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efaardvark

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Status Updates posted by efaardvark

  1. Just went and got a nice wireless headset for use during those late-night gaming sessions.  Apparently rockets make too much noise when they explode for people trying to sleep nearby.  Who knew?  :D 

    This replaces my old wired one that was really more call-center quality on the sound, and physically falling apart besides.  (My policy is to buy a new headset every decade whether I need to or not.)

    Going to make the rounds on my discord list to test it this weekend.  (Which starts in 2 hours, 10 minutes.. not that I'm keeping track or anything. ;) )

  2. I have to wonder if Putin would still have invaded Ukraine if he hadn't been enabled by all the oil money paid to Russia by Europe and others. This worldwide practice of funneling money to despots just because they have oil needs to stop. We should not even be burning it anyway. There are alternatives. Why do we keep enabling these assholes?

    1. Show previous comments  4 more
    2. efaardvark

      efaardvark

      Sorry for the dup.  I switched from my phone to the desktop and somehow sent essentially the same thing twice.

    3. efaardvark

      efaardvark

      @Wodahs I just know physics myself so I might be wrong as well but leaving things like politics aside and just going with the physics I think there’s already a very good economic case for things like big-rig diesel to switch to electricity, either directly on batteries or using ultra clean “synthetic” hydrocarbon fuel via fuel cell technology.  To produce such fuel with nuclear power we could run the chemistry “backward” to make carbon-neutral hydrocarbon fuel from water and CO2 from the air.  That way nobody needs to switch right away, yet we still take the geopolitical risk issue(s) off the table.  (Though there would still be the distribution problem and point-of-use pollution issue putting pressure on the phase-out of internal combustion, especially within high-population areas.)

      I'll point out that electrification of the delivery industry is already happening at the short-range end for delivery by entities like fedex or Amazon but give the battery technology a couple years and an infrastructure / environmental demand for it and I think we’ll be seeing even the long-haul stuff switch a lot sooner than most people think.  This is where Tesla is going with their big-rig designs.

      Of course vehicles the size of ships could use nuclear directly.  There are designs for SMRs (small modular reactors) that could even be used without much in the way of training on the part of operators.  They’re designed to be simple, passive heat sources that do their thing for 20 years then get swapped out for another unit.

      Couple that / those to one of Stanford’s supercritical CO2 gas turbines and electric motors and you get a very simple, cheap design.  Simpler even than current diesel/bunker fuel designs.  Economically that’s a no-brainer for the merchant fleet.

      We don’t need to be digging up “fossil” fuels.

      (I do have concerns about nuclear waste because some of these designs are solid-fuel but if we also have larger molten-salt designs for grid power then the “waste” could be destroyed using them.  We just need to be reasonably intelligent about the overall system design.)

       

      As for the lithium supply issue, there are battery technologies out there that are even better than lithium.  Tesla is already moving away from traditional lithium batteries even for EV applications.  We're where we are now because the production was already there due to the consumer electronics industry.  For instance, Toyota's first Prius models actually used batteries that were taken out of laptop battery assemblies and remanufactured into the automotive assemblies for use in the cars.  Needless to say that was a highly uneconomic way to do it but even so it still made a profit for Toyota.  It also showed Panasonic and others that the demand was there to build dedicated factories for the automotive applications, which of course lead more or less directly to full EVs and Tesla's Gigafactories.

      Lithium will probably continue to be used in mobile applications because it makes for lightweight and energy-dense batteries.  Obviously that has advantages for things like laptops, cellphones, cars, and planes but I think everywhere else will find other battery technologies that are more optimal for those other uses.  For instance, I think that grid power storage and frequency control will probably switch to sodium-ion and/or iron-based batteries eventually simply for economic/profit reasons, especially if EVs become dominant and cheap electricity becomes common.

      Also, even now lithium is not exactly in short supply.  Worldwide there is plenty of the element.  "Reserves" (discovered deposits) are limited because historically there has not been the demand to justify searching for more sources.  Laptops and cellphones only require so much of it after all.  Ultimately there will be more prospecting now because the demand is now higher, which will no doubt lead to more discovered sources, just as it has for oil.

      We will never get into the same situation with lithium as oil in terms of geopolitics however.  Or at least doing so should not be necessary if our "leaders" do their job right.  There's a huge source of lithium readily available worldwide.  With nuclear power we will have enough power to separate things like lithium and sodium from seawater.  There's a lot of other stuff in seawater that we could also pull out at the same time that would help with the economics and make it happen sooner than later.  This would include fresh water, which is also in short supply worldwide.

      Already the Saudis, Israelis, and others are getting a significant amount of their fresh water from desalinization.  I'm in California in the middle of a severe multi-decade drought that's threatening everything from farming and food supply to hydro power generation.  Cheaper power would have an immediate economic benefit for us, and again help with the geopolitical risk issues.  I mean, I've already got solar on the roof (no-brainer here in the southwest US with SoCalEdison's $0.42/kWh electricity) but distributed solar is really only useful for residential power and personal transport.  It does not help much with water or industrial manufacturing/transport power needs.

