Brett

@MostlyMonkey @endfederalgov @russellhbrooks This is the best data I've seen on the subject and unfortunately it's over 20 years old. Zagorsky 2007 (data is 2004)

@ABKoga @SteveSkojec @ithurtsrealbadd @uncle_deluge Can you give an example? I thought that seemed like a perfectly fine way to convey surprise

@brett02e @SteveSkojec @ithurtsrealbadd @uncle_deluge “I can’t even speak for a moment” is weak. You’re telling the reader there’s a pause, when you should make the reader pause with a moment of interiority: thoughts, feelings, reflections, etc. Just a sentence or two would be fine.

This writing pisses me off

@ABKoga @SteveSkojec @ithurtsrealbadd @uncle_deluge Did you read the book? That sentence you wrote really wouldn't work. Rocky is not speaking English. The main character has spent weeks learning to understand his alien speech. His speech always has this type of cadence.

@brett02e @SteveSkojec @ithurtsrealbadd @uncle_deluge The dialog tag is weak. Adverbs are weak. Better to have sharp dialog than tell the reader it’s sharp. I’d change it to something like: “Always,” he said. “You are too bad at math for anything else.”

@its_benji_books @PalmyrPar He's a middle school teacher.

@PalmyrPar Why does his inner monologue make him sound like he’s 12

Why does Andy Weir insist on writing like that. It would be actively easier for him if he just dropped that sort of thing.

@ABKoga @SteveSkojec @ithurtsrealbadd @uncle_deluge Like what? How would you improve the exchange here?

@SteveSkojec @ithurtsrealbadd @uncle_deluge Your irrational response gave me impression. How much money you’ve made isn’t relevant. The options aren’t 1)write as poorly as this or 2) write pretentiously. Several easy things could be done to improve this dialog.

@Apocryphal_Book @DryRoastedOne @uncle_deluge What books do you enjoy?

@DryRoastedOne @uncle_deluge It is very much a YA-centered slop product, yes. No one but children should enjoy writing like this.

@Nairebis @perrymetzger I agree that guy is wrong, but there are actual companies doing things that are bullshit. Sometimes the engineers know it & are just getting their paychecks. Examples are Spin Launch, Reflect Orbital, Helion Energy, anything related to biofuels or "hydrogen economy".

@perrymetzger The sheer amount of delusion in that thread is astonishing. Like you have to believe that none of the engineers at SpaceX can calculate the rocket equation and see that it won't work. Meanwhile, everybody who has worked with Elon says he knows everything about the systems.

So, this prediction is already wrong, because Starship has already made it to orbital velocity, it’s just that the lowest part of the orbit, the perigee, was deliberately placed inside the atmosphere so if there was loss of control the spaceship would reenter at a known location because of atmospheric drag instead of potentially becoming a hazard. They could have slightly changed the trajectory in order to have the low point of the orbit above the top of the atmosphere, but they deliberately chose not to for test safety reasons. So this person is failing to predict the past, not simply failing to predict the future. Assuming they actually are some sort of aerospace engineer, this is a fine demonstration of the fact that argument from authority is a pretty bad way to reason.

@not_voltaire @wil_da_beast630 All astronauts are trained to be pilots. It's not a requirement that they have piloting experience before selected as astronaut candidates, but anyone who goes to space has a lot of piloting experience by the time they get there.

@brett02e @wil_da_beast630 Then why don't all four of them have extensive piloting experience? Emergencies happen. They didn't cut corners like that in the space program before DEI hit.

If the guy was qualified, as he is? Nothing.

@not_voltaire @wil_da_beast630 Yes, but really they have 10s of 1000s of highly qualified people to choose from. Several hundred astronaut candidates are going to be effectively perfect. They are going to be making really arbitrary choices during the selection phase no matter what.

There aren't many people I can discuss this with other than my husband, but qualify: I'm a female SCL with an electrical engineering degree from a top engineering institute. I almost certainly could have gone into astronaut training if I wanted. And I find myself skeptical that these astronaut candidates are the best available options simply because it's statistically impossible. You understand as few do how tails of normal distributions work, and also how at the extreme tails, there are almost no women. Now, the IQ required for astronaut is high but not so high it excludes women. The pilot qualifications were originally extremely high, and that's the major place where standards were lowered to get desired immutable characteristics into spaceships, under the justification that not everyone in the ship has to fly it or some such. Despite best efforts for decades, the percent of women who graduate in engineering (other than biomed and "industrial,"/systems) is still very low (it's been 10% for my major ever since I graduated 30 years ago) due solely to interest and the percent who make careers of it is even lower. The percent of engineering grads who are black is even lower, first simply because of low representation in the overall population, and second because of historically poor academic preparation. Then look at the percent of women who become military fighter/test pilots, as all early astronauts were: Even lower. And it's not just because of interest; it's because we have slower reaction times, greater risk aversion, different decision making approaches in high stakes extreme emergencies, etc. So the percent of people who are both top engineering grads and top military pilots who are women is very, very low, as is the percent who are black. Now to pick out who is going to do one of the most important missions to space ever, and go further out than any human ever has, you should be going for the top of the top people with those credentials. You should be going to the extreme right tail of people in that overlap. Are you going to find any women there at all? Maybe. Maybe if you picked a thousand people with those qualifications, a handful would be women. What if you picked 100? Maybe one or two would be. Maybe. What if you only picked four? If you picked the top four engineer pilots in the entire English speaking world, what are the chances one would be black and one would be female? I think we know. And that means somewhere, at some point, quality was sacrificed for sex and/or race. Yes, they still have high qualifications. No, being a really good engineering grad and a really good pilot is not the same thing as being the best of the best. If I suspected for an instant I was being sent out to space to represent my sex instead of because I was the best of the best, I would resent that insult and I would refuse to risk my life and the lives of my colleagues that way. Since you're black and I'm female, what do you think? Since we're both very intelligent and educated, we understand that meeting a qualifications standard does not mean you are the *most* qualified. Do you think there's a place for race / sex discrimination once you've met the bar? If so, isn't that what DEI advocates always claim DEI is?

