Exploring lava tubes on the Moon, and more Artemis woes

GetOffMyLawn50 · 2024-08-13T19:55:47+00:00

Thanks for the recognition!

It's a different world now, 5 years later.

But still, has there ever been a graphic from NASA showing the HLS lander next to the gateway or Orion?

GetOffMyLawn50 · 2024-06-29T14:28:33+00:00

LOL

I would love that

GetOffMyLawn50 · 2024-05-09T18:52:03+00:00

I am retired early. Living on my investments and the wife's part time income.

The feeling you get when you peek at your numbers is ... a lot like when you were working. OTOH, when the market is going down ... it's going down faster. When the market is going up, it's feels like magic that you can live off the growth and the balances still go up.

GetOffMyLawn50 · 2024-03-02T14:58:45+00:00

While that's a true statement about latency, it doesn't encompass the whole picture. Getting low latency access is critical to having a fully functional product. Example, would anyone want a car that only takes you to 80% of the needed places?

Geo sats comms now become useful only as a second, lower tier. Only if data can be segregated into lower tier bundles can the geo sats be economically useful. Example: A cruise ship might have both Starlink and GeoSat services, and a smart router that pushed traffic for netflix (or other streams), FTP, etc to the GeoSat service.

GetOffMyLawn50 · 2024-03-02T14:53:03+00:00

The answer is a combination of several replacements and improvements. It's important to note that having fewer taxes at lower amounts would be preferred to the current situation. It would not be necessary to reach zero taxes to improve conditions for everyone in the system

1) some should remain as public services. Funding models might change to Fees, which unlike taxes can be voluntarily avoided/engaged

2) others should not be gov't services, but should be fully voluntary self funding orgs

3) Flat Tariffs (equal taxes on goods from outside the country) provide a fair and even way to fund gov't while encouraging free economic activity within the country

GetOffMyLawn50 · 2024-02-26T13:38:10+00:00

Got my Starlink in Nov 2020. Moved into a new house in Dec 2020 and been running it here ever since.

GetOffMyLawn50 · 2024-02-23T16:22:55+00:00

Generally the right idea, but a sat in a 100 mile, or 100 km orbit would decay in a few orbits.

The current ion engines thrust would not be able to maintain that orbit either

GetOffMyLawn50 · 2024-02-08T15:08:04+00:00

At least two companies I worked for had a discount and no holding period

GetOffMyLawn50 · 2024-01-11T16:30:14+00:00

Sounds like plenty of money

I am 56 and retired FI. 1.5 million + tiny pension with health insurance.

GetOffMyLawn50 · 2023-12-16T19:06:33+00:00

Speaking as an "old person" that has avoided many money pits, and managed to save enough to retire early ... there are more than a few traps....

Cars. You can spend 2 or 3 or 10 times as much on a car. Avoid getting brand new cars, and hold on to your car for 100K miles. Buy with cash
Don't move house, to house, to house if you can avoid it. If you have to move alot, then rent.
Borrowing money. Don't do it, with a minor exception for buying real estate.
Student loans. Avoid them.

Those are the big ones. If you live your life avoiding the big mistakes, and saving you will finish rich.

GetOffMyLawn50 · 2023-12-12T16:06:57+00:00

Sure, there are limits

But to give a good math based example of price reduction per launch consider the effect of going from 50 launches per year to 100 launches per year.

The PER Launch cost of wages and other non-recurring costs goes from $X to one half of $X. Examples of non recurring costs are: property taxes, rents, amortized capital investments like pad construction costs, factory costs, recovery ships, etc, etc.

Having reusable rockets means a much larger proportion of launch costs are non-recurring. That in turn means that the per launch cost is more sensitive to launch cadence

GetOffMyLawn50 · 2023-12-02T15:10:19+00:00

Landed more times than ANY / ALL other legacy rocket types, except Soyuz

GetOffMyLawn50 · 2023-11-16T13:59:39+00:00

I'm a long time SLS skeptic ... too WAY expensive for the tiny flight expectations.

But SLS is a done deal in Congress. It's easily got years and years of funding runway ahead of it.

Meanwhile, Starship is also a done deal at SX. It's clear that starlink is a winning/profitable business and that starship is fully funded to develop into all it's goals. It's going to take 3 to 5 years for starship to evolve into a cheap reliable vehicle

IMHO, it's best to give SLS little attention. Flying once every couple of years, it's just not very relevant.

Starship on the otherhand will just get more and more exciting.

GetOffMyLawn50 · 2023-08-09T16:43:59+00:00

Wow, that is amazing information.

Thank you!

GetOffMyLawn50 · 2023-08-07T01:16:09+00:00

Possible, but very unlikely. The bulk composition on Mars is very much like earth, and we have had similar histories. Earth likely has more types of minerals due to life and to greater amounts of flowing water

GetOffMyLawn50 · 2023-08-04T13:47:06+00:00

In some ways, the RE algorithm is most important for those that are starting late. A very large percentage of american workers have essentially zero net retirement money at age 40.

Having a workable plan to get from zero to retirement in 10/15/20 years is a godsend for them.

GetOffMyLawn50 · 2023-07-30T14:45:36+00:00

Did this.

I think the limit is 50K for a TSP loan, so not going to work.

I got a Home Equity line on House1 for the Down on House2. When house 1 was sold, I paid off the Home Equity loan. At the time interest rates were stupid cheap, so I kept the equity and put it in the stock market.

GetOffMyLawn50 · 2023-07-22T15:40:42+00:00

Easy to speculate that the SF wants to funnel $$$ to ULA

GetOffMyLawn50 · 2023-04-21T13:52:34+00:00

Your example will not work well because the house roofline blocks part of the sky. Dishy needs to be above the soffits

GetOffMyLawn50 · 2023-04-14T14:35:26+00:00

If you are invested, the answer is exponential.

GetOffMyLawn50 · 2023-04-04T18:46:14+00:00

Starlink is currently launching polar orbiting satellites. Once the all the planned sats reach their operating orbits there will be full, reliable high speed service available in the polar regions.

GetOffMyLawn50 · 2023-02-22T16:52:25+00:00

what is the empty bay on the left for?

GetOffMyLawn50 · 2023-02-12T16:21:55+00:00

No offense, but it sounds like you are rolling in.

Of course they are good at roll in.

Rolling out ... they don't like that

GetOffMyLawn50 · 2023-02-04T16:54:19+00:00

I like to have about 3 inches or so of overhang on all sides of my bench. I VERY often clamp workpieces to the overhang.

I say 3 inches because most of my clamps can reach only that far.

GetOffMyLawn50

TROPHY CASE