snrplfth
Joined 10 years ago
Karma
497
Submissions
353
Member since
Oct 13
Recent submissions
Comment · 7 years ago
Cool, it's like a nature preserve for hookworm.
Comment · 8 years ago
No worries! I guess I get people's reactions a little - they've heard so many vague plans about "maybe a Mars mission" that never pan out, so when the real thing arrives they're not ready to believe it's serious.
Comment · 8 years ago
Which is amusing, because @Pinboard absolutely cannot stand SpaceX and mocks them constantly.
Comment · 8 years ago
That's not a criticism. The Mars cult is a very good thing. For forty years, most space programs have been motivated by the burning urge to...uh...send some more people to Low Earth Orbit, I guess, and eke out marginal improvements on technology that never really changes.
The force of the idea of Mars keeps people focused on what really matters.
Comment · 8 years ago
> Like everything behind their breakthroughs, which they had a few - including landing and turnaround times - is meant to enable the Mars mission. They've been explicit about this since day one.
It's not so much a rocket company with a Mars objective, it's a Mars cult with a rocketry front operation.
Somehow, people get the idea that they're "not really serious" about the one driving goal that they've never deviated from.
Comment · 8 years ago
When you're cooking with motorbikes, it tends to accumulate at the bottom of the fryer or pan as a hot liquid which can be put down the drain, but re-solidifies once it hits the cold water in the sewer.
Comment · 8 years ago
You have a kitchen so tiny it cannot find room for a single old tomato sauce jar? My condolences.
Comment · 8 years ago
The ISS is in a great position, because it's in an altitude with such high drag that small objects and uncontrolled fragments deorbit very quickly. Even the ISS loses 50 - 90 m of altitude a day.
Satellites passing through the ISS's orbit do not tend to spend that many orbits there.
Comment · 8 years ago
"Spaceballs: The Flamethrower! The kids love this one."
Comment · 8 years ago
I've read this blog for years. This is exactly the kind of joke he makes all the time; in describing or referring to something, he folds in a fact which, while not literally true, is a funny way of imagining it to be, and which is expected to be obvious to the readership. It's kind of like the practice of Using Capital Letters to refer to a Self-Serious Idea of Something.
It's just the way he writes.
Comment · 8 years ago
It was a test payload on an experimental vehicle.
Comment · 8 years ago
I can almost guarantee you that Scott Alexander is aware of who the Jacobites and the Jacobins were and what the difference is. The blog is constantly bringing up all manner of historical and political esoterica. He's making a joke based on the name resemblance.
Comment · 8 years ago
The impression I'm getting from this and other comments is that San Francisco is basically a bunch of small mountains where people get mugged.
I live in a pretty flat city, but there's so much transit in the inner city (<8 minute frequencies most of the day) that seniors just take it everywhere. It's safe, it's warm, there's room for grocery carts, there's special seating for the mobility-impaired....maybe it's just implementation.
Comment · 8 years ago
The fact that certain industries have a lot of foreign ownership doesn't mean that they're not part of the actual economy. They produce in NZ, they employ in NZ, they buy inputs in NZ - they're part of NZ's GDP economy.
And the rest of your statement makes no sense. Some tertiary industries service primary industries, but most don't. Some housebuilding and education services immigrants, but the vast majority isn't, and regardless of that fact, it still counts as part of the local GDP. Services are no less "real" than resource industries.
Comment · 8 years ago
Also this is a cryogenic rocket which has to be kept cold and launched soon after fueling. Not terribly good for nuclear launches.