Posts by Flocke Kroes 4559 publicly visible posts • joined 19 Oct 2007
Yes I 100% agree that is the point. Twitter along with a bunch of reputable journals did not publish some blatantly fake news. Even the author of the NY Post article refused to put his name to it. I do not trust Twitface to be unbiased either, but Hunter Biden's Laptop is conclusive evidence that Twitter can get something right occasionally even if it is by only accident. On the other hand you are doing a thorough job of trashing your own credibility.
Mr Isaac says a man delivered a water damaged laptop for repair. Noddy's guide to dealing with something like this:
1) Do not under any circumstances touch the laptop until
2) Get the user to demonstrate the fault
3) Document the extent of the faults and what actions you are offering towards repair. Get this signed because without it the customer WILL say you broke it.
4) GET PAID - even if this is just a deposit. Do not waste any of your time unless there is money.
5) Make damn sure that you can identify the customer. The laptop could be stolen and you WILL need to prove to the police that you are not trading in stolen goods. When you return the laptop you must be certain that you are giving it to the right person so you will not get sued for giving it to someone else. This goes double if you are legally blind (like Mr Isaac).
6) Image the hard drive. The data on that drive could easily be worth more than your shop. Take every opportunity to not get sued for loss of any of that data.
Now for the first list of smells:
*) Mr Isaac says he did (3) - where is Hunter's signature?
*) Mr Isaac said he did not get paid.
*) Mr Isaac says he cannot identify the man who left the laptop.
*) Mr Isaac says found evidence of a crime. He is not clear on what the crime was, how he knew it was evidence of a crime and how he found it among 128,755 emails.
*) Several hard disks with Hunter's emails have turned up with modifications made after Mr Isaac received the laptop.
Everything about this story stinks. Every journalist capable of minimal fact checking did not run with this story. The lack of covfefe indicates something going right.
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the doubt and uncertainty of unknown temperatures, or to take Artemis to the vertical assembly building, and by fitting a new temperature sensor end them.
The solid rocket boosters were stacked 2021-01-07 which started the clock on the 12 month certification validity. That 12 months figure is based on limited data as no-one has kept a large number of SRBs stacked and idle for years just to see how long they last. At some point the propellant is going to sag and crack. Cracks will cause the propellant to burn more rapidly than required leading to a pressure build-up and RUD. The propellant is measured regularly and so far those measurements have shown the SRBs are as safe as ever. Adding an extra few months delay risks the SRBs dying of old age and that would come at a steep cost.
There are plenty of SRB segment casings. These were re-usable parts that have flown on several space shuttle missions. Another set could be filled with propellant, transported across 5 states, recovered from a collapsed rail bridge, sent back for re-certification then brought to the VAB for stacking which would reset the 12 month counter. The launch abort system, Orion Capsule, service module, and upper stage could all be de-stacked so the core stage can be removed from the old SRBs which could then be replaced.
SLS was constructed from components that were known to be difficult to operate and the design has been thoroughly optimised for cost plus delays. Now that there is some kind of deadline, launch/delay decisions have become really difficult and will be far tougher when Artemis 2 is ready to be delayed in May 2024.
My better USB cables are thicker than low power mains cables. Maximum safe voltage is limited by the thickness and type of insulation. Maximum safe current is limited by the cross-sectional area of the conductor and the temperature at which the insulator softens. A low power device should will safely with thin conductors if there is some sort of current limit (like a fuse) to deal with failure conditions.
There are only four names required and half the name comes from the price:
1) Cheap, slow and never in shown on searches from Apple products.
2) Expensive, fast and supplied as standard only to reviewers.
3) Same component as (2) but cheap and out of stock.
4) Same component as (1), same price as (2) and in almost identical packaging.
Board members are supposed to disclose share purchases and sales because of the insider knowledge they have. So are major share holders. Elon bought enough shares to qualify through a bunch of shell companies and continued to buy in secret at an artificially low price. Apparently he was 'late' declaring his purchases with the SEC.
If Zatko can demonstrate securities fraud he could get a percentage of the fines. He wants Musk's lawyers to do his work for him. The problem is Zatko's complaint (which predates Musk's attempt to purchase) and Musk's excuses are not about the same things. For Musk to use Zatko's complaint at all his lawyers have to convince the judge to let them change Musk's pleadings. If they get over that hurdle it is all steep up-hill sailing into the wind from there. If you want to understand Musk's chances (a little more than zero) here is an accessible piece written by a law professor.
There is a long list of rockets that use unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine and dinitrogen tetroxide as propellants. Use one of those and no-one is going to care about a few hundred kilos of hydrazine in the middle of a RUD. Even better, some launch providers dump their first stages (with residuals) on nearby villages by design. None of the locals complain about that any more.
