prayer letter printing/mailing

The Starship launch system is about to reach a tipping point, Gwynne Shotwell said, as it moves from an experimental rocket toward operational missions.

"We just passed 400 launches on Falcon, and I would not be surprised if we fly 400 Starship launches in the next four years," Shotwell said at the Baron Investment Conference in New York City. "We want to fly it a lot."

That lofty goal seems aspirational, not just because of the hardware challenges but also due to the ground systems (SpaceX currently has just one operational launch tower) as well as the difficulty of supplying that much liquid oxygen and methane for such a high flight rate. However, it's worth noting that SpaceX will launch Starship four times this year, twice the number of Falcon Heavy missions. An acceleration of Starship is highly likely. //

"Starship obsoletes Falcon 9 and the Dragon capsule," she said. "Now, we are not shutting down Dragon, and we are not shutting down Falcon. We'll be flying that for six to eight more years, but ultimately, people are going to want to fly on Starship. It's bigger. It's more comfortable. It will be less expensive. And we will have flown it so many more times.". //

As Starlink has come online, it has significantly increased the valuation of the privately held company. A decade ago, SpaceX was valued at about $12 billion, and this grew to $36 billion in 2020. Most recently, the company was valued at about $255 billion. //

DDopson Ars Tribunus Militum
22y
2,397
Subscriptor++
daddyboomalati said:
Can someone unpack this for me? I cannot understand how a massive rocket is a better choice than the Falcon 9 for medium-weight payloads. My only thought is that it delivers multiple satellites at once. I do it all the time in Kerbal Space Program, but is this a thing in real life, or an eventual likelihood?
It's simpler than that. Starship costs less to launch than F9.

Each F9 launch expends a second stage that costs roughly $20M to fabricate. They do recover the $40M booster and the $6M fairings, but they have to fabricate a new second stage for every launch. And that second stage consumes one Merlin engine, but that's only a relatively small fraction of the stage's cost, on account of SpaceX's spectacular efficiency at manufacturing rocket engines for <$1M, literally hundreds of times cheaper than, eg, the RS-25 engines NASA buys.

The cost to fuel a Starship is on the order of a few million, possibly in the $2M or $3M ballpark (this was estimated in a prior thread), probably more when including their current fueling logistics costs, possibly a bit less at scale when they are manufacturing their own LOX and can amortize various bits of fueling infra over a consistent level of demand.

Ground logistics add additional costs (control center staff, ground crew, amortized share of launch complex, etc), but these are hard to estimate. Dividing the entire Boca Chica facility cost over ~5 test launches would produce an unfavorable number, but that's silly. The ground facilities should amortize fairly well as the launch cadence increases. And this stuff is probably mostly comparable between the two platforms.

Sticking with relatively conservative numbers, I expect their all-up internal marginal cost per Starship launch to be well under $10M per flight, much less than the cost of fabricating a new F9 second stage.

Launching Starship is thus cheaper than launching F9.

Now that's an internal cost that we may never learn with precision, and SpaceX will make a business decision about what price to charge to their customers. They may create very attractive rates for rideshares. They will likely maintain high prices for "white glove" launch contracts that include significant payload preparation and other services, especially DoD and NASA, which already typically pay more per F9 launch contract than the sticker price on the website for "just a launch". //

Republicans should celebrate their wins, but they shouldn’t get too comfortable. The voters who flipped to the GOP in 2024 weren’t signing a lifelong contract; they were making a statement. If Republicans want to keep these gains, they’ll need to deliver. That means focusing on policies that help working families and avoiding the same trap Democrats fell into—listening to the loudest voices instead of the largest groups. //

ConservativeInMinnesota
19 minutes ago
Democrat’s policies drove minorities to finally challenge the narrative they had for decades. If Trump’s presidency improves their lives that narrative will be shattered.

If Republicans after Trump continue to show minorities their lives are better under Republicans they’ll know it isn’t just Trump. If we make that transition the Dems become the new Whigs.

