Posts by MonsieurTM 163 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Dec 2011
Oh, come on:
"... require the hijacking of an internet-connected device to play trigger sounds ..."
Never heard of a mobile phone? This is the frikkin' Register. Never heard of Conivore? Tempest? GCHQ hacking mobile phones to remotely turn on the speaker, microphone, camera? Come on.
Pathetic reporting.
ALIS is custom software written by the lowest paid in a rush. Of course it is full of bugs. That's why only the Israelis have access and they need to keep schtum for good reasons.
It is a sick joke to claim custom update software is better than using an open source distro suitably hardened. What? Two underpaid over worked Devs can beat the thousands of man-yeats in a decent distro?
Hubris on the largest scale.
And don't say it doesn't matter as the airbases are secured with armed guards. What if soe traitor lands an F-35 in North Korea or Russia?
So the US army goes in, sprays the land with depleted Uranium, biosweapons, plastic mines, etc.... Wait, wait! That's fine, because we've got robots to clean it up! So the US Army need heed no Geneva co mentions, not be told off, as the robots will clean it all up, if course! Annnnnnd.... Those companies supplying the nasty stuff will *never* Claude with the companies supplying the clean-up bots, eh? Oh no.
P.S. Note the sarcasm.
"StarShip"("): 3 failures
N-1 (USSR):4
So for this flight will "StarShip" match or beat the N-1....!
(*) "StarShip": there's hubris: it will never ever get to the stars, to Mars at best. Moon maybe. LEO looking dodgy at the moment ... Let's all spaff lots of methane whilst European gas prices are sky-high! Oh and we buy are gas from... The US. In competition with His Muskiness.
The original study:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/lio2.70229
Quote clearly states in the introduction:
"Of 71 de-identified ISS astronauts...' so.any reviewer should obviously ask, " what about Orlan Vs the RVA suit" and taikonauts (based on the Orlan). As the research de-identified any differences, then it must be seen within that context of combining apples-and-oranges (Orlan Vs EVA suit) and ignoring taikonauts. I.e. flawed.
The assertion that Neanderthal and human hybrids were infertile is incorrect, as modern, living, Westerners today contains up to 3-4% Neanderthal DNA, which would be impossible if the offspring were infertile. The same is true with Denisovan-human hybrids. The humans they interbred with were sufficiently genetically similar for their offspring to be able to further reproduce with the humans of the time. Archaeology of human DNA has also revealed that other sub-species existed that interbred with our lineage, but left no fossil trace (yet discovered).
I still don't get sending humans to the Moon... It's a terrible place for humans to live. The energy required to permit humans to live there, although roughly the same as the Earth, requires far more infrastructure. (No atmosphere, too little gravity, too much radiation, too great temperature swings, not enough accessible water, nor food. And sewage... Well. Then we have environmental issues: yes, we have already littered the Moon with rubbish (see Apollo amongst other programs.) But the ethical issues: so long-stay humans will want to form relationships and have sex. But no babies. Is it ethical to stop humans reproducing? The Moon dust is utterly terrible.
By the time we are able to solve these issues, we'll already have good enough drones there an immersive reality: so the humans can stay on Earth and investigate the Moon remotely to their hearts' content.
Moon bases are basically for short-stays, for the super-duper rich. That the rest of us will pay for in taxes or quantitative easing that will destroy our pensions. (Consider Concorde.)
Please do not misunderstand me: I'd love to got to the Moon and Mars and elsewhere: for a *holiday*, but for *science*: meat-sacks are the worst.
If we want to send humans, long-term, to places they did not originate, we need to accept the simple fact: ethics be damned, humans will shag and therefore reproduce (as enforced abortions are unethical) and enforced *temporary* (one hopes) sterilisation is likewise unethical. So the only solution: humans should be permitted to be born on the Moon or Mars or elsewhere, but they are most unlikely to return to Earth, as it will no longer be their psychological habitat.
