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An old classmate of mine, Lindy Elkins, proposed a mission to NASA years ago - she wanted to visit an all-metal asteroid, which is likely a remnant of an ancient planetary core, and run experiments. She didn't expect to win the competition for missions. But she did, and she's spent the last 7 years working on this mission. It is scheduled to launch today after a lot of delays on a Falcon 9 Heavy. It will take almost 6 years to get there, using Hall-effect ion engines. This is the first time these engines will be used in deep space. It will then spend two years on station running experiments and making observations. Good luck Lindy!

Yeah they’re gonna put it through the same unimpeachable process that gave us Speaker Kevin McCarthy….

Certainly that's the idea. But in WWII the US had the will to prevail and mobilized our economy to make it happen. We also did not have MTG or Trump to fuck up the program.

The economy is strong, inflation is way down, unemployment is low and wages are up. Add to that the Republicans in the house couldn't organize a three person marble game if two offered to play and brought the marbles and the election should be a Blue wave. Nothing is normal anymore.

Surely amongst the Republican members of the House there must be some who are sane and reasonable enough to negotiate support from enough Democrats. But, that would require prioritizing legislating over partisan power, so of course it will never happen.

We did a tour of the Stanton Energy Center the other day. It's a small-ish (100 megawatt) hybrid peaker plant near Disney in Anaheim. It's a good example of the new generation of peaker plants. Older peaker plants are just natural gas turbines that the utility contracts with to provide emergency power (during heat waves for example.) The utility pays them three ways: -They pay them some small amount to always be ready to go. -They pay them significantly more to go to "hot standby" (turbine running at idle, connected to the grid, ready to go) -They pay them top dollar for power when they need it, usually on the order of $200-$1000 per megawatt. The Stanton plant combines two turbines with a battery plant. Now when they need to go to hot standby they use the batteries to provide grid services (like frequency control.) If they get the order to operate they do the first 10 minutes or so on batteries. If they have to go past 10 minutes they spin up the turbine with the batteries, without needing to use any natural gas to keep it at idle, and connect it to the grid. If they go past 20 minutes they fire it up and start generating with both turbines. Since they usually don't have to start the turbine they are seeing huge savings. The plant operator estimates they have reduced their costs by 50%, reduced gas used by 80% and reduced total emissions by 90% (mainly by being able to run at 100% power any time the turbine is providing power.) And since they don't have to store 4 hours of power in the batteries on site, the battery plant can be much smaller. This plant went from approval to operation in less than 2 years. They are adding more battery storage now; that took less than 9 months. And plants like this are the reason we are not having rolling blackouts here despite higher demand, hotter summers and longer/more intense heat waves.

Hi Peter, And Bill once told me that he would NEVER give up his C23(b) certification. I would not either. Jerry Baumchen

Certainly not true in 1940. The RAF lost 1,023 from Fighter Command and 148 from Coastal Command. German losses were 1,887 RAF had a far superior system for collating information from radar and ground observers, and disseminating it to the squadrons. And this is from Adolf Galland's book “Die Ersten und die Letzte” (or The First and the Last). "The theme of fighter protection was chewed over again and again. Göring clearly represented the point of view of the bombers and demanded close and rigid protection. The bomber, he said, was more important than record bag figures. I tried to point out that the Bf 109 was superior in the attack and not so suitable for purely defensive purposes as the Spitfire, which, although a little slower, was much more maneuverable. He rejected my objection. We received many more harsh words. Finally, as his time ran short, he grew more amiable and asked what were the requirements for our squadrons. Mölders asked for a series of Bf 109's with more powerful engines. The request was granted. “And you ?” Göring turned to me. I did not hesitate long. “I should like an outfit of Spitfires for my group.”

You’re pushing Kennedy because you think he’ll steal votes from the Democrats who you hate. When you realise he’s actually far more popular with Right wingers like you, then you’ll dump him and go back to explicitly supporting Trump like the good little MAGA Republican that you are.

Hi Sky, Terry Baker, Oregon State College [ at that time ], was a Heisman Trophy winner & Sports Illustrated's Athlete of the Year, did not do so good in the pros. One of his coaches, while with the Rams, said that he should go to law school in his off-time [ he had a degree in Mech Engr ]. He did, and went on to a very successful law career here in Portland. Terry Baker - Wikipedia Jerry Baumchen

The Clown Show continues. Sad thing is that despite having a proven lying con-artist as nominal party leader and a complete inability to do the job they're there for, they still have the support of so many Americans. No man ever went broke overestimating the ignorance of the American public. P. T. Barnum Many people are gullible, and we can expect this to continue. P. T. Barnum There is a fool born every minute P. T. Barnum You can fool most of the people most of the time. P. T. Barnum

Also, 'net worth' and 'cash available to pay hospital bills' are two VERY different things. Plus, ICU for the uninsured can hit 7 figures within a week or so. That stuff is expensive.

It will be fun to see them try to float Gym Jordan again. And this is AWESOME. Remember our old friend George Santos, who the GOP is defending because they have to keep a majority at any cost? Well, turns out he's not going to vote for ol' Steve either. See, Steve didn't call him, and George feels left out and unpopular. He said he'd vote for “ANYONE but Scalise and come hell or high water I won’t change my mind.”

Laurent Duvernay-Tardiff was drafted by the Chiefs in 2014, he graduated medical school at McGill in Montreal in 2018 with a Doctor of Medicine and Master of Surgery. He studied mostly during the off season. in 2019 he enrolled at Harvard for a Masters in Public Health. He sat out the 2020 season to help in a long term care facility in Montreal during COVID. in 2022 he signed with the Jets and this year announced his retirement from Football. He is only the fourth NFL player to have graduated from Medical School. He got a lot of support from Andy Reid at the Chiefs to accomplish this. Reid's mother is also a McGill Medical School graduate.

John LeBlanc talks about it in This video recording of a seminar he gave.

Yesterday Russia lost 34 tanks, 91 APVs and 18 artillery pieces . During World War II, the Germans and Japanese had better aircraft, better pilots, better tacticians, better armor and better-trained troops. And militarily they were terrifyingly effective. But every aerial engagement where a German force would shoot down 15 Allied aircraft and lose only 2 aircraft themselves, the next day the Allies would launch another 15, fresh from the factory. And the Germans couldn't replace those 2 because the Allies were targeting their infrastructure - rubber plants, ball bearing plants, refineries. Eventually they couldn't keep up with our ability to manufacture and stage munitions. And in the end it led to their downfall. Let's hope something similar happens here.