May 302022
 

There’s just entirely too much mockable hand-wringing authoritarian panic-mongery gibberish in here to really pick from. It’s *all* just the worst, from some of the worst people on Earth:

 

Basically it boils down to “Oh Noes! A child is being taught how to use a mechanical object that I’m afeared of!”

Imagine being offended by Autumn’s Armory. Getting outraged by a little girl possibly being able to fend for herself? Buzz off, groomer.

 Posted by at 1:06 pm
May 302022
 

What’s more depressing is that their estimates may well be optimistic.

NASA mission to put humans on an asteroid ‘revealed’ – will you still be alive?

Researchers analyzed NASA’s budget since the 1960s to gauge how likely a mission to the asteroid belt is within the next century.

The researchers concluded that a crewed mission to the asteroid could take place as early as 2073, while astronauts may land on Jupiter by 2103 and on Saturn by 2132.

FFS.

Remember when NASA had some fricken’ *vision?* At least now there are vastly faster options than NASA.

I don’t, because it was before I was born. But just a few years before I came on the scene, NASA really did plan for an adventurous future, on an optimistic timescale. For instance, this from 1966:

 

“Research station on Titan” by 2000 or so.

 

*Somewhere* around here (I thought on this blog) I’ve got a chart I believe by Krafft Ehricke that lays out a more detailed vision of the future, along the lines of the crude graph above. Familiar to anyone?

 Posted by at 3:08 am
May 292022
 

Getting rid of gasoline from your vehicle and replacing it with batteries has some benefits. One of those is *not* that a fire in your energy storage system is less of a worry with a battery vehicle than an internal combustion vehicle. Because lithium *loves* oxygen with an all consuming passion.

 Posted by at 7:49 pm
May 292022
 

So much has changed in those two years. Two years ago, he died because he had taken a fatal dose of fentanyl, and now he’s been shot. But even more has changed:

Sigh.

 

 

 Posted by at 4:51 pm
May 282022
 

Ya may have noticed a dropoff in aerospace postings, and a reduction in yammering in general. This is largely due to being swamped… Book three  is due soon, and I’m up to my eyeballs. I have barely enough time to write the book, take note of the world going straight to hell, and occasionally bitch about it. Health concerns, a major time-suck a few months ago, have largely (though not completely) evaporated; financial issues remain. Feel free to buy stuff, subscribe to stuff, hit that tip jar.

And once I’m done with Book three… Book four looms.

 Posted by at 11:10 am
May 262022
 

This is a damned odd thing: across London (and apparently much of the rest of Britain), an inexplicably vast number of shops have opened up that purport to sell American candy and treats and junk food. I say “purport” because the prices are apparently insanely high, and they seem to always be empty. This is not the sort of thing that can be supported by any reading of free market capitalism; it’s really only explained by either criminal activity or socialism (but then, I repeat myself). A lot of locals believe them to be some sort of money laundering operation, but it’s vague on how that works. Perhaps someone comes in now and again and buys an armload of Oreos for the street price of, say, a trunkload of Afghani opium. If so, fine. But why are all these stores almost the exact same thing, that close to each other? And if they are a front for a criminal enterprise, why aren’t the British cops doing anything about them? Oh, wait… these are the same police who were scared of the grooming gangs and let them murder and traumatize vast numbers of British children rather than risk being called names…

 Posted by at 2:06 am