Consider the works of James Blish.
An interesting article, which shows that careful engineering analysis can update rules. Yes, they were broken, as rightly pointed out, but with careful analysis. As an ex-member of the nuclear industry and one who co-wrote a safety system for a nuclear reactor, engineering margins are vital, but knowledge of them is even more so.
"Rules are there to guide the wise and be followed by fools." My point is: never presume to be wise.
Finally the old technology, the "Ram-scoop" has found a niche! (Ram-scoop: big nuclear reactor creates a massive magnetic field to funnel the Inter-Stellar Medium into it as fuel to thrust out the back).
How does he neutalise the positive ions it will emit? (Biggest problem with ion-drives, they must not become negatively charged as a consequence, as this reduces the thrust and, more importantly, will eventually destroy the elwctronics on board.) Is the exo-atmosphwre used for this purpose? i.e. the neutralisation is indirect, due to that exo-atmosphere? If so, Very smart: no neutralisation grids in the way of the exhause-flow (which reduce the speed of the emitted ions, thus loses thrust.)
Finally, something interesting what is not based on failed Soviet projects (Starship seems to be inspired by N1, the F-35 seems to be inspired by YAK-41).
Much cheaper and safer to get into space! (As the aircraft is above the much denser atmosphere below, Max-Q issues are vastly reduced.) No need for a massively expensive and risky fist stage!
Much better for launching anything as extremely problematic acoustic environment in the payload section is vastly reduced.
The Monn is an awful place to live or work:
1. Lack of gravity (so need to stay fit, keep bone density, etc).
2. Lack of oxygen and water. (The water on the moon held in hydrated crystals in rocks, one does not squeeze a rock and get out water, readily.)
3. Too cold or hot.
4. Too much radiation, increasing likelihood of cancer.
5. The regolith, the Moon dust, woe woe. Due to lack of wind, the only weathering (such as onemay call it/ is either high-speed impact or solar radiation. The former, over the last 3+ billion years, has created a form of "sharp sand": this is microscopically sharp quartz. Quartz is second only to diamond in hardness. As it is atomically sharp, by Van der Walls forces (electrostatic polarity) it is "sticky" and does not brush off. Moreover the Solar wind that constantly impacts the day-side of the Moon (which changes every 28ish days) causes this nightmare of a type of dust to become charged, so repels, so raises to a height of about 10-20 odd metres. This causes the dust to eventually cover anything up to that height in a fine layer of effectively irremovable "gunk". Hence noi mrrors on the Moon!! The Apollo Lunar suits had major issues with Moon dust in the wrist joints. The Lunar Vehicle had to have sealed baring and drum brakes. The Lunokhod rovers, similarly. Anyone heard of Asbestosis and the affects of microscopically sharp, small particles on the lungs?
6. Energy. In the light of the above, on must have an abundant source of reliable energy. This cannot be solar,as the solar panels will degrade seriously over time. So nuclear is out only current option. But we all "hate nuclear" as that is not "green", "good" or "nice". The only suitable reactors are liquid-metal (high density, very efficient), but these we hate as the only things we might use such reactors of suitably small size is nuclear ballisticissile submarines. Even there we don't use them (safety and noise). So due to he lack of research, these are too risky and or expensive. So we have no long term, ample power.
So: one will not be bulldozing this stuff onto a base to provide shielding. One will not be romping about in buggies. One will be strenously avoiding it.
So why go? Basically so some rich tourists can "have a look". Fair enough. But let's be realistic: the Moon is much more cheaply left to robotic exploration. Much cheaper, much safer, muchore science return per unit cash spent.
I don't understand. This is basically a direct descent/ascent to the Moon from Earth orbit. This is contrary to the Apollo and Soviet systems of Lunar Orbit Rendezvous, the former proven to work. The reason Lunar Orbit Rendezvous was chosen: immensely more fuel efficient, this cheaper.