The leak was stopped by stopping the flow of liquid hydrogen, restarting it slowly then building up to the full flow rate. The problem was a connector that leaks when the two sides are at different temperatures but is fine when the two sides are at the same temperature.
This is not a "lets continue and hope the fans disburse the hydrogen before it explodes". It was a genuine tested way to fix a hydrogen leak. Much as I dislike the SLS I respect the ground crew for their ability to get this rocket safely to almost launching.
'Proven' means different things to different people. I think Elon will put a few Starlinks on the first launch even though perigee will be too low for those satellites to complete one orbit. (embiggen)If(/embiggen) the first Starship completes a fractional orbit then Starship will be proven sufficiently for Starlink. It will take more than one successful Starship launch before NASA considers it 'proven' for satellites let alone crew and many landings before they consider it for landing crew on Earth. SpaceX have said that they will fly Falcon for as long as customers want it while putting a clause in the contract to allow customers to switch to Starship if they want.
Orion in a Starship is something I have only ever seen in speculation and never in an official NASA announcement. Shelby would explode with rage if someone from NASA whispered a joke about this in Alabama. NASA would not put crew inside an Orion inside a Starship because they require a launch abort system to be able to work without fairing separation (ask Sierra Nevada Corporation about Dream Chaser). If SLS does a spectacular RUD then there is a slight possibility for the following plan to be costed in secret by NASA: An empty Orion gets taken near the Moon by a Starship. Astronauts ride a Dragon to HLS Starship in LEO and that Starship takes them to the Moon then back to the Orion for return to Earth.
The reason for 4 to 12 tanker launches to refuel a Starship is that Starship performance changes every month. SpaceX put 12 in the HLS bid so NASA would not need to do much thinking before deciding that SpaceX had assigned easily sufficient launches for the complete mission.
Office of Inspector General figures: SLS+Orion+Service module launch, excluding R&D is $4B. By itself SLS is "only" $2B. OIG said that costs had been obfuscated and he was not certain he had found them all.
Falcon Heavy, no payload reusable $97M (2022). Expendable $150m (2017). These are base figures. Payload integration and handling have extra costs. Falcon 9, no payload is somewhere between $50M and $67M. Falcon 9 with a crew Dragon is $240M-264M so by itself, a Dragon is about $192M.
Dragons were originally designed to be able to return from the Moon. Some features were cut when it became clear that it wasn't going there. The heat shield should still be good as the over specification was turned into multiple re-use. Dragon on Falcon Heavy to replace SLS+Orion is probably around $400M. NASA have said they would not man-rate Falcon Heavy because of the extra separation event for the side boosters. I believe this statement gets forgotten when convenient.
The other cost of SLS is at best one year between launches. Falcon 9s currently launch about once per week. Falcon heavy launches are limited by payload availability. Without Dragons, Falcon Heavy could launch about once per month. Dragons are more restricted, probably three this year an six next year.
Before Musk got buyer's remorse, a famous Florida man called him "another bullshit artist". They are not BFsF. Not buying twitter isn't going to help, but at the rate Deep State conspiracy theories spin they might be BFsF tomorrow.
The Biden administration has been working hard on their stupidity contest with Elon. They are really going to have to step up their game if there are going to get close.
If anything, Musk does a thorough job of antagonising both sides.
Analysis of the speedometer on the last Starlink launch shows that the Merlin engine on stage 2 got an upgrade. There was not much of a gap before. Upgrade the other 27 engines on a Falcon Heavy and the difference between SLS and FH payload to TLI must be getting really thin.
Starship is not just waiting for a launch license. They are still changing and testing the ground support equipment - possibly because they are waiting for the license.
SLS is different things to different people. For me it is a bunch of parts that were always difficult to operate, have been modified to a significant extent and put together in a way to maximise billable expenditure. I was expecting a scrub and I think more scrubs are likely.
A different point of view is that these are heritage parts that people have years of experience with. The design is perfect because it has completed simulations ad nauseam. It has to work perfectly first time to justify the expense and because a RUD would set the return to the Moon back two years.
Different people at NASA and politicians have different expectations within that range and off to each side. Some are trying to manage expectations to avoid disappointment. Some are trying to silence dissent. Some are keeping their heads down until retirement.
SLS is going to shamble on with expectations projected to match the budget rather than the lack of maturity of the rocket and ground support equipment. This will continue until SpaceX demonstrates Starships refuelling in orbit and returning to Earth or until SLS RUDs.
There were some fun videos of teens with an early PC. None of them were able to guess that the machine could not do anything useful without a boot floppy disk inserted. Most didn't find the power switch on the back. To be fair, I would expect to have difficulty getting a horse ready for a ride to work.