    4. Wodahs

      Wodahs

      i do agree with the there is alternatives that can take the function of oil

      my post was more in the aspect of if ye hadnt given putin money for oil up untill now (as it was the point of how he got the capital for his war) we would have been giving it to Xi Jinping of china , who people would probably claim he would be using it for his expansion of territory's in the south china see and so on

      we (companies in australia and one next door to my company) seem heavy in to producing hydrocarbon fuels for big equipment and have started exporting it (tho its still made by dirty methods) and have a couple of export ships running on gas for fuel which we also export , along with oil and coal and rear earth minerals including lithium (australia is as big as the us size wise we just dont have the population) we do seem to have a fair amount of resources here too most going to china or the asia pacific

  3. Just a couple hours until SpaceX launches 60-satellites on one rocket, weather permitting.  This is the first of many such launches for the Starlink constellation of satellites.  The company's FCC license requires at least  4,400 satellites to be put in orbit in the next 6 years, and the final Starlink constellation is planned to have around 12,000 satellites total.  😮   

    For the math challenged:

    4,400 satellites in the next 6 years is 61 satellites per month every month for the next 72 months. 

    12,000 satellites would be 200 launches of 60 satellites each.

     

    1. Show previous comments  4 more
    2. efaardvark

      efaardvark

      Long terms this is really another reason to get some industry going in space.  The biggest problem right now is the cost of getting stuff from the Earth's surface to orbit.  The.  Absolute.  Biggest.  The problem has been known about since even before Apollo, and NASA has talked about doing something about it for decades, but what they've come up with have been pork projects like the space shuttle that are really not useful for anything but getting money spent in certain Congressional districts.  Fortunately we now have people like Musk and Bezos with personal fortunes able to address the issue.

      If we could get something like a lunar mining/manufacturing/industrial process going then getting heavier vehicles into orbit would be so much easier in the long run.  Thicker skins, less fragile components, extra redundancy, and more maneuverability due to bigger fuel margins would in turn all go a long way towards both strengthening satellites against damage and enabling the Toy Box option to clean up old debris before it causes problems.

      It is kind of like in the game Kerbal Space Program.  (Bear with me here.)  At the beginning of the game you're just so happy that you can get something into orbit that you don't even care where the spent boosters wind up.  Over time though the old bits start to clutter up the displays in the tracking station, and even once you get better at putting stuff in orbit it still takes a lot of skill and massive rockets to do anything useful, especially when you want to send stuff to other planets. 

      Now, KSP has a "cheat" where you can just delete stuff from orbit from within the tracking station.  Unfortunately that's not an option in real life.  I've tried doing it the hard way, by launching new rockets with missions to physically go collect and de-orbit the clutter, but that takes a lot of fuel and rockets.  It is very expensive, which matters a lot in the career game.

      Pro game tip... build a mining base on Minmus.  Minmus is a small moon of Kerbin, the planet you start on.  The moon has such low gravity that even the weakest, cheapest rocket engines can lift massive amounts of, well, mass.  Most of a rocket's launch weight is fuel.  It is actually far cheaper to manufacture fuel on Minmus, launch it into Minmus orbit, and transfer it to Kerbin orbit than to launch the same amount of fuel from Kerbin itself.  If you can plan on refueling in Kerbin low orbit then the rockets you launch from Kerbin don't have to carry nearly so much fuel along with them and can be much smaller/lighter in the first place.  If you have a way to refuel in space then you can also build more flexible, capable, and durable space ships and reuse them on multiple missions, instead of doing expensive one-shot missions that leave a lot of old, useless hardware laying around cluttering up the place when you're done.

      True, it takes a bit of work to get that first mining base going.  You need to get the mining hardware to Minmus after all, and you need to do it without having the benefit of being able to refuel initially.  It isn't easy either.  I've crashed plenty of times just trying to get the equipment into orbit, or doing the transfer to Minmus orbit.  Or landing!

      Ok, about landing.  Minmus is like the Moon.  It has no atmosphere.  Atmospheres are like extra fuel.  If you have an atmosphere then you can target your orbit to enter the upper levels of the atmosphere and slow down without using fuel.  If you do it just right then you can slow down enough that you can get rid of all that orbital velocity without using a drop of fuel and wind up coming straight down instead of continuing back off into space. 

      That would be kind of a Bad Thing too, except for parachutes.  Having an atmosphere means not only not having to use fuel to come down from orbit, but you also don't have to use fuel to slow down enough to land safely.  Just pop the parachute and drift down.

      Minmus.. isn't like that.  You can put the low point of your orbit 1 foot off the surface and you won't slow down a bit.  You'll just fly by the ground at hundreds of meters per second and continue back up into orbit.  (Pretty thrilling, actually, considering things like mountains.)  If you use a little more fuel to cause your orbit to "intersect" the surface then that's called an "impact" because you'll still be going at orbital velocities of hundreds of meter per second.

      Worse, even if you expend the large amounts of fuel necessary to kill all your orbital velocity and drop like a rock straight down.  You'll still need to expend even more fuel to slow down and land gently.  Parachutes don't help at all if there's no air to inflate them.

      I can't tell you how many times I've crashed trying to land heavy mining equipment on Minmus.  (Or the Mün, which another moon of Kerbin that is easier to get to in terms of orbit, but has a higher gravity, is even harder to land on, and is ultimately less efficient in terms of getting fuel to orbit.)  But if you can do the landing, get the mining equipment set up, and start manufacturing fuel on Minmus then everything for the rest of the game becomes SO much easier.  Even building a reusable/refuelable spacecraft with a grapple to go and grab all those old booster stages and put them on new trajectories that reenter Kerbin's atmosphere and burn up are cheap enough to be feasible within the financial constraints of a career game.

