Technology, Science and the Environment.

[Foxdiamond]

1 hour ago, yorkie1999 said:

One thing I have noticed, this dry spell isn’t that terrible, I walk my dog across a few football pitches near me, 3 years ago the lines were opening up with 2-3 inch wide cracks, not a sign this year. Touch wood.

My lawn looks like a lump of concrete

[leicsmac]

 

Kurzgesagt at it again.

 

Kurz: “There is reason for optimism.”

Also Kurz: “…teenager. Reckless, drunk, without a seatbelt.”

[leicsmac]

https://www.climatefiles.com/

 

The confidential report, “The Greenhouse Effect,” was authored by members of Shell’s Greenhouse Effect Working Group and based on a 1986 study, though the document reveals Shell was commissioning “greenhouse effect” reports as early as 1981.

 

Report highlights include: 

 

A thorough review of climate science literature, including acknowledgment of fossil fuels’ dominant role in driving greenhouse gas emissions. More importantly, Shell quantifies its own products’ contribution to global CO2 emissions. 

 

A detailed analysis of potential climate impacts, including rising sea levels, ocean acidification, and human migration. 

 

A discussion of the potential impacts on the fossil fuel sector itself, including legislation, changing public sentiment, and infrastructure vulnerabilities. Shell concludes that active engagement from the energy sector is desirable. 

 

A cautious response to uncertainty in scientific models, pressing for sincere consideration of solutions even in the face of existing debates.  A warning to take policy action early, even before major changes are observed to the climate. 

[leicsmac]

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-62640529

 

...GO for launch! August 29th, here we come.

[SpacedX]

3 hours ago, leicsmac said:

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-62640529

 

...GO for launch! August 29th, here we come.

But you can't get through the Van Allen Belts. I know this because Nick Knowles said so on 'I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here'. Besides, you'd need six feet of lead to shield against the radiation - "the most well put together moon landing hoax video" - 'American Moon' tells you that. 

 

In 1968, Apollo 6 was originally designated as an unmanned TLI to the moon, but after the Saturn V practically shook itself to pieces due to pogo oscillation and the third stage engine failed to reignite, they sent Borman, Lovell and Anders instead. This of course is another uncrewed moon mission and it's bloody fascinating. The outbound trip to the moon will take several days, during which time engineers will evaluate and validate the spacecraft’s systems and where required, tweak its trajectory. Orion will fly 62 miles above the surface of the moon, and then use its gravitational force to slingshot it into a new deep retrograde orbit about 40,000 miles from the moon. The spacecraft will remain in that orbit for approximately six days to allow mission controllers to gather data and assess its performance. For its return trip to Earth, Orion will conduct another close flyby that again takes the spacecraft within about 60 miles of the moon’s surface before performing its TEI burn for its return flight home and splashdown off the coast of California.

 

Artemis 2 will revisit the historic flight of Apollo 8 no sooner than May 2024 whilst Artemis 3 is scheduled for a landing in 2025. It makes you appreciate the incredible short time scale of the Apollo programme which of course unlike Artemis did not rely on piecemeal drip-fed funding from Congress. 

 

Can't wait for the launch of the SLS - but although more powerful, it'll never rival the engineering marvel that was the Saturn V and that cluster of five F1 engines. 

 

 

[leicsmac]

10 hours ago, Line-X said:

But you can't get through the Van Allen Belts. I know this because Nick Knowles said so on 'I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here'. Besides, you'd need six feet of lead to shield against the radiation - "the most well put together moon landing hoax video" - 'American Moon' tells you that. 

 

In 1968, Apollo 6 was originally designated as an unmanned TLI to the moon, but after the Saturn V practically shook itself to pieces due to pogo oscillation and the third stage engine failed to reignite, they sent Borman, Lovell and Anders instead. This of course is another uncrewed moon mission and it's bloody fascinating. The outbound trip to the moon will take several days, during which time engineers will evaluate and validate the spacecraft’s systems and where required, tweak its trajectory. Orion will fly 62 miles above the surface of the moon, and then use its gravitational force to slingshot it into a new deep retrograde orbit about 40,000 miles from the moon. The spacecraft will remain in that orbit for approximately six days to allow mission controllers to gather data and assess its performance. For its return trip to Earth, Orion will conduct another close flyby that again takes the spacecraft within about 60 miles of the moon’s surface before performing its TEI burn for its return flight home and splashdown off the coast of California.

