Notices by Winchell Chung ⚛🚀 (nyrath@spacey.space)

In America, it is time to get your Madame Defarge on, and learn how to knit steganographic codes as part of the resistance to 🍊🐖, Tale Of Two Cities style.

https://www.popsci.com/story/diy/secret-code-messages-knitting/

https://www.cs4fn.org/ada/dickensknitting.php

@Hcobb

https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/485:_Depth

I am watching a 1956 movie called The Battle of the River Plate (a.k.a. Pursuit of the Graf Spee in the United States).

Because i am the Atomic Rockets guy, my first thought was this would make a great space opera movie. Just replace the naval cruisers and pocket battleship with star cruisers and space pocket battleships.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Battle_of_the_River_Plate_%28film%29

Interesting points were

* The Graf Spee and her sisters were designed to outgun any cruiser fast enough to catch them
* The Graf Spee sustains some damage and takes refuge in the neutral port of Montevideo, Uruguay, for repairs. According to international law, the ship may remain in a neutral harbour only long enough to repair for seaworthiness, not to refit for battle; any overstay will lead to the ship and its crew being interned for the duration of the war.

"The Graf Spee and her sisters were designed to outgun any cruiser fast enough to catch them"

But would not that always be the case? If a naval ship design based on a cruiser was modified to have more guns so it outgunned a cruiser, wouldn't the added mass automatically make the new design slower than a cruiser?

Tested to see if the fuel elements were resistant to being shattered, and exiting into the exhaust plume in a glowing radioactive cloud of death.

https://www.ga.com/ga-successfully-tests-nuclear-thermal-propulsion-reactor-fuel-at-nasa-marshall-space-flight-center

https://xkcd.com/3037/

@SFFMagazineCovers

Well, that is because one of the biggest cheerleaders of Dianetics was John W. Campbell jr, who just so happened to be the editor for Astounding magazine.

Mastodon spaceflight mass-mind, please come to my aid. My google-fu is failing me.

In the Apollo program, Saturn V’s S-II (second stage) employed four ullage motors situated on the aft interstage skirt. Additionally, the third S-IVB stage incorporated an Auxiliary Propulsion System designed for ullage purposes. These settled the fuel so the engines did not injest vapor and shred.

Question: why didn't the ullage motors need ullage motors?

@mattblaze @simplenomad

I remember when I was a child being taught to "Duck and Cover". And being shown some cartoon about a turtle.

https://phys.org/news/2024-12-astronauts-unique-visual-lunar-south.html

@futurebird

Agreed.

I was born in the late 1950s and read a lot of science fiction while growing up. Stuff like Nineteen Eighty Four, Brave New World, A Clockwork Orange, The Marching Morons, and John Brunner's Club of Rome Quartet.

So my entire life has been watching the world go through a slow motion disaster as each of those novels became true. 🤦♂️

I am waiting with dread for the global spread of Star Trek's Eugenics Wars.

@futurebird

What really frightens me is Heinlein's description of Nehemiah Scudder in the afterward to his Revolt In 2100...

@Tim_Eagon

@jautero @intransitivelie @jdnicoll

"English is the product of a Norman warrior trying to make a date with an Anglo-saxon bar-maid, and as such is no more legitimate than any of the other products of that conversation."

H. Beam Piper "Little Fuzzy"

https://futurism.com/elon-musk-city-mars-death-catastrophe

https://www.sciencealert.com/nasa-just-released-a-fireplace-video-for-the-holidays-and-its-hilarious

Take us out, Mr. Sulu.

The surviving cast of Star Trek the original series

I am re-reading Robert Heinlein's Revolt In 2100 and becoming depressed.

Especially the Postscript "Concerning Stories Never Written", about the rise of Nehemiah Scudder.

Now I become further depressed, thinking about V: The Original Miniseries (1983).

Less The Cheeto Bambito as Nehemiah Scudder and more It "Can't Happen Here" from outer space (see the Historical References section)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/V_(1983_miniseries)