One might argue that an ESA astronaut doing cosplay while on the Space Station is a waste of time. I would counter with: “you’re an idiot. Watch this awesomeness.”
2022 A Space Odyssey. Turns out, yes, you can walk with Velcro shoes. Slowly, very very slowly 😉#ASpaceOdyssey #MissionMinerva @esa @esaspaceflight @Space_Station pic.twitter.com/WI69RXmObE
— Samantha Cristoforetti (@AstroSamantha) October 8, 2022
To compare with:
This estimate appears to come from the FSB. Normally you’d expect them to underestimate the losses in order to try to make things look not quite so bad. So… is this an underestimate? Is it reasonably accurate? Or is it in the FSB’s interests to try to make things look *worse?* If the latter… one might think they’re doing it to make Ukraine look like enough of a threat to retroactively justify the invasion. or maybe they’re doing it to make the invasion look like enough of an unmitigated disaster to help spur on some home-grown regime change. Shrug.
In any event: good job, Vlad.
The Unwanted Blog at Up-Ship.com is now the backup blog. The new *official* Unwanted Blog is here: https://unwantedblog.com
The rate of failures at the server has just become freakin’ untenable. Further backup communications at twitter.com/UnwantedBlog
New posts will continue to appear here… for as long as they can. Posts will appear at the new blog first, then here delayed a bit.
Assuming the video is accurate (these days, who knows), it appears that a Ukrainian soldier swatted a Russian cruise missile on its way to a war crime using a standard shoulder-launched short range missile.
It’s unclear to me what system was used, as the video is pretty potato in quality. Doesn’t look to me like a Stinger; not enough stuff on the front of the launcher. Maybe a Grail, Gremlin or Piorun.
A MANPAD vs a cruise missile makes sense: cruise missiles fly low, generally subsonic, have no countermeasures such as flares and do not try to maneuver to avoid getting hit. On the other hand their engines are small and do not put out nearly as much thermal energy as the turbojets of a fighter; but on the gripping hand, they are also not as IR shielded as the exhausts of a stealthy airplane or a battlefield helicopter. So the trick with using a MANPAD to take out a cruise missile is to be in the right place at the right time, and to be on the ball. It’s impossible to know what apartment building or orphanarium or kitten hospital the Russian cruise missile was targeted to obliterate, but it’s safe to say that the missileer here just saved a fair number of civilians a lot of grief.
A straightforward explanation of why rockets sound the way they do:
Many years ago there was some random internet crackpot arguing that active sound cancellation systems could be added to the tail end of a rocket to make it virtually silent. Watch this and see if you can figure out how to use a point-generated cancellation wave to silence a noise-generating system that is essentially a cone dozens of meters long.
A political test in any science other than “political science” is an abomination. So, of course, here comes the United States Federal Government instituting political tests: you have to pledge allegiance to a scientifically irrelevant political ideology *and* do a performative written struggle session explaining just how much you love Dear Leaders wise policies and how you, yes, YOU, plan on instituting them rather than doing, you know, science.
From the Department of Energy, which has apparently solved all our energy problems (did they finally crack fusion? Do the neighborhood-scale fusion powerplants start shipping next week?), comes this nightmare:
That is why, beginning in FY 2023, the Office of Science is adding a new requirement to our solicitation processes: applicants must now submit a plan for Promoting Inclusive and Equitable Research, or PIER Plan, along with their research proposals. PIER Plans should describe the activities and strategies that investigators and research personnel will incorporate to promote diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility in their research projects. The complexity and detail of a PIER Plan is expected to increase with the size of the research team and the number of personnel to be supported. This will be a requirement for proposals submitted to all Office of Science solicitations, as well as invited proposals from the DOE national laboratories. The PIER Plans will be evaluated under a new merit review criterion as part of the peer review process.
I have high hopes of lawsuits galore. And I would have hopes that, if the FBI was actually up to the task of doing its job, they’d be investigating the people pushing this crap. I would not be at all surprised to find some foreign involvement here. Why do the hard work of competing against aggressive and enthusiastic science when you can convince the gullible chuckleheads on the other side to eat themselves and corrupt their own science with pseudo-religious garbage?
Prior to impact, it took Dimorphos 11 hours and 55 minutes to orbit its larger parent asteroid Didymos. Astronomers used ground-based telescopes to measure how Dimorphos’ orbit changed after impact.Now, it takes Dimorphos 11 hours and 23 minutes to circle Didymos. The DART spacecraft changed its orbit by 32 minutes.
Initially, astronomers expected DART to be a success if it shortened the trajectory by 10 minutes.
Neato. A pity we didn’t have more spacecraft on-scene to get better bomb damage assessment images in the minutes, hours and days that followed. It kinda seems like the impact really trashed the rubble pile.
This happens in both the UK and the USA (and elsewhere): people with some sort of cause decide that they way to get their point across is to block traffic. This isn’t merely an inconvenience; this can cost people jobs and, in the case below, doctors appointments, and quite possibly worse.. In the US, it is perfectly legal to protest: the Constitution by way of the 1st Amendment guarantees it:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Note, though, two important points:
Blocking traffic is not petitioning the Government. And when you intentionally piss off the public, you’re hardly “peaceably assembling.” For people trapped in their cars, I don’t see why it’s not considered kidnapping or at least unlawful arrest.
The British police are seen here doing *nothing.* They are in effect enabling the protestors in their efforts to ruin the lives of regular folk. But they also don’t seem to be doing much to stop the few decent citizens who are dragging the jackholes out of the road. So how would they respond if someone were to reasonably gently drag someone off a road and zip-tip them to a pole? Rifle through their pockets? Relieve them of their shoes and other apparel? Bundle them into unmarked vans and drive off with them?
The Danish study shows a link between PFAS chemicals, often used in plastic products including food packaging, and now found in *rain,* and drastically reduced sperm counts. This is a possible explanation for why the developed world’s sperm counts have crashed while the undeveloped world’s sperm counts remain fairly high.
It is unlikely that reduced sperm counts are the sole result of these chemicals, which mess with hormones. It would not surprise me that they also trash testosterone levels, another problem in considerable evidence these days. This would not be the first time that science has shown widespread problems due to chemicals in consumer products: tetra-ethyl lead in gasoline and lead in paint led to whole generations of kids being stupider and more violent than they should have been. And then there’s tobacco.
So what will be done about this? If the link can be firmly established, PFAS chemicals *should* be removed from the market. But I wonder about pushback: not so much from the chemical and plastics industries… but from the Alphabet People. If it is scientifically shown that the existence of everything from bog-standard homosexuals to low-testosterone “soyboys” to dangerhaired weirdos to a large fraction of those feeling the need to transition are all influenced to an important degree by the existence of PFAS… then deleting the chemicals might be seen as anti-Alphabet People. If nothing else, the following generations should presumably have fewer Alphabet People. I suspect this won’t go over all that well.
The alternative seems to be a population crash in the developed world, followed by a complete takeover by the undeveloped world. I suspect that this, too, might be something that some people want to have happen.