Bash Ars Scholae Palatinae
20y
1,191

Freedom of speech does not include the right:

• To incite imminent lawless action.
  Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444 (1969).
• To make or distribute obscene materials.
  Roth v. United States, 354 U.S. 476 (1957).
• To burn draft cards as an anti-war protest.
  United States v. O’Brien, 391 U.S. 367 (1968).
• To permit students to print articles in a school newspaper over the objections of the school administration. Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier, 484 U.S. 260 (1988).
• Of students to make an obscene speech at a school-sponsored event. Bethel School District #43 v. Fraser, 478 U.S. 675 (1986).
• Of students to advocate illegal drug use at a school-sponsored event.
  Morse v. Frederick, U.S. (2007).

What Does Free Speech Mean?
Among other cherished values, the First Amendment protects freedom of speech. Learn about what this means.
www.uscourts.gov

NASA spent millions on DEI and ‘Environmental Justice’ grants while laying off real scientists doing actual research and innovation. //

In an exclusive report, the UK Daily Mail says NASA staffers want President-Elect Donald Trump’s co-chair of the Department of Government Efficiency Elon Musk to ‘clean house’, as insiders reveal the agency squandered millions of taxpayer money on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs. //

Paula | November 18, 2024 at 1:19 pm
Democrats fear Elon Musk. And for good reason. He’s half Einstein and half honey badger.

Somehow, those incidents sum it up for Biden's time in office — absent, late, and blowing off the press.

“Nyah nyah nyah” has been the winner’s instinctive reflex, ever since we were all eight years old.

It’s human nature. And yet - and yet. This heavy-handed, partisan response to a major victory, carries a risk that this amazing realignment — MAGA and MAHA — will squander the greatest political opportunity of our lifetimes.

It is also strategically unwise. A good friend, who comes from the same world I do, said recently that he too is concerned that MAGA in triumph is “spiking the football’. //

If MAGA/MAHA did this — that is, walked with maturity and grace through this historic, unprecedented, transpartisan open door — it would revitalize and transform the Republican party, making the MAGA/MAHA movement into a big, unbeatable tent whose mission is to promote core American principles. This mission could replace the always-marginal, always-vulnerable status of the Republican party, which has devolved (as has the DNC) into a checklist of ever more extreme policy itemizations.

any North Korean troops that do come out of this with real-life combat experience and do return to North Korea will be the first Nork soldiers with real combined arms and large-scale combat experience since the Korean War. These troops could be valuable as a training cadre for any future North Korean operations — say, against South Korea.

The Spanish Civil War, we might note, served a very similar role in providing both German and Soviet troops with real-world combat experience.

The statement by DoD notes that there is as yet no confirmation that the North Korean troops have entered into combat operations against Ukrainian forces, but there's literally no other reason to move them into the Kursk region. While their most likely fate will be "cannon fodder," 11,000 fresh troops could make a difference for a while; but it's important to note that the DoD estimates Russia is losing 1,200 troops a day in the conflict, meaning that any numerical advantage provided by this influx will be eliminated in less than ten days.

Friday, Socialist Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders used a post on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, to announce that he was willing to work with the incoming Trump administration to accomplish mutually beneficial legislation.

I look forward to working with the Trump Administration on fulfilling his promise to cap credit card interest rates at 10%.

He received a quick reply from Missouri Republican Senator Josh Hawley. "An anti-usury bill capping outrageous credit card rates," said Hawley, "ought to be a top priority of the next Congress." //

In my view, the number of times the government has intervened in markets directly and produced the intended result can probably be counted on the fingers of one hand. The obvious problem with a return to the medieval system of slapping usury laws on lenders is that when interest rates spike, banks lose the ability to adjust their interest rates. This, by definition, creates a drought in the credit market, which is quickly felt by commercial enterprises that rely on credit card transactions. If one is hellbent on regulating credit cards to save people from themselves, then allow a certain rate against the Fed's bank rate. //

Years ago, the Fed sponsored a study of the impact of usury ceilings:

Economic research clearly supports the current legislative moves toward deregulation of usury ceilings. The evidence on the impact of usury ceilings shows that they have not achieved their objectives. According to the empirical studies surveyed, usury ceilings have significantly reduced the availability of credit and created hardships for those who were supposed to be protected. Ceilings have encouraged lenders to use credit rationing devices such as higher down payments, shorter maturities, higher fees for related non-credit services, which increase the effective interest rate. They have curtailed the amount of credit available to lower income and higher risk borrowers, harming primarily those individuals whom the ceilings are intended to benefit. Finally, the lack of uniformity in usury laws across states has distorted credit flows and economic activity, favoring those states and regions which are less regulated.

