I actually took a look at the airport in google maps to see if I could identify the spot. There isn't enough to go on from the article. Some parts seem to definitely have ground-covering vegetation between the trees, but it's less clear in other parts, where it does look fairly brown between the trees. That could just be brown vegetation, however. Overall, the ground in the pictures seems far too devoid of small plants close to the crater. I'm definitely thinking that there's a layer of dirt there covering everything.

Trees being uprooted by sinkholes tend to be falling into the hole, not away from it. It's hard to see in the photo, but that tree looks like it's had most, but not all leaves blown off it. As for where the ejecta vanished to, it looks like where it vanished to is the area immediately around the crater. We don't have any sort of before and after picture or a picture of another part of the same wooded area, but the part that we can see seems to be all dirt except for where there are taller trees. It might be the case that there's normally nothing but bare dirt visible, or it might be the case that all the ground covering vegetation is covered in the thick layer of ejected dirt. There also seem to some loose, recently deposited, rocks outside the crater.

The part where you said "If the Soviet Union had managed LEO or the moon, do you think they would not have used it?" is the confusing part. It's confusing because you seem to have written it from a parallel universe where the Soviet Union never "managed LEO". If by "managed" you meant using taking command of LEO militarily, then the sentence in question is a tautology and one wonders why you even wrote it.

Amen. I have been thinking something like that for years. MBA programs are like pernicious cults. So many failures and yet MBA's just keep on hiring clones of themselves.

The idea that a company can be run by someone who knows nothing about what the company does is a prime example of MBA delusion. I know of a food manufacturing plant who hired an MBA whose previous experience was in running a train assembly plant. All he could do was to sit upstairs and stair at graphs. Meanwhile the plant function decayed and profitability disappeared. The person he replaced had started his career from the plant floor, and had run the plant profitably for many years. Bring in an MBA and within two years, the damage was done. He was fired.

The other obvious examples: Apple - started by Steve Jobs (not an MBA). Makes Schully (an MBA) CEO. Almost goes bankrupt. Rehires Steve Jobs and becomes one of the world's most successful companies.

Space X, Solar City, Tesla, Paypal started by Elon Musk (not an MBA). All four are remarkably successful and disruptive businesses.

The lesson: People who actually understand the nuts and bolts of the businesses they run make far better leaders than those who don't have a clue what their businesses do. Surprise, surprise.

The article you linked to didn't say that Tesla drive units fail after a year. It said that the warranty used to be 8 years or 125,000 miles and that they've just extended it. There were a few anecdotes provided, but the article itself admitted that the source was inherently biased. So, basically, car parts wear out and some cars are defective from the factory. True for cars whether they're gasoline, diesel, LPG, electric, etc.

To quote the wikipedia page on molten salt batteries

I'm sorry, you're attacking Musk because car parts wear out eventually? And he's extending the warranty for some of those parts?

This is sort of a confusing sentence. The Soviet Union _did_ manage LEO in just about every way you can "manage" LEO. They also got probes, but not people, to the moon.

My original comment referred to war between the Soviet Union and the US. I didn't say Russia.

But it was not a formalized declared "shooting war" in which Americans explicitly targeted Soviets and Soviets explicitly targeted Americans. What we saw were undeclared skirmishes. There was no fanning of Soviet public opinion that Americans were killing thousands of Soviets and that Soviet citizens had to enlist to revenge those killings. If Americans were explicitly and publically killing Russians today (or the reverse), it would be the beginning of World War III. Any policy that puts us unnecessarily close to such an incident is reckless.

Assuming that you are implying American boots/bombs on the ground in the Ukraine, are you crazy? I mean seriously. Are you? There is in my opinion a dangerous detachment from reality in some circles of American political discussion about confronting Russia. Perhaps you may feel my language is inflamatory. But I get kind of disturbed when so many people, including those in power, put forward actions which would likely lead to thermonuclear war.

Looking back at history, there has never been a shooting war between the Soviet Union and the US. Never. The Cold War? It was always fought between proxies of the great powers. We would sell arms to pro-US or anti-Soviet interests (like in 1980's Afghanistan), or we would directly confront pro-Soviet interests (like in Vietnam). We came close to a shooting war with the Soviets more than once (the Bay of Pigs in Cuba). But such a war never happened, because those in power knew that such a war would inevitably decay into a thermonuclear war that would likely end western civilization with the press of a button.

The proper response to this is to strengthen military forces in new NATO member states surrounding Russia, including US boots on the ground. This will make a clear line that Russia knows it cannot cross without provoking all-out war. Unfortunately Ukraine is not part of NATO. We might be able to sell arms to Ukraine, but there are risks and limitations to this. What must be made clear to Russia is that if it enters Ukraine, it will face profound economic isolation. If it goes further it must be clear that it will result in WWIII. Thus we end in a stalemate. Not unlike the Cold War.

Europa is probably a non-starter due to the high radiation, but Callisto gets two orders of magnitude less and Ganymede about three orders of magnitude less than that.

If their method requires 50 people to move a 2.5 ton stone block at .5 meters per second, why not just use some poles and yokes and just have the 50 men pick up and carry the stone at twice that speed? That's 50 kilograms each. Heavy, sure, but not more than a worker can carry. Obviously the rarer, heavier stones would require other techniques anyway.

In the spirit of pedantry I feel inclined to point out that what you say would only be the case if the "hill" is a 90 degree cliff.