You don't need Star Trek to see the same tendency in the real life. OTOH, the 45-year old scientific instrument really brings more pride than scientific data these days.

Most of the power loss is from the thermoelectric cell degradation and not from the less heat being produced by Pu-238. .

A weak theory either. Maybe someone buys themselves an indulgence - see, we are not completely and absolutely pro-Russian, we are doing something for the US - knowing very well that the bill won't happen and they won't have to pay the political price thereof.

... somewhat. The authors know pretty well that the bill won't go.

Bulgaria is in the middle of a political crisis. The council of ministers is a temporary one assembled by the president because the previous parliament failed to elect an ordinary government. It is likely that the present parliament won't create a viable council of ministers either. On the other hand, the president and his ministers don't have much of a support in the current parliament configuration. Whatever they did draft is not going to be approved by the parliament if it is ever scheduled for vote. The parliament dealing with an IP-related law when a great deal of other outstanding issues require immediate attention is also unlikely. In short, the draft in question is going to be at least profoundly reworked before it could be put for vote. It is much more likely to be scrapped altogether.

It doesn't come true if a great deal of people keep repeating it. Russian gas is cheaper, that's all. It is russian leaders that will go nowhere without the EU money.

The Japanese group just invented the basic survival skills of a domestic cat.

All failed? Like, Airbus?

Looks like you never lived in an economy so fscked that the USD behave just like XBT in regard to your local currency. Or did you? We ended up using USD and different EUR precursors (like DEM) and not the local one.

Those people probably never, ever tried to move gravel or sand around. Otherwise, they would know that if you want the ultimate tool that dissipates any mechanical energy, gravel and/or sand are exactly the materials you should look first. Just a brief look at any construction site or mining operation will show a number of energy-hungry technologies (excavators, bulldozers, trucks, transport belts and so on) used just to put the damn substances somewhere else. Diesel exhaust, dust, noise, people wearing helmets and half or 2/3 of the machinery always broken... priceless, environmentally-friendly picture. Compare that to an artificial lake used for recreation, sports, fishing, water supply for households and irrigation, flood control.. and somehow also storing electricity.

Where I live, we don't have hurricanes. But you CANNOT open a gas station without installing a generator capable of powering the whole business, including lights, pumps and cash registers. The generator is expected to have a separate tank and to run on something that the gas station sells (usually diesel). The same AFAIK is in the whole EU and the whole post-Soviet world. Isn't it the same in US ?

I'll try to translate: The construction of the Rome's subway is halted because of archaeology research. Tools from the era when the subway construction started are found in the borehole.

Sextant is good and even a relatively small ships carry more than one. Highly trained, my ass. A day of training for a clever man, that is. Or a month for a barely reading, but motivated one.

And I don't imply that the sextant has to be mechanical and human-operated. A simple webcam w/ an infrared filter and not so complex software can do. There is an app for that (probably!).

> Unlike aircraft, ships lack a back-up navigation system

Really? Ships had pretty reliable means of open sea navigation for at good 1000++y before GPS and even before the first aircraft, gradually improved trough the centuries. Paper maps, magnetic compass, more or less accurate clocks, tools for optical measurements? Whatever happened to them?

LORAN is good, but it is just as vulnerable as GPS and is pretty much the same basic technology, having infrastructure on the ground instead of space.

OTOH, sun/star/compass-based navigation can be improved by modern technology and still work autonomously on the ship. The fog and the clouds, preventing optical measurements by naked eye are almost non-issue in infrared. And more, now we have modern laser gyroscopes and precise accelerometers for a good inertial add-ons.

It used to be here for ages. It is called STDs. Well, it doesn't cover all of the microbiome, but still works.