The 33 engines on the first stage suffered failures very similar to the N1. So nothing new.
Apparently nothing learnt either. I feel so saddened that this huge White Elephant is destroying the Earth's resources, wasting precious talent, doing it in a manner that befits a Tintin story.
How many tons of kerosene or methane are used in each launch? What about the environmental impact of chilling that huge amount of oxygen, the carbon impact, etc? And we suffer huge fuel prices as Musk soaffs it on space.
How many to refuel the "Starship" to go & return from the Moon? 12 I have read. Utterly unbelievable waste of energy.
Sadly all this hydrogen-from what nd.or waves is all a bit of nonsense: the energy density of waves or wind is ver y ver ylow compared to break oxygen-hydrogen bonds. So this means we need to build ridiculous qualities of wind farms (dumb because w eneed wind for other things like blowing pollen about to fertize crops, e.g. wheat and baey). What about waves? Argh: these are needed to oxygenate the shore line, so we have fewer dead zones. So hydrogen sounds good, but the production is awful. So we need ... nuclear, the only green power source with sufficiently high energy density to cut it.
This is the usual green-wash withering in that gives environmentalism a bad name.
May I correct the esteemed reporter regarding this quote' "... crew left the CSM to enter the LM, demonstrating that astronauts could move from one spacecraft to another for the first time ..."
From NASA's own web site, Apollo 9 orbited in March, 3rd to 13th: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/apollo/apollo-9
But this link: http://russianspaceweb.com/soyuz4-soyuz5-eva.html claims: "On Jan. 16, 1969, Aleksei Yeliseev and Yevgeny Khrunov, wearing Yastreb spacesuits, conducted a 37-minute transfer from Soyuz-5 to Soyuz-4 on the exterior of the spacecraft."
Which clearly contradicts the esteemed reporter....
Ok, credit to getting it working... But....
Given it was spinning due to a faulty valve... The reaction wheels would be at max rpm. The probe is spinning. To cancel the rotation, which might be multi-axis will require thrust and more than usual given the maxed-out reaction wheels providing excess angulat momentum. Then a further course correction would be needed as the leaking valve would have changed the course. Now perhaps the valve leaked a tiny bit, then surely the reaction wheels could have controlled it. But given the reaction wheels were maxed out, then lots of fuel would have been wasted.
So: howuch reaction fuel is left, otherwise it is doomed anyway due to too little fuel.... Or it has huge reserves, which given launch costs seems unlikely.
Something odd in this story....
Hahahaha!
"News": sending electricity down aluminium wires (c.f.pylons) to consumers homes loses about 40% of the energy. So charging your cars' unrecyclable electric betteries from such an inefficient source has to be prevented! Hahahaha! Errrrm... Why not use a more efficient source of energy? E.g. burning fossil fuels in your petrol engine?
The Earth is a very, very nice place to live Elsewhere, e.g. space, the Moon, Mars and so-forth is not. It is a absurd fantasy that humans will visit these other words in a long term sense when using virtual reality is so much cheaper and safer. Why do we persist in the foolishness of sending fleshies into space? ROTM!!!
As an ex nuclear physicist, the UK government made me redundant years ago as we ignored our best bet for power security and safety. The Chinese now fund the French to build our reactors. The Russians build them... We prevaricate and pretend that wind and solar will solve our energy problems. Gas and oil are far too valuable to waste, yet the Middle East, amongst others still flares off the gas. We also still ignore geothermal energy because we are dumb.
Maybe our time on Earth is over, given we are lead by emotion and ignorance? Perhaps we should give way to evolution and let other species evve to replace us and let them use the remaining resources more wisely.
El Reg itself reported about GCHQ's analysis of the code in the 5G kit from Huawei: apart from the usual rubbish code quality, NONE.
