The Guardian article says this was actually the first flight test of the new plastic based engine. So I suppose it worked for a few seconds in flight, nothing more.

Frame 2 from the ground based photos seems to show that thrust from the engine reduced before the explosion. I wonder if something came loose and obstructed the outlet of the engine, causing an increase in pressure. Sort of a blowback situation.

Consistency is a big issues with solid fuels. The shuttle SRBs were paired during construction, and the fuel was poured at the same rate into each engine from the same source. That way if the engine developed more or less thrust because of a variation in the consistency of the solid fuel, it would happen on both sides of the shuttle. Liquid fuels mix themselves, but a mixing problem is locked in to solid fuels until you burn them. I just wonder if a mistake was made during construction which caused a sudden increase in engine pressure, above that caused by the greater efficiency of this new fuel.

There is one switch in the US which will disable the whole system. GPS works badly for aircraft because they change altitude. Most users have a fixed altitude, so a small degradation in the system can cause large positional errors.

Its used in Australia as well, in parallel with GPS and radar. The aircraft transmits a signal, and multiple ground stations compare the arrival time.

It looks like an INI file for describing different layers in windows.

Can we still slashdot things?

I had the impression the Model S has two motors between the rear wheels, one for each wheel.

Its hard to miss. Basically a wall from the Arctic to the Antarctic.

He doesn't mention Chinese tea houses. Tea has been important in China for thousands of years but Polo makes no mention of it.

It made the jump because of the large local population, fed by modern transportation systems. Previously it hadn't been possible to support a million people in such a small area.

In fact I know a guy who works as a butcher. He got badly sick at one point from exposure to blood from a butchered animal. Not sure if it happened because he had an open wound. It does seem to be an occupational hazard for butchers.

Yes I would agree. Its just that I used to hang around the test stand in the engine factory for the Australian fleet of FA/18 jets and those things are very loud.

IIRC there was a product advertised some years ago. Its basically a contractors truck with an integrated generator. The focus is on supplying power to a construction site, and traction runs off the same power source.

I can't wait for to be woken at 5 AM when the turbine generator fires up outside my bedroom window ;(