       

    3. Illusion of Terra

      Illusion of Terra

      Man, you really know how to make something sound tempting. I mean I've seen some of your screenshots in the gaming section but never knew the game was so advanced/realistic in a way. I wish I had the time to actually game, but when I get to your age the latest I hope I'll have a steady job and enough stuff figured out that I can indulge myself in gaming again.

      On the cleaning up space debris issue, I think it's kinda weird that you might have to rely on people with their personal fortune, when (at least in my book) it should be part of governments' jobs (either national or through international treaties). But I'm not complaining about SpaceX, more about the lack of ambition from the official side.

    4. efaardvark

      efaardvark

      It should be part of government's jobs, but nobody is doing anything anymore for the country's sake.  They're all doing it for themselves.  If you're a Congresscritter then the money you bring in to your district is almost directly tied to whether you get reelected.  Either it puts "federal money" (someone else's taxes) into your local economy and makes you popular with your voters, or else it channels money to certain special interests whose lobbyists in turn channel a certain fraction of it into your campaign funds.

      It is all short-term too.  Elections typically happen ever two or 4 years.  Anything beyond that is hard to justify, especially since even if it works out then by that time you may have been replaced by your opponent.  Who then of course will claim credit for the resulting benefits.

      The only way to do this sort of long-term stuff is to have your own resources and spend them as you see fit.  That or have a command economy at your fingers, which amounts to the same thing. 

      Of course, the guy at the top has to know how to spend the money and get things done.  Musk clearly has what it takes, and has hired some of the best people in the world.  Bezos hasn't even got to orbit yet, but he has far, far, more money to spend, and has the right ideas and has also hired top talent.  And he did create Amazon after all, so he personally knows at least a thing or two about technology.

      On the "command economy" side,  Jiang Zemin, Hu Jintao, and Xi Jinping, the Chinese leadership are all quite well educated, with the first two even having engineering degrees (electrical and hydraulic, respectively), and all are proponents of the Chinese "Scientific Outlook on Development".  China is already ahead of the US in many ways.  They're already the most influential economic power in the world, with most of the world's manufacturing under their control, including key industrial resources like rare-earth minerals.  They've got the biggest solar power station in the world, the biggest hydro power station, and they're going ahead full speed with "modern" clean nuclear ideas like molten salt breeder reactors.  (Which they got from us btw.)  They're even putting SpaceX under pressure by duplicating their reusable booster concepts.  The rover they landed on the lunar far side last year shows that they have the technical chops for space and they have credible plans to put a manned base on the moon by the 2030s.  Couple their manufacturing and industrial power with extremely cheap, virtually unlimited electrical power and they'll be unstoppable, not only in space but wherever else they decide to exert their influence.

      Our government .. has Trump.  And Pelosi, and Schumer, and Hillary, and McConnell, and etc.  Career lawyers and politicians all.  Not a single science or engineering degree in the bunch.  :( 

  4. Looks like I have to go out to Goldstone on the 10th.  Damn.. I thought I was done with that when I switched jobs.  :(  

    1. Show previous comments  4 more
    2. Wodahs

      Wodahs

      think i drive thru places like that regularly

      image.thumb.png.3becf9684deeea793d3285675c666f0a.png

    3. efaardvark

      efaardvark

      @Wodahs Yes, it is very much a drive through (and hope you don't have to stop) sort of place.  :D

    4. Hällregn

      Hällregn

      @Wodahs Mad respect for your line of work! What do you normally end up hauling if you don't mind me asking?

  5. Woke up early Saturday so dizzy I could hardly stand.  Turns out there's a loose stone in my head (who knew?) that's rattling around in my inner ear and affecting my balance.  Got some medicine from the doctor, but it knocks me out.  So my choices for this weekend have been either sleep or feeling like I just got off a slightly too-long ride on a playground merry-go-round. 

    On the plus side, it is quite a bit better today than yesterday.  This morning the room was not spinning when I woke up like yesterday, and in fact I've found that if I keep my head still then I'm pretty much ok.  It is only when I tilt or rotate my head that I get in trouble.  I managed to - carefully - do a bit of laundry today and I'm watching TV, but unfortunately the xmas shopping and decorating I'd had planned for this weekend was not to be.  Things like driving a car and climbing on ladders don't sound like things I should be attempting at the moment.

    1. Show previous comments  3 more
    2. Illusion of Terra

      Illusion of Terra

      man what a bummer, especially since it's so unexpected. Hope it goes away quickly!

      I'm interested though, you said something about a stone in your inner ear. Do you know what it's made of or how it formed?

    3. efaardvark

      efaardvark

      @Illusion of Terra the stones in question are calcium carbonate crystals.  They apparently are part of structures (otolith organs) in the ear that let your ear detect head orientation.  For a variety of reasons they can occasionally become dislodged and interfere with the process.  They listed a few - head trauma, disease - but none seemed applicable in my case.  I'm old enough that it may just be they're wearing out and breaking down after all these years.

  6. So Artemis-1 is (hopefully) launching on the 29th.  On it will be 8 smaller cubesats, which will be deployed by Artemis at 2 "bus stops" on its way to the moon.  The cubesats will then find their own ways to fulfill their various missions, with NASA's Deep Space Network of tracking stations providing the data link for them all.

