When I first saw it, I was wondering “are ‘the Carters’ some famous midgets I don’t know about?” I didn’t see any reference to the former president.

You could always do a “first time viewer reaction” video for each one. Aren’t those all the rage now?

Unless it’s an intentional omission. Then it’s practically criminal. (Maybe a future treaty will make it actually criminal.) I don’t deny that past launches by the US and Russia have left lots of junk up there. But Kessler Syndrome is a threat, and most countries are making a conscious effort to reduce the risk,…

At 6 months out, there is not enough precise info to do an evacuation. At that point, the area of uncertainty covered half the Earth. A few months later, they could say it would be somewhere in central Europe. It was only later, perhaps a few weeks before impact, that they could narrow it down to an area that could…

The SpaceX second stage that was recently an uncontrolled reentry was an error. They usually perform an intentional deorbit into a safe area, but in this case had a malfunction when restarting the engine to do so. That’s very different than putting it in orbit with no ability to deorbit at all. The 2-ton SpaceX stage…

Depends how the law is worded. (And each state could be different.) If the law says “attach a tracking device” or something like that, then it doesn’t matter if you get the data or not. Safest thing would be to put it in the trash.

Sounds like the court disagreed with that reasoning, but they might make the case that *you* are illegally tracking someone else by attaching the tracker to someone else’s car.

You covered all the caveats well, but just a reminder that patents don’t cover the concept of “doing X”. They have to be very specific about the process to do that, and if Apple used a different algorithm, then it’s not infringing. But we may not know the answer until trial. (Assuming it ever gets that far, and they…

Would the Egyptians even allow that? If they don’t allow the crew to leave, I can’t imagine them letting the cargo go.

Obviously the commercial cargo is an expensive delay, but I also know some people use such containers to transport personal belongings, such as when you move between continents, and want your house furniture there. I wonder if there’s anything of that kind stuck in limbo now.

There are plenty of smart plugs in the same price range that support multiple systems. Why buy into just Amazon’s Alexa when you can get something that supports Alexa, Google, IFTTT, and others?

There are plenty of smart plugs in the same price range that support multiple systems. Why buy into just Amazon’s…

I wasn’t in any of the eligible groups until California opened it to all last week, but got my shot last Wednesday at a nice drive-through site. (Hansen Dam) Made the appointment. Waited maybe 10 minutes in line, pulled up, got the shot, never had to leave the car. They had us park a short distance away for the 15 minu…

It involves some pulleys that are actually not pulleys, but snatch blocks.

I’m not sure the cause of SN11, but it seems to have ruptured the CH4 header tank, which sits next to the O2 tank. So it might not have been Helium ingestion, but it’s also not what I would call solved, since it exploded before it could get that far. It could have even been related to whatever they were doing to try…

Then you need more structure (mass) to hold each rotor away from the body, and it still doesn’t help with disk loading, (i.e. mass per square foot of propeller disk) and it increases the number of motors you need.

ISO 8601. It just avoids the whole ambiguity. YYYY-MM-DD. And it sorts nicely in file names.

I think the laws of cubes (volume and mass) and squares (blade surface and disk loading) will put serious limits on how well it can be scaled up without the blades going supersonic. Ingenuity’s 4ft blades (1.2m) are already spinning at 2500 RPM, which puts the tip at 66% of the local speed of sound. (Helicopter blades…

It has no long-range communication equipment, so it is totally reliant on Perseverance being nearby. When they complete these test flights, Perseverance will move on to other areas that they have planned for it, and Ingenuity will be left behind, since they have no way to pick it up. (That would have been cool!)

Yet they still had a helium ingestion problem with the recent flights. I’m hoping SN15 has it figured out, but it’s still too early to call it “solved.”

They would have, if Congress would let them. But at the moment support for SLS is carved in stone written in law, so NASA’s hands are tied right now.