SLS is undersized. It has to lift Orion, which was designed as a two-part architecture that provided a large lander to provide Lunar transit. That architecture never happened, and neither did the lander, so we’re stuck with a pig of a capsule and launcher that can’t get any closer than a NRHO. Unfortunately, they…

“I think they were foolish to retire the Atlas V before Vulcan Centaur was fully developed and in us”

What makes you think they aren’t paying appropriate tax on these pre-orders? They had to register a domestic subsidiary in India to even file for the appropriate licenses, and any sales will have to be funneled through that subsidiary. That seems a very clear and accessible target for India to go after if they aren’t…

Huawei is being “unfairly banned” because the US government expects the Chinese government is just like the US government. Remember the clipper chip that the US tried to force on its own networking companies? The only difference is that in the US, it’s somewhat more difficult for the government to put private citizens…

What nonsense? Starlink is not yet authorized to provide service in India. Starlink is not yet providing service in India. All that’s happening is India telling Starlink not to book future service to customers until they’re actually permitted to have active customers. If negotiations fall through, Starlink would have…

NASA pays Boeing for milestones. If Boeing never hits that next milestone of a successful uncrewed flight to ISS, then NASA doesn’t pay them another dime. Obviously they’re spending money on oversight, but it’s cheaper for them to just let Starliner founder and go nowhere than it is to actually cancel the contract.

I have small change to bet that Dream Chaser will visit the ISS before Starliner, even if they have to find a new booster because Vulcan-Centaur isn’t rated yet. (Dream Chaser would fit on top of a Falcon 9 or Ariane 5 too.)(It could also fit on top of a Long March 5 or a Proton M, but I find those to be unlikely…

I even had one lady report her car stolen, we found it, brought it to her and she refused to acknowledge that vehicle was hers. She said she had a Green Camry not a White Accord. We even ran past vehicles and we could see that she sold the Camry 8 months prior and bought an Accord but she refused to accept that …

Shell is a leader in CCS, and has numerous projects that was sequester millions of tonnes of carbon per year built and scheduled to be built.

No. It’s just a simple number of combinations. There’s two sequences (red or blue), each with five points that are randomized, so if each of those points had ten different clips to choose from, that’s 200k combinations. Or they could be cheating and claiming each passing minute is a different teaser, and then you only…

If a forest burns down, then its sequestration has be come temporary and transient, putting us right back at square one. The only way for forestry to be a net negative is if the biomass continues to increase, which is unsustainable. Eventually you’re going to hit saturation, either because you’ve just completely run…

Their new assessment is that Planet Nine should be closer to the Sun—close enough, in fact, that it should be observable in the near future by the Vera Rubin Observatory

which it likely did upon detecting the subpar performance of the rocket

They appear to be completely trash patents in general. The first is for a fractally shaped food container, for... reasons. While probably patentable on the face of it, it’s just stupid. Acutely concave sections will cause food waste and sanitary issues. Complex profiles will inhibit efficient stacking for storage.…

Yes...

If Autopilot is claimed to be a Level 2 system, then no, the driver was still in complete control of the vehicle. The only way to argue otherwise would be to claim the vehicle resisted the driver’s attempts to correct.

Transversely, if your Toyota, Honda and Ford had a feature called “autopilot,” and we’re crashing into parked patrol cars, we’d be seeing THOSEcars in articles like this.

The biggest issue with Tesla’s “autopilot” system is the name.

The difference is that this is fixed cost.  SpaceX quoted a price, and it’s up to SpaceX to deliver for that price.  If there are complications, say parachutes not behaving according to well accepted models, or leaky valves causing titanium to blow up, SpaceX either eats the cost to complete the project, or they don’t…

Maybe it’s just because I’m always borrowing those, rather than having my own properly fitted to me, but I’d rather not wear one of those if I’m not required to.