 

Artemis 2 will revisit the historic flight of Apollo 8 no sooner than May 2024 whilst Artemis 3 is scheduled for a landing in 2025. It makes you appreciate the incredible short time scale of the Apollo programme which of course unlike Artemis did not rely on piecemeal drip-fed funding from Congress. 

 

Can't wait for the launch of the SLS - but although more powerful, it'll never rival the engineering marvel that was the Saturn V and that cluster of five F1 engines. 

 

 

A couple of observations:

 

- As one shameless pedant to another, I'm assuming you mean Apollo 8 rather than Apollo 6

- While the Saturn V was a marvel of engineering that outshines the SLS in that regard, for me it remains a symbol of what might have been and something we have taken far, far too long to move on from.

Edited 24 August 2022 by leicsmac

[SpacedX]

6 hours ago, leicsmac said:

A couple of observations:

 

- As one shameless pedant to another, I'm assuming you mean Apollo 8 rather than Apollo 6

- While the Saturn V was a marvel of engineering that outshines the SLS in that regard, for me it remains a symbol of what might have been and something we have taken far, far too long to move on from.

No, I meant Apollo 6 which was unmanned but the mission profile was scrapped after the Saturn V practically destroyed itself due to pogo oscillation - a known problem that claimed one of the Russian N1 rockets. Apollo 7 was to test the CM in low earth orbit whilst Apollo 8 sent Borman, Lovell and Anders into lunar orbit - that's what I meant - after the failure of the Apollo 6 mission objectives, they sent them instead. Actually Apollo 6 wasn't intended to orbit the moon. After TLE the CM was supposed to to perform a 'direct return abort' but the third stage engine didn't fire on the S-IVB so TLE couldn't be performed. I was jokingly saying that they flung Borman, Lovell and Anders into Apollo 8 and sent them later - for Christmas.

 

Second point, I do agree. As you know, following the cancellation of Apollo, the manufacturing plants and processes, the tooling and the r&d was abandoned, the expertise retired and the technology left to lie fallow.  Artemis has since superseded the latter which has become obsolete. The lament for the Saturn V is rather like recalling the era of steam locomotives. Apollo had an organic feel about it - the engineering expertise was very...human. Designed by pencil, slide rule and drawing board, much of it assembled and crafted by hand, and they simply stuck Isaac Newton in the driving seat. However, Artemis feels more mechanised, contrived, dare I say, soulless. Sorry, I'm not articulating myself that well here. But even the SLS seems like a derivative of Shuttle technology - although the RS-25s are amongst the most tested rocket engines on the planet and the SRBs have been revised and upgraded. Interesting though, that the core stage was manufactured at the same plant that produced the mighty S-IC Completely refurbished and upgraded by Boeing, but nonetheless the same building - so perhaps it's there in spirit.. I dunno, seeing the SLS roll out of the VAB doesn't fill me with quite the same sense of awe as the Saturn V. 

 

'Spider' from the exceptional 'From the Earth to the Moon' told the story of Grumman's bid to build the LM. The final minute perhaps better encapsulates what I am trying to express. 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited 24 August 2022 by Line-X

[leicsmac]

1 hour ago, Line-X said:

No, I meant Apollo 6 which was unmanned but the mission profile was scrapped after the Saturn V practically destroyed itself due to pogo oscillation - a known problem that claimed one of the Russian N1 rockets. Apollo 7 was to test the CM in low earth orbit whilst Apollo 8 sent Borman, Lovell and Anders into lunar orbit - that's what I meant - after the failure of the Apollo 6 mission objectives, they sent them instead. Actually Apollo 6 wasn't intended to orbit the moon. After TLE the CM was supposed to to perform a 'direct return abort' but the third stage engine didn't fire on the S-IVB so TLE couldn't be performed. I was jokingly saying that they flung Borman, Lovell and Anders into Apollo 8 and sent them later - for Christmas.