    Or at least that was the plan.  Someone recently realized that with 9 new spacecraft all vying for time on the DSN's already overbooked downlink stations it might be a good idea to see what additional options for tracking time might be available in the world in case something doesn't go as planned and one or more of the cubesats wind up needing additional tracking time due to problems post-deployment.  Yeah.  So now, only a couple weeks before launch, we're doing cross-support testing with the European Space Agency to make sure that's at least an option.

    Let's see, 8 cubesats x 5 ESA tracking stations, uplink and downlink, call it 5 data rates and 2 or 3 different encoding schemes per sat.  Maybe 10-12 hours of testing per cubesat if we're quick about it.  Then there's equipment and manpower availability to allocate and schedule, factoring in the time zones of the various mission operations centers (JAXA, Italy, Goddard, etc.), the stations (Goonhilly, New Norcia, Cebrerus, etc.), and of course JPL in California.

    Um.. how long did you say we had to finish this?

    1. Show previous comments  3 more
    2. Wodahs

      Wodahs

      and i know my way around the erea

    3. Wodahs

      Wodahs

      hope alls going good with your section with whats been going on 👍

    4. efaardvark

      efaardvark

      @Wodahs we’re in something of a holding pattern right now until engineers decide what’s necessary to fix or bypass the problem on the vehicle.  We’re in the launch configuration and a configuration hold (no changing anything) so really we’re just waiting.  Latest word is we’ll probably try again Saturday.

  7. It is snowing at Goldstone (California desert)!

    image001.thumb.jpg.cc4a65c3d7d0b85931ece705d243ede7.jpg

     

    1. Show previous comments  3 more
    2. efaardvark

      efaardvark

      The thing about deserts is that there is no water.  There is no water in the air to make clouds or fog so the sun hits the ground full-force and heats everything up.  If there were water on the ground, either in the ground or in standing bodies or even in plants, then it could evaporate and cool things off a little, but there isn't.

      One other thing that water vapor in the air does is trap heat at the ground.  Since deserts have no water, at night all that heat collected during the day gets lost back to space.  It is not at all unusual for the temperature in a desert to go from below freezing before dawn to over 100F by noon.

      Snow in the desert is pretty unusual though.  In my area the deserts are deserts because mountains along the coast block all the moisture from the ocean from getting inland to the deserts.  Lately however  we've had strong winds pushing very cold, wet air over the mountains into the deserts.  We've been getting lots of rain on our side of the mountains as well, but conditions on the desert side this time turned it into snow instead.  Definitely unusual.

    3. Illusion of Terra

      Illusion of Terra

      Crazy stuff. So is it possible for new kinds of plants to start expanding there (e.g. through plants or seeds spread through the winds)? Would be interesting if in a few decades the desert turns into something else.

    4. efaardvark

      efaardvark

      Probably not likely.  Anything that blows in would have to deal with the desert conditions & coming from wetter areas they'd likely die.  Unless this is more of a permanent weather change of course.

      There are plants that are already there and adapted to the desert however.  Usually they lay low most of the time, waiting for the infrequent rains.  When the water does come, there's an explosion of activity as they do their thing while they have access to the water.  Some desert plants have seeds that can last for hundreds of years, then sprout, grow, flower, go to seed, and die in the course of a couple days or a week, and desert blooms are often quite impressive, though hard to catch.

  8. Drinking coffee & waking up to the sights and sound so f 1911 New York City...
     

     

    1. Show previous comments  3 more
    2. Illusion of Terra

      Illusion of Terra

      kinda weird to think that that's you with all those old cars in the background. you seem like a time traveler of sorts 😂 it's a great photo! You should start a blast from the past blog 😂 

    3. efaardvark

      efaardvark

      Everyone is a time traveler.  The trick is to turn around and go back in the direction you came from.

    4. Illusion of Terra

      Illusion of Terra

      I once tried to sneak in time travel into a paper. It was something like 'given current scientific methods, it is not possible to test what would have happened if x did not take place' (it was something on 'counterfactuals'). The reviewer caught it though, and said that this was obscure (as counterfactuals are defined as not factual). Had to take it out, but I still don't think it is an impossibility.

  9. A building literally full of NASA engineers, yet apparently nobody can figure out how to clear and re-thread a jammed roll of paper in the restroom's paper towel dispenser.  smh

     

    IMG_4515.thumb.JPG.971ca098e0787e35d0ce978f712f04d9.JPG

    1. Show previous comments  3 more
    2. efaardvark

      efaardvark

      Even to me it wasn't at all difficult.  (And I am by no means the smartest person in the building.)  The whole process of clearing the jam and re-placing the paper literally takes only a few seconds, including waiting for the gizmo to automatically re-thread the paper when you close it up.  Definitely not rocket science.  People are just being lazy.

      If you want to cheat there's even instructions embossed into the plastic on the inside of the case... not that anyone reads instructions anymore.  :D 

       

    3. Seshi

      Seshi

      Nope.. you lost me at automatic threading.

