The conops for this doesn’t make sense to me. Not only is it in a weird orbit but after the first lunar landing, which will have two astronauts, the rest will have four. With all 4 crew members on the lunar surface who will be working on gateway? SLS can max launch once a year. Are we really going to give up a lunar landing opportunity for a gateway only mission? Already 1 mission a year for a couple weeks is a big change from a quarter century of continuous operations on ISS. Mix of commercial space stations in LEO supported by regular NASA crews and lunar mission with eventual base seems the most inspiring and beneficial way to keep consistent presence in space was explaining exploration and building private space capability/infrastructure.
It might be interesting to look up Gateway's mission and see why they are putting it in in orbit around the Moon rather than Earth. I know a major part of it is to learn the lessons needed for a human trip to Mars.
> Not only is it in a weird orbit
Regarding lunar orbits (I don't know about Gateway's orbit):
We are used to relatively stable gravity in Earth orbit, but it is much different out near the Moon: Gravity in cislunar space creates chaotic trajectories due to the three-body problem of Earth, Moon, and the vehicle. Orbits around the Moon are also much less stable than around Earth. There are only a few stable orbits, all below 700 km.
Yes I could see deals being worked out where gateway partners instead build parts of a lunar base. The international partnerships a likely the biggest piece going for gateway in terms of not being cancelled
I have fond memories of the time I visited Jura. It’s an island of 100 people and 10,000 deer. When we stayed at the one hotel there we had an amazing hostess who showed us to our room and then when we went down to the (only) bar was our bartender and later at the restaurant she was our server. It was an amazing small community. There is also a museum in town dedicated to people who have lived on the island. My favorite description of one women was “she was known for causing general mischief on the island”. I didn’t realize that Orwell lived there until I visited. I didn’t understand how that place would inspire 1984 but this article gives another perspective of how the environment may have affected him that i never considered.
I don't think that place inspired 1984; reverse the arrows: the place was a result of the thinking that led to 1984's "Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism".
Orwell had tried joining the proletariat for their franchise, but Blair's habitus always gave him away (see "The Spike"). His nonfiction ("Ode to...", "Atom bomb...") suggests he had no reason to believe that Airstrip One would also not turn Stalinesque[0] (at worst), and his upbringing gave him every reason to believe it was (already) run like an English boarding school in macrocosm; either way Jura would've been an insular escape.
(if one reads Maugham's Sanatorium as a reflection on the small world of great power helvetic intelligence and counter-intelligence during the Great War[1], then could Jura "for one's health" have been a better way to come in from the cold than a large, formal, institution?)
[0] Might Blair have had any reason to believe that someone, somewhere, might've had a sawed-off ice axe with Orwell's name on it?
[1] I was just reading something the other day where during that period Swiss authorities had at first, upon discovery of an arms cache, thought they'd uncovered an Indian Anarchist plot to arm Italian Anarchists, only to eventually discover there was an English double agent fomenting the whole thing...
See "Content"; I am looking forward to having it fire all my 1984 cylinders, Julia/Jura getting the manic pixie treatment they deserve etc.
EDIT:I accept that it might hard to take Jura, as a concept, much further than very good Scotch.
(Professional fanfic)
BtW this is the KM who wrote the preface to his buddy Iain Banks' poetry release. So on the one hand Banks inspired (right arrow) Elon and on the other end in KM's stories it's the postSoviets(+Linux) who dominate future space exploration, due to socialist virtu (left arrow)
Hmmm... haven't thought about those in a long time, even though I was looking at the "White Mountains" earlier today.
Seems as if EAB would've agreed his frame story could've been handled a bit better[0], but as he did go to a sanatorium once prescribed, I guess my imputation of paranoia driving choice of island over institution had been apophenic[1]. Maybe he was just into it because all the rich kids at St Cyprian's used to summer (ca.1915?) in exotic[2] Scotland?
[1] when did Sonia start working with IRD, anyway?
