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Comment With what Budget? (Score 5, Informative) 89

NASA's annual budget for most of the 1960s was over $60B, adjusted for inflation, whereas now its $20B. Also, the risk appetite now is much less and the current moon objectives are much more challenging. Partly this can be offset by better technology and past experience, but it still seems much too optimistic to me. Not to mention that Trump is about as far as you can get from Kennedy.

Comment Booster issues remain (Score 5, Informative) 61

The rocket booster also managed to relight 13 engines, as planned, to steer itself back toward a controlled landing. Only when Super Heavy attempted to relight its engines for a controlled landing burn over the Gulf waters did problems arise. The landing was still controlled, though Huot said the vehicle was traveling a bit faster than the company had hoped when it made touchdown.

This isn't quite right. The 13-engine boost-back burn ended early, contributing to a splashdown about 20km short of the target. So there were problems before the landing burn's partial relight. The booster splashdown was close enough that there was no danger to the public, but it was pretty far from the goal of landing as if to be caught by an imaginary tower at a precise, predetermined ocean location, as some previous boosters have done.

Comment Where's the FCC in all this? (Score 5, Interesting) 172

Apart from warrantless mass surveillance, how to you legally operate a cell tower without an FCC licence? Is this just the government deciding not to follow its own rules? Surely the telcos, who paid good money for their spectrum, and who can't enjoy the service disruptions these government devices cause, must be pissed. Or has the FCC issued cellphone tower licences to law enforcement? Can these devices even connect calls and, if not, how could they get a licence?

Comment GoDaddy's just worried about its profits (Score 3, Insightful) 20

U.S.-based GoDaddy has challenged the directives before a larger bench of judges at the Delhi High Court, according to a Reuters review of non-public filings. It says the ruling will affect legitimate businesses that have names similar to big brands.

I bet GoDaddy makes tons more money from typo-squatters and scammers than from legitimate businesses with similar names.

Comment Re:How Will They Get Them Up? (Score 2) 47

They've used 3 Falcon 9 launches so far and contracted for 10 more. SpaceX is happy to launch them. Remember, SpaceX developed Starlink in large part because they were short on customers for Falcon 9, because it can launch so often. This way, they became their own best customer by monetising a huge constellation. Having Starlink competitors launching with them too is icing on the cake.

Comment Re:Transmission lines not power plants (Score 2) 216

That's literally the dream scenario for a power plant because for many types of generation having to ramp up and down is more costly than delivering a fixed amount of power.

Unfortunately, it's the dream scenario for the old kinds of power stations that we want to be moving away from, like coal, gas and nuclear. Solar and wind like loads that can adapt to their inherent variability because, otherwise, expensive storage is required.

Comment The earth's rotation spec up (Score 2) 50

after 2016, when we had our last leap second. The next leap second might need to be negative. I wonder if that's related. I'm talking about the rotation of the crust, but conservation of angular momentum would suggest that a change in the core's would require an equal and opposite change in the rotation of some other part of the earth.

Comment Re:Pretty ballsy for a US District Judge (Score 3, Interesting) 67

every member country must extend the same copyright protections to the creations of those in other nations as though they were their own citizens

But member countries don't have to extend the same copyright protections as the US. Just because Anna's Archive is infringing copyright doesn't mean that the .se registrar is. Sure, a .se DNS record assists Anna's Archive in its activities, but different countries disagree on whether that's grounds for forcing the registrar to take the record down.

along with a minimum set of standards such as no illegal copying and distribution of copyrighted works

And maintaining a DNS record doesn't meet that standard; it's just a directory listing telling people how to obtain infringing copies.

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