...That's one rainbow world down, we'll be swimming in sweet, sweet Melnorme trade credits in no time now.

I'll second that. You haven't known pain until you try to get Ultima 7 to run on a system with a Proaudio Spectrum 16 sound card.

I'm pretty sure the parent was being sarcastic, man.

There are currently almost 20,000 pieces of space debris at least 5 cm in diameter that we are tracking. The addition of a few hundred CubeSats which generally have a short lifetime in orbit is not a significant increase in the orbital space debris load.

RTFA, dumbass. She did report it but the Polish police declined to file a report.

Look up Project Orion. It turns out that making that kind of shock absorber is actually quite technically feasible. Somewhat ironically, riding to orbit on a stream of nuclear fireballs is a lot simpler than how we're doing it now. One big advantage is that you are no longer mass-limited and so you don't need to make as many compromises to the system design to keep things light.

Huh. So colonialism and fascism got bumped from the top by annoying busy-bodies that occasionally result in people losing their jobs...

Sit down and take a damn chill pill man. Passive aggressive people getting offended over stupid shit is nothing new and isn't going to go away. Deal.

I just wanted to say that I fervently hope that Ferric Fang goes by the nickname 'Iron'.

Wow, I've gotten used to running into worthless shitpiles on the internet but I honestly hope you go die in a fire.

Holy shit, you win the biggest moron I've seen on the internet all month award.

I would point out the irony in everything you've just said but I'm afraid that distance it would go over your head would just add to the crowding in LEO.

I know, right? It's such a shame that MS won the browser wars and killed off the competition.

Millions of people also think the Bach Brandenburg concertos, Firefly, Aliens, Terminator2, the Curiosity rover, seasons 3-10 of the Simpsons and Raiders of the lost Ark were pretty awesome. Your point?

You're missing the point, though. A John Deere tractor is much better than what they're making and I'm sure they would agree with that assessment. Their machines are cheaper and more importantly much simpler so that they can be built or have major repairs done on site with very simple metalworking tools.

That's not much of a selling point in the US but in a developing nation, it's a game changer. We could give a bunch of poor farmers John Deer tractors and when they break down, those farmers can't afford replacement parts and can't make parts. This has been the bane of most of the humanitarian efforts of the past. We airdrop in and give the locals a bunch of tech that makes sense for the US, pat them on the back and jet back out. Then we get all surprised when all that shit stops working 2 years later. OTOH, if those farmers have built up the metalworking infrastructure that's part of the package, they can keep these machines running for much longer.

Of course there's certain parts like the ICE and hydraulic pumps that won't be buildable for the foreseeable future this way but they're fairly inexpensive and widely available.

In the US, we benefit from a gigantic industrial infrastructure full of institutional knowledge. That's why a John Deere makes sense here. Unfortunately, the vast majority of that knowledge is proprietary and locked up if you don't have enough money. The group's aim is to try and at least come up with a skeleton of open source infrastructure/institutional knowledge that anyone can access, regardless of wealth.

Obviously they've got a tremendous way to go before they can even say they're scratching the bottom of that goal but it's a laudable one.

The whole antibiotics thing that's post-industrial revolution was pretty nifty, IMO.

I'll agree that they're a bit scattered in scope but they are doing interesting things. I've been following the group fora few years now and it seems that the overall aim is moving away from a 'rebuild civilization' kit towards open source, low-cost farm equipment for smaller farms and developing nations. There's a strong emphasis on low cost, modular design where the metalworking is all very simple. That alone is definitely worth the cost of admission.