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But why, if you don't need to

Aghm, sorry, I meant, the tanks actually are pressurized at landing and not at risk of buckling. Why depressurize?

The pressure is enough to help push out liquid fuel but I don't think that means the pressure can be fully relied upon to provide structural support.

That's literally how original Atlas rockets and modern Centaur stages work.

Starship is literally not an Atlas rocket or Centaur stage.

Starship uses autogenous pressurization, which is not what Atlas/Centaur used.


You know, that's completely unimportant. The important parts are that 1) Starship stage is under pressure when landing and 2) pressurization makes a thin-walled metal cylinder much stronger resisting buckling. Details of how Starship works and how pressurization is historically used to increase strength are just to support these two points. But if you already have these two points, you should admit that the argument "Starship can't land on legs because there's too big of a risk of buckling" has some counterarguments. And the overall decision isn't as clear as we'd like to have it.

Actually, it is very important. Autogenous pressurization has a much higher risk of pressurization loss than a system which uses inert gases, due to the potential for the ullage gases to mix with the liquid fuel and condense.

This is relevant when designing the landing system.


Sure, but I am quite sure pressure is expected to be in place & provides the necessary strength for all the maneuvers.

Yes. They were installed many decades ago and haven't been replaced because a) it would be extremely expensive to do so and b) there are additives which AIUI prevent or at least significantly reduce leaching.

I'd be shocked if the EPA's cost estimates turns out to even be within an order of magnitude off the actual cost. Maybe they're just measuring the cost to utilities for the parts not on private property.


> there are additives which AIUI prevent or at least significantly reduce leaching

Hard water (high in calcium and magnesium) can form a scale on the inside of copper pipes. In a way this acts as a protective layer, as the water doesn't actually come into contact with the copper.


In my high school, English class existed to teach you to do two things - read books and write essays. No other class cared about both things (individually or separately). Kids need to do both, so emphasizing one over the other does them a disservice. TFA talks about the problems that result when you starve the reading side, and this post suggests (I think) starving the writing side (writing your "real thoughts" vs learning to structure them as an essay).


I agree with you--reading and writing must both be done frequently. Ideally both are occurring constantly.

However, the problem with "learning to structure your thoughts in an essay" is that most schools teach one style of essay, which is a "baby thesis" (or a five-paragraph essay with in-text citations, written without use of the third person.) It's incredibly boring, and what's more it's not a convention that the majority of great essay writers in the past stuck to. Furthermore, the choice of subject matter is decided by the teacher, which means that there isn't any chance to develop your skills based on subject material that you actually care about. If the only exposure to essay writing that kids have is "mandatory topics on mandatory novels in a mandatory framework", it's highly unlikely that any but the top 5-20% will actually develop any real taste for reading and writing that persists into adulthood.

I would prefer to blow open the playing field and allow students to submit any kind of writing, including first-person and personal opinions, and then have the option to publish the essays centrally so they can read each others' work and respond, as occurs in adult society. The writing quality and volume should be mandatory, but the form and content should not.


Great. So he's well-motivated to dig up and publicize hitherto-unknown (or barely-known) shenanigans from Forbes etc al, and he knows where to look.

If he wasn't going to investigate this, who would? CNN? USA Today?


> publicize hitherto-unknown (or barely-known) shenanigans

It's disclosed on a banner across the top of literally every cnn-uncensored page that's being 'outed' here. He could have saved the entire research/dig by simply screenshotting the top of any of the pages. That wouldn't have the same energy or 'Ahah!' though.


A different comment says librewolf disables webgl by default, breaking OP's decompression. Is that what you're seeing?



Heinlien, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, 1966

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moon_Is_a_Harsh_Mistress

The moon colony uses this to win its freedom.

However, The Expanse is also a great book


Related: Footfall and Lucifers Hammer (Both by Niven and Pournelle)


Hopefully better than the TV show. Man, that was a terrible ending.


It is better, and yeah for anybody who read the series the ending was especially awful. It's been awhile but I feel like they packed at least one book into the last 2-3 episodes of the last season. The book series still has a weird 30 year jump, but you stay there awhile at least.

For the first few seasons of the show I thought they did a good job, even though (or maybe because?) the show departs from the books in a lot of ways. But they tried to cram way too much into the last season and just made it seem like jibberish.


The book ending ("and then they gave up") put me off so much that I never bothered finishing the TV series. Given that, any thoughts on how I might find the TV series ending?


Worse than the books. They try to pack so much into the last few episodes that -- to me at least -- it didn't even make sense.


Thank you for heads up will get my code submitted before world ends.


You need to send the backups towards space, with a trajectory to come back towards Earth when we have restarted civilisation


Ah, so it was that kind of monolith!


That's true, but NYC still ships trash all over the place: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/8714ca7999a64704b59721c...

At the end of the day it has to go somewhere, and there's no room for it in the five boroughs, so they pay what they need to pay. And it's still cheaper than sending it overseas (otherwise they would).


NYC is a bit of a special case for a lot of things due to it's size/density and location. Most places don't ship their waste that far from it's origin because it's expensive.



The photos are gorgeous. The first one, of the motor disassembly area, has a bridge crane (labeled M-23) with a 1-ton capacity?? I didn't realize bridge cranes that size went that low.


Interesting point. I am sure the steel beam that is stenciled with "1 ton" can hold more than that, but the plasticky thing that's the actual lifting mechanism looks pretty hardware-store grade.


I always right-click and "Open Image in New Tab"; you can see so much more than the Times makes available in the context of the article.


If you do that, you can see the "1-ton" rating marked on the trolley. It's possible the original crane was rated higher, but when the trolley needed replacing they just bought the size trolley they needed, leaving the girder overrated.


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