ValueArb

Those who trade freedom for temporary security will soon find they have neither.

This is Bidenism at its finest. The faster Russia's economy collapses the better for the world. It's a criminal regime that's been spreading its poison across the world for too long, and the sooner the world recognizes it's just a third world kleptocracy with little actual economic power the better.

There are thousands of prosecutors issuing arrest warrants every day, and guess what, some of them are based on flimsy evidence and theories. So Zelensky told Zaluszhny not to do it, but he went ahead and he (or staff involved in attack) informed Western intelligence agencies about the attack ahead of time. Anyone see how absurd this story is? Biden and Zelensky were struggling to keep together a strong european coalition with Germany as a key member to support Ukraine, yet their underlings went full bore on a project that risked shattering German support? And all for a pipeline that was already shut down and not in use? That provided zero revenues and resources to the Russian economy or military? So the US did it, again risking the most important coalition, all for a pipeline Germany had already shut down on its own within days of the invasion? Or Russia did it, destroying billions in their own important infrastructure to sell their natural gas to Europe, that was almost certainly to be back in operation as soon as a peace agreement is signed in Ukraine? Or Poland did it, because they just hate Russia so bad they'll risk pissing off Germany just to take out a non operating pipeline. Every single theory is absurd on its face. Again, the "intelligence world" is also full of fakes, wannabes and liars, and this wouldn't be the first, second or even hundredth time gullible journalists have been taken in by sources vastly over-representing their knowledge and credentials to spin a dramatic story with zero basis in actual fact. And why did Denmark and Sweden abandon their investigations? Maybe its because they realized there isn't any credible evidence any sabotage took place. Maybe they found their chemical tests frequently produce false positives when done against seabed oceanic samples containing an abundance of natural chemicals and elements, not to mention hundreds of years of human pollution, and realized its almost impossible a diving team could perform the sophisticated deep water diving operations to plant explosives hundreds of meters deep in multiple locations far apart from a tiny yacht. Again there is only one hypothesis that realistically matches the motives of all parties. Summer of 2022 stinging from how unexpectedly harsh European sanctions were, Putin was convinced that the European coalition would crack during a cold winter without Russian natural gas. His staff told their toadies in charge of Gazprom to ensure the pipelines were ready at a moments notice to supply Germany when its leaders finally folded under pressure from citizenry desperate for relief from massive increase in the prices of natural gas needed to keep them warm. Putin would blackmail Germany into dropping support for Ukraine in exchange for turning on the Nordstream spigot, and the European coalition would shatter and weaken, allowing him to grind the increasingly isolated Ukraines under a million boots of the under equipped and under trained Russian military mob. Like all Putin grand strategies, likely an absurd expectation of results but a far from absurd expectation of his mind-set. To use the pipelines requires they be clear of methane hydrates, massive thousand kilo blocks of methane-water ice that form in cold environments like the Baltic. Clearing out these blocks is a delicate and dangerous operation because if pressure/temperature changes too rapidly pockets of the blocks can rapidly disassociated into a water/methane steam, working like a rocket in the tightly contained pipe to shoot a multi-ton ice block down the pipeline at over a hundred miles per hour, and if it reaches a bend in the pipeline, hitting the pipe wall with enough force to crack it which instantly causes a massive explosion as the gas is contained at a pressure hundreds of times higher than earths atmosphere. So clearing methane hydrates is usually carefully managed from both ends of the pipeline by western experts. But Russia only controlled one end. While you can clear the pipeline from a single end, it is a far more dangerous and difficult operation, requiring those western experts, who, oops, were no longer available due to sanctions. What are the odds the Putin flunkies at Gazprom told their remaining Russian staff on the ground managing the pipelines to stop arguing and clear them now, while the weather was still good and baltic still relatively warm? What part did vodka play in decisions from the top down to the poor ground staff forced to do a more sophisticated and difficult operation than they've ever been allowed to do, with one arm (end of pipeline) tied behind their backs? i'll guarantee no one wanted to tell any superior in the chain that Gazprom's Russian engineers weren't up to the task and that they needed to get the westerners back involved. But this only makes sense if the explosions occured at locations where the pipeline changed directions, providng that bend in the pipe that the block would strike like a hammer creating the tiny cracks that hundreds of atmospheres of pressure would rip into vast openings in a massive pulse of hundreds of tons of methane expanding like a shockwave into the sea. And what a coincidence that every explosion occured at the only places in that area where the pipeline was bent to head into a different direction? And all nearly at the same time and locations where sea temperature and declining pipeline pressure from the Russian head matched the same trigger values that started the methane hydrates disassociating in one, started it in all. And some close enough to each other to get a second trigger effect from the pulse wave of pressure from the first to blow. Until actual natural gas drilling experts with deep sea experience are heavily involved in the investigation instead of explosive demolition teams and prosecutors, we'll never know if the most naturally rational hypothesis is the correct one, or if one of the crazy sabotage theories is. Demolition experts and prosecutors look for demolition evidence and sabotage suspects and treat any trace evidence supporting it, no matter how weak, as conclusive because it fits their pre-ordained mission parameters to find the "perpetrators". Its likely they don't even have a concept that pipelines can explode through shoddy maintenance practices (if they were Russian they'd know through long standing Gazprom traditions) nor do they have any motivation to investigate the possibility. Its like Fundamentalist religious believers who can't accept any evidence of a world older than 6,000 years because they have already accepted the truth of a holy book, and their job is to see the world through its teachings and defend that faith, so any evidence to the contrary must be either wrong, faked, or forged. The german prosecutor was tasked to find "the suspects" so he's going to damn well find someone with the necessary skills and a tangential relationship to the presumed perpetrators and pursue them. The demo team is going to highlight any positive traces of explosives they found, and downplay the likelyhood of false positives in that environment or any doubts they have. The day some actual pipeline experts detail why the maintenance failure theory can't be true I'll happily abandon it. But until then every time some journalist writes a new conspiracy article about the Nordstream pipeline failures based on beers with some low level intelligence employees desperate for attention spinning easily rebuttble yarns, I'm going to trot out the only rational hypothesis again.

