Idea: For long-term storage & preservation of rare "treasures" (whether they be museums pieces, library books, national archive documents, or whoever), invest in oxygen-depleted facilities. At low-enough O2, nothing aerobic - be it bacteria, mold, bug, rodent, or whatever - can grow. Most can't even live. Gradual oxidation damage (paper turning yellow then brown, etc.) ceases. And disastrous fires can't happen.
IANAL, to comment on the court's ruling. But $30k seems kinda high to just get rid of the offensive symbols.
If stuck in the homeowner's shoes - I'd quietly ask local rabbis for ideas. They might know a contractor who'd give a nice discount on the removal & replacement. Perhaps a very nice discount, if you were open to the floor being "creatively repurposed in unflattering circumstances" elsewhere.
Once you've got even hundreds of satellites in non-equatorial orbits, trying to provide global coverage - their ground tracks very frequently cross each other. Even if they're all at the same orbital inclination. While those mostly won't be 90 degree crossings - the great majority will involve several km/s relative velocity. And you'd run out of (say) 5km LEO shells very quickly.
But the orbit is a minimum of about 50,000 kilometers, and the satellite is maybe a meter across. That's a very low probability of a collision per crossing.
I get that 'probably safe' or '0.001% chance of destruction per day' is not very satisfying for an investment that cost millions, but everything always comes down to odds. None of these satellites are eternal, even if they're the only thing in their orbit.
Don't know. But I'm sure that people at NASA and other such places have done that calculation. I just wanted to point out that orbital space is big, so you have to do the math to see if there's an actual problem.
If it's WWIII, and you're using ballistic missiles against satellite constellations, then either:
- You are not targeting individual satellites; you're setting off nuclear warheads in space, and relying on the EMP to disable all satellites within a large radius of the blast - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_electromagnetic_pulse
or
- You're nuking the ground-based command & control centers for those satellites. Again, nothing like 10,000 missiles needed.
(Or both.)
To target 10,000 satellites directly, the "obvious" weapon would be a few satellite-launch rockets, lofting tons of BB's (or little steel bolts, or whatever) - which would become a sort of long-duration artillery barrage shrapnel in orbit.
> - You're nuking the ground-based command & control centers for those satellites. Again, nothing like 10,000 missiles needed.
With Starlink's peer-to-peer capabilities, hitting every single ground station and keeping the satellites from working through new ground stations may actually be quite difficult.
Starlink orbits close enough that they're looking into offering LTE coverage from "space". You don't need a giant dish to access the satellites, which means building new ground stations and reprogramming the network from an unassuming-looking ground device to use them is quite feasible.
The paths of the satellites are rather predictable, though, so your shrapnel attack executed with some precision should clear out enough of them.
The moment you launch a nuke (even if just to set off an EMP), you can expect nukes to come your way in retaliation before your nuke even detonates. Unless whatever war is going on has already gone full nuclear, I don't think nuclear weaponry is a viable move to take out satellites.
> With Starlink's peer-to-peer capabilities, hitting every single ground station and keeping the satellites from working through new ground stations may actually be quite difficult.
Yes-ish? I was thinking the command & control facilities - far scarcer than the (probably unmanned) StarLink-to-Internet Backbone connection ground stations.
> The moment you launch a nuke...
Yes-ish. The (great-)^n grandparent comment posited WWIII starting, and the nukes flying at scale. Between the widespread obliteration of ground-side infrastructure, ground-side EMP damage, and very likely EMP in space - I'd assume that Starlink would quickly go down. Plus, the ionosphere could become opaque to Starlink's radio frequencies. Finally, the ionosphere's upper layers might expand enough (due to nuclear detonations in or near space) that the orbits of the Starlink satellites started degrading very quickly.
With how easily any major space power could set off "small n" nukes in space during a major crisis, to knock out satellites - I would not rule someone doing so. The responsible parties need not claim responsibility. And sane leaders might hesitate to go full nuclear in response.
The BB idea doesn’t really work either- if they are in orbit they circle with the satellites and don’t hit anything, if they are at different speeds they are in different orbits and fly above and below the satellites and miss, if they cross the orbit SpaceX just moves the satellites to miss.
"Circle with the satellites" is not how orbits work. Do a Google image search for satellite ground tracks, and observe how those tracks repeatedly cross each other. In LEO, a 90 degree orbital crossing represents a relative velocity of >10km/s. (Normally, collisions do not happen because the satellites are under control, and everyone is making ongoing efforts to avoid collision. Kinda like how cars & trucks normally don't hit pedestrians.)
Bottom line - a "3 tons to LEO" satellite launch vehicle could put ~10,000,000 untrackable little metal objects into orbit, crossing satellite orbits at lethal velocities. Trivial methods, such as dispersing the BB's with small explosive charges, could randomize their individual orbits.
The satellite operators have very good reason to be concerned about such "low tech" anti-satellite weapons.
> opposition parties have seized the opportunity to pile pressure on the government.
> “This is too much,” the head of the rightwing Popular party, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, wrote on X as he demanded an “immediate clarification” of the state of the nation’s railways.
> Speaking to reporters on Tuesday before the Barcelona-area crash, the far-right Vox party’s spokesperson Pepa Millán claimed Spaniards were now “afraid to get on a train”.
> However, while the latest accidents raise concerns about safety, according to EU statistics Spain’s rail network is one of Europe’s safest. According to the same report, in 2024 a total of 16 passengers died in accidents on Europe’s rail networks, among them one passenger in Spain. During the same period there were 20,000 deaths on Europe’s roads.
From a glance at Wikipedia, the PP and Vox are the two biggest opposition parties in Spain's parliament. If they gained power - there'd be no quick, cheap, or sure fixes for the rail system...but now it would be "their fault".
Anyone familiar with Spanish politics here, to comment?
Amusing idea: To do UBI research at scale, without the political drama, just disguise your UBI research as lottery research. Partner with some state lottery which wants to understand its customers better, and distribute the limited run of not-called-UBI scratch-off tickets* to normal lottery retailers according to the demographics you're looking for. "Hide" in the fine print that the limited-run game's bit-better-than-usual odds are because it's "market research" for the lottery - so winners of the big ($X/month for Y months) prizes must agree to several interviews by the lottery's market research team and anti-gambling-addiction team.
*Yes - 99.xx% of the tickets are either losers, or only good for some minor prize
Massive UBI trial hidden in plain sight is also know as social security in the U.S.. It definitely helps out the poorer. And it hasn't resulted in a bloom of over-60 artisans, poets, musicians, novelists, etc., and the other rosy predictions of UBI enthusiasts.
Not to speak highly of the NYPD - but it is the character of most violent criminals to refrain from attacking you when police officers are standing close at hand.
This is false and a gross oversimplification based on one specific thing, which is that petty theft in particular has taken a backseat in many areas as it's not a felony and is usually a waste of time and money to persue, especially when the thief just gets turned loose with no big consequences.
Depends on the violent crime. I've been nearly run over in crosswalks dozens of times in view of police, sometimes when they're in traffic as well and could easily pull over the perpetrator. It's never happened.
Not to say that Western countries are second to anyone at self-sabotage - but China's worst enemy has always been itself. And there's another 3/4 century to go here.
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