Today I Learned (TIL)

Entropyman said:

Streetwiseguy said:

We have better rockets that can lift more with less fuel than a Saturn V.

 

I'm pretty sure I disagree with this.  Everything else, I agree, and a Saturn VI would absolutely burn less fuel, but I don't think we've ever come up with anything that will lift as much out of Earth orbit as a Saturn V.

The Space Launch System (SLS), that is currently scheduled to launch in August of this year, will be close.  The Block 1 configuration that is currently on the pad is supposed to be capable of lifting 26 tons out of earth orbit.  The final Block 2 configuration has a design capability of lifting 45 tons out of earth orbit.  By comparison, the Saturn V could move 48.6 tons out of earth orbit.  One item of note is that the SLS will cost about 500 million/launch and the Saturn V cost 1.3 billion/launch in modern dollars.

SpaceX claims that they will deliver 100 tons to the moon with Starship.  The plan is to launch to LEO, refuel there (with fuel launched by other Starships) then head to the moon (or Mars).  I swear a saw a number at least an order of magnitude less than SLS for a ton delivered to the moon somewhere but can't find it now.

So far, SpaceX has delivered on what they promised, we'll see.

TIL that Audi 2.7t engines can be had for cheap.  Very cheap.  Very very cheap.

In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :

Running?

Appleseed said:

In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :

Running?

With a warranty.

Difficulty:  I specifically wanted a B2 chassis Audi for swapping a turbo engine in for the 5 cylinder Sound.  That rusted out. I bought another one.  In 2014.  I rented a garage to house it in 2016.  It still sits there.  In the interim I bought a Volvo S60R, which contains a highly turbocharged 5 cylinder engine from the factory.  (It's a-verry-nice)  I also heard Pat's R32 Skyline, and now I want a small displacement 6 cylinder with a pair of turbos.

And I happen to have an engineless VWAG product that a 2.7t will bolt to its trans.  Not sure that it will clear the framerails, but it should be easier to stuff a V6 where an inline 5 used to be, right?

In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :

Is this because the mini-baru isn't enough to keep you busy?

For two years our primary autocross site has been a smallish bouncy lot.   I've really struggled with grip in the Zoomboni and kept try to make it work at low tire pressure (thinking that a softer tire will be more compliant and therefor stickier).

yesterday was going the same for 4 runs and I decided to try the other direction and add air.    Up from 14 to 18 and run 5 was much better.   Then to 20 psi and is set my FTD.    Actually ran a respectable time and the car felt much more responsive and lively.  
 

Two years I've been on the struggle bus with this getting beaten by street cars on 200TW tires.   And MORE air pressure was the answer! 

Yesterday I learned that the neighboring autocross region has a spot on their site where if you get into oversteer as you transition from the taxiway to the main runway, you can totally do the Ebisu drift-jump. I may have ended up doing it accidentally, like three times. There were photographers, so I hope they caught it and I hope it looked as rad as it felt 

barefootcyborg5000 said:

In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :

Is this because the mini-baru isn't enough to keep you busy?

I have had this car for seven years already, probably should start working on it soon.

It makes a very nice shelf but shelving is not a very good motoring experience.

TIL

KyAllroad said:

For two years our primary autocross site has been a smallish bouncy lot.   I've really struggled with grip in the Zoomboni and kept try to make it work at low tire pressure (thinking that a softer tire will be more compliant and therefor stickier).

yesterday was going the same for 4 runs and I decided to try the other direction and add air.    Up from 14 to 18 and run 5 was much better.   Then to 20 psi and is set my FTD.    Actually ran a respectable time and the car felt much more responsive and lively.  
 

Two years I've been on the struggle bus with this getting beaten by street cars on 200TW tires.   And MORE air pressure was the answer! 

It gets worse.  I took it in for an alignment yesterday and it was catastrophically bad.  Like, two slipped adjusters and one broken one.  Both rear wheels pointed right which made it impossible to use the gas while turning left without sliding sideways.

Next event should be better.

Today i found out I can block whole channels on YouTube from showing up on my recommendations. Goodbye annoying voices and terrible product placements. 

In reply to RevRico :

Did you start with that tool from Donut Media?

In reply to Appleseed :

Holy E36 M3, I cant stand that channel. Guy looks like Dollar Store James Corden and is just as annoying.

RX Reven' said:

Stampie said:

So if you say there's a 1 in a billion chance of life outside our solar system in the Milky Way then there's an estimated 20,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 "live" civilizations out there.

In the absence of some mechanism that drives "necessity", the odds are wildly, vanishingly less than one in a billion.

This image is one of the first from the Webb telescope.  We've all seen it.

Each spec of light in that image is a galaxy.

Each of those galaxies contains on the order of 100 billion stars.

Each of those stars is almost certain to have at least one, and probably several, planets.

That image covers an area of the sky about the size of a single grain of sand, held at arm's length.

A grain of sand, at arm's length.  How many grains of sand to cover the entire 360° sphere of view in the universe?

Still think we're alone? 

Still think there is no chance that life appeared without a Creator?

TIL (thanks to Prime Day, of all things) that there are portable electric jacks (like this one). Yeah, it's kind of pointless at home when I have two nice floor jacks... but on the road, when we're halfway through an 11 hour drive, and a tire goes flat? Would be so much nicer than screwing around (pun halfway intentional) with the normal jacks in the vehicles. And hell- I can't say I wouldn't bust if out occasionally at home- it looks like it weighs a good bit less than my floor jacks.

EDIT: OK, I'm a bit less impressed to find that it's not battery powered and has to be hooked up to the vehicle... but I suppose that shouldn't surprise me. Still neat- but am reconsidering whether it would be that much more useful.

