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Submission + - trump proposes nasa budget be slashed by 23% (arstechnica.com)

Mr. Dollar Ton writes: right in the wake of the lunar mission achieving a major milestone and on top of its 1.5 trillion military budget proposal, the trump administration want to save money by slashing nasa budget significantly.

tired of winning yet?

Comment Re:diverse? a woman? a person of color? a canuck? (Score 1) 183

Can we stop pretending that America is still stuck in the 1960's? The overwhelming majority of Americans no longer have a Jim Crow mindset, and no longer regard as remarkable when a woman or "person of color" (i.e., an ordinary person) does something that white people have been doing for years. Diversity is ordinary now, and has been for the past few decades.

Diversity is like a religion with some people - no matter how much you (Americans) repent, you are still a sinner and in need of grace and forgiveness from TPB.

Submission + - Using a VPN May Subject You to NSA Spying (stacker.news)

joshuark writes: Lawmakersare pressing the nation's top intelligence official to publicly disclose whether Americans who use commercialVPN servicesrisk being treated as foreigners under United States surveillance law—a classification that would strip them of constitutional protections against warrantless government spying. Lawmakers pressed Tulsi Gabbard to reveal whether using a VPN can strip Americans of their constitutional protections against warrantless surveillance.

In a letter sent Thursday to Director of National IntelligenceTulsi Gabbard, the lawmakers say that because VPNs obscure a user's true location, and because intelligence agencies presume that communications of unknown origin are foreign, Americans may be inadvertently waiving the privacy protections they're entitled to under the law.

Several federal agencies, including the FBI, the National Security Agency, and the Federal Trade Commission, haverecommendedthat consumers use VPNs toprotect their privacy. But following that advice may inadvertently cost Americans the very protections they're seeking.

Comment Mars is still the goal (Score 1) 73

The Moon is target practice. We need to get away from innovative bespoke engineering, into industrial mass production with continuous improvement. To do that we need to fly often. Mars just doesn't have the launch window availability. The biggest part of the challenge is that we were born in the bottom of a deep well. To toss enough stuff out of the well for a long journey is critical. Boosters that reliably fly on time often and cheaply enough to get ships and fuel out of the well. Ships that carry fuel into orbit and return over and over since the vast majority of the material we need to send out of the well isn't payloads or ships, it's fuel. Kilotons of fuel. Once the factories and processes are set up for that going far beyond the Moon is fairly easy. But with a narrow opportunity every two years that's not going to happen in a human lifespan. It's not enough refinement cycles per year.

I see this accelerating the Mars objective, not deferring it.

Comment Good for local hauling (Score 1) 179

But probably not all that great for long hauling. Though I believe there is an easy solution. A small second trailer shaped like a cone for aerodynamics that is full of battery and is connected by cable to the semi. Then for long hauling you simply stop off at a depot and drop off the batter trailer and hook up a charged one.

Comment If they take away legal recourse (Score 1) 243

Then they leave only violence as a recourse. There needs to be a legal recourse. Otherwise, those who suffer the consequences (e.g. black lung, asbestos, who knows what from the thousands of pesticides, etc). Then victims with no legal recourse will be left to resort to illegal recourse and violence.

Submission + - Ryugu asteroid samples contain all DNA and RNA building blocks

symbolset writes: More and more science is pushing back the Drake equation, reducing the parameters necessary for life to form. From the discovery that organic molecules are formed in the little red dot protogalaxies at the edge of our visible universe to AI models that identify a self replicating RNA molecule in only 45 nucleotides. Now comes Toshiki Koga et al with a study published in the journal Nature Astronomy reported on by phys.org finding all the nucleobases of RNA and DNA in pristine samples collected from the asteroid Ryugu. The bases being uracil adenine, guanine, cytosine and thymine. Ammonia was also found.

The universe it seems is made of soup.

Comment Re:Helium can be re-used? (Score 4, Interesting) 125

Is joke of course. Was angling for the same joke.

3He is normal helium atom with an extra neutron, hoped to be used in some forms of fusion. It's not considered radioactive. Emitted by the sun it's trapped in lunar rock possibly at concentrations of up to 50 parts per billion but more likely 5-10ppb. The utility of extracting it from the Moon is hotly debated. On Earth isolating it from normal helium involves the same sort of centrifuge used to isolate isotopes of uranium, radium, hydrogen but there is far less of it than in lunar soil.

This is not actually the case in the subject at hand. It's all normal helium. When cooled enough all other gases will precipitate out as they freeze - including Hydrogen - leaving only helium as a gas and so easily isolated. That's actually why it's valuable since it's the only gas that will boil off at temperatures so low that the conductors immersed in the fluid will superconduct supporting the currents necessary for the intense electromagnets used in imaging and such. /Explaining nerd jokes since 1983

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