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Oh, 2022

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Re: Oh, 2022

#201

Post by stickfigure »

Syonyk wrote: post #107
stickfigure wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space." (RIP Douglas Adams)

Space is hugely, vastly, mind-bogglingly big. Useful low orbital shells around the Earth are an awful lot smaller. They're still big, like the sky is big, but airplanes do manage to, at least somewhat regularly, collide with each other "in the middle of nowhere" (most midairs are around airports, since there are a lot of airplanes heading in and out of them). Aircraft debris, however, falls out of the sky in short or…

Low earth orbit (where Starlink and the ISS are) actually has a fair amount of atmospheric drag. Random google searching suggests an inert Starlink satellite (or fragments of one) would come down in 5-10 years.

Re: Oh, 2022

#202

Post by throwawaylinux »

> But this is all predictable. (Except for COVID19 which was wide-screen WTFery, like the second world war—September 1st 1939 was not in fact predictable from September 1st 1929, for example: all that was predictable was that another European war would sooner or later see France and Germany at loggerheads.)

I can't understand what this is saying. Not sure what 'wide-screen WTFery' is, but lots of people were predicting a pandemic, even covid-like if I remember correctly. I suppose that does not absolutely prove that it was predictable and not just unreasonable predictions being made by scientists and experts which just happened to be right by pure coincidence, but still.

He also seems to say with the WWII example that it's not predictable if it can't be predicted to a very precise date. By that definition sure probably covid19 could not have been predicted to a date or even year. But he claims everything else is predictable, but he is making some pretty wild predictions with very vague timelines. So I don't understand his criteria for predictableness.

Re: Oh, 2022

#203

Post by tuatoru »

barry-cotter wrote: post #146
zapataband1 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a virus infects more people it has more of a chance of spreading and more of a chance of mutating into a deadlier virus that affects a different demographic. Bringing sweden up but not the vast number of countries or active measure still currently in place, including mass vaccinations, seems to serve a narrow narritive. Bringing up civilizations and cultures that did in-fact get destroyed by viruses doesn't really…

The Inca didn't even have the concept of infectious disease, or quarantine. If you want a 99.9th percentile bad outcome look at Black Death Norway. Civilization didn't collapse in the face of 60% of the population dying. These are people without the germ theory of disease, never mind antibiotics, antivirals and the state capacity to seal borders completely and modern hospitals. COVID can be really, really bad without…

In medieval Norway most individual settlements were almost totally self-reliant. Some could go for years without any interaction with outsiders and such interaction as they had was mostly about things not essential to survival. (Probably the same is true for the Incan empire.)

Things are different now, yes.

Re: Oh, 2022

#204

Post by wott »

JetSetWilly wrote: post #106

> (We don't remember how awful chickenpox was because (a) we're generally vaccinated in infancy and (b) it's not a killer on the same level as its big sibling, Variola, aka smallpox. But the so-called "childhood diseases" like mumps, rubella, and chickenpox used to kill infants by windrows. There's a reason public health bodies remain vigilant and run constant vaccination campaigns against them Don't understand that…

> Don't understand that line - Chickenpox is not vaccinated in the UK

I am always a bit surprised when I read on this site Americans taking offence that some crazy reckless people do not vaccinate their child against this and this. And I am like "Oh? there's a vaccine against that? Over here it is[1] considered normal to catch it because it is considered mild and just watched and cured in the rare serious cases."

> Charles Stross is from the UK so I am quite surprised he doesn't know this

Furthermore, it appears that the vaccine is rather recent, thus it cannot be that "we're generally vaccinated in infancy", let alone that he was. Strange.

------------

[1] 'is' or 'was', for over here too, in the name of fighting presumed anti-vaxers, more vaccines have been getting mandatory. It's a strange political mechanic to witness, because imposing rather useless vaccines has been a major factor in creating anti-vaxers, which didn't really exist before that.

Re: Oh, 2022

#205

Post by runarberg »

Syonyk wrote: post #107
stickfigure wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space." (RIP Douglas Adams)

Space is hugely, vastly, mind-bogglingly big. Useful low orbital shells around the Earth are an awful lot smaller. They're still big, like the sky is big, but airplanes do manage to, at least somewhat regularly, collide with each other "in the middle of nowhere" (most midairs are around airports, since there are a lot of airplanes heading in and out of them). Aircraft debris, however, falls out of the sky in short or…

Yes, space is big. Lower earth orbit is still very big. However if you have dozens of operators, each with thousands of satiates making multiple round the world trips. The chances of a specific satellite colliding perhaps is tiny (given how big space is). However the chances of one of the thousands colliding with any of the other thousands over any of their orbital periods increases exponentially as the number of satellites increases.

