They can in fact try that! :-) I believe the FDS has been rebooted before, although I don’t know how recently. (One of the other computers on Voyager 1, the CCS, currently holds a Guiness World Record for longest continually operating computer as it’s never been rebooted since launch in 1977.) They also have a…

Currently, the best precedent we have is the uncontrolled reentry of a nuclear-powered Soviet early warning satellite that spread radioactive debris across a large portion of the Arctic, requiring a multi-million dollar cleanup operation.  The USSR was determined to be at fault, refused to accept responsibility, was…

I invite you to come up with an alternative.  This is already plan B, after all.

It is actually true. A key fob has to perform cryptography, which is a fairly processor-intensive operation. Voyager’s tasks are quite simple by comparison, and it’s got three different computer systems to share them across.

Well.....they do want to be able to keep this PG. Also, not everybody gets the same emotions at the same time. Including that one, believe it or not.  Some of us are late bloomers.  ;-)

Congress is pissed that NASA started the workforce reductions without being 100% sure they were gonna get their budget axed, and now that it’s obvious they were absolutely right about it, Congress is complaining? That’s pretty rich, considering they’ve been running the government on continuing resolutions for four and…

And as evidence, I point to his impulse purchase of Twitter for $44 billion.

Fair! There aren’t that many major contractors anymore as it is. They’ve absorbed one another.

I just can’t handle that much stupid and bad acting.

Boeing had nothing to do with it.  Orion is built by Lockheed Martin.

The nature of Maxar’s fixed-price contract with NASA, which didn’t “provide NASA adequate flexibility to incentivize Maxar to improve its performance,”

Well, I suppose they figure he’s the idiot.

Supposedly he was actually selling the cards, although since they decided not to prosecute him, they must not have been able to find enough evidence to ensure they’d get a conviction.

I suppose it’s possible that Blue Origin, having played their cards very close to their chest, may be a lot further along than they’re admitting. If so, I would love to see them suddenly impress us. ;-) I will wait to actually *see* it before believing it, but I’d love it! I want to see someone get us back to the…

Makes me think of the incident during the George Floyd protests when a news team covering the protests first parked legally, then made a point of talking to an officer and pointing out their vehicle, and making sure they were okay with where they were leaving it. They went on to go get some photographs and when they…

Addendum to my last post: I just read that Opill is expected to become the first OTC birth control pill later this month, with a retail price of $19.99 for a month’s supply. This is expected to affect insurance coverage, since many plans may now refuse to cover birth control pills since there is an OTC alternative.…

I am really sorry! I didn’t mean to cast aspersions on you! Obviously someone prescribed a drug would know what they were taking, so I’m sure your friend would know. But the prolifers have spread a lot of misinformation about birth control in general, and that’s really muddied the waters, making it harder for people…

“Also, not that it’s his business, but there are many reasons that someone might need these drugs, including a miscarriage or an ectopic pregnancy.”

That was saying it wasn’t going to have an LES. That doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be able to abort; it just means it would have to use its normal systems. I mean, you gotta take everything Musk says with a big block of salt, but he said in the same statement that he intended it to be like an airliner, and those do…

When Starship flies uncrewed, if something goes drastically wrong right after launch, they can just blow it up. But there is an intent to have a crewed variant of Starship, and you have to have assured abort capability for a crewed spacecraft. The crewed Starship would have to be able to land fully loaded. This has…