don’t get too excited, the next big nordstream story will have an entirely new narrative because all of these conspiracy theories have been sourced entirely from shadowy European sources desperate for attention. This one doesn’t make sense on its face. The pipelines were already shut down, and European allies, especially Germany are critical to Ukrainian survival. Let alone the physical difficulties of doing a deep sea demolition from a tiny yacht. As always, I’ll point out there is no compelling evidence that the Nordstream pipelines were blown up by an intentional act of sabotage. Unless you think Gasproms terrible maintenance practices were directed by Ukrainian secret service.

It’s all self promotion so far. Two decades? Maybe but there will already by explorers waiting for them. If Starship meets its design goals, humans will be walking on Mars in under a decade.

we don’t have the technology to travel to Mars with risk of death, and won’t for hundreds of years. That’s a silly reason to not allow volunteers to explore Mars now. Humanoid robots are farther away than you think, especially when a leading proponents demonstrations have included m a man in a robot suit. A humanoid robotic can’t just master a few dozen or few hundred tasks, human mental flexibility approaches infinity. A robot can not weight substantially more on a trip where mass is at a premium. And still has to have batteries that last long times between charges, don't decline in charge capacity over long trips, and it also has to be able to repair itself. the first time a robot runs low on power too far from its charger, or its charging connector gets damaged, it’s stuck forever. A human with a broken leg can at least drag himself to the medical facility. And then there is the current state of AI, which is merely pattern matching. We train AI systems by showing them data and telling them which is “good” and which is “bad” until they can identify “goid” decisions on their own. This doesn’t train them for the ability to handle unexpected situations, or make any general purpose decisions. Only specific decisions across data they’ve been trained on. So they will still need to be operated from earlh, with a round trip communication time of up to an hour, and slowly, carefully to ensure they aren’t stranded or damaged beyond repair. We don’t need further breakthroughs for humans to perform well on mars. We know exactly how much food is needed to power them through a long trip, and when they get hungry they eat, when supplies get low they can reduce consumption to stretch them out. They’ll have their own medical facilities and doctors to address accidents and illness and keep them working. When they notice an unusual outcropping they can walk directly to it and examine it in detail without a single command from earth. The day these magic humanoid robots actually work, with sufficient battery and self repair capabilities, without doubling or tripling mass requirements, and at a reasonable cost, I’m sure they will supplement human crew members under their direct supervision. But there is no reason to wait decades for humanoid bots when we can go to Mars this decade with a fully capable human crew.

