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25-Dec. Shout-out to everyone else at work

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: 25-Dec. Shout-out to everyone else at work

#141

Post by dlivingston »

fortran77 wrote: post #111
dlivingston wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yawn. Christmas is ostensibly a religious holiday, yet those from all faiths and cultures celebrate it. I am an atheist and it is my favorite holiday by far. I know Jews and Buddhists and Hindus who celebrate. It is a cultural holiday, not a religious holiday. This is a very important point.

What an insensitive take! It is a religious holiday. I don't celebrate it. It's fine if other people do. Stop trying to shove it down everyone's throat.

I’m not trying to shove it down anyone’s throat; I’m just saying that culturally it has separated itself from religion almost completely and, because of that, is celebrated by people of all backgrounds and faiths.

Re: 25-Dec. Shout-out to everyone else at work

#143

Post by dlivingston »

hashimotonomora wrote: post #106
dlivingston wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yawn. Christmas is ostensibly a religious holiday, yet those from all faiths and cultures celebrate it. I am an atheist and it is my favorite holiday by far. I know Jews and Buddhists and Hindus who celebrate. It is a cultural holiday, not a religious holiday. This is a very important point.

Christmas is literally Christ’s mass. If there’s a widespread religious celebration it’s that.

Just as Easter is a celebration of Ishtar, the Babylonian deity, and All Hallow’s Eve is a remembrance of departed saints.

Re: 25-Dec. Shout-out to everyone else at work

#144

Post by dnautics »

hahajk wrote: post #101
ido wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So why couldn’t they delay the lunch by a week so everyone could spend Christmas with their families and then launch it?

There very specific times you can launch to establish desired orbits. Typically these windows only come once every month or two.

Is that the case for an orbit around the earth-sun Lagrange point? It seems like anytime should be GTG

Re: 25-Dec. Shout-out to everyone else at work

#145

Post by yobert »

n8henrie wrote: post #58

Just getting to bed after an overnight in the ER and subsequent Christmas with the wife and kids. Thanks for the shout-out, and likewise for all the other cogs in the wheel. Discovered today that the hospital IT has decided to disable rebooting our computers through the usual Windows 10 menu, which I usually do at the beginning of each shift to optimize the chances of a smooth-running EHR. Power button still initiate…

I can't believe how bad the EHRs in ER settings seem to be. I run a small (but complete) EHR that never has these problems, but we don't have the right sales people I guess to get into these settings.

Re: 25-Dec. Shout-out to everyone else at work

#147

Post by fortran77 »

dlivingston wrote: post #141
fortran77 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What an insensitive take! It is a religious holiday. I don't celebrate it. It's fine if other people do. Stop trying to shove it down everyone's throat.

I’m not trying to shove it down anyone’s throat; I’m just saying that culturally it has separated itself from religion almost completely and, because of that, is celebrated by people of all backgrounds and faiths.

I'm Jewish. None of the Jews I know celebrate Christmas, or any holiday of another faith.

I spent today (in London) at synagogue.

Re: 25-Dec. Shout-out to everyone else at work

#148

Post by sandworm101 »

dnautics wrote: post #144
hahajk wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There very specific times you can launch to establish desired orbits. Typically these windows only come once every month or two.

Is that the case for an orbit around the earth-sun Lagrange point? It seems like anytime should be GTG

True. I don't think this is an orbital launch window thing. Rather, the date seemed to be driven by operational necessities (range safety, weather, the practicalities of getting the rocket ready etc).

Re: 25-Dec. Shout-out to everyone else at work

#149

Post by sandworm101 »

Kye wrote: post #112
eganist wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doubtful considering how long it took to put JWST together. What, 30 years almost? Granted a lot of that was scope creep but nonetheless, I'm betting it's not launch capacity that's the bottleneck.

The available launch vehicles probably demanded a certain amount of ambition in the plans. You can't launch small experimental telescopes with a short planned operation on the shuttle. It's too expensive just to show up with anything less than Hubble's successor. Now the new space race is aiming at making access to space cheap and common. Whatever follows probably won't be a big telescope. It'll be all the little exp…

>> probably won't be a big telescope.

It will be another infrared telescope. Hubble's capabilities have been all but surpassed by ground-based optics. Some of the new giant telescopes already being built will easily surpass Hubble (100+foot mirrors etc). What JWST does is see in infrared, something that ground-based telescopes can never do as IR is absorbed by atmosphere. So whatever replaces JWST will likely be another, bigger, IR telescope.

https://www.tmt.org/page/about

>>With its 30m diameter prime-mirror, TMT will be three times as wide, with nine times more area, than the largest currently existing visible-light telescope in the world. This will provide an unparalleled resolution, with TMT images more than 12 times sharper than those from the Hubble Space Telescope.

Re: 25-Dec. Shout-out to everyone else at work

#150

Post by gibolt »

sandworm101 wrote: post #72
mabbo wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a Christmas every year. A major telescope launch is apparently once a generation.

>> apparently once a generation I hope not. This one is only going to last 10 years. Kepler also only lasted 10 years. Given the time it took to build it, I hope the JWST's replacement is already well into development. The reality is that space telescopes are launched every couple years without much fanfare. This just happens to be a very big and expensive one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_space_telescopes

Hopefully this restraint will become less significant for future missions. Starship should mean larger payload volume (less folding/structure required), far more payload capacity, far lower costs, and more frequent flights.

Refueling and refurbishment costs should become much more acceptable as viable approaches emerge due to dropping ticket cost to space.

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