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Comment Re:271 meters (Score 1) 43

Shit sorry- that wasn't you!

No problem, though the Soyuz only uses those rockets in the final few meters because it lands on land. If it splashed down, it wouldn't need them. In any case, it and its passengers would probably be okay w/o them even on land, but using them probably removes potential damage/injury cases.

Comment Re:271 meters (Score 1) 43

Thanks for the reminder. I stopped watching SpaceX launches when they moved the videos off the SpaceX site and onto X and I stopped paying close attention to those more positive aspects of Elon when he started destroying the government (at Trump's behest, to be fair), especially for his own benefit -- gutting agencies and firing people overseeing his companies, getting investigation into his companies shutdown, wildly misinterpreting information yet posting them as facts then trying to cancel funding, people and agencies based on his misunderstandings, trying to install cronies as heads of agencies, trying to get data on competitors and trying to that to swing more contract his way, etc ... You know, that whole DOGE scam that looks like it will end up actually costing taxpayers more than the minuscule ~ $150M they cut. Fun fact, the payroll for *all* federal employees is only about 4.3% of the budget, so firing all of them would only save $293 billion -- out of $6.8 trillion in FY 2024.

AFGE Continues to Debunk Misconceptions About Federal Workers
Federal workers’ salaries represent less than 5% of federal spending and 1% of GDP

If anyone knows where I can go to watch SPaceX launches with the nice telemetry data, like when they were on the SpaceX site, I'd be happy to know.

Comment Re:271 meters (Score 1) 43

except for the Shuttle, no one has performed a controlled (or powered) landing

I'm not sure how you define "controlled" and "powered" in this context.

Um, you said *and*, I said *or* -- controlled (or powered).
I know the Shuttle was a glider, or as said in the movie Space Cowboys, "A flying brick", but thanks for the recap.

Comment Re:271 meters (Score 3, Informative) 43

Anyone in the space industry know if there is much of a difference in successfully landing something that went up to 271 meters vs to the ISS?

I believe you'd need to consult Boeing and Blue Origin to find that answer.

As far as I know (and not an expert), except for the Shuttle, no one has performed a controlled (or powered) landing, in this sense, of anything that's made it all the way to the ISS. Sure, SpaceX does controlled landings of their Falcon/Starship boosters and their Dragon capsules land by parachute, and the upper stage of Starship have come down all over the place, but those aren't the same things.

Comment Counterpoint (Score 3, Informative) 222

From TFA:

Pocket is a helpful program that many people I know use to keep "read-it-later" web content easily at hand.

Pocket is something I never used and had disabled in my "user.js" file -- and it seems many people apparently did the same. I also have a *bunch* of other things disabled; maybe that helps with performance and stability? In fact, first thing I do when a new version is released is see what new "features" I have to disable. Not a ringing endorsement of Mozilla's development efforts/direction, but at least I (still) have the option of disabling many (most?) things, unlike in Chrome/Edge.

Can't speak to any speed difference between Firefox and Chrome as I don't use Chrome (or Edge), but haven't personally noticed any performance issues. I'll note that I don't keep many tabs open and close the browser when I'm not using it; your use-case and mileage may vary ... The add-ons/extensions I use, like uBO, seem to be better supported in Firefox and browsing w/o then, and especially uBO, seems unthinkable.

I rarely have an issue loading the sites I visit, but the few times it was either a HW acceleration issue, which I could disable, and was corrected based on a Bugzilla report I filed and helped work through; or because I needed to re-enable something in Firefox that a site started using, like Web Assembly -- notably, my bank and USPS.com. Personally, I'd like to be able to whitelist Wasm usage rather than it be just off/on for everyone.

Not sure about all the privacy whinging, but guessing anything in Firefox is better than in Chrome/Edge.

Comment Re:Learning the Hard Way (Score 1) 283

Think of it this way: They didn't give immunity to trump, they gave themselves the power to decide who's immune and who's not.

I wonder how they'll feel if a president gets Seal Team 6 to assassinate one of them, to install someone else ... Oops! too late. /cynical-conspiracy-theories

(Noting that Trump's lawyer asserted that a scenario like this would be legal and immune and SCOTUS didn't contradict it.)

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