Apple’s support for 3rd party keyboards is notoriously difficult to work with. It’s not surprising to me that we don’t see many high quality alternatives.
Working with 3rd party keyboards is still the same nightmare it was when the feature was introduced many years ago. For one, iOS will randomly switch you to a different keyboard. Or the keyboard will just crash.
What does it matter that development has stopped? I haven't updated my software keyboard in a decade because I'm simply happy with the way it works. Why not use Nintype if you like it?
Mostly I'm worried about bit rot, i.e. breaking changes in subsequent iOS updates. But your point is valid, I'll try Nintype again. It's extremely quirky and opinionated in an entertaining way.
At least on Android, Nintype has a few annoying bugs now and has gotten terribly slow. But it's an incredible idea and I wish it would get revived by someone - I still use it despite the bugs, but I need to switch over to Gboard sometimes.
The third party keyboards are OK, but it depends on if you trust sending 100% of your typing content to a third party. The two big options are owned by Microsoft and Google. It’s bad enough I have to trust Apple. And Gboard still isn’t as good as the Android keyboard.
They'll figure out a way eventually, but it is definitely harder.
It is always easy to grow something uniform as a pure crystal, without fault lines on them causing crumbling.
As a kid who spent a lot of time with chemistry, it used to fascinate me that you can crystallize out a clean salt crystal out of a mix of potassium permanganate and salt, the salt grain will grow pretty much pure salt on it without a hint of purple (also burned my nose skin off collecting chlorine from the exercise, talk to your local chemistry teacher and find out why).
I never succeeded in making a colored salt transparent crystal.
> The iodine intake is also inadequate in several countries with strong health systems and otherwise successful public health programs (Norway, Germany and Finland). In Norway, iodized salt is not widely implemented and the allowed level of fortification is only 5 ppm, below the recommended minimum level of 15 ppm. Fish and seafood were assumed to provide adequate iodine intake in the population, but their iodine content is not high enough unless consumed every day, and their consumption is declining. In Germany, a major challenge is the low use of iodized salt in the production of processed foods, which contributes to most dietary salt. Finland had an effective salt iodization program for decades, but decreased consumption of iodized salt and milk resulted in lower iodine intakes. Actions to strengthen the coverage of iodized salt were recently recommended by the Finnish National Nutrition Council.
Almost all table salt is. Flake or kosher salt has become fashionable for various reasons.
You’ll not see any change for awhile, as the same clowns who are against fluoridation and vaccination also want to enjoy the freedom of a life without iodine.
Notably, a lot of non-table salt in the US is not iodized. So the amount of iodine someone gets depends on how much of their food is industrialized, vs home cooked.
Yeah frames per second probably would have made more sense. That being said, I think it's fine to colloquially refer to time/distance as speed, e.g. my walking speed is 15 minutes per mile, but it should probably be specified that that's the unit in use. But also this isn't a carefully designed game, it's a small tech demo, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Drive a Toyota Mirai while you can–this might be the only time in history to experience the hilarious quirks of a hydrogen car. Including the "dump h2o" button, which causes the car to, um, eject its h2o waste on command. Oh and if you're in San Francisco, take a ride on the free hydrogen powered ferry "Sea Change" (its waste comes out of the drinking fountain).
Another fun quirk: The hydrogen dispenser frosts up pretty fiercely during fueling. There's a station near SFO that I stumbled across where the dispenser was too cold to dare touch.
I wonder if that depends on the pressure of the car? I vaguely recall they sold at two pressures when I looked long ago. Could stepping down from the stored pressure to much lower car pressure cause the icing?
oh, and I remember one other thing. Even though the mirai drivers were getting free fuel (at the beginning), I think H2 was like the equivalent of $17/gallon marked on the pump.
I have a Toyota Mirai. The cheapest hydrogen available to me is $30/kg, and many stations (those owned by True Zero) charge $36/kg. When I bought my Mirai, it was $19.70/kg.
The reason I bought a Mirai is because I wanted to go zero-emissions but I’m an apartment dweller with no EV charging options. The Mirai is the best vehicle I’ve driven in terms of its features and comfort. However, once my fuel card ran low, I ended up getting a gas-powered car since $36/kg is prohibitively expensive for me to pay out of pocket.
I hope the hydrogen situation improves, since not everybody has convenient access to an EV charger, not to mention the cost of electricity in PG&E territory.
I wonder if there's any useful heavy equipment aboard the ISS that could be transferred to the Axiom prior to separation and thus salvaged. It'd have to be stuff the ISS could do without for the remaining couple years of its life.
I suppose ISS is being decommissioned in a big part because the big hardware there is approaching / has approached the end of its practical life. The metal has accumulated fatigue here and there. The solar panels are heavy and inefficient, compared to more modern developments, except for the newest array mounted in 2021.
Maybe some of the newest hardware could be transferred to a lower orbit for cheaper than bringing up brand new hardware from Earth.
The thing is that the newest ISS modules, barely 4 years old, are Russian (Nauka + Prichal); the newest module before that is the Japanese science module from 2008. It could probably be still reused, it's barely 16 years old %)
Likely the only things that would remain then would be the interfaces and standards. On one hand, these are time-tested standards. OTOH perpetuating them would miss an opportunity to evolve and upgrade, fixing some of the known issues.
