Pinckney

16 ms·

151.
by Pinckney 10y ago
Generally speaking, the cheap decks people start the game with aren't very interesting to pilot. They don't have enough removal, which is one of the primary ways players interact with their opponent's board. They definitely d
152.
by Pinckney 10y ago
Absurd results aren't what you want, since they're readily dismissed as localized, and people could believe that hacking had no effect on the overall result. You want to prove that hacking took place, but subtly, so that people ca
153.
by Pinckney 10y ago
Right, but how many people actually rent their own residence on Airbnb?
154.
by Pinckney 10y ago
This seems to resemble more a problem of agency law. The recruiter was an agent of the government. Is the government liable for their agent's statements to potential soldiers? >[Considering a swimming pool salesman...] Envision a si
155.
by Pinckney 10y ago
But why would a rational, self-interested person put up with great risk and expense to live in a small closed economy on Mars, when they could much more easily live in a small closed economy on earth? What's so great about Mars?
156.
by Pinckney 10y ago
Nautilus-X was pretty serious. You really want a pretty large diameter so that you don't have a huge gravity gradient causing your astronauts discomfort. Tethers might be more practical than the classical doughnut designs for the near
157.
by Pinckney 10y ago
Surely Ceres would just fling itself apart?
158.
by Pinckney 10y ago
Hi-seas isn't self-sustaining in food, water, or atmosphere.
159.
by Pinckney 10y ago
Does this not get you banned?
160.
by Pinckney 10y ago
Delta-v to EML1 from LEO is 3.77 km/sec. Assuming an Isp of 320 sec, you get a mass ratio of about 3.3, which works out to about 75 Falcon payloads, not counting any hardware you need to boost. If you use ion thrusters, the delta-V bec
161.
by Pinckney 10y ago
It's like religion in that people like to anthropomorphize wildly. The Cosmological argument ("Define God to be the first cause") becomes "... and that's why God smote a fig tree." Here, "Huh, the universe
162.
by Pinckney 10y ago
It's not entirely clear what, exactly, it would mean for this to be true. It's also not clear that defining what we mean by "Is the universe a simulation?" has any value if it is not testable.
163.
by Pinckney 10y ago
Galileo safely aerobraked into Jupiter at 47km/s. It takes one hell of a heat shield, but it can be done.
164.
by Pinckney 10y ago
Another way to view it is that human rovers must go fast, because humans are impatient. We could build a faster, battery powered robotic rover if we wanted, but why? If it's simply mileage you want, Curiosity's RTG means it can ju
165.
by Pinckney 10y ago
Since Orion doesn't need to accelerate constantly, it's in principle quite possible to turn it and fire bombs in the direction of any interceptor, and the thick pusher plate makes it actually pretty durable from some aspects. What
166.
by Pinckney 10y ago
The big advantage of Orion is that we're reasonably confident it would work, and could probably build one within the decade with a serious effort. Zubrin's NSW rocket, on the other hand, falls into the "hasn't yet been c
167.
by Pinckney 10y ago
You add a significant amount of mass to the bombs to act as propellant. I don't know offhand what fraction is typical for Orion designs.
168.
by Pinckney 10y ago
His cost estimates depend on hundreds of thousands of people signing up, to diffuse R&D costs. That's dubious. Historically, colonists are self-interested. Typically they want to become rich, or they want to escape poverty or perse
169.
by Pinckney 10y ago
So? Nobody has been able to present any credible economic plan for Mars, either, which makes it more like Antarctica (or central Greenland, if you insist on somewhere you can legally move) than Norilsk.
170.
by Pinckney 10y ago
I believe you're mistaken about the gravity. Position is as R e^(i v/r t), so |acceleration| is as R v^2/r^2 -- right? For a fixed station of floor radius r, acceleration is directly proportional to distance from the center,
171.
by Pinckney 10y ago
The Brexit thread broke 2500. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11966167
172.
by Pinckney 10y ago
Asteroids don't cause extinctions by coming in and blowing everything to smithereens. Rather, the ejecta causes firestorms, and an impact winter can wreck the biosphere and prevent sunlight from reaching the surface. But even during th
173.
by Pinckney 10y ago
If the government couldn't make other charges stick, they shouldn't be in jail.
174.
by Pinckney 10y ago
A solar flare or a gamma ray burst might knock out satellites and electrical equipment and damage earth's atmosphere. In the worst case, they could kill a few billion people. But Earth will still be more hospitable than Mars. >Same
175.
by Pinckney 10y ago
How many tourists visit Admundsen-Scott, and what percentage of its operating costs do you think it covers?
176.
by Pinckney 10y ago
The technology to put people on Mars is not fundamentally new. The technology to make such a colony self sustaining is. We've never built any habitat which is entirely self sufficient even just in food, water, and air. Even the ISS nee
177.
by Pinckney 10y ago
The problem with space elevators is that the cable (or the pipe, as you propose) needs to be able to hold itself together. Imagine taking a 4000 km long elevator cable and holding it up by one end: it would snap under its own weight ins
178.
by Pinckney 10y ago
What would they use it for? If you're going to Mars, your vessel has a reasonable crew habitat, so you don't need Tiangong I for that. Tiangong I is more payload than spaceship. Its tanks can only hold about 1000kg of propellant.
179.
by Pinckney 10y ago
I'll say it, sure. Apollo was dangerous, expensive, and didn't accomplish anything that couldn't have been done more safely and cheaply with probes. It was cool as shit too, but I'm not going to pretend that 'cool&#
180.
by Pinckney 10y ago
Earth is still more hospitable in the case of your giant asteroid. Those in nuclear submarines and bunkers will survive unless they're very close to the epicenter. When they emerge, they'll find temperatures and atmosphere which a

More ›