 

Second point, I do agree. As you know, following the cancellation of Apollo, the manufacturing plants and processes, the tooling and the r&d was abandoned, the expertise retired and the technology left to lie fallow.  Artemis has since superseded the latter which has become obsolete. The lament for the Saturn V is rather like recalling the era of steam locomotives. Apollo had an organic feel about it - the engineering expertise was very...human. Designed by pencil, slide rule and drawing board, much of it assembled and crafted by hand, and they simply stuck Isaac Newton in the driving seat. However, Artemis feels more mechanised, contrived, dare I say, soulless. Sorry, I'm not articulating myself that well here. But even the SLS seems like a derivative of Shuttle technology - although the RS-25s are amongst the most tested rocket engines on the planet and the SRBs have been revised and upgraded. Interesting though, that the core stage was manufactured at the same plant that produced the mighty S-IC Completely refurbished and upgraded by Boeing, but nonetheless the same building - so perhaps it's there in spirit.. I dunno, seeing the SLS roll out of the VAB doesn't fill me with quite the same sense of awe as the Saturn V. 

 

'Spider' from the exceptional 'From the Earth to the Moon' told the story of Grumman's bid to build the LM. The final minute perhaps better encapsulates what I am trying to express. 

 

 

 

 

 

Ah, thank you for the clarification!

 

On the second point, I do understand and enjoy the romanticism, but that comes a distant second to the pragmatism of the necessity to get out there - in numbers, and at speed. The clock is ticking.

[SpacedX]

38 minutes ago, leicsmac said:

Ah, thank you for the clarification!

 

On the second point, I do understand and enjoy the romanticism, but that comes a distant second to the pragmatism of the necessity to get out there - in numbers, and at speed. The clock is ticking.

Well Artemis has as I've mentioned previously taken an eternity due to drip fed, piecemeal funding from congress, which has nonetheless ensured a measured and ostensibly well calculated programme by design, but I'm very sceptical over the overly optimistic 2025 goal of a manned landing. 

 

In contrast, the clock was ticking on Apollo which made it all the more remarkable. The difference being, the blank cheque. 

 

In January 1967 the Apollo Spacecraft was a chaotic mess. The design, the materials, the cartwheeling configuration-control, the constant ad-hoc alterations and meddling and the frenetic farrago of activity made it ‘an accident waiting to happen’. The astronauts and program managers knew this full well - but they under the oppressive pressure and objective of JFK’s “before his decade is out” pledge, they pressed-on regardless. Grissom famously hung the lemon on the simulator as an observation of how the project was working - or not working - at that time. It was a symbolic plea for NASA to ‘get a grip on the program’. Unfortunately, it was only the deaths of Grissom, White and Chaffee that forced a pause in the frantic pace and allowed the radical revision and overhaul of both hardware and systems together with managerial ethos that resulted in the superior, safer spacecraft. Many involved with Apollo, from astronauts to ground crew, flight directors and management have all said that had it not been for the tragedy of Apollo 1 - we would never have reached the moon by the end of the decade...if at all. 

 

In spite of the tragedy of Apollo 1, I sense that NASA learnt lessons the hard way through the loss of Challenger and Columbia and the folly of the Space Shuttle Programme. A quote often attributed to John Glenn regarding his Mercury flight supposedly said (although Scott Carpenter insisted the inspiration was his): “My life depended on 150,000 pieces of equipment – each bought from the lowest bidder.”. Despite the protracted development of Artemis due to the slow rate of funding, it does however suggest that this isn't the case and no major corners have been cut.  

[SpacedX]

The science on board Artemis:

 

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-02293-8

[leicsmac]

The discussion elsewhere regarding lawns got me thinking:

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/08/24/lawns-and-replacement/

 

"We are still, largely, lawn people. The biggest crop, by area, in the United States? Not corn, or soybean, but lawn. Unproductive, ornamental lawn: around 40 million acres of it, or 2 percent of the land area of the Lower 48, according to multiple estimates cited by Garik Gutman, program manager for NASA’s Land-Cover/Land-Use Change Program.

 

Forty million acres: The entire state of Georgia couldn’t contain America’s total lawnage. And we pour 9 billion gallons of water on landscaping every day, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Meanwhile the Southwest United States is enduring a megadrought; the past two decades constitute its driest period since the year 800."

[SpacedX]

17 minutes ago, leicsmac said:

The discussion elsewhere regarding lawns got me thinking:

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/08/24/lawns-and-replacement/

 

"We are still, largely, lawn people. The biggest crop, by area, in the United States? Not corn, or soybean, but lawn. Unproductive, ornamental lawn: around 40 million acres of it, or 2 percent of the land area of the Lower 48, according to multiple estimates cited by Garik Gutman, program manager for NASA’s Land-Cover/Land-Use Change Program.

