SethInMI

So with this new KA what are your numbers Mike, if I may ask? Time to altitude and cycle time for a load wheels up to wheels down?

seems right to me. Getting out first and you risk the belly fliers opening over top of you, unless you are angling off jump run somehow, not sure what a speed flier does, I assume they just went straight down though.

I've never heard of FB / Meta charging for account recovery. Likely it is a scam, but try to do some more research. Try Reddit, maybe there is a sub-reddit on FB account recovery.

Excluding health coverage for source-of-injury like skydiving came up in a discussion. Googling around found this https://www.congress.gov/bill/108th-congress/senate-bill/423 amendment that I read was supposed to prevent group plans from excluding legal recreation activities (so skydiving but not trespassing BASE jumps). From what I can tell it never became law. Does anyone know if any employer offered group health plans exclude for source-of-injury in the USA? I kinda doubt it, but it would be interesting to know.

We still get our city Sunday paper, although it is thinner and smaller every year. One thing I like to do is read the obits, scanning to find ones that seem interesting to me. I like to see what the deceased family thought of him / her, what value they brought to the lives of others or what value they chose to create for themselves. There is also the interesting puzzle of reading between the lines, all families have some drama, divorces, blended families, difficult relationships often get alluded to obliquely and it is entertaining to read into names mentioned and omitted and descriptive word choices to try to assemble a more complete picture of a life lived. Most are like this person, "worked hard all their life, loved spending time with their family and friends and pursuing hobbies" but occasionally you get someone that really says to me "that was a life really well lived" or even "that was an obit well written" (not that a simple life isn't worth celebrating) Also, Wendy I was able to find the name of the person easily through google, but perhaps that wasn't your intent, It may have been just to prevent someone searching the name from finding this post on DZ.com.

I'm a bit late to this thread but my 0.02 is to echo Wendy and say buy used for first rig, and that all the major brands are fine. Javelin, Vector, Mirage, Infinity, Curv are popular, and there are others that I am skipping. Why used? Well you say you won't downside for a long time, but I don't believe you ; ). Sure you are a bit older, but ex-Airborne you will feel the need for a bit more speed. I am 50, I jump a 135 loaded at 1.6 and it isn't a rocket ship, but it gives me several nice features. The rig is smaller, I can fit it in a carry-on suitcase, the canopy is smaller and easier to pack, the rig is lighter and more comfortable to wear, and the increased airspeed makes me less sensitive to changing wind speeds. All these will enter your mind as you get more comfortable with flying a canopy and if you are like many (but not all) jumpers you will drop canopy sizes.

The quote about misleading range loss in cold weather does ring true for me. My brother lives about 150 miles from me, and my Tesla (with 300 mi range) uses about 55% of range to get to his house in the summer, which seems reasonable given my 80 mph highway speed. But when the temps drop below 20F it probably took 80% (iirc) or more. Some of that I chalk up to my winter tires being less efficient and my winter wheels also being less efficient, but although Telsa makes it clear that cold weather affects range it was surprising how much it changed.

I was too young to be into the Dead, but I am very glad my one trip to Red Rocks was July 2014. It was an Avett Brothers show, Bob Weir and RatDog opened, for one of their last shows. The Avetts joined in for Touch of Grey and I felt connected to a vast musical experience... Glad your daughter was able to gift that to you, that must have been a "gee I did something right" moment

what is the difference between a lentil and a chickpea? I have never had a lentil on my face

interesting to see what people think of as "the worst case" that is worth trying to prepare for. My off the cuff categories: Level1: a prolonged recession Level2: an orderly breakdown of basic supply chains / rationing / hoarding Level3: civil unrest / breakdown of society / civil war Level4: zombies Level5: a massive meteor strike / global nuclear war I only worry about 1, meaning I try to be conservative with my saving for the future. Edit: Climate change factors in here somewhere. I live in Michigan which is a good choice as any for dealing with it IMHO.

The Nissan ARIYA is CCS. They read the writing on the wall.

