It looks impossible because everyone is extrapolating from existing orbital platforms and capabilities. The power supply ( solar panels ) doesn't have to be coincident with the ( heat generation ), paired satellites have been demonstrated with beaming between them, radiators are problematic is you think you need to keep the compute within conventional temperature ranges, but ultra-heat tolerant chips are already demonstrated, so very hot radiators leverage the T^4 factor - the chip itself can become the radiator surface. Outside the chip itself, the other heat source is the copper of the connections infrastructure, much of that is already being replaced by phonetics. NASA has been addressing heat issues since the early days of their nuclear propulsion R&D, and DoD with passive anti-ASAT tech and stealth. If that monolithic platform is separated out into a micro-constellation of distributed highly specialized thermal functions, some of the huge disadvantages become assets.

Somebody remind me again what the Academy Awards are ... something to do with the Special Olympics?

Take a job doing practically anything - then intensely observe every piece of software and hardware infrastructure in use, and what is and isn't working. covertly Interrogate coworkers, supervision, management, and build that mental model and the lexicon of the line of business. Then turn your resume upside down, mentioning all those 'keywords', and be upfront if it's superficial ( or not ). Don't remove the degree, delegate it to the 'education section at the bottom, and instead decompose it into a list task oriented experience, skill, and knowledge. Those are the hooks folks are looking for. Then send it to other firms in the same domain / value network. But more importantly, if you are haired into any sizeable company, they have internal job postings, and preferentially hire existing quality folks. Hiring outsiders from the public pool is a huge risk for any corporation versus someone that's already on the payroll and has some track record and has folks around them that the hiring manager can conversate with. The employment game is just another algorithm.

They are a waste of money because they are obsolete and never meant to be an ongoing program, but rather a technology test bed. The lessons learned have been incorporated into vastly superior systems, not only at NASA, but ESA, JAXA, and others - i.e. "The Global Observing SATellite for Greenhouse gases and Water cycle (GOSAT-GW), nicknamed "IBUKI GW", is a Japanese Earth observation satellite launched on June 29, 2025, to monitor greenhouse gases and water cycle variations. It builds upon the previous GOSAT and GOSAT-2 missions, enhancing global greenhouse gas monitoring capabilities. GOSAT-GW carries two main instruments: TANSO-3 for greenhouse gas observation and AMSR3 for water cycle monitoring" https://fanfun.jaxa.jp/countdo...

GOSAT-GW is orders of magnitude more capable than OCO, see capabilities at "The greenhouse gas observation mission with Global Observing SATellite for Greenhouse gases and Water cycle (GOSAT-GW): objectives, conceptual framework and scientific contributions" at https://progearthplanetsci.spr...

They are a waste of money because they are obsolete and never meant to be an ongoing program, rather a technology test bed. The lessons learned have been incorporated into vastly superior systems not only at NASA, but ESA, JAXA, and others - "The Global Observing SATellite for Greenhouse gases and Water cycle (GOSAT-GW), nicknamed "IBUKI GW", is a Japanese Earth observation satellite launched on June 29, 2025, to monitor greenhouse gases and water cycle variations. It builds upon the previous GOSAT and GOSAT-2 missions, enhancing global greenhouse gas monitoring capabilities. GOSAT-GW carries two main instruments: TANSO-3 for greenhouse gas observation and AMSR3 for water cycle monitoring" https://fanfun.jaxa.jp/countdo...

GOSAT-GW is orders of magnitude more capable than OCO, see capabilities at "The greenhouse gas observation mission with Global Observing SATellite for Greenhouse gases and Water cycle (GOSAT-GW): objectives, conceptual framework and scientific contributions" https://progearthplanetsci.spr...

Myth. See 'US Spy Satellites at Diffraction Limit for Resolution Since 1971' at https://www.nextbigfuture.com/... ..."A perfect 2.4-meter mirror observing in the visual (i.e. at a wavelength of 500 nm) has a diffraction-limited resolution of around 0.05 arcsec, which from an orbital altitude of 250 km corresponds to a ground sample distance of 0.06 m (6 cm, 2.4 inches). Operational resolution should be worse due to effects of the atmospheric turbulence. Astronomer Clifford Stoll estimates that such a telescope could resolve up to “a couple inches. Not quite good enough to recognize a face”

The NGA has declassified much of the spy satellite imagery ( film ) from that era, see GAMBIT-HEXAGON Images at https://www.nro.gov/About-NRO/...

Unless the license plate was mounted facing upwards on the car's roof, it would be an 'off nadir' sot, where all the factors get exponentially worse ( longer light path and more atmosphere to transit ).

