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Some ideas on preventing cryogenic propellant boiloff in Starship during long duration cruise or while operating orbital fuel depots. The usual caveats apply! One of the major concerns with using Starship for the Human Landing System is that propellant (cryogenically liquid methane and oxygen) need to a) be transferred in orbit and b) maintained for the duration of the mission, which could be weeks, months, or years. In particular, no astronaut wants to board their Starship after a successful 6 week sortie on the Moon only to find the fuel’s boiled off and they’re stuck. The trick lies in using energy …
California is by far the richest and most powerful polity led by Progressive ideals, and it has taken a beating of late. In this post, I discuss a practical roadmap by which California must reclaim its mantle as the shining city on the hill, an embodiment of the positive attributes of Progressive ideals and material optimism, and once again become a target of aspirational upward mobility. This will not be an easy road. Decades of complacency have squandered enviable resources and potential. But I believe a strength of America is syncretism, with the marketplace of ideas providing robust competition for …
As of today, it is 601 days until October 17, 2026, when the mass-optimal launch window to Mars opens next. While I don’t have any privileged information, it’s fun to speculate about what SpaceX could choose to send on its first Starship flights to Mars. (Spoiler alert: Rods from the gods…) Over the next 600 days, SpaceX has a number of key technologies to demonstrate; orbit, reuse, refill, and chill. It’s hard to make predictions, particularly about the future. I’m optimistic that SpaceX will have multiple fully fueled Starships ready to go in October next year, to be followed by …
This post is a follow on from Powering the Mars Base. It’s an extended riff on the following thought experiment: What is the most electrical power you could extract from an integrated Starship-delivered nuclear reactor on Mars? The usual caveats apply. I have taught nuclear physics but I am not a reactor designer – which will shortly become obvious to those of you who Know. No liability is accepted for attempts to install open Brayton cycle nuclear turbines in Starships, with or without SpaceX permission. At the outset, let’s rehearse the underlying assumptions. A Starship has a 9 m diameter, …
As part of my job running Terraform Industries, I get to build an amazing team of super smart people, and that involves interviewing hundreds of people. Over time certain patterns have become obvious, but I remember when they weren’t obvious to me on the other side of the table! It has become clear to me that there are some subjects that should be covered as part of any professional degree and are not only not taught and not discussed, but most otherwise highly qualified graduates are completely unaware of their existence. I have previously written about improving resumes, becoming a …
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February 26, 2024 As dawn broke, Laura, Moises and I slowly cruised along a quiet watercourse. The dawn chorus was active and included species like Ferruginous Pygmy-Owl, Zimmer's Woodcreeper and Black-tailed Antbird, but I stayed focused on the treeline, hoping that a curassow-shaped bird would appear. The dawn chorus quieted as the sun rose above the horizon. Early morning is the best time to find the curassow, and we were running out of time. Domain of the Wattled Curassow - Muyuna Lodge, Loreto, Peru And there it was! It was the bright red bill that first caught my attention and 0.05 seconds later, my brain registered that I was staring at a female Wattled Curassow. Wattled Curassow - Muyuna Lodge, Loreto, Peru But it was better than I had imagined - the female was accompanied by a tiny chick! For a few magical minutes we watched the duo in their element. Wattled Curassow chick - Muyuna Lodge, Loreto, Peru Wattled Curassow chick - Muyuna Lodge, Loreto, Peru Wattled Curassows are closely associated with these rivers in the western Amazon basin and that has led to their downfall. The rivers are the highways, and curassows have a lot of meat. But in a few areas like here, hunting of the curassows does not occur and encounters with this secretive species are possible. The curassows like feeding on the fruits of mahogany trees that line the watercourses, and that is likely what this female was on the hunt for. Wattled Currasow - Muyuna Lodge, Loreto, Peru We were on cloud nine after such an epic start to the day! I was pleased that I even managed some mostly in-focus photos with my broken lens. For the next few hours we cruised around by boat, checking out different waterways in search of some of our target birds. We were successful with Black-tailed Antbird and Short-tailed Parrot. Black-tailed Antbird - Muyuna Lodge, Loreto, Peru Short-tailed Parrot - Muyuna Lodge, Loreto, Peru It was a very birdy morning and we cleared the hundred species mark before returning to the lodge for breakfast. Bluish-fronted Jacamar - Muyuna Lodge, Loreto, Peru Black-tailed Tityra - Muyuna Lodge, Loreto, Peru Proboscis Bat (Rhynchonycteris nasa) - Muyuna