I happened to have just watched that for the first time last week. Aware of the difficulty in stopping the 67,000mph initial speed after a shallow dive on the Parker Solar Probe, I noticed they did loop around Mercury. Pretty sure they looped the wrong way (adding speed with a counter clockwise loop, assuming we’d still use Earth-North as Solar-Up) and an impressively circular loop ended with an impressively sharp departure, at least in the graphic.

While we’re here, what’s the deal with roasting the antennas that were absolutely required for communication upon return to Earth? They couldn’t handle the relatively distant sunlight but would absolutely be exposed to much more energy when the payload/shield departed anyway. We’re also not going to pretend when they rendezvous with Icarus 1 they weren’t totally roasting the backside of the forward ship’s shield with the reflection off the rear ship’s shield?

I really enjoyed the first half/two thirds. It was very well laid out and I enjoyed the cast interactions. The group viewing of the Mercury transit was a little corny but is definitely something I expect astronauts to get excited for. The fight over the messages and the ensuing apology felt pretty accurate for Evans’ character. I don’t know when those actors’ careers took off but it’s certainly a heavy-hitting group, even if only in hindsight.

Anyway, I still have to watch the 3rd (4th?) movie in this head canon Warhammer40k Origin series. Event Horizon (1997), Sunshine (2007), and Pandorum (2009). Honorable mention: The Black Hole (1979) is basically the same story as Event Horizon but more comical. Meanwhile, I’m not actually enjoying these movies ending in divine non-scientific explanations. That’s probably why I enjoyed Ad Astra the most (so far) of this narrow band of the long-lost explorer space scifi genre.

If they build it, will anyone come? Or does private social media only work because the user base is already scrolling endlessly there?

Hi, it’s me, the Google weather AI. Today will be couldy with a 69% chance of meatballs because I saw that once

“majority”

You sound like you feel guilty after you masturbate and your favorite expedition was the Mayflower

Fake IDs, fake foreign IDs, mismatched IDs?

Do you know what halving means? It’s not a stock split and it’s not a value halving.

Wild. I was just complaining that I used to follow Lockheed Martin on social because planes are cool, but it’s recently become filled with missile and other direct weaponry posts. I’m well aware of what the purpose of a fighter plane is. They used to at least have fun posts about the scientific work performed by the U2 and SR71.

If I make a gas engine with 100% heat efficiency but only run it in my backyard, do the greenhouse gases not count because it’s so efficient? Of course they do. The high efficiency of a data center is great, but that’s not what the article laments. The problem it’s calling out is the absurdly wasteful nature of why these farms will flourish: to power excessively animated programs to feign intelligence, vainly wasting power for what a simple program was already addressing.

It’s the same story with lighting. LEDs seemed like a savior for energy consumption because they were so efficient. Sure they save energy overall (for now), but it prompted people to multiply the number of lights and total output by an order of magnitude simply because it’s so cheap. This stems a secondary issue of further increasing light pollution and intrusion.

Greater efficiency doesn’t make things right if it comes with an increase in use.