This story is the classic "look, the Queen!" trope: UK government has, allegedly, been spying and infringing our liberties for years. Now they have been found out. How to get out of this mess? Easy: blame it on the most appropriate fake news. The cameras are Chinese: so look at Huawei: they are dodgy (NOT, as reported by El Reg itself), so these must be too!!! Evil Chinese spying on us through alleged back-dporsbthat some bloke behind the potting shed told me he'd found
Shame on you El Reg to fall for this.
So the UK Government has been merrily invading our privacy for years. The fact the kit might be dodgy is irrelevant! So now Jonny or Jane MP has to reveal that they have been using advanced surveillance techniques on Joe Public for years!!! Such is the dodgy-ness of these techniques that they should be banned!!!
But not from the UK: just replaced with more expensive kit with even more leaks in them from our mates old "get to the back of the queue" USofA.
Oh:-El Rwg, how your reportage failed us.
A reason Skylab failed is that it was effectively unable to be re-supplied as the only vehicles that could reach it were the Apollo vehicles. They were only designed to transport humans to the Moon, so were over-built and incorrectly tailored for low-Earth orbit use. They had no resupply capacity. They had no emergency evacuation capability. Skylab was a technological dead-end, based upon the inappropriately-tuned (for low Earth orbit) use of the Apollo system.
It was a dangerous white elephant, sadly.
I am *extremely* disappointed by this alarmist-reporting. It is a KNOWN fact tact that the Zaraya module is "beyond its sell-by date". I cannot believe that NASA are so incompetent that they do not know this already (in fact Roscosmos and NASA have been in discussion over how to upgrade the Zaraya module over the years, so NASA well knows of this problem.) Therefore it IS totally unsurprising that Roscosmos have announce that they WILL STAY with the ISS until at least 2024. (As that is EXACTLY what "leave after 2024 means.)
All of the components of the ISS are nearing end-of-life. The Russian segment is more upgrade-able and serviceable than the International portion due to the design of the modules.
Conflating Rogozin's foolish blusterings with solid engineering is beneath El Reg.
Are you mad? Roscosmos sabotage the ISS? A cash-cow? Recall that the ISS STAYS IN ORBIT because of the Zarakya module and the orbital manoeuvring system it has that has worked without hitch since 1998. An amazing success. It is THE oldest, in-service but of kit ever launched into space. A major success for the Soviet and Russian space programs. Yup, it is outdated now. Of course. Bit space is expensive, amortised over the 23 years the Zaraya module has got to be the cheapest thing NASA EVER bought!
I am curious why I should be downvoted: yes my grammar & spelling are imperfect, I am a "commentard" after all
But I happen to have read quite a bit about the US and Soviet and Russian space-programs. No expert, just read a lot. I'd like to know from an expert point of view, what I got wrong. Could someone suggest quality peer-review literature to enlighten me? (As opposed to a ... "Meh: you're a dumb-ass, I hate you", response.
And let's be blunt; the final docking of the Nauka with the ISS when they moved to TORU co trol in the last few moments: grandstanding by the highly competent cosmonauts assuring themselves of a dinner at the Kremlin. Roscosmos was so assured that they permitted this remarkable switch froma successful automatic docking to manual in the last moments as ..,. frankly they know their shit.
Recall the MiR and Progress + TORU problem: at the time Roscosmos was broke. The automated docking system, KURS was built Inthe Ukraine at the time, which, not unreasonably demanded hard cash from the Russian government to pay for the kit it supplies
So, Roscosmos, strapped thought: well we have the manual TORU system, let's try that instead and see if we can do it manually without that pricey but of kit from abroad. So they operated the pprly-trained for mode. The basic problem was that the optics for viewing MIR fro Progress was... rubbish: the ability to judge distance appalling, spped useless. So it was an accident waiting to happen. Human factors problem.
Subsequently Roscosmos had all the data overlays added and improved the cameras and optics. Also they regualraly, redundantly use TORU mode on purpose to maintain the skills for the tricky remote operation.
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