Lodge, Loreto, Peru After breakfast, we searched by boat for some of the few remaining target birds I had in mind such as Purple-throated Cotinga, Gray-eyed Greenlet and Wing-barred Seedeater, but were unsuccessful. Unidentified katydid - Muyuna Lodge, Loreto, Peru We were also on the lookout for Dusky-billed Parrotlets, a potential lifer for Laura and a new photographed bird for me. Moises claimed sightings on a few occasions, but each time my photos revealed that they were the more expected Riparian Parrotlets. Band-tailed Antbird - Muyuna Lodge, Loreto, Peru At one point during the afternoon we entered an area of higher ground where there was a small walking trail. After spending most of the day in a boat it felt great to feel the earth beneath our boots, even though this meant that we were accompanied by a swarm of mosquitoes. Amazonian Trogon - Muyuna Lodge, Loreto, Peru Methona confusa - Muyuna Lodge, Loreto, Peru We found several groups of Eastern Pygmy Marmosets, one of the smallest species of monkey! Eastern Pygmy Marmoset (Cebuella niveiventris) - Muyuna Lodge, Loreto, Peru Eastern Pygmy Marmoset (Cebuella niveiventris) - Muyuna Lodge, Loreto, Peru Our guide, Moises had a stake-out for Nancy Ma's Night-Monkey (Aotus nancymai) that was visible from the main watercourse. Nancy Ma's Night-Monkey (Aotus nancymai) - Muyuna Lodge, Loreto, Peru During the mid-afternoon, Moises took us down a channel choked with vegetation to look for some herps. We kept a close eye on the vegetation until Laura spotted the first snake, as she is known to do! Giant Parrot Snake (Leptophis ahaetulla nigromarginatus) - Muyuna Lodge, Loreto, Peru While we have seen this widespread species before, this was a new subspecies for us. The extensive black markings between the scales are quite distinctive. Giant Parrot Snake (Leptophis ahaetulla nigromarginatus) - Muyuna Lodge, Loreto, Peru Even better than the parrot snake was this next species: a Northern Caiman Lizard (Dracaena guianensis)! I have wanted to see this huge species of lizard for many years but had never gotten lucky. As the name suggests, particularly large individuals somewhat resemble caimans, and they share similar aquatic habitats. Caiman lizards feed on snails, fish, amphibians and other creatures that they find underwater. Northern Caiman Lizard (Dracaena guianensis) - Muyuna Lodge, Loreto, Peru Northern Caiman Lizard (Dracaena guianensis) - Muyuna Lodge, Loreto, Peru As the sun set, we found ourselves slowly paddling in a different wetland after another unsuccessful Purple-throated Cotinga search. We enjoyed watching a pair of Yellow-chinned Spinetails. This species is widespread in South America but is fairly localized in Peru. Yellow-chinned Spinetail - Muyuna Lodge, Loreto, Peru You would be hard-pressed to find an activity that Laura likes more than a night-hike in the tropics, and tonight's walk was a good one. We only stayed out for a short while but came away with some nice sightings, including several snakes! Smoky Jungle Frog (Leptodactylus pentadactylus) - Muyuna Lodge, Loreto, Peru Ancylometes sp. - Muyuna Lodge, Loreto, Peru Unidentified net-casting spider (family Deinopidae) - Muyuna Lodge, Loreto, Peru Crowned False Boa (Pseudoboa coronata) - Muyuna Lodge, Loreto, Peru Pierella hortona - Muyuna Lodge, Loreto, Peru Leptodactylus sp. - Muyuna Lodge, Loreto, Peru Sais rosalia - Muyuna Lodge, Loreto, Peru Garden Tree Boa (Corallus hortulana) - Muyuna Lodge, Loreto, Peru I think my favourite sighting of the walk was this Slender Opossum (Marmosops sp.). It was extremely confiding and didn't mind my close approach for photos. Slender Opossum (Marmoseps sp.) - Muyuna Lodge, Loreto, Peru Though they may resemble a rodent to some (Moises confidently identified it as an "Amazonian Mouse", whatever that is), these are actually a tiny genus of neotropical opossums, meaning that they are a marsupial. Slender opossums typically live in the viny, dense understory where they search for insects, arachnids, flowers and fruit. Slender Opossum (Marmoseps sp.) - Muyuna Lodge, Loreto, Peru My final post from Peru will include our last couple of days at Muyuna Lodge.
When pigeons outnumber pigeonholes, some birds must double up. This obvious statement — and its inverse — have deep connections to many areas of math and computer science. The post How a Problem About Pigeons Powers Complexity Theory first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Yes – it is well-documented that in many industries the design of products incorporates a plan for when the product will need to be replaced. A blatant example was in 1924 when an international meeting of lightbulb manufacturers decided to limit the lifespan of lightbulbs to 1,000 hours, so that consumers would have to constantly […] The post Is Planned Obsolescence Real first appeared on NeuroLogica Blog.
The crazy story of a few days that changed Korea forever
Despite the hype, it’s been surprisingly challenging to find quantum algorithms that outperform classical ones. In this episode, Ewin Tang discusses her pioneering work in “dequantizing” quantum algorithms — and what it means for the future of quantum computing. The post What Is the True Promise of Quantum Computing? first appeared on Quanta Magazine
