Recent content by bolide

FWIW, I was thinking more of human eyes looking through robotic lenses, rather than AI trying to decide what to pick up.

The Earth-Moon communication lag is a little over one second each way. It seems to me that humans could be trained to be critically useful co-pilots, even so. As for replacing humans, what counts as "replacing" depends on your objectives. While there are things that only humans can do, the...

"astronauts managed soft landings on the Moon 6 times out of 6 tries. Bots are less than 50%" If we can achieve consistent success with humans on board, then we can do the same thing without humans on board. The robotic missions sent out thus far have been built to a purpose, and a budget. You...

There's enough solar energy hitting Earth now. We don't need a hugely expensive and polluting system to just harvest a bit more of it from orbit. Every parking lot, large roof, irrigation canal, and reservoir behind a dam could be covered with solar panels. For the same money an orbiting system...

Why should the height of cloud cover have any effect?

"variations in the local terrain might change if you see a total eclipse, or how long the eclipse is experienced" Sorry, but this is gibberish. If you guys can't afford to employ an editor, maybe you could at least have the writers check on each other's work?

Funny that they don't say anything about radio emissions. Wouldn't Earth be bright across a wide electromagnetic spectrum, in a way that would demand explanation?

"The blade was broken — and, still unforged, it's been found ... " Sounds like a quote from something. What's the allusion?

When you consider the size of the disk of gas and dust that surrounds the infant star, compared to the size of the Earth, rather than saying "drenched," maybe it's enough to just say that they discovered some water vapor in the disk.

Beat me to it. I was about to say, we are supposing that an extraterrestrial civilization sent out a message ... because ...... they saw a supernova? And why in our particular direction? Have we done this?

If a spinning body sheds mass, shouldn't conservation of angular momentum cause it to spin faster, rather than slowing down?

Seems odd to think that it couldn't know its orientation to the surface, because the surface was flat.

Cost of materials is rarely a profit center. Money would be made on packaging and installing the product. Most likely not on the market because the whole package (much more than cost of materials) would be uneconomical to sell.

Is this "common solution" actually in use, anywhere?

They get the same effect flying over any body of water, and it doesn't seem to be a problem.