Also Falcon Heavy doesn't cost a tenth of an SLS...
Tons to LEO is not a good figure as SLS will never deliver a payload there. It can (and will only ever) do 27t to trans-lunar injection. I have not seen an official quote but popular guesses at Falcon Heavy payload to TLI are between 22t and 24t.
SLS can be diced two different ways: replace Orion+Service Module with something not designed to be too heavy to be launched with anything but SLS to get the mass down to FH range or split crew and cargo into different launches. 2x Falcon Heavy + Crew Dragon is still well under a tenth of the cost of SLS+Orion.
There is one critical area where SLS totally demolishes FH: election campaign contributions.
I am confident congress will keep funding this no matter how many times it scrubs. Even if it does not launch on time (2016) funding will be approved. A commercial alternative for under a tenth of the cost that has been operational since 2018 hasn't come close to ending SLS. An explosion might make a difference but scrubs can continue until the main tank cracks.
I can see how this can possibly work. SpaceX and T-mobile both employ skilled RF engineers. Believe it or not they already anticipated problems with signal strength and Doppler shift. Licenses can be changed. There are other companies working on the same problem that do not sell Full Self Driving - to be completed real soon now.
If a planet has a breathable concentration of oxygen in the atmosphere then it has plant life equivalent to blue-green algae or something more modern. The fastest way to get humans there could well be to transmit some DNA sequences and tell the locals "some assembly required".
This all dates back to 2020 when Twitter got hacked and big accounts (like Musk's) were used to spam support for crypto scams. The aftermath was that Twitter's deal with the FTC included hiring Zatko to tighten security. Zatko got ignored and fired. He started blowing his whistle in January, long before Musk started buying lots of Twitter shares. It has just taken this long for the complaint to work its way through the legal system.
If Musk had put a tiny bit of effort into finding an excuse not to buy Twitter then this would have been front and centre and not the rubbish about Twitter failing to provide the data needed to count 'bots.
It is possible the Twitter is being honest and accurate. Re-read the quote but with the assumption that the security and privacy situation is far worse than Zatko describes:
Twitter claimed the complaint presented a "false narrative about Twitter and our privacy and data security practices that is riddled with inconsistencies and inaccuracies and lacks important context,"
$2B does not include the service module or the Orion capsule. As SLS will never launch with anything else the actual cost is $4B. On top of that, divide R&D and infrastructure costs of $50B by the number of launches. The only good news is that the construction rate is limited to one per year - but not next year.
Yes this was the precise plan. When the shuttle program ended it was replaced by the Constellation program. Constellation was designed by the US military industrial complex to keep shuttle contractors on the gravy train by recycling as many shuttle parts as possible into a 'new' series of rockets. Their lobbyists did an excellent job selling this to politicians.
Constellation was cancelled because it was over budget and accumulated delays at around one year per year. It was replaced by the Senate Launch System. The US senate insisted on recycling shuttle parts into a new rocket because those parts were made in all the states by companies that made generous campaign contributions. The plan was to save money by using existing technology and as nothing new would be developed the contracts had to be cost plus to handle the required R&D. The boosters are shuttle boosters with a different casing material, number of segments, thermal insulation and nozzle. The core stage is the same as the shuttle except there are 4 engines instead of three, mounted on the core stage instead of the payload and the payload goes on top instead of on the side. The upper stage is mostly a Centaur but will be replaced by something closer to the right size real soon now (2026+???). The Orion capsule is straight out of the constellation program - and so far past its sell-by date that bits have already failed.
Change orders have kept the gravy train running as intended for years but now disaster has struck. Some upstart is already operating a rocket for far less than ULA charge and is in danger of getting to Mars within a decade. The SLS contractors a rushing to run up their bills as fast as possible because they can see the end of the line approaching.
Discovery class missions cost about $500M, so about 8 - excluding a discount for buying in bulk.
RUD is a fairly popular outcome among human spaceflight enthusiasts. They want it on Artemis 1 because the later missions will have crews. They also want it to take out the mobile launcher platform. There is only one, and without it SLS cannot launch for Artemis 2 and 3. The SLS for Artemis 4 has a different upper stage that requires a new mobile launcher platform that does not currently exist. That would delay SLS launches until at least 2026. They hope that would divert $4B/year onto a sustainable human rated launch vehicle. (Starship HLS development + 2 missions is $3.9B - fixed fee not cost plus plus plus...)
I am a bit more pessimistic. I think a RUD would cause congress to budget $450M for a new MLP that only gets used twice - some time after 2026. In the mean time, the other Orion capsules would continue to cost $1.4B/year to gather dust and pass their sell-by dates. Everything else Artemis related would get put on hold and Artemis 1B would launch with a very brave crew.
