461–470 of 494 posts
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Hence the "Reds" vs. "Greens" in the KSR Mars trilogy.
I always found it amusing that KSR's Greens were the side that would have in effect have destroyed the natural environment of Mars (by terraforming it), unlike our Greens who in general want to preserve the environment.
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There’s a beautiful conference (which I’ve lost) saying that science and technology can regress. We always talk about “the progress” but things do regress all the time; Tests I’ve cleared for employment can’t be passed by newcomers, the NASA wouldn’t be able to put a rocket on the moon today, and there is no downloadable Jira competitor anymore. In fact the speed of innovation is, pretty much, equal to the speed of m…
This here should trigger a red flag when you hear anyone say "The government should be run like a business". Businesses kill themselves all the time from the loss of institutional knowledge. We see stuff like "government spends X a year paying people Y to build almost no product Z". Instead, we're paying people Y to be ready to build Z when something goes terribly wrong like war.
It wasn't a particularly huge cost, and before Harry Stonechisler took over there was money for that type of work within a profitable BCAG.
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We are about to crash, did you really turn them on? I still have no control of the plane
You’re absolutely right! The engines do not appear to be working. What I actually meant to do is, of course, turn the engines on. As you can see, they should now be working correctly. Sorry about that, thanks for correcting me!
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>why is the Lunar Gateway such an essential part of the Artemis project's mission architecture when we didn't need anything like that for Apollo? The explicit reason is: Why would we pay another $200 billion to just do Apollo again? People were bored of Apollo before it even finished its original set of missions.
In the 1980s I read articles in the “science fact” columns in Analog Science Fiction Magazine that told me that NASA sold out a much more ambitious lunar program for something that was little more than a stunt. The reality was that Von Braun looked at dozens of mission architectures before discovering one that was much more feasible than any of the others and made it possible to realize Kennedy’s dream. The moon is n…
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I'm admittedly very much not an expert in this area. But my post is less about the C919 specifically, and more about China's track record of developing manufacturing processes very rapidly such that they compete on the world market. Specifically I'm thinking of how China is suddenly exporting tons of EVs throughout the world at prices that USA/EU auto-makers can't really compete with. Over 50% of EVs sold in the worl…
China "cheated" with EVs. They never managed to make a combustion engine that could hold a candle against western ones in terms of efficiency and reliability. Electric motors are waaay simpler. I doubt that the same will happen in commertial aircraft engines. If China catches up it will be through industrial spionage or very slow grinding, that will take many years.
Commerical turbofan harder, but ultimately it boils down to TCO, where fuel efficiency "major" factor, major factor in that 10-15% less efficiency kills margins / ability to discout for current COMAC builds which uses many overpriced western components for certification. PRC switches to all domestic aviation stack (which they already have for military aviation, i.e. most of pieces there already), they can feasibly undercut/discount where PRC commercial aviation is competitive, it doesn't matter if CJ1000A is 15% less efficient than leading if upfront cost (+ favourable PRC financing) makes up for lifetime of less efficient fuel costs (cheaper TCO). But TBH civil aviation is not actually a "commercial" sector, it'a a strategic (geopolitical) sector, US will do everything it can to kill COMAC, or prevent global exports, i.e. no certification, sanction countries that buy COMAC etc.
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My work laptop (Mac) needed an OS upgrade recently, top of the release notes was "added 8 emojis" - what? Why is this an OS level feature worth calling out
Apple is rumored to have a strategic emoji reserve. The more they want people to install an update, the more emojis from the reserve they release as part of it. Because this is basically the only thing that drives OS updates among average people.
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I never had any interest in wearing a watch to bed. Still don’t, although theoretically I could charge it for a few minutes in the evening to make that possible. The Watch has helped me lose 30 pounds, has significantly helped motivate me to exercise more, and has let me keep my phone on silent mode for at least 5 years now. For me, it’s a great device.
I have a Garmin with roughly the same functionality and I only need to charge it every other week. If you use the GPS the battery gets drained in about a 6 hour activity, but I've recharged it at a refuge while eating.
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> there is a reason nobody flies the 747 anymore The reason is the aerodynamics of it are 60 years old making it no longer competitive with modern aerodynamics. Compare your car with a 1965 Chevy Impala, for example.
Mostly it's about engine tech. A 777/787 or whatever can fit almost as many passengers as a 747, but has only two engines, burning less fuel and requiring less maintenance. Back when 747 was designed engine tech wasn't there yet to build really big two engine airplanes. There was also the issue of ETOPS limits. The regulations on how far away from nearest airport you can fly with two-engine aircraft were stricter tha…
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Apple is rumored to have a strategic emoji reserve. The more they want people to install an update, the more emojis from the reserve they release as part of it. Because this is basically the only thing that drives OS updates among average people.
New emojis are actually created by the Unicode consortium so they they are interoperable across ecosystems.
737 with fly-by-wire avionics would be what 737MAX should have been.