The direct federal supremacy argument seems like a long shot to me. For example, the fire code is also enforced by the state of Colorado. Does GEO Group claim to be exempt from the fire code?

There’s a federal law that grants fed contractors protection from state liability when they are performing their federal contracts. But only when they are performing to the fed’s requirements and specifications. Does this law matter here? Is this a “protection from liability” or an “exemption from regulation?” Is it going to matter whether GEO is following the specs or not? I don’t know.

In the world of nuclear weapons, there’s a big difference between “I have nuclear weapons,” and “I will be able to get nuclear weapons soon.”

New York Times reported that no sounds of power tools were heard, and it appeared that the lettering was simply removed by hand.

Yes. Those dark spots are plains of actually darker rocks, specifically basalts. That generally means that those are dried out lava fields.

To be clear to everyone here: The primary reason why Artemis 3 is not landing is because the billionaire-run Human Landing System contractors are not performing to schedule. The landers are just not ready.

In this test, Artemis 3 will dock with a starship in Earth orbit, but the starship will not even have a cabin interior fitted.

Artemis 3 is going ahead with no landing either. Orbital test only.

But the presidential alerts are very rare, and are actually designed for nuclear war. They’re tied into all of the continuity of government machinery. I’ve never actually seen one.

I think the numbers were proportional, or at least proportionate, back in May of 2022 when this was created.

Oh! To recall the carefree days when the special 3-day military operation was only around 90 days old.

It’s true. Dwarf planets do have to be round (“in hydrostatic equilibrium”). That requirement will definitely disqualify many of the hypothetical billions of Oort cloud objects.

Ceres is an official dwarf planet, but I excluded it from my list because I was focusing on trans-Neptunians.

A big reason why the IAU hasn’t confirmed most of the 36 is because they want strong evidence of roundness, like a spacecraft flyby with direct imaging. Pluto and Eris are close enough that earth telescopes can just barely resolve some of their shapes.

Finally, Pluto and Charon are too close to be considered in the Oort cloud. Sedna, whose discovery precipitated a lot of this crisis, has been nominated as the very first discovered object in the “inner Oort cloud.” Sedna’s perihelion is at 76 AU.

Officially only 4 trans-Neptunian objects have been recognized as dwarf planets. But here’s a paper that proposes another 36 known objects to be dwarf planets.

That’s about what the situation was in 2006 as well. A new technology was worked out to make it easier to find these, and once it did a bunch of discoveries came in really fast. The writing was definitely on the wall.

If you include the entire Oort cloud, there could be billions of objects out there.

I’ve been told a fun thing to do in Rome is to walk up to one of the tourist trap restaurants that has a tout at the door. Those guys know like 5 or 6 different languages, and they try to lure unsuspecting tourists to sit down at their restaurant. Anyhow, the play is to walk up to one of these touts and to start speaking Classical Latin at them. Latin is close enough to several Romance languages they do know that it seems familiar, but it’s not quite intelligible. And it’s really confusing to them to figure out which one you are speaking.

Of course it helps if you’re conversational in Latin.

In any case, whatever the scheme is, it should be voted upon by our Congressional representatives in Congress and enacted by Congress, and signed into law by the President. That is how the H1-B visa was created in the first place, and that is how taxes are raised in this country: with representation.

If that happened, then school children would no longer be required to learn the names of all of the planets. That’s just a practical concern with adding another several dozen planets to the list.

And I think it is worthwhile to make kids learn the names and some basic facts about the 8 planets we have.

imagine they reclaim all the territory except the Gadsden purchase, which becomes an exclave.

I think the reality is that these admissions and scholarship committees were well aware these were the Lopez offspring. And I imagine they’re counting on getting more money back in future donations and from extra buzz and interest generated if these celebrities actually matriculate.

In this specific case, your phone exchanges radio signals with a cell tower, and then the cell tower transfers your data requests onto the wires.

Dreamliners had some nightmare problems with their batteries back when they first came out.

It was the first use of lithium ion chemistry on airplanes. The batteries kept catching on fire. At one point a battery fire started on a taxiway with a plane full of revenue passengers.

Boeing had to design a heavy, fireproof lock box to contain the batteries. It completely negated the weight savings from using lithium over NiCad and then some.

They also had a lot of manufacturing problems in the beginning trying to stop the carbon fiber from cracking.

Why call up “AAA Bail Bonds” when you need bail?

It’s pretty common for natural gas electric plants to use Brayton cycle turbines, which is the same thermodynamic cycle that the turbojet engines on airplanes use. But you can optimize the designs on the ground for efficiency (and zero thrust) instead of thrust-to-weight.

It’s also common to use “combined cycle” technology which mashes the Brayton cycle engine together with an older-style steam loop for extra efficiency.

After reading the article, I think they’re just saying they installed some miniaturized natural gas plants. I don’t think they’re literally running aircraft engines on the ground.

If the OTA distribution system went online in 2011, it would have been for P/Y code, which is the original military-use code that launched with the GPS satellites.

P/Y originally provided better position precision than the unclassified C/A code, under a program called Selective Availability (SA). SA was deactivated in 2000 by executive order of President Bill Clinton. Since that time, P/Y only provides an anti-spoofing feature that helps receivers to authenticate genuine GPS.

The military is now in the process of moving to a new, third code called M-code. M-code required updated satellites to be launched, as old ones were retired, and it required big overhauls to the ground control networks. After about 10 years of delays, M-code is now in process of rolling out to end users in the military.

I’m conclusion, a possible reason to retire this old program is because users are now moving to M-code.