Yeah I.. did that a lot. Usually put on an audiobook while I'd doing something else and all of a sudden I realize I've been zoning out for the past couple of hours while doing some routine task like cleaning the house.

top secret missile guidance control chips.

Wait, how is this motivating?

Much easier if you soak your clothes in ligher fluid first.

My left hand.

The top example indicates good crisis management. When you notice a fire, work on extinguishing it until there is no more fire.

The bottom example is basically seeing a fire and ignoring it for over a month.

Why you want a fire to burn every week for five plus weeks, I don't know...

I'm the T-posing glitched out quest giving NPC that soft-locks the main character and corrupts his entire save game, forcing him to restart the console and start a new game from scratch.

Just... scroll down. Literally the next line.

"In 2017 the 2,383 km long Jiuquan - Hunan HVDC transmission line entered service connecting the remote complex to the Hunan regional grid allowing full utilization of its generation capacity.[4]"

BTW long distance transmission of wind farms has always been a problem in the industry - since most places with high wind output are typically nowhere near civilization.

Normal grid connectivity is sufficient for sub gigawatt output but when your numbers get up there, dedicated HDVC transmission is absolutely a must. This is something people have learned the hard way, and it is THE number one bottleneck when it comes to upscaling wind farms - not turbine availability - not area limitation.

Most wind farms outside of China are clustered around sub gigawatts precisely because the amount of money and funds required to put in a proper HDVC transmission system can rack up a bill as large as the turbine installation themselves.

Unlike turbine construction and deployment, transmission lines are typically NOT subsidized, and rather rolled into existing infra expansion costs.

Asking an energy company to eat the cost of a substantial megaproject in and of itself with no subsidy and no clear profit projections in the name of renewables is... actually a very Chinese thing.

I recall back in 2010 when China setup one of its first offshore windfarms, as a demonstration project, near Shanghai - no one really supported it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donghai_Bridge_Wind_Farm

The whole thing was seen as a giant waste of tax payer money. It went over budget and over time, and was operating well below the projected power output of 200 MW. (Ended up pulling in 120 MW).

I remember a bunch of local lobbyists were saying the money should have been better spent on rail infrastructure or solar farms.

But 10 years later and the 120MW wind farm is now the smallest of China's windfarms compared to stuff like this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gansu_Wind_Farm

Which is currently operating at a fairly massive 8 GW with plans to expand to 20 GW.

China doesn't fuck around.

Yup. Thank you. That's what I was missing

Yeah if you can get a bunch of ball bearings going retrograde, you will rip up the entire orbit like a shotgun blast that keeps on going.

Did someone show this to Liz Truss about... oh... a few months ago?

Is that why she keeps on changing her mind about everything?

So my initial reaction is, you have satellites, which do station keeping, and ball bearings, which do not. So after the initial blast, the vast majority of the debris should be kicked to a different orbit, and no longer a "threat" to the current orbit.

That said, I'd imagine debris kicked off into the lower orbits could pose a serious concern to future satellite launches.

I agree that the initial impact will be quite devastating, but it won't disable the entire orbit.

This... seems off. I'm not saying it won't work - but it's definitely not as trivial as just setting off a shrapnel bomb a bit above geosync orbit.

Orbital space isn't as crowded as it seems - it's quite high up and the amount actually occupied by satellites is infinitesmal.

Plus which, if you set off an explosion on top of the geosynch orbit, only a very minor fraction of the debris will remain in geosynch orbit. Most will be propelled to a higher or lower orbit. And the debris that do end up in geosynch orbit will have very low relative velocity to the other satellites, since they share the same orbit.

Plus, it's difficult to get a killshot on a satellite unless you're aiming for one. You can nick a solar panel or a make a hole in the casing, but to render the satellite inoperable, you'd have to punch through one of its vital systems - for example - the CPU, a comms antenna, or the battery array.

Which - especially on one of the larger milsats - makes up a small fraction of the total satellite mass.

This sounds like the kessler syndrome scare again.

"No, no. Yuri. Is not your fault. Is you weak? Nyet. Is you broken? Nyet. Is Ukranian artillery. Very accurate. Very deadly. Legitimately difficult. Hard shit. Da, da. It would be easier if we had guns, but... tough times, Yuri. Tough times." - Russian field commander. 2022.

You know if there's one group in this polical climate that's destroying America, it's the Pro-Polio lobby and the Big Polio conglomerates fucking it up for the rest of us.

If I had a nickle every time some bigshot celebrity goes to congress to rant about the wonders of polio...

Got kicked out of art school?

Not the end of the world.

Rise up above and go into politics.

You can rise up from anything!