is wrong.
What always worked in the entrepreneurial cultures like the American one is set proper incentives. Simple, transparent rules that people would agree upon, and let them compete with each other. If you have 10 dental practices, and 2 of them charge you for the holes you don't have, the customers will move to the remaining 8. If a hospital starts charging unreasonable fees to feed extra levels of bureaucracy, a bunch of pissed off MDs will open a competing one. But we are not doing that. We have low interest rates that allow established players to scoop up competition with cheap debt. We have complex bureaucratic systems that make opening a new hospital without a 8-figure investment virtually impossible, and then we wonder why people's entrepreneurial energy gets directed towards creative billing rather than actually delivering value.
Also TMI (and let's be honest: mega-creepy) I can tell when women are menstruating with about 90%+ accuracy if we share small-ish indoor space for a few minutes. (As confirmed by female family members.)
It's not so much an obvious smell as a perceived "sharpness" that feels related to the sense-modality of smell, but is not exactly equivalent to it. I wonder sometimes if it's a pheromone-based phenomenon.
> ‘In this paper we propose an extremely stealthy approach for imple- menting hardware Trojans below the gate level, and we evaluate their impact on the security of the target device’
And just as fictional! Whenever anybody is talking about one distant nuclear power physically invading another nuclear power they are reaching into your pocket.
Speaking of "the public" as a single entity is about as useful as approximating a curve with a straight line - i.e. unless it's the most trivial case, it's oversimplified to the point of being doomed to failure.
The public is comprised of people with vast differences in cognitive ability, education, and scientific training. Most members of the public, even in highly educated countries, are easily fooled by a wide variety of logical fallacies, emotional manipulation, and statistical misdirection.
So why didn’t you post this reply one comment up when he calls the public morons? Instead you choose to correct the person who says the public is actually smarter than we think?
I’m not implying you meant anything by it. But it should be noted that people here are arguing, and you’re coming down with a sort of correction that could be applied to either side of the argument. You appear to take a side by choosing this comment without any further nuance.
Apologies if it sounds like I’m saying you’re doing something horribly wrong here, I just find this particular dynamic interesting in internet discussions. It happens all the time.
Where, exactly, did the previous comment call the public "morons"? Are you discarding any other interpretation of that comment in order to avoid any nuance?
> Nuances will likely hurt and confuse the common man. That's why the news and celebs and politicians etc try to keep things simple.
You can pretend there is "nuance" to saying that the common man would be hurt and confused by facts. I see this plainly as calling people morons in a polite manner. Sorry if it hurts your sensibilities that someone would lay bare the underlying meaning of a comment.
Also, please by all means ignore the actual point of my comment, which is, why do people go around correcting a specific comment when that applies to at least one more comment up the chain. Any replies re: "morons" will be ignored.
Both intelligence agencies and cyber-criminals can be considered threats, but they are quite different. Intel agencies would present a serious threat to confidentiality, but are very unlikely to threaten the integrity & availability of business systems.
I would not so quick to judge the circumstances surround their divorce. There are quite serious allegations of physical and financial abuse lasting for years.
"Seems" to, but does he? He goes on about how "never been convicted or found guilty of doing shit", points out (correctly) that anyone can allege anything on the internet -- but I don't see him actually deny any of the accusations?
Not saying you're wrong, but. . . who actually knows what actual top-grade INS is doing these days? Those kinds of capabilities would probably be Top Secret or SCI.