 

Forty million acres: The entire state of Georgia couldn’t contain America’s total lawnage. And we pour 9 billion gallons of water on landscaping every day, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Meanwhile the Southwest United States is enduring a megadrought; the past two decades constitute its driest period since the year 800."

Not fond of American lawns, particular the prevalent coarse types such as Zoysia and ryegrass varieties. From living in California I recall disliking the fescue grass, which is everywhere, but on a positive note, it has a high absorption of water, even during drought.

[leicsmac]

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-62652133

 

Ugh.

[FoxesDeb]

1 hour ago, leicsmac said:

The discussion elsewhere regarding lawns got me thinking:

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/08/24/lawns-and-replacement/

 

"We are still, largely, lawn people. The biggest crop, by area, in the United States? Not corn, or soybean, but lawn. Unproductive, ornamental lawn: around 40 million acres of it, or 2 percent of the land area of the Lower 48, according to multiple estimates cited by Garik Gutman, program manager for NASA’s Land-Cover/Land-Use Change Program.

 

Forty million acres: The entire state of Georgia couldn’t contain America’s total lawnage. And we pour 9 billion gallons of water on landscaping every day, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Meanwhile the Southwest United States is enduring a megadrought; the past two decades constitute its driest period since the year 800."

That's pretty depressing to read

[leicsmac]

1 hour ago, FoxesDeb said:

That's pretty depressing to read

There are still too many people who take the trappings of civilisation for granted and (though times are nasty right now for a lot of people) cannot imagine a situation where a key resource becomes so scarce that it causes truly awful problems.

 

And that lack of vision is bad not just because it's a lack of vision, but because it also gets in the way of trying to prevent such issues from arising in the first place because "it'll never happen to me, so why spend time and resources figuring out how to stop it?"

[yorkie1999]

We need to go 100% nuclear energy. If the UK built another 24 nuclear power plants, 6 currently supply 20% of our electricity,  and every home was fitted with zeb electric boilers, we'd have more than enough electricty to run and heat the country and produce zero emisions. And the cost for that, 530 billion quid. We wasted 30 billion on a track and trace system that didn't work 

Edited 26 August 2022 by yorkie1999

[Bryn]

11 minutes ago, yorkie1999 said:

We need to go 100% nuclear energy. If the UK built another 24 nuclear power plants, 6 currently supply 20% of our electricity,  and every home was fitted with zeb electric boilers, we'd have more than enough electricty to run and heat the country and produce zero emisions. And the cost for that, 530 billion quid. We wasted 30 billion on a track and trace system that didn't work 

Not gonna happen. The Tories don’t invest in infrastructure.

[String fellow]

On 24/08/2022 at 01:25, leicsmac said:

A couple of observations:

 

- As one shameless pedant to another, I'm assuming you mean Apollo 8 rather than Apollo 6

- While the Saturn V was a marvel of engineering that outshines the SLS in that regard, for me it remains a symbol of what might have been and something we have taken far, far too long to move on from.

For me, the 'V' in Saturn V is a permanent reminder of its links to Werner von Braun's V2 rockets, which were manufactured underground at Dora-Mittelbau near the end of WWII. They were built using slave labour, with production only ever stopped when mass hangings took place. 20,000 souls died in that hell-hole, which von Braun was closely associated with, before the Americans got hold of him. 

Edited 26 August 2022 by String fellow

[SpacedX]

2 minutes ago, String fellow said:

For me, the 'V' in Saturn V is a permanent reminder of its links to Werner von Braun's V2 rockets, which were manufactured underground at Dora-Mittelbau near the end of WWII. They were built using slave labour, with production only ever stopped when mass hangings took place. 20,000 souls died in that hell-hole, which von Braun was closely associated with, before the Americans got hold of him. 

I hear you, but remember, in Nazi Germany von Braun presided over rocket design and development at at Peenemünde, not the building of them. Although he visited Mittelwerk many times and expressed his disgust at the conditions he had nothing whatsoever to do with Dora-Mittelbau. There are a few testimonies from prisoners that he presided over floggings and hand picked slaves, but these have never been substantiated and may have been mistaken identity.  

 

He was a card carrying member of the Nazi party, but he applied through sheer political expedience to fund his research and his primary objective which was to send rockets into space. He clams he only wore the pin once at a state occasion and the SS uniform under similar circumstances, but what is clear is that he was ideologically opposed to Hitler who he disliked intensely and was deeply troubled in later life over his service to the Third Reich and the ethical compromises that he made. 