[2] two bits of information (decent bits, so we shan't mention Oliver Mellors!) as to what constituted "exotic" in postwar Britain: (a) Spaghetti Trees [1957], and (b) the first James Bond [1953] is set all the way across the Channel in "Royale-les-Eaux".
By no means contraindicating your (harmless) micro-apophenia, but "Orwell >>> Galois >>> we" in terms of gambling nous, might explain the difficulty of modelling their emotional states or purchases (ie of insurance for theories of uncertain import)
Indeed, although I think in Petsinis' case it was just a moment of inattention (bonus Homer). Given that I read very few XIX autopsy reports, it's completely unclear to me if they're giving a standard report or drawing attention to something. (it's even unclear to me why they should have been paying so much attention to the cranium when the problem clearly lay in the abdomen? early phrenology?)
As a metal music listener with fond memories of Guitar Hero, I’ve enjoyed Ragnarock a ton.
You play as the drummer on a viking boat, hitting the notes (similar to GH) to the tune of power metal. Nice workout, especially if you really get into it and start exaggerating your movements.
I have no killer game, but I enjoyed many games. The most notables for me were I expected you to die series, A Fisherman's tale series, the last clockwinder, Synth Riders, Superhot
Personal favorite: Cosmodread. It’s a procedurally generated spaceship horror game where you must gather resources and not get killed by monsters to escape.
To add to this it’s not only cosmonauts assigned to this soyuz it’s 2 Russians and 1 American. Doesn’t change making the right decision for protecting crew but may add complexity if Roscosmos is confident in the Soyuz for returning crew but NASA isn’t.
Additionally depending on damage Soyuz may be on a clock to leave no matter what (with or without crew) to prevent it from being stuck to ISS.
Big question is what caused the damage and thus what risk there is to re-entry. Lots of tough risk trades to make.
This might be a myth but when I was a kid I assumed (or was told?) that there was always another space shuttle ready to go if there was a problem with the one in flight. Since SpaceX has nearly perfected quick turn launches, I have to believe that they can get one fueled up relatively quickly.
> This might be a myth but when I was a kid I assumed (or was told?) that there was always another space shuttle ready to go if there was a problem with the one in flight.
I believe it was a myth. IIRC, one of the unusual things about the final Hubble servicing mission was said to be the sight of two space shuttles ready to go at the same time (one for the mission and a second one to be used as a rescue ship if necessary), implying that this wasn't done often (if at all) previously.
Post Columbia accident, most of the shuttle missions were focused on the ISS where the crew could have taken refuge had there been a problem during ascent which prevented safe re-entry.[1]
As you note the Hubble mission (STS-125 with Atlantis) wouldn't have that option available due to its orbit, so NASA had the shuttle Endeavour ready to fly as STS-400 as a contingency.
[1] The plan would have been that crew stranded on the ISS would be picked up by a later shuttle, so NASA was obviously comfortable with the contingency of leaving a crew without transport off for a period of time during an emergency. These were designated STS-3xx missions and would have launched within 40 days of call up. The ISS could have supported the additional crew for 80 days.
This only became true after the loss of the shuttle Columbia on the STS-107 mission in 2003. After Columbia, a rigorous process was put in place for checking the heat tiles on the underside of the orbiter for damage. If damage was discovered, the shuttle crew would shelter aboard the International Space Station for about 40 days until a rescue shuttle came to get them. This mission profile was known as Launch On Need or Contingency Shuttle Crew Support. The rescue missions were numbered in the STS-3xx range. [0]
A different rescue mission profile was needed for STS-125, which serviced the Hubble Space Telescope and couldn’t reach the orbital inclination of the ISS. This rescue mission, STS-400, had to be ready to launch within three days of a problem being found.
The last planned shuttle mission was STS-134, with STS-335 as the LON mission. Since the hardware for 335 existed, NASA decided to fly it as an operational mission, STS-135. At this point there could be no backup shuttle, so 135 was flown with just four crew members who would shelter on ISS and come down one at a time via Soyuz over the course of about a year if the shuttle couldn’t re-enter.