It certainly is. I think Tesla realized there are plenty of people who will not buy a Tesla, no matter how good its charging network is, and this way, like Bill said, they get to make money off those people. Also importantly Ford and GM will (it sounds like) contribute to building out the Tesla network and all 3 companies customers benefit from that. Now what will VW and the Koreans do? Are they going to try to beat em, or join em? <insert star wars "join us or die" meme>

lol. some days this site comes through. if anyone wonders: kouta = aussie for excellent https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=kouta

It's funny to me how this video affects me now vs 30+ years ago when my teenage self first saw it. Back then it was "damn she's hot" but now it's "sure she's hot but how does she feel about the effort to stay that way? I mean she could stand to eat a sandwich or two. And what is she like as a person, could I stand being around her for more than 10 minutes? Is she a stuck-up prima-donna? Is she funny?" Life changes your view on what is important.

if Elon says 1-2 months, it's probably 3-4. Either way, the next launch will be here before we know it, and be far likelier to get to splashdown. Fun times if you are a space nerd.

In Michigan, my overnight electrical rate is $0.13 / kWh. For my car, that is about $1.07 to go 30 miles.

I wondered a bit about that too, so I looked it up, here is one explanation: "Sidestepping decades of precedent, Musk says that Starship will have no separation mechanism at all. Instead, at some point during the design or testing process, Musk decided that a separation mechanism was entirely superfluous and that the same effect could be more or less replicated by using existing systems on Super Heavy. By using the booster’s gimballing Raptor engines to impart a small but significant rotation on the rocket moments before separation, Super Heavy could effectively flick Starship away from it – a bit like how SpaceX currently deploys Starlink satellites from Falcon by spinning the upper stage end over end and letting the spacecraft just float away thanks to centripetal forces. Because Starship is something like five times heavier than Super Heavy at stage separation, the ship would effectively float away from the booster in a straight and stable line, use cold gas thrusters to settle its propellant, and ignite its six Raptor engines to head to orbit. In return for the slightly unorthodox deployment profile, if this new approach works, SpaceX can entirely preclude the development of a pusher/spring system capable of pushing a ~1300 ton Starship away from Super Heavy. That approach is possible on Starship in large part because the ship’s six Raptor engines are completely tucked away inside a skirt, meaning that there is zero chance of nozzles being damaged by impacting the booster interstage."

a pic from twitter showing the pad damage (with the original forms for the concrete pour on left). Elon says they were planning a flame diverter / water deluge but it wasn't ready in time so they rolled the dice and went anyway. I wonder if his desire to launch on 4/20 overrode some people who wanted to wait, but OTOH they have another rocket soon ready to go so just saying "lets get this one gone and we can keep iterating" has a point. Elon claims next launch in 2 months, the armchair QBs on NSF say 4-6 months.

barely. I saw NSF has video of one of their remotes with a car parked by the camera. A big chunk of concrete smashes into the car, maybe totaling it depending on if there is frame damage. As Phil said, those seconds on the pad with the engines running was not good for it. Maybe knocked out a few engines or caused some other damage to the rocket itself...

A personal anecdote illustrating that this whole e-car ship has sailed and Brent has to let that shit go: My next door neighbor, who flew a Trump 2020 flag, then a Trump 2024 flag, then a Lets Go Brandon flag, and who vowed during the George Floyd protests that his personal arsenal would be ready to protect our neighborhood...just bought a Tesla Model S. It's over.

It may be worth pointing out when it comes to electricity usage that not all crypto is equal anymore. Ethereum switched last fall to a proof-of-stake model from a proof-of-work model, which cut its electricity requirements by 99%. So when people say "crypto miners are sucking electricity" they mean just bitcoin.

this post ended up sending me down a 2+ hour rabbit hole of answering the questions "what is a carbon cub" and "what would I do with one" I learned that you can buy one new for 300k, or build from a kit for about half that. They climb quick and fly slow. I wondered what the point would be unless you lived in Alaska or Canada though.

They basically pushed the $250k of automatic depositor insurance up to "unlimited", because the risk of many smaller banks going under in this difficult situation, and they are going to use the same bank-funded insurance fund to cover the shortfall. I can see their point, with the rise in interest rates banks are having a lot of trouble so this is a problem not entirely of their own making.

doo-wop