Idle Words @idlewords

Bloga longa, tweeta brevis idlewords.com Lonely blvd. of broken dreams Joined December 2009

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Idle Words @idlewords

7 months ago

New installment in my "Why Not Mars?" series, "The Shape of a Mars Mission" idlewords.com/2025/02/the_sh…

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Sam Altman @sama

8 months ago

https://t.co/jkVZTikjGU

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Idle Words @idlewords

8 months ago

Key points: 1) There is totally room to add Trump to Mt. Rushmore 2) It looks like a fifth president already got added and then erased

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When I was in grad school, we were talking about one day being able to block the light of a star to see the planets right next to it. This is stunning. Now we can accurately study the spectra of light from exoplanets to learn the chemistry of their atmospheres.

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Idle Words @idlewords

a year ago

"Right now the Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate (the entity responsible for manned space flight) couldn’t build a toaster for less than a billion dollars." My rant about America's dangerous, rudderless, and incoherent moon program idlewords.com/2024/5/the_lun…

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derek guy @dieworkwear

2 years ago

please keep my cat in your thoughts tonight. she's not sick or anything. she just needs everyone's attention at all times including at night.

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Cat @CatOrman1

2 years ago

you're not a "generalist" you're 23

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Hannah @teaforpterosaur

2 years ago

Can't believe how much time I spent trying to convince women I got chatting to in Superdrug and at the hairdresser they should get vaccinated and this cnt drops the most convincing argument I've ever heard 2 fucking years later

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Josh Hopkins @SpaceJosh

2 years ago

@idlewords @Pinboard I skimmed my copy of Tsiolkovsky's collected works and don't see much on Mars. But Walter Hohmann's 1925 "The Attainability of Heavenly Bodies", which I suspect *invented* conjunction-class trajectories, covers rocket-to-Mars missions in some detail. books.google.com/books?id=vb7Lc…

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Idle Words @idlewords

2 years ago

Dear Lazyweb, The earliest description I've found of a modern Mars mission (rocket trip on a conjunction-class trajectory) is this 1928 Scientific American article by JR Randolph. I know Goddard at least was thinking about this earlier, but is there any published prior art?

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Idle Words @idlewords

2 years ago

You can instantly tell if a spacecraft design uses nuclear thermal propulsion by looking for the "crew cabin on a stick" motif. Differential diagnosis with nuclear electric propulsion is easy, check for the presence of huge radiators. (Diagram from doi.org/10.1115/1.3664…)

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Idle Words @idlewords

2 years ago

Fun and useful snippet on fuel density from a NASA paper: "supercritical Xe is about as dense as a brick (comparatively, cryogenic hydrogen is about a dense as Styrofoam, cryogenic methane is about as dense as oak wood, and cryogenic oxygen is slightly denser than water"

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deadprogrammer @deadprogrammer

2 years ago

this is ozeki level sumo, she’s channeling takakeisho at his best. three different kimarite in a row! i’m going to say amiuchi followed by tsukitaoshi and then okuritaoshi.