There is zero regulatory risk in using humans. SpaceX could send volunteers to Mars tomorrow (or next Martian launch window) if Starship demonstrated that its re-entry shielding and in orbit refueling system works. NASA is the only one handcuffed by its own safety regulations, which border on the absurd. For example, requiring seven successful flights before certifying a private launch system for NASA astronauts, but only a single flight of the SLS before risking human lives on it. NASA specifically handcuffs itself for human mars expeditions by requiring them to be entirely self contained, ie travel with enough fuel for return trips instead of relying on making it at the destination. This reduces potential payload mass by roughly 90%, increasing risks of death on Mars due to less redundant equipment and supplies.

Robots are entirely unsuited for effective exploration, and will be for many decades to come. We've gotten a great deal of data out of robotic probes on Mars, but its still very limited. Over the last 50 years all the robotic probes have explored less of Mars than Apollo Astronauts did in one week total of cumulative lunar rover time. Insight is nearly a billion dollar robot that spent over a year trying to dig a hole on Mars and failed. Everything the probes do has to be planned on earth and painfully executed one step at a time with instructions taking up to 30 minutes to be executed and another 30 minutes before we can start to get data on their success. So each rover moves one step at a time, very slowly, towards any destination. More importantly, the robots can only do specifically what they were designed to do, whatever the results of their tests they don't have equipment that can be repurposed to run additional tests that weren't anticipated. So we spend billions and up to a decade building basically single purpose robots to do one type of test, wait years to launch and land them, and then finally get results to guide us on what next robot should do. Starship is designed to land massive teams of scientists and engineers, dozens to hundreds, with thousands of tons of equipment and supplies. They'll have a full medical lab, a full machine shop, a full scientific lab. If they discover something unexpected they'll be able to run hundreds of new tests quickly to explore it. If they have to dig a hole, and their backhoe breaks down, they'll use shovels. If the drill fails, the machine shop will make something even more adapted to the task at hand. Explorers died exploring the new world, the arctic, Antarctica, space. 90% of Magellans crew including himself died. Explorers will die on Mars, but for incredibly useful and valuable reasons, advancing the science of how Mars and Earth were formed, whether there is or was life on Mars, and whether life on Mars seeded life on Earth (the theory of Panspermia), whether Mars can be habitable for colonists, whether it has resources that would support habitation or whether it can be terraformed easily. And the risks/danger won't stop thousands of qualified people from volunteering to go.

Nuclear power is entirely unsuited for Mars. Chemical rockets like Starship can do it in under 6 months with crews. You'd still take the 7-8 month trip with the cargo ships since it maximizes efficiency and payload mass. The problems with NTRs (nuclear thermal rockets) like NASA's NERVA from the 60s, is their higher performance is sapped by the extra mass they require in shielding, and lower thrust to weight engines requiring more engine mass. Also, to get the highest performance you need to use Hydrogen as your fuel, which is extremely difficult to store for long missions without losing a lot to leakage. Despite all those problems, its performance is likely still superior for long trips beyond Mars such as the asteroid belt/jupiter/etc. But for Mars you can use aerobraking to save immense amounts of fuel, which also allows you to transit at higher speeds. Starship is designed to aerobrake into Mars landing, and aerobrake back to Earth landing. No nuclear rocket will ever be licensed to aerobrake in Earth's atmosphere due to risk of breakup spreading active radioactive elements across wide areas, and its likely the same prohibition will apply to Mars. Even if your NTR could be licensed to land directly on Mars it's design is likely to be entirely unsuitable for aerobraking since most designs have engines on long booms to keep them away from crew compartments. If Starship meets it's design criteria, its crew versions are likely to transit to Mars in as little as 4 months. The main reason is in-orbit refueling in low earth orbit, which NASA never considered since Von Braun was forced to drop his idea of earth orbit rendeszvouz to assemble the landing stack and put everything on a single rocket to make the Apollo schedule. NASA since then made it a mission mantra that a single rocket loaded with everything is lower risk (not what Von Braun intended) which naturally limits the performance and capacity of what you can send to Mars.

