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Comment Re:satellites (Score 1) 403

Most of the US Navy's nuclear ships are setup to be refueled at least once in the expected lifetime

Yes, that's why I specifically referred to CVN 78 which no longer has that requirement. The latest nuclear submarines have also been designed to do away with the midlife refueling, since that's a horrendously expensive 2-year-long drydock job.

Comment Re:satellites (Score 3, Informative) 403

The Voyager RTGs are decaying, NASA expects output power to drop below the point where it can keep a single instrument going around 2025.
The Pioneers are already long past the point where they can't send a strong enough signal to be detected.
The latest nuclear power plants for the US Navy have been designed to run without refueling for the life of the ship. That's 50 years for aircraft carriers, so the USS Gerald R Ford (CVN 78) is capable of functioning until 2065. Now I don't know how stable a nuclear power plant is when left on its own, but potentially this'll live much longer than the Voyagers.

Comment Re:hey, y'all, watch this! (Score 1) 49

The LR weighed 210 kg on Earth, 35 kg on the Moon.

I don't think he's putting so much force on it he'd lift one wheel though: he's standing downhill from the vehicle and he's holding on to it above its CoG. He'd have to be pulling the vehicle to lift that wheel, but he should be pushing it to prevent it sliding down the hillside.
More likely the rover is sitting on uneven ground and the right front suspension has bottomed out.

Comment Good idea, stupid form factor (Score 0) 514

The battery is shown installed hanging on a wall. Its dimensions are H: 1300mm W: 860mm D:180mm, so it's too wide to fit in a closet. You also can't fit it under e.g. a workbench (in any orientation), so your only installation option is a blank expanse of wall. It also looks like the front panel is curved, so you can't install it lying on its back and then put anything on top of it.

So once again marketing (hey, let's make a glossy design that stands out and is impossible to hide) wins over practicality (let's make a rectangular box that can be installed somewhere unobtrusive).

Comment Re:Enhanced images have always had a downside (Score 1) 28

Even when I was growing up (in the 1950s) my first impressions of astronomy were formed by illustrations of the solar system--shown from a point of view outside the system, with the orbits displayed as brightly colored, ellipses ...

Now that would be cool; standing at a point where the ecliptic plane is right overhead, and seeing a bright red ribbon erupting from the ground, extending straight up as far as the eye can see. The eruption point would move at 1600 km/h and the ribbon itself would move up at 29 km/s. I'm so disappointed this doesn't happen :-)

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