They do refurbish stuff that’s dunking in the ocean though, like the fairings (which do also contain active parts).

Also the dragon spacecraft. It lands in the sea and gets reused.

Charles Bolden once remarked that the congress would have shut down the Apollo program if they lost vehicles at the rate spacex does now.

Well, yes. But it was really a show of force towards the soviets and anything that could be construed as ‘failure’ would be sensitive. And it was all public money so things were very political and optics mattered. Society was also hugely different in the 60s.

Also in the years before mercury a lot of stuff went boom, of course. Apollo was built upon those failures.

I have a feeling that for SpaceX the opposite is true. Every time they shoot something up it’s press coverage, even if it blows up. As long as they’re not blowing up people they don’t get the boeing effect.

Consider the first flight. They decided to launch it without a flame deflector or a deluge system. They thought that it would be OK based on a hot test of the superheavy at half thrust. I don’t think any other rocket company would have made the same decision. Even if the concrete slabs didn’t shatter into a thousand pieces, the reflected shock wave would have been damaging enough to the engine compartment. They predictably lifted off with several failed and failing engines.

Yeah that was indeed very stupid. Agreed. Especially for the environment. They were right to get flak for that.

If this afterthought feels like a conspiracy theory, remember the time when Musk made a change to starship after Tim Dodd (earlyastronaut) asked him a question on the same? Or the time when someone on Twitter asked Musk why they didn’t start two raptor engines and then shutoff the underperforming one during Starship’s flip maneuver at landing? They do this now. Afterthoughts are evidently not a rare thing at SpaceX.

Could be yes… But don’t forget, it is their money. They’re clearly rushing to market and cutting corners, but as long as they don’t blow up people or property, it’s kinda their problem. And it has worked for them with Falcon 9.

I do agree they are kinda cowboys but they do also have a point in some ways: Field testing is better than theory. I’d rather step into a rocket that has flown 30 times than one that has never flown before but a whole team of scientists think things will be fine.

But yeah you still need theory and they could do a better job at that, I do agree there.

It’s not really ‘reusable’ like this though :) But this is how SpaceX iterate of course. I’m sure they’ll learn from this and fix it for next time.

Oh it works great for me. In fact a lot better than the Rift did with its dedicated trackers.

It’s also handy to just pop it on and not have to set it up. I often bring it to the office and I’ve given a demo for friends, it’s much harder with lighthouses.

And the cost of them is just insane. If they were 100 bucks for a couple it’s fine.

Yeah that pattern is called “Pentile” or RGBG. Very annoying indeed on screens where you look right up to the pixels. And it reduces the number of subpixels by 1/3 so the resolution really suffers.

The PSVR1 had a real RGB panel but sadly the PSVR2 moved to pentile.

• Inside-out tracking so you don’t need expensive lighthouses
• Wireless connection

Wow… TIL there are actually people that believe North Korea is an amazing country.

And the longer the time between episodes, the smaller the chance it would generate new sales because existing users lost interest.

True, but with that particular game what didn’t help either was that there were many years between episodes, it was pretty awful. It’s one thing I really hate about episodic gaming. But Valve already proved it to be a failure, only Telltale And Dontnod still do it (and they do it consistently right, to be fair).

The rest of the gaming industry has gone on to “Early access” which is even more awful. Rather than buying the first part of the story for a lower fee, you now pay top dollar for a game which isn’t even finished and never might be because once you pay them there is no real incentive to actually finish it :)

But really, most categories of mobile games don’t interest me. Arcade and other simple crap like angry birds never interested me even in the 80s. Adventures yes but they’re few and far between on mobile and if they are they’re almost always desktop ports anyway. FPS really really sucks on mobile for me, the input is just too crappy and the screens too small.

For me they have always sucked. The only one I liked a bit was “1112” (also known as Fade), BUT the developer actually cancelled the last episode because they didn’t feel like making it anymore 🤬 So yeah it also sucked big time.

More details: https://www.reddit.com/r/adventuregames/comments/k3wc7b/the_history_of_1112_an_ambitious_adventure_game/

The problem with the ecosystems is that evolution can’t adapt fast enough.

When it takes 500-5000 years for 1 degree rise, then yeah nature adapts pretty smoothly. When it’s 50 years then things get really screwed.

Obligatory XKCD but I think this one explains the problem extremely well: https://xkcd.com/1732/

Yeah and another war would cause those policies to go on the backburner immediately. For example nobody in Ukraine cares about greenhouse emissions now, they are dashing their diesel tanks through the mud like there is no tomorrow. And in fairness, if they don’t do that there may not be a tomorrow for them. So a lot of this depends on world stability. Which is pretty unlikely with the type of ‘leaders’ the world is seeing now IMO.

The actual article is not nearly as positive as the headline :)

As they mention reducing is key. But I think it’s going to be really hard to do carbon capture at a scale that actually matters. It will require a lot of additional green power generation, and the material extraction for the capture machinery, the transportation, the maintenance etc will have to be low carbon as well, otherwise there is still no point.

And there is significant inertia in greenhouse production so the greenhouse effect would keep rising for a decade even if we were at zero now.

Nah. Playstation is the biggest threat to the Xbox. They sell much more than the steam deck. And they know how to sell a console by selling good games and not making only deals with repetitive “AAA” studios that poop out one remaster after another.

But this, in fact, is what actual war looks like these days: Sometimes it’s a volley of 300 missiles and drones, and sometimes it is lean, targeted, and carried out covertly. Gone are the days of vast conquering armies and conventional military confrontations between two parties.

So, like what’s happening in Ukraine right now?

I mean they use drones for some deep strikes causing minor damage but most of the actual advancement is made using artillery and boots on the ground.

Orbital space is really incredibly empty.

What we have much more to worry about is the magnetic polar reversal which will happen soon. While this is happening the magnetic field is erratic and may even diminish significantly. That will have a huge effect on both sats and life on earth, though we still have the atmosphere to protect us too.

PS: I really wonder what will happen with all the radioactive particles trapped in the van allen belts, I assume they will run amok all over the place then.

Yeah I agree, it’s a better solution. But something that meets the requirement too.

After all if they stop selling the game, why bother with activation? Just patch that shit out.

This is nothing like a Dutch pancake, which are much more like the French crêpe.

Ik snap het ook niet.

I don’t understand either :P

I think the biggest problem with the US system is the FPTP thing, the winner takes all.

This always leads to two parties that become pure enemies because of the zero-sum game that ensues. A loss for one is a win for the other, there is no incentive to collaborate.

Our coalition system is not perfect because it often causes very uncomfortable coalitions of parties not well suited. But at least it doesn’t feel like a stalemate.

I’m still surprised people in the US actually vote only for people so old they can’t reasonably do the job properly. I mean what’s up with that?

I guess the cynic in me thinks only people that old have a lifetime of being beholden to the powers behind the curtain to have their trust to receive big campaign funding. But that doesn’t explain Trump. He was never really ‘favoured’ by the establishment as far as I gather. Not that I think he was a good president of course, don’t get me wrong!