SpaceX is reusing spaceships, landing them, catching rockets in chopstick contraptions. But a spaceship that lands near its launchpad can also land anywhere in the world. In an hour. Loaded with military might.
No - no they can't. Referencing Starship Troopers is appropriate because this is fiction.
It's an old military dream; Ithacus [0] was a 1966 concept for a vertical take-off, vertical landing troop transport rocket that could put 1200 soldiers plus materiel anywhere in the world in an hour. Issues that others have brought up here (like the vehicle being mistaken for a nuclear missile) were brought up then, and the obvious flaws killed the project.
As [0] points out, and as I vividly recall from the antiquated books of my childhood, a similar concept was prominent in the 1979 Usborne Book of the Future. The idea of being able to put boots on the ground anywhere within an hour is probably still a military dream somewhere, although I don't think US doctrine has a place for that right now, since achieving air supremacy over the theater, a prerequisite to boots on the ground, would probably take longer than an hour.
Don’t need air supremacy if the boots are attached to ground drones. We’re not far off from a starship equivalent deploying a cloud of ground and air drones, some of which could help effect the air supremacy required. Like rapid dragon but more variations of deployed materiel and…a lot more rapid.
You do want control of the airspace if you want the operation to be affordable, otherwise, you're pouring resources into a drone grinder (to mix metaphors).
Why would you try to land the rocket at the destination rather than re entering a pod and parachuting its contents past critical burn independently? We already do high speed spy plane HALO since the 1960’s, this would be more controlled and the rocket could bring massive payloads like tanks.
It would be more useful for the launch vehicle to return to its original pad for relaunch. It’s not like you’re going to refuel and refit it on the battlefield.
In my friend group - those with a Commodore 64 were at the top. The Vic-20 was the middle and the Sinclair the bottom. My one friend with a Tandy Color Computer had no idea what he was doing, his family just had money.
I lived in Europe for 10 years and that was nice as far as eating goes. Here in the USA I always try to grab a left corner so I'm not bumping elbows with anyone.
I had an uncle just like us, my son is a true full on lefty.
I had a Dodge pickup with the most basic radio package, no screens or infotainment. Per the law it had a backup camera, the screen for which was in the rear view mirror. It was perfect.
Carplay doesn’t provide the backup camera. That’s safety equipment, including Apple in that loop would be malpractice.
Ever wonder why there’s a delay when you shift into reverse? That’s a whole other system. Made, tested, and proven by actual engineers. Not the bootcamp types.
No, backup cameras are better than rear visibility has ever been. If a small child is sitting directly in front of your rear bumper, can you see that in any car? I don't think so. But with any modern car with a proper backup camera, the kid is easy to see on the monitor. This, in fact, is the main reason these cameras were mandated: lots of kids were getting run over, usually by their own parents. Of course, worse visibility makes it even more likely, but rear visibility has never been great in any car.
I have an old jeep and I’m dying to put a backup camera on that thing. I can basically reach the bumper from the driver seat and I still prefer the visibility that a backup camera brings.
I had a friend who avoided a situation like this because he was in a 1989 Miata and was able to see the child who was looking at the stickers that my friend placed on his rear bumper at the time. So yes, there are cars that exist that can do this.
No, they don't. What if the child were smaller, or lying on the ground?
The idea that any car has such visibility that you can see something small on the ground immediately in front of the rear bumper is just ridiculous. Of course your chances of seeing a child in a Miata are far, far better than in a 2024 pickup truck or mega-SUV, but nothing will give you the visibility of a camera with fisheye lens mounted on the rear bumper.
I'm not moving the goalposts at all. A fisheye lens is normal on any backup camera. My statement that you quoted is literally correct: you cannot see a small child lying down directly in front of your rear bumper, in any car. Why you're trying to disprove this, I have no idea.
I think point 3 of the grand parent indicates admins were not given an opportunity to test this.
My company had a lot of Azure vms impacted by this and I'm not sure who the admin was who should have tested it. Microsoft? I don't think we have anything to do with crowdstrike software on our vms. ( I think - I'm sure I'll find out this week.)
Edit: I just learned the Azure central region failure wasn't related to the larger event - and we weren't impacted by the crowd strike issue - I didn't know it was two different things. So my second part of the comment is irrelevant.
Oh, I'd missed point #3 somehow. If individual consumers weren't even given the opportunity to test this, whether by policy or by bug, then ... yeesh. Even worse than I'd thought.
Exactly which team owns the testing is probably left up to each individual company to determine. But ultimately, if you have a team of admins supporting the production deployment of the machines that enable your business, then someone's responsible for ensuring the availability of those machines. Given how impactful this CrowdStrike incident was, maybe these kinds of third-party auto-update postures need to be reviewed and potentially brought back into the fold of admin-reviewed updates.
I wouldn't say almost nothing. But the more domain specific things get the less I can track.
My big takeaway has been when that happens, I remind myself I'm not fit to judge if a comment is good/right or not. I try to get a feel for the context of conversations and just kind of mentally file it away.
I've learned a lot here over the years and the discussions sometimes remind of the good old days on slashdot.
I had a discussion with an engineer from John Deer, I'm not a farmer and don't have direct experience with it so I am taking his word but he told me in most cases the person in the tractor is just there to monitor what's going on for safety. I imagine this frees up people for other work if someone maybe less qualified can be in the tractor, or just takes the load off so they can work longer, allow them to do more in less time, etc.
The Bourbaki dangerous bend symbol is also a part of the lore and symbology for the band. I think that the use of the name is a 'clue' to the meaning of the symbol. The recent new release is the first time I think they've stated this explicitly.
No - no they can't. Referencing Starship Troopers is appropriate because this is fiction.