What is worse, a guy holding a credit card that carries a 30% interest rate or his car breaking down and losing his job because he can't get to work all due to some well-meaning Karen in DC deciding it is more virtuous for him to be destitute than enrich some bank?

Trump needs to back off faux-populist issues like this. I understand the sugar rush of applause as well as the next guy, but cutting off credit card access from banks doesn't mean that poor people won't pay exorbitant interest rates.

How much does a payday loan cost? //

We have two parties here, and only two — one is the evil party, and the other is the stupid party. I’m very proud to be a member of the stupid party. Occasionally, the two parties get together to do something that’s both evil and stupid. That’s called bipartisanship. —M. Stanton Evans //

DaleS an hour ago edited

The graphes don't go back that far, but I'm old enough to remember when the federal funds rate (the rate when banks borrow from each other) was well over 10%. What do you suppose happens to the credit card market when credit card holders can borrow from the bank at a lower rate than they can borrow from each other?

Even if you thought an anti-usury law was a good idea, it would be madness to peg it to a fixed rate. I believe every card I've ever had (ignoring promotional rates) has been set at an offset on prime. Pegging the maximum interest to Prime+5 would still allow the banks to offer credit cards as a product no matter where interest rates go -- but it would be to a far smaller group of consumers. Markets work better than government. Lowering interest rates for everybody means that good credit risks lose their rewards, and bad credit risks lose their credit. This would not be a good thing. //

Musicman an hour ago

The Founding Fathers created a government that required consensus to get anything done. But don't confuse consensus with "bipartisanship." Bipartisanship means each Party gets something it wants. And often that means the two most extreme elements of our body politic--the far right and the far left--get something they want. It's also called log rolling. It's too often a compromise that benefits Washington insiders rather than the country. It's why we have a 35 trillion dollar debt.

A consensus is where you can get more than a pure majority, say 60 or 70 % of the people behind something. Or in the case of a Constitutional Amendment, 75% (of the states). Trump can reach a consensus without giving the Dems--or at least their left wing base--a damn thing. He just needs to get most Republicans and independents, and then a slice of the Democrat Party behind whatever he does. That is how to build a lasting movement.

Kyrsten Sinema @kyrstensinema
·
What’s the one tool that requires the Senate to work in a bipartisan way?

Oh look, the filibuster.

Burgess Everett @burgessev
Schumer to Republicans: "Take care not to misread the will of the American people"

"Do not abandon bipartisanship. It's the best and most effective way to get things done"
2:22 PM · Nov 18, 2024 //

The less Washington gets done, the better for everyone involved. We don't need a Congress that can make sweeping, dramatic changes to the nation based on winning an election by a few percentage points. That's how you end up with internal unrest under the tyranny of the majority.

It may not be a popular position on the right given we just won a sweeping victory, but strengthening, not removing the filibuster is the right move. There's nothing the government can do for me that is that important. I'd rather the behemoth stay out of my way more often than not, and the moment the filibuster ends, it's never coming back. That'd be very bad news the next time Democrats take power. Republicans should use their current leverage to ensure that can't happen.

Delta-V required for transfer orbit between planets

KSP Visual Calculator, online tool that determines delta-v required for multiple checkpoint missions

DNC Staff Union
@dncstaffunion
·
Follow
One day’s notice, no severance—the DNC fights for workers, just not their own.

Full statement below:
5:11 AM · Nov 18, 2024

This was apparently not your typical post-election culling of temporary staff; this seems to have hit people considered permanent staff, some of whom have worked at the DNC for a decade.

“We’ve heard for four years how Republicans were a threat to democracy, they were going to overturn democracy. But really what is happening is that the election deniers, the people who are trying to thwart the rule of law, trying to thwart what a state constitution allows when it comes to elections, are the Democrats,” the Republican congresswoman said.