      Id probably put it in completely upside down and threading would be impossible 

      And if it were my brother, he’d use brute force to break it into submission 🤣

    4. efaardvark

      efaardvark

      I'm not sure it is actually possible to do it wrong.  I may (or not) do some after-hours experimentation to check it out, but the way it is set up it looks like the roll of paper can go either "under" or "over".  Either way the end of the paper goes down to the bottom and under that white plastic guide thing that you can see in front there in the pic.  Under the white plastic bit and behind the paper are a couple rubber rollers that actually feed the paper and hold it securely so you can tear off a piece.  To clear a jam all you have to do is jiggle those rollers about a quarter turn or so (using the thumb-wheels provided for that purpose) and the jam will likely drop out on its own.  Then to get the paper going you just tear off enough of the paper from the end of the roll - if necessary - to make it roughly squared-off, lift the white plastic bit, lay the paper against the roller under it, and lower the plastic bit back down so it holds the paper between it and the roller(s).  Then close the case up.  The gizmo inside takes care of finishing the job, threading the paper the rest of the way between the rollers and dispensing the first length of paper to be torn off. 

      They should make one of those GEICO "so easy a caveman could do it" commercials out of the process.  :D

  10. Any of you older nerds out there remember these?  And care to admit it? :D

     

    1. Show previous comments  2 more
    2. Otaking66lives
    3. viruxx

      viruxx

      Ahh... 56k....... Those were the days. Although, I think I came in at the tail end of the dial-up days. 😅

    4. Animedragon

      Animedragon

      I never had an acoustic modem, but do have a 300pbs modem and that picture of all the Sportster modems brings back memories I had the 14K4 and the 28K4 models my 56K modem was a US Robotics unit.  I have a couple of other modems but I can't remember the details and speeds of them.
      And yes, I did say "have" there's lots of old computer bits somewhere up in my loft. 😃

  11. 🎵 It's Friday!  🎵 It's Friday!  🎶 Even though it's Wednesday!  :D

     

    1. Show previous comments  2 more
    2. Ohayotaku

      Ohayotaku

      Always feel out of sync returning to a regular work week after a holiday :P 

      Made even worse because I was off Thursday, half day Friday & then 2 days off.

    3. efaardvark

      efaardvark

      I (finally) got a couple additional days off this week so I'm already on my weekend.  Had to spend it getting estimates for and scheduling some semi-emergency plumbing work but I'll take what I can get.

      55E0C7AD-A65B-432E-8DD3-5EFC1470E275.thumb.jpeg.c394414c3750aea829baa8be775742e6.jpeg

    4. Ohayotaku

      Ohayotaku

      There’s the work you get paid to do & then there’s the work you don’t get paid for but still have to do 😂 Spent a good part of my weekend on car maintenance which will hopefully save me some trouble once winter begins in earnest.

  12. Got to sleep in late today, but also working until midnight on a Friday. :( 

    1. Show previous comments  2 more
    2. efaardvark

      efaardvark

      This was a one-day thing supporting a special event.  Looks like it isn't happening though so I'll likely be going home early after all.  They did feed us at work too.  I guess I should be thanking ISRO?  They might not be in a mood to appreciate it much at the moment however.   :(

    3. Illusion of Terra

      Illusion of Terra

      One day working late is one day too much for me 😂

      Yeah, too bad for India, quite a lot of money down the drain, but let's see what the reason was.

    4. efaardvark

      efaardvark

      Yeah, too bad about the lander but they still have the orbiter, which has most of the science instruments on it.  It would have been great to have the lander (and rover) to ground-truth things, but it isn't the end of the mission by any stretch.  ESAs MEX lost Beagle, but years later were still tracking them every day.

  13. This.  So much this...

     

    1. Show previous comments  2 more
    2. efaardvark

      efaardvark

      And today I find this in my inbox from our illustrious leader.  2024?  Pretty ambitious if you ask me, given NASA's last few decades of inertia.  We'll see...
       

       

  14. You know you're a game nerd when stuff like this rotates through your Spotify feed during your commute...

    IMG_4723.thumb.JPG.b322aa1d9192252e27a9c456256c2604.JPG

     

    1. Show previous comments  2 more
    2. Seshi

      Seshi

      Ooh, nice to know. Pandora is like empty

    3. efaardvark

      efaardvark

      Yeah, I subscribed to Pandora for a while too.  Spotify is better.  I even found stuff like the sound tracks for games like Kerbal Space Program and Minecraft on Spotify, and the anime tracks are extensive as well.  A lot of it is covers of varying, sometimes dubious quality, but there's plenty of high-quality gems too, including quite a few OSTs, in both English and Japanese.
       

  15. Took a trip to the middle of nowhere yesterday...

    7DC6E151-4F72-47D5-AC8B-2E9C88CF3DB1.thumb.jpeg.9d3d2a6492f7a2cf7135ab63f53f96be.jpeg

    1. Show previous comments  2 more
    2. efaardvark

      efaardvark

      Long drives can be fun if the scenery is interesting.  This was just boring.  3 hours out into the desert literally halfway to Las Vegas, then just after Baker hang a left and drive for another hour until you start seeing "tank xing" signs.  The first hour is Los Angeles freeways, after that it is just mind-numbing.  Like a game world where they made 3 plant models and 4 rock variants then had the terrain generator scatter them randomly 10,000 times between you and the horizon.  On the long stretches it seems like you're not even moving.  Also, by the time I got there I had Flatbutt Syndrome from sitting too long.  :D

  16. $55M for a Dragon ride to an annex of the space station set up for tourists...


    https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/05/science/axiom-space-station.html

    1. Show previous comments  2 more
    2. efaardvark

      efaardvark

      There’s also the minor issue that the annex itself has yet to be built, never mind launched and attached to the ISS.