 

Operation Paperclip harboured war criminals - of that there is no doubt and I understand why you associate this with Nazi atrocities and why you justly object to the programme. But to suggest that the Saturn V, an entirely different machine to the V2, itself evokes such painful unpleasant memories and inglorious history is frankly a bit of a stretch and a huge discredit to the tens of thousands of engineers and personnel that worked on it. Far from being a symbol of past death and destruction, I see it as having epitomised hope, optimism, exploration and human ingenuity 'for all mankind'. From a more pragmatic and less emotional standpoint, an outstanding feat of engineering. 

 

 

[leicsmac]

6 hours ago, String fellow said:

For me, the 'V' in Saturn V is a permanent reminder of its links to Werner von Braun's V2 rockets, which were manufactured underground at Dora-Mittelbau near the end of WWII. They were built using slave labour, with production only ever stopped when mass hangings took place. 20,000 souls died in that hell-hole, which von Braun was closely associated with, before the Americans got hold of him. 

Yep, the Space Race was built on blood and Cold War paranoia, that is pretty much undeniable. It frustrates the living hell out of me that it had to be the research of finding more efficient ways of killing people that actually was the key driver of human progress in this matter, but the fact remains that manned spaceflight programs were, and are, a matter of necessity for the survival of our species.

 

However, if we're going to look at scientific progress through that lens, should we also look at most every scientist involved in the Manhattan Project - the culmination of which was the use of a weapon that killed over 60,000 innocent civilians who just happened to be on the wrong side, just because it was the right side using it? As per above, I despise that humankind is so fond of war that it appears to be a chief driver of scientific progress because it has serious connotations for our future, but there are so many examples of where it is the case.

 

A pertinent comment from a while back to accompany this:

 

"And I think the thing that some of y'all don't like about it that you don't really want to address directly is that you find the idea inherently unbelievable of a galaxy-spanning culture that isn't as good at violence as we planet-bound humans are, because *you inescapably associate technological advancement of a species' power with advancement of their capacity to intentionally inflict violence on each other*. The capacity for violence and the nobility of restraint in its application is just so tightly bound up in your narrative of what it means to be powerful that it ruins your suspension of disbelief to be asked to question it."

[leicsmac]

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-62707359

 

Today is the day!

 

Hopefully the beginning of a new phase in space exploration.

[ozleicester]

1 hour ago, leicsmac said:

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-62707359

 

Today is the day!

 

Hopefully the beginning of a new phase in space exploration.

Our planet is dying, there are record floods and environmental destruction happening right now.. and we are burning a shit load a fuel and wasting billions to go to space.

Ludicrous.

[leicsmac]

4 minutes ago, ozleicester said:

Our planet is dying, there are record floods and environmental destruction happening right now.. and we are burning a shit load a fuel and wasting billions to go to space.

Ludicrous.

Our planet is becoming less habitable to humans and some other organisms, not "dying".

 

And it is perfectly possible, nay necessary, to be good custodians of the world we live on by working out more sustainable ways to maintain quality of life and work on getting out into the stars at the same time. Building a utopia (or as close as we can get) on Earth is a good idea but it the end it wouldn't matter much in the half-second it takes the asteroid we couldn't stop to come through the atmosphere and impact.

[ozleicester]

1 minute ago, leicsmac said:

Our planet is becoming less habitable to humans and some other organisms, not "dying".

Fair point

 

And it is perfectly possible, nay necessary, to be good custodians of the world we live on by working out more sustainable ways to maintain quality of life and work on getting out into the stars at the same time. Building a utopia (or as close as we can get) on Earth is a good idea but it the end it wouldn't matter much in the half-second it takes the asteroid we couldn't stop to come through the atmosphere and impact.

Destroying the planet for greed or scientific advancement is the same.

So, why bother trying to make the planet livable for humans?

 

[leicsmac]

2 minutes ago, ozleicester said:

So, why bother trying to make the planet livable for humans?

.....because while humanity is flawed in a lot of ways, I'm not a nihilist and am on the side of humans actually being better, doing better, and enduring for a very long time alongside the rich and varied other life on Earth, rather than being doomed and deserving to be so.

 

And to accomplish that, we need to be able to do the right thing both on the ground and out in space.