@MiguelTHEone197 @CFL68 @Tazerface16 Sure. It doesn't account for atmospheric drag or show how orbital injection burns work, and it has a cannon launching objects into orbit, which is silly (unless you're on a body with no atmospheric and have a super futuristic mass driver)

Why does @elonmusk's profile pic look like a giant, painful dildo? Is he foreshadowing?

@cryptojay02 @_OKJ__ You're still being vague and now you're avoiding answering yes or no questions.

@brett02e @_OKJ__ Am not internationally it's just a broad topic I can't cover on keyboard . Look at it this way, if sin is your lifestyle it means you are internationally choosing to reject God

One question I always ask Christians that I have never gotten any reasonable answer for is … If heaven involves perfect, unending happiness for the “saved”, how is it possible for them to experience that joy while retaining full knowledge of…and genuine love for…people they cared about who are were never saved and are suffering eternal torment in hell? Alternatively, if God erases or suppresses those memories to preserve heavenly bliss, does this not compromise the authenticity of the personal identity of the “saved …and the very notion of a perfectly loving and just deity who’s willing to erase people’s memory of their own loved one? These aren’t mundane questions.

@CFL68 @Tazerface16 Starship flight 11 actually got beyond that. It's trajectory looked more like C except perigee (periapsis if you are orbiting earth) was only about 31 miles above the surface, still well within the atmosphere, so it wasn't in a stable orbit.

@brett02e @Tazerface16 So Musk made it to B?

@cryptojay02 @_OKJ__ You're being (intentionally?) vague. Do you mean that any fault earns damnation? If I stole a comic book in 4th grade and knew it was wrong, does that earn damnation? If I have ever felt lustful, does that earn damnation? The Christian tradition I was raised in would say yes.

@brett02e @_OKJ__ I have explained my position already, which is if you haven't been convicted by the holy spirit by the message of the gospel but you believe a God exists, God would judge based on general revelation (objective moral obligations)

@CFL68 @Tazerface16 If you are in orbit C, you can get to orbit D by accelerating when you're at periapsis. If you're in D and want to get to C, you decelerate at apoapsis. If you want to leave orbit and go to deep space you accelerate to escape velocity where the planet's gravity can't pull you in

@CFL68 @Tazerface16 Look at this diagram. A and B are suborbital flight. C is a circular orbit. D is an elliptical orbit with a higher apoapsis but the same periapsis as C. E is an hyperbolic orbit on an escape trajectory. If I toss a baseball, it's on a (very low) suborbital trajectory.

@lysolhuffer69 @_OKJ__ Okay, but he isn't talking about those people.

@_OKJ__ Not all Christians believe in eternal conscious torment and some believe in universal salvation

@cryptojay02 @_OKJ__ Do you think someone in hell is able to apologize, repent, and leave anytime?

@_OKJ__ The rich man was clearly in agony. But he never apologizes. He never asks to leave. Even in his torment, his pride was fully intact and it's clear from the story. People won't stay in hell because they like the pain but they stay because their ego would still refuse to bow to God

@cryptojay02 @_OKJ__ I don't see myself as rejecting God. If I thought Christian claims about God were accurate, I would be a devout Christian (there isn't really any other sane response imo). I simply think humans are saying things that don't make sense.

@_OKJ__ Hell is the direct consequence of rejecting God, it's basically a place outside God's love Jesus said they that follow me at those that will abide in my love, if you reject Jesus you will be basically outside his love and that's what hell is

@cryptojay02 @_OKJ__ Interesting. So most Christians I've known interpret this in light of Roman 6:23. Everyone knows what sin is and everyone chooses to sin, so all non-Christians will be found guilty and damned to hell. Is that also your view?

@_OKJ__ The Apostle Paul addresses this exact geographic problem in Romans 2:14-15. He says people without the explicit Gospel are judged by their conscience, the moral law written on their hearts. So it doesn't matter if a place is necessarily 92% Buddhist

@ryrybeitz18 @cammakingminds They would actually be able to get home okay if that happened. They'd be able to use a little fuel to lower their perigee (point in orbit closest to earth) into the atmosphere, and then they'd fall to the surface as planned.

@ryrybeitz18 @cammakingminds No. They aren't faster than earth's escape velocity. See how their trajectory is curving as it gets to the moon? If the moon wasn't there, it would form a giant ellipse. It would be in a stable orbit w/ one end close to earth.

If you are using the earth as a reference frame, the moon is actually doing a close flyby of Artemis II.