"OCO-2 was designed to have a nominal mission time frame of at least two years, but the spacecraft has continued to fly well beyond its prime mission." from https://ocov2.jpl.nasa.gov/mis... ... OCO-2 launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base on Tuesday, July 1, 2014. ... "OCO-2 continues to serve as a pathfinder mission that validates a space-based measurement approach and analysis concept that can be used for future systematic CO2 monitoring missions." The operative word there is 'pathfinder', these missions were never meant to be ongoing, they were to prototype follow on design and deployment with more robust observation capabilities. The mission is redundant, technology and operations have improved. NASA, ESA, JAXA, and others share platforms and instruments, so the question really is not about a particular satelite but if the actual capability is lost, and it is not: "... the biggest change will result from data delivered by the upcoming Copernicus CO2 Monitoring Mission (CO2M)42 that is due for launch in 2025. CO2M will have an equatorial local overpass time of 11:30, focused on quantifying anthropogenic emissions of CO2 and methane and will form part of the European MVS measurement and verification support capacity" ( from https://www.nature.com/article... ).

For Traffic Coordination System for Space (TraCSS) to be sustainable long term and not vulnerable to political whims, the funding should be analogous to how aviation works ( like landing fees, gate slot rental, etc. ) which are aligned and proportional to the benefit received. Spread over the entire orbital industry, that amount of money is trivial to players like SpaceX, Amazon, etc. Really no different than tech companies contribution to Open Source software projects for building and maintaining common infrastructure.

'Zip Codes' are not actually 'areas', they are basically a contrivance, a polygon that encloses a collection of 'Letter Carrier Routes' ( https://www.marketmaps.com/car... ). Those Routes are optimized for all the standard logistics concerns, volume, number of end points, street network access, etc. Individual buildings can and often do have their own ZIP codes, especially in areas with high-volume businesses or institutions. Any reference scheme based on equal sized polygons is a mismatch to the variability in feature density, so there is a type of fractal hexagon mapping, Discrete Global Grids which can basically address any resolution and density of data ( https://www.sciencedirect.com/... ).

The Earth's direct gravitational effect isn't the only relativistic effect, the aspect that it is also rotating injects some interesting weirdness.

https://www.gpsworld.com/insid...

"There is more to relativity than the special theory and general theory. There is the Sagnac effect associated with our rotating reference frames attached to Earth, in which we’d like to determine a position. The principle of constancy of the speed of light cannot be applied in a rotating reference frame, where the paths of the radio rays are not straight lines, but spirals. (Receivers at rest on Earth are moving quite rapidly: 465 meters per second at the equator.) There is also the Shapiro delay associated with the slowing of electromagnetic waves as they near Earth, which amounts to a fraction of a nanosecond. "

The vertical markets for AR/VR which actually have an ROI on the premium cost have been the same ones since the late 1960s ( first full motion simulators from Evans & Sutherland, for example ) with one exception in the consumer space, gaming. And they saturate fairly quickly, especially since the display devices are actually a small part of the investment required for an actually useful application in the real world. They never 'cross the Chasm' so to speak despite the hopes of hypsters. I've been doing 3D solid modeling and simulation since the 1980's in the manufacturing vertical and the current VR/AR hypists have no idea how difficult it is to produce and harmonize the assets within a fairly narrow boundary ( one could also probably ask a Hollywood movie production team or game developer business ). It is hard in manufacturing where everyone is trying like hell to cooperate, most likely impossible with competing players all pushing their own proprietary interests to create walled gardens ( one of the AR/VR headset vendors actually required on to have and use a FaceBook account ).

Most of the traditional face 2 face venues have now been corrupted by woke attendance 'Codes of Conduct', where anyone can be the language police overhearing anything ( especially 'sharing your views' ) can take offense and create a kerfuffle.

"Analysis of physicochemical processes in volcanic column showed the possibility of formation of the following types of black carbon particles: single highly dispersed particles or their small fractal aggregates, particles of fibrous or encapsulate types associated with pyroclasts, graphite-like pyrocarbon particles.Moreover, the formation of particles of the second and third types is energetically more accessible than that of the first type. Data on the detection of carbonceous particles in the stratosphere and volcanic ash confirm the possibility of formation of all types of predicted particles and their identity with particles produced by known technological processes and detected after powerful volcanic eruptions in Kamchatka (Russia). The main limiting factors determining both the possibility and the lower boundary of the conditions for the formation of particles of different types have been identified: temperature and concentration of carbon-bearing gases in the volcanic column."

The authors ( actual only one was a geochemist ) diligently avoid any discussion of alternative sources of their indicators, or the simple fallacy that correlation doesn't mean causation. "During the peak climactic phase of the 2022 Hunga volcano eruption, the upper part of the plume reached 57 km3 injecting aerosols into the mesosphere. The impact of these aerosols and salts at such high atmospheric levels is not well known, but postulated effects include ozone destruction, radiative forcing and climate warming, variations in mesospheric clouds3, as well as impacts on regional and global climate" from "Atmosphere injection of sea salts during large explosive submarine volcanic eruptions" at https://www.nature.com/article...

Driving behavior in the US has no meaningful 'typical' because of the huge variety of conditions across the country - so beware the 'Ecological Fallacy' ( https://www.servicescape.com/b... ) when you see it. However, one can get a pretty good idea of what the commuter trip effort is happening in a region just by looking at the boundaries of the US Census Metropolitan Statistical Areas ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... ) and the associated CSBAs, because the populations actual commuter and other trips are the core of the definition.