Re: Oh, 2022

#206

Post by gjm11 »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #144
supperburg wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t need to show you, go listen to the Stanford professor. Lex Fridman podcast in the past week or two. Am I an idiot for believing a current Stanford professor? Is it not a reputable source?

You're not an idiot for believing the professor, but you could stand to apply more critical thought to the question, and look for additional sources before thoughtlessly propagating what you heard on a podcast. Just because "a professor" says something doesn't mean you should reflexively believe it. As an example, a Stanford professor by the name of Dr. Scott Atlas was a prominent voice within the Trump administratio…

Just out of curiosity, was the phrasing of your letter (or email or whatever) to Stanford a deliberate echo of https://lettersofnote.com/2011/02/14/regarding-your-stupid-c... ?

Re: Oh, 2022

#207

Post by Syonyk »

stickfigure wrote: post #201
Syonyk wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Space is hugely, vastly, mind-bogglingly big. Useful low orbital shells around the Earth are an awful lot smaller. They're still big, like the sky is big, but airplanes do manage to, at least somewhat regularly, collide with each other "in the middle of nowhere" (most midairs are around airports, since there are a lot of airplanes heading in and out of them). Aircraft debris, however, falls out of the sky in short or…

Low earth orbit (where Starlink and the ISS are) actually has a fair amount of atmospheric drag. Random google searching suggests an inert Starlink satellite (or fragments of one) would come down in 5-10 years.

That's the claim made, yes.

Now, how many other satellites are likely to get hit in "5-10 years" of flak flying around at orbital velocities? It's nice if your goal is to say "Well, it probably won't render space useless forever..." - but that assumes one collision, and no ongoing collisions. If it's "5-10 years per collision," and each new one resets the 5-10 years timeframe, well, there's a lot of stuff up there that can make a mess.

Unfortunately, the low orbital shells are also "everywhere." It's not like geosync orbits where if you Kessler them, well... not going to have geosync stuff anymore, but you can still use other orbits. If you Kessler LEO shells, you pretty much have a high risk of anything you try to send to space getting blasted on the way up. It doesn't take much of a bit of debris, at orbital speeds, to trash your booster and make you have a bad day. I guarantee a bolt at 17,000 mph will do some damage (typical LEO velocities) - that's about ~22x the speed of sound in the atmosphere, depending on altitude.

If there are tens of thousands of things up there and you start things colliding and blowing up, you've basically put a defensive shell around the earth for a century, if not longer, by the time all the satellites get fragged and the debris eventually comes down.

Re: Oh, 2022

#208

Post by stickfigure »

coldtea wrote: post #197
stickfigure wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space." (RIP Douglas Adams)

Since space debris in the satellite zone is already a problem, that's not a solution.

There isn't just one satellite zone. Starlink satellites are about 4 times closer to earth than than they are to the geosynchronous Hughesnet satellites. The starlink satellites are close enough that even after full Gravity-style Kessler syndrome, you could just wait several years and start over from scratch.

Obviously that is something to avoid, but it's not like we're filling up a non-renewable resource in low earth orbit. It cleans itself naturally.

Re: Oh, 2022

#209

Post by ehsankia »

jws wrote: post #164
ehsankia wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So is the earth, really. Reminds me of how all humans would fit in a ball of meat in Central Park [0]. The satellites aren't much bigger than humans, so even if there was a starlink satellite for every single human, it would still barely make a dent. Let alone the fact that the surface area would be larger 2000KM up, and without oceans. [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/theydidthemath/comments/p0qws3/self...

Nit, but 550km up. You can visualize the Earth as a basketball with the Starlink satellites crawling around an inch above the surface. (Now, with my local folk out of the way, the rest of you can visualize a football with the satellites 2cm over the surface.)

This reminds me of my favorite "true but hard to believe" fact.

Imagine you have a string wrapped tightly around the earth, how much more string to you need to raise the string 10cm above the ground everywhere? The answer just feels so hard to believe, but it indeed only depends on pi and 10cm.

Re: Oh, 2022

#210

Post by caf »

tialaramex wrote: post #29
TigeriusKirk wrote: post #16

Asking because I have no idea - Will other mRNA vaccines have short-lived efficacy like the covid one does? Will you need an AIDS vaccine booster every six months?

The purpose of all vaccines (including those built with mRNA technology, many current day vaccines using a "killed" virus and even those using a different but related virus whole like the original "vaccination" with cow pox) is to teach your body's immune system about something so that it might react appropriately immediately when it sees that thing, or something very similar in the future. The effect of teaching the…

One thing we do know, however, is that the immune system has fewer tools available at the mucosal membrane in the respiratory system (where the battle against SARS-COV-2 happens) than it does in the blood (where the battle against HIV happens).
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