    3. Illusion of Terra

      Illusion of Terra

      $300k does sound affordable for quite a few people though. not that I have that kind of money, but I can see how if you have a decent job and save wisely, you could afford it. a much better spending than an overpriced car with a certain logo on it in my opinion

    4. efaardvark

      efaardvark

      $300k (inflation adjusted) is about what the people moving west (from eastern United States) to settle in places like California and Oregon paid to get there.

      Hmmm.. not sure I like that analogy.  My settlers in Oregon Trail always used to starve, or get killed by indians or dysentery.  :D 

  17. Did not smell smoke this morning.  That's always good.  AND we still had power!  Even better.

    The clothes dryer was not feeling well however.  Started the laundry and discovered it was taking forever to dry the clothes.  Gave it a once-over but this is a (very) old dryer that has been repaired many times already so it could be pretty much anything.  The dial to set the heat and one of the mode selector buttons don't stay attached.  The lint trap bracket is cracked.  The bearing for the drum that tumbles the clothes rattles and probably needs replacing.  So does the blower.  Etc.  Etc..

    So a not-so-quick trip to the nearby Lowes (hardware/housewares/appliance chain store) and I've got a new dryer set to be delivered and installed in a couple weeks.  New washer too, since it has a number of issues as well.  Got it at the same time as the dryer and it too has been repaired at least as many times.  Expensive (isn't everything these days) but a new washer/dryer every couple decades isn't so bad.  At least this way I hopefully won't have to deal with any laundry-related issues for another decade or so. 🤞

    Meanwhile I also upgraded Ubuntu to 19.10 "Eoan Ermine" last night in a fit of madness.  I was a little worried since 19.10 had depreciated 32-bit software support and updated the kernel from 4.18 under cosmic to 5.3.0 under eoan.  Bash went from 4.4 to 5.0.  Gcc went from 8.2 to 9.2.  Bumps on the 3d and AMDGPU gfx driver(s) too.  Lots of moving parts, several critical for the things I do.  Net result:  Looks like my local server running the RLCraft modpack is down for good.. probably a java thing.  (1.8 -> 11.0.. yeah.)  KSP is still fine however (checked that much before upgrading), as is my minecraft client/launcher (once I updated to the most recent version that is).  Spotify, Discord, and everything else I've checked also seems ok.  So far, so good.

    Can't tell if I'm winning or losing this week.

    1. Show previous comments  2 more
    2. Illusion of Terra

      Illusion of Terra

      Definitely agree to this. As far as I know, I don't own any 'smart' appliance so far. I really don't see the point anyway. Also, one of the firs things they taught me in engineering was that generally speaking it's a great idea to use as few parts as possible, because it reduces the possibilities of dysfunctioning elements.
      I am glad that there (still) are at least some things we can fix ourselves. I am given to understand that for example in apple computers it is usually not the case that you can even exchange simple parts. If I look at laptops nowadays with RAM modules soldered into it in a way that you can't really desolder it without damaging anything (at least with my primitive soldering irons), I really envy the days when I mainly used tower PCs.

    3. efaardvark

      efaardvark

      Heh.. be careful what you wish for.  I happen to live in one of those places with a warmer climate.  Lately I don't know from day to day if I'm going to catch fire or just lose power.

  18. Looks like Spitzer project has set the date to end operations.

    IMG_4818.thumb.JPG.f062bb431f702c386cc3f8fc2374f9fe.JPG

  19. DART launch team photo.  (I’m the guy in back with the lid.)
     

    D2CB20A1-393B-4552-929F-3088C5EB3D41.jpeg

    1. Show previous comments  2 more
    2. Kit

      Kit

      Envious XD

      Mad respect for how much schooling and dedication that must have taken. It all paid off and you love your job, can't get any better than that? I don't even know you and I'm proud of you. lol

    3. efaardvark

      efaardvark

      Thanks @Kit.  Might be changing jobs in the near future tho.  I’m currently working for a contractor but JPL/Caltech has made me an offer that looks good.  It is in integration and testing and moves me away from real-time ops but it is more in tune with my training as a systems engineer.  Benefits are better and it comes with a bigger paycheck too.

      The downside is it drops me right in the middle of GDS - ground data system - testing for all those cubesats going up on Artemis in a couple/few months.  😱  (Currently there’s one guy doing it full time and one loaner half-timer and they’re apparently not getting much sleep.  How do you schedule testing with JAXA, Goddard, and ESA in the same day and still find time to sleep?)

  20. Trying out a new avatar pic.  I'm thinking I like the old Taurus better, but I'll keep Hachirota for a week or so.

    1. Show previous comments  1 more
    2. efaardvark

      efaardvark

      Yeah, same here.

    3. Vitis

      Vitis

      There are a few shoppes that will edit images for you if you can't pin down a specific image you want to use and simply have a character in mind. #Shameless Plug XD

    4. efaardvark

      efaardvark

      Once upon a time there was a guy in the local mall who did walk-in portraits/caricatures.  He was good, but kind of expensive.  Enough so I that I never did it, but I always thought that would be the best avatar.  If he was still there it'd be fun to see what he could come up with if asked for something anime-ish.

