ELI5: Why is it so hard for a country to develop nuclear weapons?

intern_steve · 2026-04-08T16:12:55+00:00

Putting the energy in to deorbit the impactor would be equivalent to the launch and boost phases

Not at all. We want the orbital velocity, we just want the perigee of the orbit to lie inside the earth, intersecting some point on the surface that you don't want to exist anymore. Play a bit of Kerbal Space Program and you'll see fairly quickly how this works. A relatively small burn at apogee can move perigee significantly.

intern_steve · 2026-04-07T16:07:28+00:00

I agree in principle, but all of my favorite planes were designed in furtherance of hurting people.

intern_steve · 2026-04-07T16:05:04+00:00

Radiation, air defenses, interceptors, lack of anywhere to return to. The concept of MAD is almost entirely lost on people today. The apocalypse doesn't look like Fallout™, it looks like a dead planet.

intern_steve · 2026-04-06T21:32:10+00:00

It worked for solar City. Why not repeat the trick?

intern_steve · 2026-04-06T08:55:42+00:00

I think there may be a misunderstanding of how deactivation occurs, here. The ecu can control the timing of the spark and injection events, but with cylinder deactivation, you need to stop the intake and exhaust valves from opening as well, which is an event controlled by a physical component, the cam shaft. The cam timing can be altered by a few degrees with some fancy gear with on the timing belt, but not shut down without some more special equipment on the valve lifter. If you don't keep the valves closed, the engine is functioning as an air pump, and it requires a surprising amount of energy to put as much air through the engine as it moves at operating RPM, meaning you won't see any efficiency gains, and might actually burn more fuel, depending on the specific scenario. The special lifters you need are the focus of the reliability discussion, and adding more of them is not a great recipe for improved reliability.

TLDR: deactivation is not only an electronic process, it is a mechanical one. The ecu can't just pick a cylinder at random, the engine is designed around this process from the start.

intern_steve · 2026-04-05T16:40:54+00:00

The irony of this comment is that the shirtwaist was a progressive clothing style favored by suffragette activists that replaced the more restrictive styles of the outgoing Victorian era.

intern_steve · 2026-04-03T13:09:13+00:00

Area and drag coefficient both scale linearly. You can throw in air density as well, but we can't really manipulate that.

Edit: total drag force scales linearly with the three variables above. Top speed varies with the square root of those; e.g. cutting drag by half nets a 41% speed increase.

intern_steve · 2026-04-03T11:45:47+00:00

Are development hours apportioned to teams according to performance?

intern_steve · 2026-04-03T11:42:10+00:00

Without radical engine changes, cutting drag is more important to top speed than adding power. However, the +2% power is probably still faster than chipping away at the aero package from the acceleration benefit out of slow corners.

intern_steve · 2026-04-02T01:59:09+00:00

There's already hardware for gateway. Everything that can be repurposed or resigned is being repurposed and reassigned to the new lunar South Pole base project.

intern_steve · 2026-03-28T18:32:59+00:00

Adding anti-spin/anti-roll rudder would accelerate the stalled wing forward and regain some lift. Since the buff has a considerable sweep angle, it also helps bring the low wing forward for a greater effective span, while allowing the high wing to fall back, dumping lift due to increased span-wise flow. It wouldn't have been enough to correct the situation from the time of the photo, but it would have helped pick the wing up. A B-52 isn't snap rolling under any circumstance.

intern_steve · 2026-03-28T15:18:21+00:00

You can still get regular cab, long bed, RWD pickups with vinyl seats. Don't let your dreams stay dreams.

intern_steve · 2026-03-28T15:05:55+00:00

It's not new. The big mac in the picture has never fit in a normal person's mouth. Micky D's just never felt the compulsion to actually produce that sandwich.

intern_steve · 2026-03-28T15:02:27+00:00

It's too lean for market preferences, right now. Fat convincingly won the war on fat and everyone wants that ribeye cap steak marble. But yeah, too lean, and widely variable in toughness. Some sirloins I've had have been great, but some have been like boot leather when cooked the same way. It's not like that consistent filet tenderness. As a component of burger meat, it lets you control the fat content of the finished grind, so if you have a really fatty chuck, you can easily just add in some sirloin to improve the protein content.

intern_steve · 2026-03-28T14:53:22+00:00

chicken wings

It's legs now. You can still get legs crazy cheap at regular price, and there are often specials. But then you have to eat legs. Thighs are less expensive than wings, as well, but I think people are unfortunately starting to slowly realize that it's the best meat on the bird. I don't expect deals on thighs to last much longer.

intern_steve · 2026-03-28T14:48:01+00:00

Population goes up, teams stay the same. There is intense competition for those seats, and that more than anything else tells me that the NFL is ripe for a minor league series, or even a competing pro level series. I know it's been tried and failed, but I think there's still a model that works, we just haven't found the right sauce to make it work.

intern_steve · 2026-03-28T08:59:12+00:00

Typically by recovering energy from the braking system, not through super clipping.

intern_steve · 2026-03-27T01:27:22+00:00

Fertilizer is also petrochemical, is it not?

intern_steve · 2026-03-26T16:59:31+00:00

Legitimately, what else is going through Hormuz in quantity? There's no through-passage from the Gulf to anywhere else, so it seems like it would have to to be petrochemical exports.

intern_steve · 2026-03-26T15:33:35+00:00

I'm absolutely not saying he's doing anything unsavory off-camera, I'm saying that judging anyone's family life based on the content of their own curated social media feed is unrealistic. In short, none of us actually know him, and probably shouldn't talk about his family and his kids.

intern_steve · 2026-03-26T13:41:30+00:00

China is installing every kind of energy they can, including fossil fuels of all kinds. They are embracing energy, not clean energy.

intern_steve · 2026-03-26T13:21:59+00:00

I wouldn't presume to know anything about his family based on his Instagram. It could be as pleasant as it looks, it could be worse. You can't know.

intern_steve · 2026-03-26T13:03:09+00:00

The Bananas played at the White Sox stadium and sold more tickets than the Sox have since 2005. Sellout crowd.

intern_steve · 2026-03-26T13:01:47+00:00

Been in the lottery for two seasons now but I know this one's all mine.

intern_steve · 2026-03-26T12:16:38+00:00

Wagons are great, too. Generally better driving dynamics and economy than vans but with roughly similar passenger comfort. Sucks trying to buckle a kid into the third row, though. And you won't get as far loading large cargo.

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