Every time I see Komarov's name, I get angry. Most astronaut deaths can be traced to a bad decision somewhere, either in design or construction, and none of them expected to die in the ways that they did. Even for Challenger, they thought the odds were with them for a safe flight. Komarov's situation was so blatantly based on politics--everyone was afraid of Brezhnev's wrath in case of a delayed launch--that he knew he was going to die, and he preferred that it be him instead of close friend and national/world hero Yuri Gagarin.

Menin, not melanin. Menin is a protein, melanin is a pigment.

Depends on the state. Assault covers both in some states.

OP wasn't asking about 727, DC-10, or L1011-style engines. They were asking about DC-9-style mountings, or the common tail mountings on business jets. Unfortunately wording on their part.

Lots of people talking in various posts about HfH, Guinea worn, and so on, but one of my favorite stories about him is how seriously he took the threat of nuclear war. When he arrived in office, he asked for results of nuclear attack drills conducted by civilian agencies, especially the White House. There were none. Most people didn't even know where they were supposed to go or who they were supposed to call. He was flabbergasted.

So in February 1977, just a few weeks into office, he ordered a zero-notice midnight drill. It failed miserably. A few weeks later, he ordered another one. And another a few weeks later, and so on. Eventually, there was improvement, and he slowed the rate once they got sufficiently under the target times for his satisfaction. This whole thing undoubtedly stemmed from his time on subs.

Since then, every president has ordered random drills to ensure there was a suitable government after a nuclear strike. But he set the standard.

This is where McDonald's Filet-O-Fish came from. McDonald's fanchisee Lou Coen came up with the idea. McDonald's founder Ray Kroc wasn't convinced and devised a Hula Burger (grilled pineapple with cheese) as an alternative and challenged Coen to a competition. The highest-selling product would win.

The Filet-O-Fish won handily, selling 350 to...some very small number that Ray Kroc wouldn't admit. It was reportedly the first ever addition to the McDonald's menu. It was a huge hit among Catholics after that.

That actually happened with the Genesis mission to collect samples from the solar wind. It hit the atmosphere at 11 km/s, but after slowing down, the parachutes never deployed. It impacted the ground at 86 m/s, contaminating most but not all of the collectors, and some of the science was salvaged.

This is a big part of the reason that I'm rooting for cultured meat to be successful. So much of the world's forests and bundles are being cut down for ranching.

On the other hand, that success will probably lead to millions of jobs being lost with no straightforward replacement.

Because it's micrograms and because the current supply somewhat outweighs the demand. Most fusion concepts now under investigation rely on tritium but it's still years away from needing significant amounts. Once fusion power is a reality, tritium is going to be in enormous demand (ITER is expected to use most of the world's supply just in experiments) unless we have a way to generate it more freely, such as with lithium-6 blankets.

There's probably not as much tritium in that water as you think. According to this paper on sourcing tritium, a 700 MW CANDU-6 reactor can make only about 130 grams of tritium per year. There probably aren't dozens of kilograms of tritium sitting in those barrels.

I explained in another comment the details and challenges of production. In short, scaling up is difficult and requires either special rods that produce 1.2 grams per 10-foot rod per 500 days of irradiation in a light-water reactor or else heavy water reactors that can create up to 130 grams per 700 MW reactor per year. It's extremely inefficient either way.

Lithium blankets are being researched, but they're not yet proven.

A tiny fraction of a gram is used, with a maximum of 25 millicuries allowed per timepiece. A little bit goes a long way for that purpose.

Edit: I looked up some numbers, and the amount of tritium in any given timepiece is apparently measured in micrograms, not even milligrams. I'm having trouble finding exact amounts, but a very rough calculation based on a specific activity of 9650 Cu/g and 25 millicuries results in .025 mCu-g/9650 Cu = 2.6 micrograms per watch. That's a very, very tiny amount.

Lithium blankets are still very much in the research stage. The US gets its tritium for it's nuclear arsenal by irradiating special rods called tritium producing burnable absorber rods (TPBARs) containing lithium-6 in a nuclear reactor, specifically Watts Bar Reactors 1 and 2 at the TVA. Each TPBAR is about ten feet long and less than half an inch in diameter. Over about 500 days of burning, each produces about 1.2 grams of tritium.

Civilian sources are primarily from CANDU reactors, but building more of these can be problematic as they're heavy-water reactors (they produce tritium by deuterium neutron capture) and are considered to be proliferation risks, raising both political and legal problems. They also don't produce that much. According tothis paper on sourcing tritium for fusion use, the CANDU 6 reactor, a 700 MW design, can generate only 130 grams of tritium per year, though not all of this can be captured.

According to ITER's own numbers, 800 MW of fusion-generated electricity will require 300 grams of tritium per day. Lithium blankets are the most promising way to get this done, but they present their own technical challenges. This is why research is happening on other approaches like laser confinement and Z-pinch to find ways of using just deuterium.

Deuterium is easy, tritium is not. The entire world's supply is about 20 kg and it's only produced in a few reactors around the world. It decays rapidly with a half-life of only 12 years, making holding on to what you have a temporary prospect at best. Much of what is produced goes into keeping nuclear weapons active, and when ITER comes online, it will get much of the rest unless its lithium blanket for breeding tritium works spectacularly well.

The lack of easy tritium production is a major reason various projects around the world are looking at alternate means.

It is. Most jurisdictions have special forms that have to be completed before a judge will even look at the claims, and the overwhelming majority of cases are dismissed immediately. RICO doesn't mean "these companies do bad things so they should pay." It means "these people colluded in a very specific manner to break specific laws."

The federal government has trouble winning RICO cases with effectively infinite resources and time. This case has almost no chance.

Or, as Popehat says, "It's never RICO."

Iran has a nuclear program with some work towards nuclear weapons. They are not known to have nuclear weapons at this point.