Isn't that happening anyway? New stations will be designed to interface with current spacecraft, that are designed to interface with current space stations.
Maybe but to be honest Starship cost-per-pound to LEO will make re-use of 20 year old technology, in questionable states of maintenance, less appealing than starting from a clean slate in most cases.
Agreed. When it comes to flying people, the volume of a habitable starship is approximately equivalent to the entirety of the habitable volume of the ISS.
I really look forward to the heavy-lift future where full reusability means actual cheap spaceflight.
I wonder if the ISS could instead be scrapped to the moon.
Let's get this space station to the moon.
Can a [Falcon 9 [Heavy] or similar] rocket shove the ISS from its current attitude into an Earth-Moon orbit with or without orbital refuelling?
The ISS weighs 900,000 lbs on Earth.
Have we yet altered the orbital trajectory of anything that heavy in space?
Can any existing rocket program rendezvous and boost sideways to alter the trajectory of NEOs (Near-Earth Objects) or aging, heirloom, defunct space stations?
Which of the things of ISS that we have internationally paid to loft into orbit would be useful for future robot, human, and emergency operations on the Moon?
"Space station operations require a full-time crew to
operate, and as such, an inability to keep crews onboard
would rule out operating at higher altitudes. The cargo
and crew vehicles that service the space station are designed and optimized for its current 257 mile (415km)
altitude and, while the ability of these vehicles varies,
NASA’s ability to maintain crew on the space station at
significantly higher altitudes would be severely impacted or even impossible with the current fleet. This includes the International crew and cargo fleet, as Russian assets providing propulsion and attitude control need to remain operational through the boost phase.
"Ignoring the requirement of keeping crew onboard, NASA evaluated orbits above the present orbital regime that could extend just the orbital lifetime of the space station. [...]
"However, ascending to these orbits would require the development of new propulsive and tanker vehicles that do not currently exist. While still currently in development, vehicles such as the SpaceX Starship are being designed to deliver significant amounts of cargo to these orbits; however, there are prohibitive engineering challenges with docking such a large vehicle to the space station and being able to use its thrusters while remaining within space station structural margins. Other vehicles would require both new
certifications to fly at higher altitudes and multiple flights to deliver propellant.
"The other major consideration when going to a higher altitude is the orbital debris regime at each specified locale. The risk of a penetrating or catastrophic impact to space station (i.e., that could fragment the vehicle)
increases drastically above 257miles (415km). While higher altitudes provide a longer theoretical orbital life, the mean time between an impact event decreases from ~51 years at the current operational altitude to less than four years at a 497 mile (800km), ~700-year orbit. This means that the likelihood of an impact leaving station unable to maneuver or react to future threats, or even a significant impact resulting in complete fragmentation, is unacceptably high. NASA has estimated that such an impact could permanently degrade or even eliminate access to LEO for centuries."
How are any lunar orbital trajectories relatively safe given the same risks to all crafts at such altitudes?
Is it mass or thrust, or failure to plan something better than inconsiderately decommissioning into the atmosphere and ocean.
If there are escape windows to the moon for other programs, how are there no escape windows to the moon for the ISS?
Given the standing risks of existing orbital debris and higher-altitude orbits' lack of shielding, are NEO impact collisions with e.g. hypersonic glide delivery vehicles advisable methods for NEO avoidance?
The NEO avoidance need is still to safely rendezvous and shove things headed for earth orbit into a different trajectory;
Is there a better plan than blowing a NEO up into fragments still headed for earth, like rendezvousing and shoving to the side?
So we need 33 Centaur III (and some way to attach them, which I optimistically assume won't add significantly to the ISS mass).
Total Centaur III + propellant mass: 33 * (2462 + 20830) = 768636 kg
Planned Starship payload capacity to LEO is 2e5 kg [5], so assuming that a way can be found to fit 7 Centaur III in its payload bay, we can get all 33 boosters to LEO with five Starship launches.
Why not use Starship itself? Its Raptor Vacuum engines have lower v_e (~3.7 km/s) [6], and if you want it back, you need to add fuel for the return trip to m_f. Exercise for the reader!
Thanks for the numbers. I think it's still possible to create gists with .ipynb Jupyter notebooks which have can have latex math and code with test assertions; symbolic algebra with sympy, astropy, GIZMO-public, spiceypy
> and some way to attach them
Because of my love for old kitchens on the Moon.
(The cost then to put all of that into orbit, in today's dollars)
So, orbitally refuelling Starship(s) would be less efficient than 33 of the cited capability all at once.
What about solar; could any solar-powered thrusters - given an unlimited amount of time - shove the ISS into a dangerous orbit towards the moon instead of the ocean?
> and some way to attach them
There's a laser welding in space spec and grants FWIU.
Can any space program do robotic spacecraft hull repair in orbit, like R2D2? With laser welding?
Or do we need to find more people like Col. McBride in brad pitt space movie, more astronauts?
iOS supports third party keyboards. Surely anybody this bothered by it should investigate those and pick a better option?
There was an absolutely mind-blowing keyboard which supported multi-finger swiping called Nintype, but development on it has stopped.
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