Notices by simonbp (simonbp@social.linux.pizza)

"Why are space missions so expensive? Surely a for-profit start-up can do it cheaper!"

And as always in life, you get what you pay for.

@dgodon IMHO he would if he could, but he can't let Tesla fail. Nearly all his wealth is tied up in it, and he leveraged billions of its value for the Twitter purchase. If Tesla stock fully collapses, the banks will start coming after his SpaceX equity.

@jenzi @billyjoebowers @jalefkowit The reality is that the sale price of used Teslas are dropping like mad. Might as well sell it now while you can still get something for it, rather than a few years from now when they'll be worthless.

Just a reminder that SpaceX only exists because of ISS. Without the NASA COTS ISS Commerical Cargo demo contract in 2006, they were just another obscure space launch startup that had repeatedly failed to get to orbit. Without COTS and ISS, their commercial prospects were pathetic. And then they had the massive luck that their only competition for COTS (the technically superior Kistler K-1) ran out of money too quickly, allowing Falcon 9 to be very late on delivery and still come out on top.

Also, SpaceX already has the contract to deorbit ISS, and so any delay to the deorbit is likely because they are behind schedule.

To note, the K-1 would've been a fully reusable launch vehicle, something SpaceX has still failed to achieve two decades later.

@selea The day ActivityPub supports smell is the day I might find a new server.

@HighlandLawyer @abstractcode @cstross Alternatively, England and the Netherlands stayed under personal union after William & Mary, and have been a single political entity since.

@khleedril @HighlandLawyer @abstractcode @cstross Eh. It might be a better outcome if you're English or Dutch. I doubt it's any better if you're Scottish or Irish. And probably far worse if you're one of the millions soon to be colonised by the amped up Anglo Dutch Empire.

I have to say, congratulations to #Tesla for finally inventing the bus. Now granted, they are the 23rd tech company to invent the 18th century omnibus, but congrats nonetheless.

I look forward to their invention of CyBerGuIDEs (rails) and GiGaHyperBatterY (overhead electrification).

If you think the Muskbus looks silly on the outside, wait until you see the interior.

Only 4 of 14 seats have a window, but the view is obscured by the pseudo art deco stripes. Half the seats are rear facing, and it's stadium seating, so you're going to be staring at half the bus and they're going to staring at you. Plus, rear facing seats with no windows is a great recipe for motion sickness; I hope vomit wipes cleanly off those pristine white seats...

Also, zero wheelchair seating, so this would be illegal to use as a bus in the US.

Has literally no one involved in this ever been on a bus ever?

@ryanc Also git snap and git crackle

#Colorado's decoalification over the next six years.

People tend not to think about it, but coal and steel were the original main industries that built the Colorado front range. Boulder County in particular hosts a massive coal field a few hundred feet down. Most Colorado coal mines closed in the 1950s, as they were replaced with cheaper strip mines of near-surface deposits in Wyoming.

But the coal plants have remained, for another few years yet. Some have been converted to natural gas (like the Valmont plant in Boulder), and some are just being shut down as the state finally turns the "300 days of sunshine" into usable solar power.

https://coloradosun.com/2024/08/27/colorado-coal-fired-power-plants-closing/

The first few messages that humanity received from the Galactics were surprisingly articulate and erudite. However, over time the weird inconsistencies added up enough that humanity gradually realized that they were talking to a Galactic chatbot.

Thus began the Great Crusade against the Galactics.

#MicroSciFi

Anyone who rants about safety regulations "stifling innovation" should be forced to read this article. Clockwork Orange style if necessary.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/06/inside-the-titan-submersible-disaster

Edit: Apparently it's now here https://www.wired.com/story/titan-submersible-disaster-inside-story-oceangate-files/

Thinking about the fact that I now travel with three separate and very divergent Linux desktop machines: System76 Lemur laptop (work), Lenovo Chromebook Duet 3 (videos so I don't have to touch hotel TVs to zone out), and a Steam Deck (games). All three happily charge with USB C, and it's trivial to get all three into a standard desktop environment. But the hardware is completely different.

I guess "Linux on everything" really did happen.

#Linux #travel #Linux_Hardware

Hello #Astrodon, good to see some friends

I mainly study the Kuiper Belt, through telescopic observations (Hubble and ground based), that one spacecraft in the Kuiper Belt, and stellar occultations. Recently expanded into looking at Jupiter Trojans too, since they are just KBOs that got lost.

FYI if Hubble had gone to single-gyro mode circa 2014-17, the Arrokoth flyby would not have happened. HST isn't very useful for the ecliptic with a single gyro, and no other telescope could provide the required astrometry.

That was quite possible, and was acknowledged as a significant technical risk in the Kuiper Belt Extended Mission (KEM) proposal. But we were lucky.

#astrodon

Amongst other things, @GreatDismal accurately predicted shitty Instagram filters (Count Zero, 1986)

@thomasfuchs Starship is almost totally funded by NASA these days, through the Artemis lunar landing program. They might launch a few Starlinks on the side, but Artemis is their priority, at least until the landing happens.

That was the same Falcon 9 before it, NASA fully funded development and was the exclusive customer for the first 6 launches.