EDIT 2: I ended up buying 2 of the scissor-jack type lifts, mainly because they're half the price of the piston-type and not much different in size. I bought one for my parents, because when they were visiting a few years back my Dad hit a curb hard and had a difficult time with using the stock scissor jack, so I figure this would make a good Christmas present for them.

Duke said:

RX Reven' said:

Stampie said:

So if you say there's a 1 in a billion chance of life outside our solar system in the Milky Way then there's an estimated 20,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 "live" civilizations out there.

In the absence of some mechanism that drives "necessity", the odds are wildly, vanishingly less than one in a billion.

This image is one of the first from the Webb telescope.  We've all seen it.

Each spec of light in that image is a galaxy.

Each of those galaxies contains on the order of 100 billion stars.

Each of those stars is almost certain to have at least one, and probably several, planets.

That image covers an area of the sky about the size of a single grain of sand, held at arm's length.

A grain of sand, at arm's length.  How many grains of sand to cover the entire 360° sphere of view in the universe?

 

 

Still think we're alone? 

 

 

 

Still think there is no chance that life appeared without a Creator?

 

I am a man of faith, and I believe it to be impossible that there is not life besides our own. This article was written in 1971. 
https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/new-era/1971/04/people-on-other-worlds?lang=eng

TIL that Cmdr. Riker's great grandfather was Chuck Norris.

TIL that Greta van Fleet is a band named for a person, not a person.

In reply to Duke :

Can I buy some pot from you?
 

In reply to Duke :

This image is one of the first from the Webb telescope.  We've all seen it.

Each spec of light in that image is a galaxy.

Each of those galaxies contains on the order of 100 billion stars.

Each of those stars is almost certain to have at least one, and probably several, planets.

That image covers an area of the sky about the size of a single grain of sand, held at arm's length.

A grain of sand, at arm's length.  How many grains of sand to cover the entire 360° sphere of view in the universe?

I get it...the universe is super duper big.  

Still think we're alone? 

I have no idea whether or not we're alone...I'm only saying that "we" look designed; wouldn't surprise me if there are countless "they's" that look designed as well. 

Still think there is no chance that life appeared without a Creator?

I never said there's no chance of life appearing without a creator...what I said was that until we discover a mechanism that drives "necessity" (please look up the term as it has a very specific meaning), the neo-darwinistic explanation for the origin of life requires the same level of blind faith that any theistic explanation does.

There is one alternative to "necessity" that can make the math work and it's the notion of the multiverse but by definition, the multiverse can't be directly measured (if it could, it wouldn't be separate from our universe), it can only be inferred which takes back to operating within a faith based belief system.

The math isn't complicated...the numerator represents what percent of random protein configurations are functional X how many functional proteins are minimally required for life and the denominator represents the probabilistic resource (how many rolls of the dice has the universe had).

I get jumped on every time I point out that the math, in the absence of "necessity" or multiverse screams "we didn't get here by chance".

I won't be surprised if we do one day discover a source of "necessity" that makes the math work but top scientists have been trying for decades with no success and I'm not subscribing to the "new religion of science" without it.

In reply to RX Reven' :

In the interest of clarity, what specific meaning of necessity are you referring to?

In reply to RX Reven' :

As I mentioned previously, your sources are making assumptions I (and many many other highly-educated scientists) don't accept.  You can define your statistical probability however you want to, but if the assumptions are flawed, so are the results, no matter how carefully calculated.

If we are designed, why do we have an appendix?  What is something like 60% of our DNA useless junk? Why does a giraffe's recurrent laryngeal nerve make several passes up and down that long neck, delaying neural response time dramatically?  Why do whales have hips?

All these examples have been debated many many times, so there's probably no point in retreading them here.

iansane said:

In reply to RX Reven' :

In the interest of clarity, what specific meaning of necessity are you referring to?

Necessity is any mechanism that causes one outcome to be more probable than another outcome or outcomes.

For example, a typical protein has about 300 polypeptide links resulting in about 10 to the power of 390 unique possible arrangements of the 21 amino acids and only a vanishingly, vanishingly small percent of those arrangements are functional (serve a purpose).

Given how many different proteins even the simplest life forms need (Humans have about 200,000 BTW), the universe has nowhere near the probabilistic resource (rolling of the dice) necessary to have any practical chance of randomly hitting the life jackpot.

But, perhaps some amino acid arrangements are more probable than others making functional proteins more likely than what would be expected by chance.  This is what we mean by necessity which I won't be surprised if found but despite considerable effort, nothing at all promising has been found yet.

In reply to RX Reven' :

Ah, but the anthropic principle says that if it didn't happen, we would not be here to observe it.

Mu.

Duke said:

In reply to RX Reven' :

As I mentioned previously, your sources are making assumptions I (and many many other highly-educated scientists) don't accept.  You can define your statistical probability however you want to, but if the assumptions are flawed, so are the results, no matter how carefully calculated.

If we are designed, why do we have an appendix?  Why does a giraffe's recurrent laryngeal nerve make several passes up and down that long neck, delaying neural response time dramatically?  Why do whales have hips?

All these examples have been debated many many times, so there's probably no point in retreading them here.

 

Duke, I completely believe in evolution (I'm questioning arrival not survival) and in terms of assumptions, even when you take them to ridiculously generous levels, the odds of life randomly popping into existence are practically zero.

Lastly, it tends to be big science (professors hoping for tenure or trying to get research grants or ???) that tend to be the critics...it was either Watson or Crick (co-discovers of DNA) that on his death bed went on record saying he believed in design.