  21. Wasted a weekend, but I got my car! 

    20181020_PriusPrime.thumb.jpg.36e7355201cf6a9d0b269d651c6d887e.jpg

    I must say, this was something of an experience.  I don't buy cars often.  I treat them well and tend to keep them until they die naturally or are murdered.  My last car was an '07 model that a tree fell on.  The one before that I think I bought sometime in the mid 80s.  I haven't been in the market for over a decade.  These days cars seem a bit different.  Much more exposed electronics and gadgetry.   In fact, these days they're more like "smart" phones.  For example, ipad-like touch consoles seem all the rage (whether you like them or not).  You also tend to have to charge them overnight before you can really use them.  :D  The dealerships I visited were all pushing either hybrids or EVs, or at least things claiming to be hybrids or EVs.  (Is a double-sized battery and a larger starter motor /really/ a hybrid, even if it shuts off the engine at stop lights?  I have my doubts.)  And the apps!  Why apps on your car when texting and cellphones are already such a problem?  Really.  Bad.  Idea.

    One thing that hasn't changed however.. that new-car smell.  :)

    1. Show previous comments  1 more
    2. efaardvark

      efaardvark

      Yeah, BT is a Good Thing.  For cellphones, well, I'm one of the 0.01% of the population that will actually turn off their cell connection when driving.  What calling I do is usually just 30-second "I'll be late" type notices when stuck in traffic.  Though I don't use it much, for those times hands-free calling is wonderful.  I also had a bluetooth gadget for wirelessly connecting my phone to my old car's "aux" audio input for spotify because I literally wore out my last phone's audio jack plugging/unplugging for the commute.  (I don't buy new phones very often either.)  I made sure this car had both hands-free phone and BT audio input built-in.

    3. brycec

      brycec

      Most of the time, the apps stink, so it is a bad idea in that respect, but I still think they could be neat, especially if it could make the car invisible.

      Nice looking car though.

    4. efaardvark

      efaardvark

      I wasn't impressed with the apps I saw either.  The apps I want/need are already on my phone for the most part, and I don't need the distraction of dealing with any of the ones in my car while I'm driving.  The only apps I use with any regularity while actually driving are waze and spotify anyway.  I'll probably use the built-in GPS instead of waze because the car's display is bigger.  It would have been nice to have spotify built-in too, but with the BT connection that's not a big deal.  The car does have Sirius XM and Pandora.  XM I'll probably use for the 3 month trial and not miss it afterwards.  I have yet to try Pandora, even though I have a subscription.  That might be good enough to replace spotify when I'm in the car.  Other than that the rest is uninteresting at best, and distracting at worst.

      Invisibility would be cool.  Dangerous, but cool.  :)

  22. Thinking about building a new budget game box for my brother's steam/etc. activities (his old one has been taken over by his GF. :D )  

    https://pcpartpicker.com/user/jmgrant/saved/3gQ6sY

    1. Show previous comments  1 more
    2. brycec

      brycec

      @Roxeg He is talking about a gaming PC.

    3. efaardvark

      efaardvark

      A game box in this case is a computer to (mostly) play games.  On "his" old computer he mostly played minecraft, WoW, and Civilization.  Occasionally he'd get on his steam account and download something else to play for a while, but those are/were his main go-to games.  Something that could run those reasonably well, plus do stuff like email, web, etc.   His old system was an i3 with 4G ram and a Radeon RX460 w/2GB.

    4. Myouya

      Myouya

      That makes a lot of sense. Don't know how I didn't think of it first.

  23. They took out all the computers on the console that the Spirit/Opportunity project people used to use today.  Not sure what's going in there to replace them yet, but InSight is possible.  Also Mars 2020 is coming up.

    IMG_4536.thumb.JPG.913bedc2a3246105fa65f0a3a142d305.JPG

    1. Show previous comments  1 more
    2. efaardvark

      efaardvark

      Heck no.  That keyboard is probably 20 years old.  It isn't even USB!  LED backlighting is one of them newfangled inventions that hasn't yet been supplied to us yet.  :) 

  24. I've been charging my car at work where they have a bunch of chargers installed in the parking garage.  They're charging (no pun intended) $0.12/kWh for the electrons so - since my car is a PHEV - I was wondering how that equates to gas prices.  IOW, at what point does it make more sense to fill up my car with gas than with electrons?

    Some base numbers for my particular situation, given California gas and electricity prices and Prius Prime as my car:

    Price for regular gas = $3.80/gal
    My car's miles/gallon = 60
    My car's miles/kilowatt-hour = 3.64

    According to my math, that means:
    A mile on gas costs about $0.63.
    A mile on electrons costs $0.33.
    At $3.80/gallon, electricity could cost up to $0.20/kWh before gas becomes the cheaper option.
    At $0.12/kWh, gas would have to drop to below $2.30/gal to make gas a better deal.

    FWIW...

    IMG_4546.thumb.JPG.bcdda81fba2ac8bbd342d1cea9a001e3.JPG

    1. Show previous comments  1 more
    2. Beocat

      Beocat

      Gas prices vary by state due to taxes. California and New York have notoriously high tax rates so they can be expensive. In my area (different state) we vary from $2.11 to $2.79 per gallon. The savings would still exist here but be less than driving in California. It's all about the taxes.