We have the team. Actually the high likelyhood of accessible water at nearly all landing locations is a big driver of current mission plans built on the Mars Direct model. You land somewhere you can drill for liquid water, use solar power to split it into oxygen/hydrogen and in combination with CO2 from atmosphere and Sabatier process you can make LOX and Methane fuel for the return trip. Making fuel there reduces the amount of mass you need to send to Mars by huge amounts, increasing the payloads you can land on Mars by at least 10x or more. Its how each Starship can be designed to land 100 tons on Mars, to support massive exploration teams of dozens or hundreds of astronauts with a dozen or more ships and over a thousands tons of supplies and equipment. The problems are, how easy will it be to drill for water? How effective will solar panels work, will they get damaged or regularly covered with sand, etc. They will be on the surface at least a year, so if they lose power its lights out for living quarters as well as the fuel making process. NASA refuses to buy into a Mars Direct type project because they are so risk averse, but that means their planned missions would be far more expensive even while being ludicrously under-massed for a two year round trip so they are just trying to land a couple astronauts for a few weeks to plant a flag and spend the rest of the time in orbit waiting for the return window, not exploring or doing testing on the surface. But if NASA ever bought into Mars Direct, they could include a small nuclear reactor that provides redundant power over solar to address the greatest risks of the approach. As long as you can keep the first astronauts alive on Mars with new cargo landings every 18 month synod, theoretically it doesn't matter how long fuel production takes. They can send better equipment every synod to solve specific problems along with more supplies. This is the opposite of the Apollo approach where a giant rocket sends a small team for a one shot landing and return, all within a short period of time. So its questionable whether Mars Direct type missions will get the green light, even if solely privately funded.

Yea, its clear Epstein tried to use Gates to get Epsteins' own philanthropic foundation funded to help rehabilitate his image, while Gates thought Epstein had pull with the Nobel Prize committee to get Bill his own Nobel Prize. Nothing else has "become apparent" over time.

Never lionize anyone if perfection is the only standard you'll apply. Bill Gates should be lionized for his role in the development of the PC industry, not just Wintel but also his contributions to the Macintosh and CPM, for his massive philanthropy, and for saying a lot of smart things about technology. But he's still human who just had different views on monogamy than his ex-wife did. That's one of the most trivial reasons possible to dislike someone, he broke a vow to her so she has the right to be angry. But we as outsiders don't know what else was going on in the relationship, nor do we know how she was treating him (having a wife track your every movement is a huge red flag indicative they should have divorced far earlier). And as I get older and am now single I get a bit irked at the "creepy old man" assumption. I always try to date age ranges close to mine, but this weekend I had two much younger women express a lot more interest in me than required by their jobs. If I were to test the waters by asking them to dinner I'm a creep either way, if I got their signals wrong or if I didn't and we become a couple in public. I once had a widower friend who was 88 years old so I tried to set him up with a 45 year old, but he told me he didn't date anyone that old. Sounds creepy but he was hugely popular with the ladies. We once went out on a group date, he, my wife, and four casino waitresses in their early 30s vying to be his lead girlfriend. RIP Mel, you were a legend.

False dichotomy. Didn't have to go nuclear, could have just taken out Chinese airfields and supply depots on other side of Yalu river and starved their Korean troops of ammo and supplies. A decisive defeat in Korea may have led to regime change in China, which would have saved tens of millions of lives and re-opened China decades earlier. Hindsight is also called learning from mistakes. Such as extending conflicts for years on end and causing millions of deaths instead of decisively ending them quickly. And there are no unwritten rules. in the case of Ukraine only allowing the use of US weapons against Russians throughout all Russian held territory in Ukraine but not 100 miles deep in Russia proper is absurd. Especially when Ukraine is already making those strikes using jerry rigged home designed drones, only not in the volume or effectiveness required. Russia's been drawing red lines from the shipment of the first palette of ammunition to Ukraine, at Bradleys, at Abrams, at HIMARs, at ATACMs, at F-16s, etc. They have nothing left to escalate other than tactical nukes, which are of very limited effectiveness and would be a huge political disaster for Russia so extremely unlikely. Biden is doing just enough to ensure Russia can't win, but not enough to let Ukraine win and end the conflict. Just let the Ukrainians bleed for years on end until Russia overwhelms them with human waves of conscripts. Just another failure of Realpolitik.

Its the same "great power" management that won us the war in Korea, and the one in Vietnam, and kept Sadaam in power after Kuwait was freed, and allows the Houthis to keep receiving new Iranian missiles and drones through their unmolested ports. To quote Starship Troopers: The ukrainians do the dying while the US just brags about the supplyin.

Interesting update on Shoigu scandal