I too have mixed feelings about this launch. Success means Artemis 2 flies with a crew in a capsule with a life support system that has never been tested in zero gravity. On the other hand I would quite like a video of the expended core stage smashing into the sea as planned with $160B worth of engines that belong in a museum.
Which of the ten commandments is thou shalt not bake a gay wedding cake? Is it before or after "Thou shalt not boil a kid in his mother’s milk"?
Water and electricity companies have a legal duty to supply. If Twitfacesoft cut off my water or electricity because they do not like I say then they would be in deep legal pooh, probably to the extent of being required to split off their water and electricity businesses after paying a hefty fine and damages.
If Twitfacesoft decide not to host my content, I can set up my own version of TRUTH Social, which would be massively easier than arranging my own independent electricity supply/connection, water supply and sewage treatment. This is why utilities have a duty of supply and social networks do not.
I am massively more terrified of Big Government deciding that businesses are required to host other people's stuff on their web sites. If I have an argument with Twitface I can stop using them, find out who advises with them on stop buying those products. Twitface can be held to account via their advertisers - but only when a large majority agrees it is necessary.
If Microsoft's choice offends you, you are very welcome to not use their products or services. You are welcome to host Tornado Cash code on your own server. You can invite the EFF to use your server to make Tornado Cash code available on the internet. You have plenty of options to express your opinion without involving a third party.
If Microsoft had on their own initiative chosen to not host Tornado Cash for ethical reasons and the US Government had decided to take away Microsoft's right to freedom of association and required Microsoft to distribute Tornado Cash source code on Github would you be cheering on the US Government for illegally taking away Microsoft's right to free speech?
This is one of the very rare occasions where I support Microsoft over the EFF. The EFF are well aware that Microsoft have the right to chose which repositories they host and which accounts they terminate. This is not a first amendment issue because Github is not the US Government and Microsoft has not passed a law. If Professor Green or the EFF has an issue with the Treasury Department's OFAC they can host a Tornado Cash git repository on their own server and argue with the US government without dragging Microsoft into the courts.
There aren't enough small satellites for the currently operational small rockets. The more alert small rocket companies are now talking about medium sized rockets. Perhaps a couple of them will reach orbit before the rest realise they have to talk about large rockets...
Smart quotes are not a part of Unicode at all. What should be happening is when you type " your client software should convert it to one of ", “ or ” depending on context. Lots of software does this, with varying levels of irritation caused when the selection algorithm guesses what you did not want. Microsoft came up with the amazing idea (pre-unicode) of assigning a character sequence for smart quote and inserting that sequence into documents when you type ". That stood some chance of producing a random quote glyph if the character encoding was correctly signalled as one of Microsoft's encodings. AFAIK, there is no single official documented algorithm to convert a smart quote into a glyph so which one you get is POM dependent.
Converting Microsoft encodings to Unicode is always going to have difficulty with smart quotes. To make matters worse, the encoding might not be specified, might be specified incorrectly or may simply be ignored. Pretending the source is UTF-8 is likely to work much of the time for English text, and with the "it compiles, ship it" level of testing much software gets defective clients and content management systems are common.
kWh is the problem. There are two distinct quantities to measure: power and energy. It would be easier for people to understand if everyone used the two distinct units: kWatts and MJoules. The usual complaint is that most people do not have a feel for how big or small kWatts and MJoules are. Perhaps they would if the standard units got used regularly and we could stop using house power for a day per Olympic swimming pool.
While we are at it, measuring weight in pounds does not help either. Measure mass in pounds (0.4536kg) if you have to then weight in pounds force (4.448Newtons). The unit of pressure should not be pounds per square inch (pounds force per square inch). Pound foot and foot pound are equally messed up. The way things are going, Twitter users will measure rocket thrust in tonf then fail to land on Mars. About the only way to make things worse would be to do thermodynamics in Fahrenheit.
Clearly you don't, and for perfectly good reasons.
Elon's stated goal is to make humans a multi-planet species so a single large asteroid cannot take us all out at once. There are others who despite some evidence to the contrary consider humanity worth protecting even though there are enormous difficulties.
There are bad reasons to go too. In the words of former US Vice President Dan Quayle:
"Mars is essentially in the same orbit... Mars is somewhat the same distance from the Sun, which is very important. We have seen pictures where there are canals, we believe, and water. If there is water, that means there is oxygen. If oxygen, that means we can breathe."
A Moon base is easier than a Mars base but for a self sustaining colony, Mars is a better choice. If thousands of years from now Mars has a breathable atmosphere and an asteroid takes out the radiation shield then Martians will have thousands more years to put off building a replacement before they would have to retreat back into pressurised habitats.
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