Most properties today, whether residential, commercial, or industrial, include at least one building or structure on that property. Often there are multiple buildings on a single property. Some include buildings that are each supplied by its own utility service and others have an electrical service at one point and deliver electrical power to the other buildings or structures by feeder(s) or by branch circuit(s). This article takes a closer look at the grounding and bonding requirements and methods for separate buildings or structures supplied from other than a service. //

The second method for grounding and bonding at a separate building or structure is allowed where the feeder does not provide an equipment grounding conductor, but does include a system grounded (often a neutral) conductor. This second method is a bit more difficult to utilize because there are more specific restrictions that must be considered and adhered to. Three conditions must exist before one may use the grounded conductor for grounding purposes at a separate building or structure.

Figure 4. Grounding and bonding at separate buildings or structures using the grounded conductor by the method specified in Section 250.32(B)(2)

The first condition is that an equipment grounding conductor, of any form specified in 250.118, is not provided or run with the supply to the structure. This means that only the phase conductor(s) and the system grounded conductor either as direct burial, in nonmetallic conduit underground, or as overhead conductors are included. The key is that no equipment grounding conductor is included.

The second condition is that no continuous metallic paths exist or are otherwise present, and that are bonded to the grounding system in both buildings. Examples of continuous metallic paths could be metal water piping, building steel, metallic conduit, cable shields, metal ducts, and so forth.

The last condition that must be met prior to utilizing this method is that no equipment ground-fault protection is installed on the supply service or feeder, as neutral-to-ground connections on the load side of this equipment can nullify or desensitize the equipment protection.

If all of these conditions are met, then the grounded conductor of the feeder or branch circuit is permitted to be used for grounding and bonding the electrical equipment. It must be connected to the structure disconnecting means enclosure to which the required grounding electrode conductor is also connected. The minimum size of the grounded conductor of the feeder or branch– circuit must satisfy two minimum sizing requirements. First, it must be adequate to carry the maximum load on the grounded (often a neutral) conductor as specified in 220.22. Second, it also must not be smaller than the required equipment grounding conductor for the feeder or branch circuit using 250.122, based on the size of fuse or circuit breaker ahead of it.

david says:
January 20, 2015 at 1:50 PM

There’s a big difference in what we’re told about climate change versus the effects of radiation.

Decades ago people subjected test animals to “large” amounts of radiation, and extrapolated their results to “small” amounts of radiation. The assumption was that as the amount of radiation decreased, then so did the effects of the radiation linearly. This implies that even at low doses of radiation there would be some damage. (ie. 1/10th the radiation = 1/10th the damage, 1/100th the radiation = 1/100th the damage..)

However, that’s not how science works. They had an hypothesis, but where were the experiments to prove it true?

Eventually it was found that the LNT model didn’t hold to be true. The expected cancers from Chernobyl didn’t match what was expected. Different parts of the world have different background levels of radiation, yet those changes don’t seem to correspond with the LNT hypothesis. There were accident where people were subjected to radiation, yet once again no correlation with cancer rates as suggested by the LNT hypothesis; in fact, in such cases it sometimes appeared that low doses of radiation could decrease cancer rates.

The LNT hypothesis is dead, or at least it should be. But there are people who benefit from keeping it alive, and rather than going back to the labs to try to figure out the proper relationship between radiation at low levels, and genetic damage, they try to muddy the waters.

Climate change might have its fear-mongers, much like the supporters of the LNT hypothesis do, but it has yet to be proven wrong. We know that greenhouse gases do affect the Earth’s climate, though to what degree our meddling will affect it is open to some debate, as is how harshly those changes will affect us humans. But, since the Earth isn’t a frozen wasteland, we “know” that greenhouse gases do affect the climate.

In short:
———-

Low doses of radiation:
-> has fear mongers
-> those fear mongers have been proven wrong.
-> end of story, (or it should be.)

Climate Change:
-> has fear mongers, and also
-> has those who benefit from denying it.
-> greenhouse gases affect climate, else the Earth would be a lot colder.
-> end of story, including how bad it will be, is yet to be written.

Given we don’t know the full story, we should research, and act, because the worse case scenario is disaster for us human. Replacing coal with nuclear is a no brainer. If there is room for some small release of greenhouse gases by us humans, it won’t include the use of coal to generate electricity. That’s one of the lower-hanging branches that we should be eliminating now.