       

      Efaardvark, it's pretty cool that you can fuel up there. My favorite physics professor and I had a conversation once way back in the day about electric cars and the lack of "fueling" stations. Glad that isn't an issue for you. :)

    3. efaardvark

      efaardvark

      Yeah, our gas (petrol) prices are subsidized in various ways.  A lot of the costs of oil - geopolitical instability for example - are "externalized" by the industry and picked up by the taxpayer, or in the case of environmental damage simply not fully accounted for.  (BP oil spill, pipeline failures, etc.)  We're also the world's #3 oil -producer-, which helps on the domestic supply side to keep prices down.

      Electricity prices are all over the place.  In the Eastern US coal and nuclear produce extremely cheap electrons, coal because the environmental costs of pollution from what goes up the chimney and whats in the fly ash are not accounted for, and nuclear because it is cheap and abundant.  It also hasn't been updated for decades so it is generally fully-amortized.  Some of the rates in the eastern US are as low as 3 to 5 cents per kWh.

      Here in the south-western US where I live we’ve been phasing out nukes because of safety politics surrounding earthquakes and due to lack of water for coolant.  We could use molten salt reactors to avoid both issues, but that would require more thoughtful, intelligent politics than we can apparently manage.  We never did have much coal, and for air quality reasons we've banished the remaining coal plants to nearby states, which means transmission losses and interstate politics drives up the prices.  As a result the residential rates around here are between $0.19/kWh for the "base" rate tier to $0.42/kWh for the highest usage tier.  Solar being much less expensive than even the lowest tier there’s been a big interest in that around here, since we have the sun for it.  I’ve got 10kWh/day (@ $0.17/kWh) coming off my own roof in fact.  Commercial rates are again subsidized in various ways, so that’s how I get to $0.12/kWh from the chargers at work.

      My particular car has a relatively small 8.8kWh battery.  (Which gives me about a 30 mile range.  Work is only about 7 miles one-way so that’s plenty for the commute and local errands.)  There’s basically 2 types of chargers around here, “level 1”, and “level 2”.  Level 1 uses our standard 120V AC.  My car came with a L1 charger that just plugs into a regular household AC outlet.  It takes about 4 hours to fully charge a completely discharged 8.8kWh battery.  A L2 charger uses a 240VAC outlet and will take about half the time to charge a battery (vs a level 1 charger).  Level 1/2 are something that most people can install at home.  They’re relatively cheap and don’t require any special infrastructure beyond that required by the typical residential electrical/building codes.

      There’s also a “level 3” charger, but it isn’t really a standard.  Level 3s cost thousands of dollars, generally require access to commercial-level power infrastructure, and not all cars can accept a level-3 charge.  Tesla’s “Supercharger” is a L3 charger that works with Tesla cars, but I don’t know of anyone else’s car that can handle it in level-3 mode.  I know my Prius, the Nissan Leaf and Chevy Bolt don’t.  Even the original Tesla Roadster can’t use the Tesla Superchargers.

    4. efaardvark

      efaardvark

      @Beocat Charging used to be a BYO thing at work, and even then there were fundamental issues, like who was going to pay how much and where you could plug in your charger.  Then a few years back the parking situation became intolerable and they (finally!) built a parking garage, including about a dozen charging stations initially and an infrastructure that could support a bunch more.  It was a huge hit, what with all the engineers and their toys on staff :D, and we now have over 50 chargers in the parking structure and a couple dozen more up the hill in the old lot.  It is first-come, first serve parking so it is still a bit of a challenge to find an open charger spot for "normal" people.  Never a problem finding an open charger on the off hours when I often work however, and as long as I can plug in maybe every other day then I pretty much never have to buy gas.

      All I need is a "PowerFlex" app on my cellphone to manage the billing and control the charger and I'm good.  I just park, plug in, scan a barcode on the charger, and tell it to start.  While it is charging I can look at the app in realtime for how the charge is progressing.  I can stop it at any time from the app, and of course my car can stop when it is "full".  If I can't find a spot to plug in then I can add myself to a queue and get notified when someone else finishes charging.  If I'm charging, someone else is waiting, and my car finishes then the app also notifies me and asks me to move my car to free the slot for the next guy.  The service is pay-as-you-go and the app can be loaded with funds in various ways, including a CC, paypal, apple pay, etc.  So far it is all working out pretty well.  If they'd just cover the top level of the parking structure with solar panels it'd be perfect.  :)

  25. Looks like that's it for the Opportunity Mars rover.  Not a bad way to go though... taken out by a global dust storm - the biggest ever recorded - 15 years into a 90-day mission.

    1. Show previous comments  1 more
    2. CypherCode

      CypherCode

      Would had been super interesting if somehow it managed to take records of the storm from the inside, I bet the pics would be all blurry though!

    3. efaardvark

      efaardvark

      "Opportunity" did manage to collect some data and transmit some pictures (like this and this) before it had to shut down to conserve battery power..

      The "Curiosity" rover also collected a bunch of pictures and other data.  It is nuke-powered so it didn't have any trouble surviving the storm.  There are also several spacecraft orbiting Mars that were collecting data during the storm.  This was the first (known) global dust storm since the 70s so the scientists were really interested in bringing all their instruments to bear and getting as much data as possible on this storm.

    4. CypherCode

      CypherCode

      Makes you think how crazy thick the storm must be to be able to cloud the sun like that

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