Loved the first book and then stopped. Very fun and some interesting concepts too :)
Centrist, progressive, radical optimist. Geophysicist, R&D, Planetary Scientist and general nerd in Winnipeg, Canada.
troyunrau.ca (personal)
lithogen.ca (business)
Loved the first book and then stopped. Very fun and some interesting concepts too :)
Does links count? ;)
links --gui
Or old school Konqueror.
I use Firefox on my phone, and Chrome on my work computer.
Canada only has appointed judges, and their appointments are almost uniformly meritorious. It’s so much better than elected judges and keeps politics out of the Rule of Law. I think Mexico is making a mistake here. But perhaps it suits their specific needs.
The coastline there is receding, due to isostatic rebound. Actually this is true of most of the north. It’s ironic in the context of global warming that sea level rise won’t affect the north much as it melts.
Oooh! I think I saw that documentary. Uh, what was it called. Demolition Man!
This is actually brilliant
Meow
Galicia but biggerer.
It’s only a country in the vaguist sense. It’s a historical artifact. Charlemagne’s last gasp. It’s beyond funny that they have a vote in the UN, despite being effectively a tax haven and ski resort.
It’s such a bizarre thing that Macron is a prince there.
That’s a mean thing to say about Iberia
There is still patio furniture on the deck of the far unit. But it looks like storm damage or something, cutting the water and sewer pipes nearer the shore. Probably this was a multi unit complex and not only three remain at the far end.
This could literally be in any big hotel in any city and it would look the same haha.
Language is evolving. I agree with you but we will lose this fight in the long term ;)
This track is fun. “In this way, our minds were locked together.”
I unashamedly love the Venetian Snares. Recommended launch point if you want to explore – this album is one of the finest pieces of bottled aggression I’ve ever listened to: https://venetiansnares.bandcamp.com/album/rossz-csillag-alatt-sz-letett
That said, there are a lot of stinkers in the back catalogue haha.
Voter turnout in these sorts of student elections is usually on the order of 10%. It’s quite easy to hijack, and I’m surprised it doesn’t happen more often.
James Bond death ray time :)
So to maintain stable orbit (from my understanding) you will need to counteract that with a constant antinormal force, or else you’ll get pushed out of L1 and then go flying off.
You’re absolutely right, assuming the craft is on the L1 saddle point. The craft can, however, sit slightly sunward of the saddle point in a halo orbit. It wants to fall towards the sun (and enter a solar orbit) due to being on that side of L1, but you set it in the position it needs to be to balance the force of sunlight. There will be quasi-stable points in a halo orbits around the sun-facing side of L1 which could sustain a whole lot of these buggers.
KSP is great, but it only does two body physics (unless you’re using the Principia mod – never tried it). So you cannot simulate things like lagrange points there. The patched conics are a great first order teaching tool though, and KSP is great for that!
Solar sailing doesn’t require fuel, and can be truly solar powered. The IKAROS probe is a great example of this, and it was launched quite a while ago already. My favourite part of this probe was the liquid crystal panels that could change brightness and darkness electrically in order to steer by creating a differential absorption/reflection of sunlight. Clever stuff. It’s basically a steerable continuous thrust system that tacks against sunlight.
There’s also some untested methods that could potentially work here, like eletric tethers in the sun’s magnetic field – this stuff: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrodynamic_tether – although I’m not aware of anyone that has done this calculation in the context of sunshields. And further outside the box, magnetic sails: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_sail or even this craziness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bussard_ramjet#Dyson_swarm-based_stellar_engine_(Caplan_thruster)
Probably you’d still want some RCS thrusters for faster reaction times in a pinch. And reaction wheels are “free” in terms of fuel, so there is likely some upper bound to lifetime. But not as bad as normal spacecraft.
Long short: RCS thrusters are probably still useful, but may not necessarily need to be the primary means of station keeping.
not all of our population has adapted to this
“The future is already here – it’s just not evenly distributed.” – William Gibson
This probably isn’t the progressive answer you’d expect, but perhaps under a centuries old definition of progressive: weighted technocracy. People vote only in the field of their own expertise, and leave all other issues to those who have expertise. It is a sort of direct democracy with votes weighted by credentials.
Unfortunately you need an insane amount of checks and balances to make it work without power becoming overly concentrated in a Soviet style steering committee.
Cyteen, by CJ Cherryh, explores this well in a fictional context.