Wayne SW says:
January 13, 2015 at 11:09 PM

Well, you identified a major part of the problem. Those wind farms don’t harvest wind so much as they harvest subsidies. And governments are the ones who put those subsidies in place. In my state (Ohio), the state government is mulling removing the state portion of those subsidies, and the unreliable energy lobbyists are raising holy hell. They say they won’t proceed with any new projects without those subsidies. That right there tells me how they are making their money. And of course they also lobby for high-priced PPAs, while you have travelling anti-nuclear activists decrying PPAs for any company with nuclear plants (they say it shows the nukes need “subsidies”).

Allan Savory delivered a highly publicized talk at a “Technology, Entertainment, Design (TED)” conference in February of this year (2013) entitled “How to fight desertification and reverse climate change.” Here we address one of the most dramatic claims made – that a specialized grazing method alone can reverse the current trajectory of increasing atmospheric CO2 and climate change. //

Approximately 8 Petagrams (Pg; trillion kilograms) of carbon are added to the atmosphere every year from fossil fuel burning and cement production alone. This will increase in the future at a rate that depends largely on global use of fossil fuels. To put these emissions in perspective, the amount of carbon taken up by vegetation is about 2.6 Pg per year. To a very rough approximation then, the net carbon uptake by all of the planet’s vegetation would need to triple (assuming similar transfers to stable C pools like soil organic matter) just to offset current carbon emissions every year. However, the claim was not that holistic management would maintain current atmospheric CO2 levels, but that it would return the atmosphere to pre-industrial levels. Based on IPCC estimates, there are now approximately 240 more Petagrams (Pg) of carbon in the atmosphere than in pre-industrial times. To put this value in perspective, the amount of carbon in vegetation is currently estimated at around 450 Pg, most of that in the wood of trees. The amount of carbon that would need to be removed from the atmosphere and stabilized in soils, in addition to the amount required to compensate for ongoing emissions, to attain pre-industrial levels is equivalent to approximately one-half of the total carbon in all of Earth’s vegetation. Recall that annual uptake of carbon is about two orders of magnitude smaller than the total carbon amount stored in vegetation.

Brian Mays says:
January 13, 2015 at 2:40 PM

By the way, I wonder in what world funding for global warming research can be called “enormous”.

Welcome to the world of R&D for advanced reactor concepts! If only a tiny fraction of the money that has been wasted on deeply flawed, ideologically driven “climate studies” (keep in mind that I used to be part of this world when I was in graduate school) had been spent on genuine nuclear R&D … well … I’m sure that the DOE would have wasted most of it … but the remainder that went to those of us who just want to make a product that we can sell would have resulted in some very substantial progress.

But the reality is that I’ve just been tasked with tidying up and documenting the calculations that I performed to better understand severe-accident analysis of advanced gas-cooled reactor designs. This is work that resulted in a couple of published papers, but the budget for this cleanup/documentation work is $0, because there is no budget. There wasn’t even enough budget to get the papers done in the first place. That’s what nights and weekends are for. Fortunately, my day job manages to pay the bills.

Gee … I wished I worked in a field so flush with money that they’d fly me to Bali or Peru to discuss my latest “research” (or the made-up crap that I call “research”). I was fortunate enough to go to the last year’s meeting on new nuclear power plants (ICAPP’14), but that’s only because it was in Charlotte, NC, and I could drive there. I have nothing against Charlotte, but it’s no Bali.

The amount of money that has been, and still is being, wasted on the Climate BS is truly obscene, and those who refuse to see it are the real “deniers.”

Brian Mays says:
January 12, 2015 at 8:05 PM

“The question arises: Were the decisions concerning this enormous funding for global warming research taken out of genuine concern that the climate is allegedly changing as a result of CO2 industrial emissions, or do some other undisclosed ideas stand behind this money, IPCC activity, Kyoto, and all the gruesome catastrophic propaganda the world is now exposed to? If this concern is genuine, then why do we not see a storm of enthusiastic environmentalists and United Nations officials demanding to replace all fossil-fuel plants with nuclear plants, which have zero emission of greenhouse gases, are environmentally friendly, more economical, and much safer for plant workers and much safer for the general population than other sources of energy?”

– Zbigniew Jaworowski