Notices by Prof. Sam Lawler (sundogplanets@mastodon.social)

Chickies are still cute! And a couple more hatched!

Pretty terrible hatch rate, though better than last time. Looking like it'll be something like 12 out of 45 rather than 7 out of 60 like the first round. Could be that fertility is just lower right now than in the spring (it's HOT and the day length is getting shorter). Or maybe I need to bump the temperature slightly lower next time.

Who knows. Astrophysics is easy compared to biology. Too many variables!

Also the goats got new grass. Yay happy goats!

I should definitely go do some weeding before it gets even hotter but ugh it's really hot already...

When I peeked into the incubator earlier, there were 6 hatched chicks and several more pipped eggs! Hooray! I'll take them out of the incubator and have some cute floofball pictures to share later today.

Chicks can easily go without eating or drinking for ~48 hours after hatching (that's why you can mail-order chicks), and I don't want to open the incubator and drop the humidity while other eggs are hatching. But I'm also very impatient...

2 chicks have now hatched! Hopefully a few more will hatch overnight.

And happy first tomato day!! Just barely squeaked that in before the end of July.

And happy... apocalyptic sky day....?

One chick has hatched in the second batch of eggs. Hm. Not sure if there is a bunch more coming, or if this incubator is not as good as I hoped, or if this is a terrible time of year for hatching eggs (the 3rd option is almost certainly true... I usually only hatch eggs in the spring. But I didn't get the fancy incubator until summer, so... oh well.)

9 chicks! Looks like a few more eggs may still hatch.

At first I put them in with the bigger, 3 week old chicks. But it looked like there was going to be some bullying.

So the bigger chicks have now moved in with the mama hen and her babies. Very chill mama, and we watched carefully for a while. She definitely knows they are not her chicks, and doesn't want them closer to her, but the space they are in is large and it doesn't look like she's going to be mean to them.

@hannorein Yeah, same. I hope that doesn't mean it'll be colder than forecast 😬

WTF Saskatchewan weather, part 178325:

(Low of 7C??! If we get frost on Aug 3 I'm going to cry. If it's been cool and the forecast is 5C or lower, in the lowest part of the farm we can get frost pockets. This is... close.)

RE: https://raggedfeathers.com/@lilithsaintcrow/117020904859904785

The book contract I signed a few days ago has a "no genAI" clause. Neither I, the author, nor the editor/publisher are allowed to use genAI. I am extremely happy about having that written officially in the document!

I didn't get interviewed for this article, but at least they briefly mentioned one of the two recent Saskatchewan debris falls, and used it to introduce this quote which is going to keep me awake for a few nights: "The company [SpaceX] now says that about 5 percent of the mass of some satellites may not disintegrate."

There are almost 11,000 SpaceX satellites above our heads. I do not like this Russian roulette game.

https://mastodon.social/@fullywoolly/117013241064815417

Apparently ALL the opposition letters mentioned how 20,000 bright satellites would absolutely destroy astronomy, so that's nice.

Ok, well, this section is 100% gaslighting, which I expected. "No no no, radio astronomers, you are overreacting! We will totally not clobber your bands and we magically don't have harmonics or unintended radio emissions, despite not having actually ever built a satellite before. Also we'll use lasers to fix everything. Radio astronomers, shut up."

They make it pretty clear that they are in fact over-asking and also don't intend to actually launch 20,000 satellites in 5 years. So... I guess that's good. But also fucking annoying.

Oh no here's the astronomy section. I'm sure this will be great.

Next, they spend a bunch of time saying they totally need a bond waiver. Please ignore all the stuff we said about how much money we're making! We shouldn't have to pay!

And then they go into specifics of saying that @space_environmentalism "mischaracterized" the purpose of a bond: it's not actually to make companies pay for cleanup, it's to avoid over-asking for orbits. Well... they might have a point there, the FCC certainly doesn't give a shit about cleaning anything up.

WOW it gets even more whimsical and hand-wavy in the orbital debris section. Actual quote: "Certain commenters raise concerns regarding the extent of the orbital debris mitigation information provided in the application but ignore Cowboy Space’s steadfast commitment to operating
safely."

In other words: "Why won't scientists believe the words that we wrote down without any actual data, information, citations, or sketches?"

The rest of the astronomy section is pure bullshit, unadulterated by any facts or actual information.

"We will definitely work with astronomers, and we definitely won't have any reflections because our satellites are magical, we also won't have any infrared emissions, even though physics says that very hot things emit blackbody radiation. We are cowboys, not bound by mere LAWS OF PHYSICS."

Ooo actual quote "AAS’s concerns are unfounded"

Top-notch gaslighting. Nope the professional astronomers definitely don't know what they're talking about. Ooo it gets better:

"Nevertheless, Cowboy Space commits to coordination with National Science Foundation (“NSF”) and will work to mitigate potential impacts on radio astronomy before they arise."

We totally don't need to do this because there won't be any problems but we'll talk to NSF about the problems that we totally won't have.

HAHAHA wow apparently they shouldn't have to provide any kind of debris mitigation plan because they haven't built the satellites yet.

OK but like... why are you filing if you haven't built the fucking satellites yet?? Weren't you complaining earlier about "warehousing" orbits? WHAT ARE YOU FUCKING DOING RIGHT NOW HMMMM??

Then they go on to say that the FCC shouldn't have to think about aggregate collision risk. Just consider one satellite at a time please, ignore the other 19,999

This company also posted an ex parte filing (which means they had a super special extra FCC meeting), their satellites are too fucking huge to even be physically possible. They just can't fucking do this.

My estimate from looking at this ridiculous sketch is 8x60x10m solar panels... that's a reflecting area of 4800 m^2. The International Space Station, the biggest thing in orbit, has a solar panel area of about 3400 m^2.

After modelling this in detail, I can say that that these companies can't even do basic geometry, apparently. They want tens of thousands of satellites to have 24 hour sunlight, so sun-synchronous terminator orbits, baybeeee!

But as Hugh Lewis pointed out (I know, ew, linkedin sorry) https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/sun-always-shines-tv-hugh-lewis-tlkbe/ IT DOESN'T FUCKING WORK unless you're above 1400km altitude. And then you're not in the *magical* low-latency low-altitude zone that these companies actually want for fast comms.

Cowboy Space (I hate their name so much) published their consolidated response a week ago but we just noticed it. We either have 3 days or 8 days to respond now. So... I guess I have to read this shit. Swearing a lot here will get me through it.

A reminder: this is the 4th company that wants to launch fucking enormous "AI data center" satellites into sun-synchronous terminator orbits, giving Earth a ring. This particular company wants 20,000 satellites in one ring.