What about the damaged orbiter stuck at ISS? Orbiters were quite expensive, so NASA developed hardware (which was stored on ISS) to attempt a landing of the empty orbiter via remote control. Whatever the probability of success, it was better than zero.
After the loss of STS-107, the investigation board asked NASA to devise a rescue that could have been attempted if the damage had been identified early in the mission. [1] The result was an audacious rescue plan that would have pushed two orbiters, their crews, and NASA itself to the absolute limit. We will never know if it could have been done.
I’ve been using Cryptomator for a few months now. Very happy with it. Closest to “main stream” file encryption tool that I’ve used. Confident anyone in my family could use it without much instruction.
SpaceX has drastically lowered cost/mass to put something in orbit with Falcon 9. If they are successful with Starship they will do so again. Already lowering cost to orbit is increasing access to space for companies, universities, and governments. This is huge. Their success has lead to a number of new companies trying to innovate in a similar way and even. altering how governments plan to run future space programs.
Lower cost to transportation is key for pretty much any economic growth. People and companies have significantly more plans than just a couple probes every few years. Exploration, mining, tourism, scientific research, manufacturing are a couple things that come to mind. There are probably many more ideas than what i can think of and that’s the point. Make it cheaper for people with ideas to make them a reality. When only the largest of governments can afford to put something into space then we won’t see much innovation/economic growth.
I hope the ability to use your EV battery to backup your house power becomes an expected capability in the future. Glad Ford included it. Too bad Tesla backed away from it, i’m guessing due to their powerwall business.
I'm interested to see if this leads to people living in places without power and using their truck as the sole source of electricity.
If you have a small cabin with no a/c, wood heat, and a propane stove - your house is going to use hardly any power compared to your truck. It would barely make a difference.
The power draw is probably fine, but the contention for the battery would be a problem. Think, "hey honey, can we put off the Costco trip until next week so we can leave the internet up, and lights on?"
Implementing a transfer switch and dummy load just to dump solar generation when your truck is being a truck would feel like a weird exercise.
At a charging station? A lot of people do a lot of their charging not at home already - at least in cities. Presumably this could / will be true in rural areas, too.
I want to know if it is 240V split phase. A lot of houses use multiwire branch circuits so getting split phase power would be a Big Deal. If Ford puts a big gnarly inverter capable of this in the F150, then I'm going to be stoked.
But I need an HD truck, and it has to have enough range to tow, which means I'm not in the market for a Lightning. Dammit.
Depends on the size of the house's load and the size of the battery and the efficiency of the inverter.
Ford's promo site says 'up to 10 days with rationing power' asuming 30kWh use per day with extended-range battery. But it's not clear to me if 30kWH is normal use, and rationing would be less, or if that's the rationed use. A 300 kWH battery seems rather large to me, and i haven't seen an actual spec for the Ford.
Edit: reread their site after reading sibling posts, in a different blurb they say 3 days or 10 days with rationing with the same assumption about 30 kWH per day; so their rationing assumption must be getting down closer to 9 kWH per day. Either way, a nice feature to have that would eliminate a portable generator for me.
The average household electricity consumption per day is 28.9 kWh. For comparison, the Tesla Model X long range has a battery capacity of 100 kWh.
So in theory, a fully charged Model X could power the average home for 3 days. Really puts into perspective how much energy is needed to move a car at highway speeds.
I recently moved photos from google photos to icloud using google takeout and it removed meta data from the vast majority of my photos.
Photos with correct dates and locations in google photos not longer have any of that data in icloud. Makes icloud photos a lot less usable, not sure if anyone else has had this issue (can't find any articles on it)
Anyways agree that google takeout needs improvement.
If they don’t switch to another provider they are automatically switched to a provider of last resort (POLR) which is a predetermined provider based on ERCOT policy.
