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Comment Annoying one-sidedness (Score 4, Insightful) 59

The two Shuttle disasters have generated and continue to generate far more media attention including long-form documentaries than the entire rest of the Space Shuttle program put together. Tell me more about what those 133 missions did, instead of always and only playing the disaster tourist.

Comment Recommended reading (Score 4, Informative) 23

'Across the airless wilds' by Earl Swift is an account of the design and development of the Apollo LRV. From the proposals made by various companies, to the eventual mission experience on Apollo 15-17 and the major difference it made to those missions.

The LRV story is closely related to the scientific field of terramechanics (i.e. how to move vehicles through rough terrain). M.G. Bekker was a pioneer in this field, doing studies for the Polish army in the 1920s and 1930s, before fleeing as the Nazis invaded. He ended up in Canada, then the US, working for the US military and writing what's still the standard textbook on the topic.

Comment Re:Excellent Illustration (Score 3, Informative) 64

No. She's providing an insider perspective (her own work is in this area) that is thankfully free of the "scientists are stunned" nonsense. She presents popular science in the sense that she makes complicated subjects accessible to non-scientists, not in the sense that she sensationalizes things.

Comment Re:Hell no (Score 2) 39

This is behavior I observe every day: drop any file into a folder that is watched by OneDrive, and OneDrive will immediately lock the file and make it impossible for you to open or rename it while it synchronizes the file. Only when syncing is done are you allowed access to your files. I even made a batchfile that reduces the priority of onedrive.exe to 'lowest'. That did not help.

Comment Hell no (Score 2) 39

Onedrive is already an insane resource hog that makes file access slower than what I had on a ZX Spectrum. I do not want it to waste more of my time by analyzing every file with a LLM. Because of course Microsoft will be stupid enough to give that process a higher priority for file access than the user's priority, which means every file that ends up in a folder watched by Onedrive gets locked for ages before mere peons are allowed to open it.

Comment Re:Not Going To The Moon (Score 1) 21

the only people who believe the moon landings were faked, were conned by charlatans.

As evidence for the moon landings, we have:
- 382 kg of moon rock,
- hours of live TV and film,
- more than 8000 photos,
- scientific results from every experiment they did,
- thousands of technical documents that show how they did it.

We can analyze this evidence, and have been doing that for 50 years now, In all that time, not one of these items has been found to be falsified. The Apollo videos show they're in 1/6 g gravity, which we cannot replicate on Earth today, which proves those videos were not recorded on Earth, but on the moon.

In addition, we have confirmation from multiple independent sources:
- amateur astronomers could see the CSM/LM on their way to the Moon.
- in several countries including the USSR, people monitored Apollo spacecraft radio transmissions. Radio astronomers used their telescopes to monitor transmissions, confirming they were transmitting from the moon.
- in the 50 years since the landings, thousands of geologists all over the world have examined lunar rock samples and found they don't look like the rocks we find on Earth.
- The NASA Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and India's Chandrayaan-2 orbiter has photographed the Apollo landing sites, with enough resolution to show the foot tracks of the astronauts.
- Japan's Selene lunar orbiter has mapped the Apollo landing sites and found the topography matches that seen in Apollo photos.
- laser reflectors were left on the moon by the Apollo missions, and can be pinged from Earth by anyone with a powerful laser.

Comment Re:Isn't it ironic (Score 1) 276

I have two fibre-reinforced plastic bags that I use for my groceries. They are about 20 years old and still in good shape. That's 20x52 trips to the supermarket they have survived.
As an additional bonus, I can load them with 20 kg apiece and be sure the bottom won't fall out. Try that with a paper bag.

Comment Re:Its time to show the technocrats the door (Score 2) 186

Populists are a menace to civilization. For every problem, they have a proposed 'solution' that is simple, sounds attractive and does not actually solve the problem.
Invite the populists in, and you end up with an authoritarian, undemocratic state that goes to hell in a handbasket.

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