LostCosmonaut

Pluto has roughly the same surface area as Russia. Assuming that the American Minuteman III arsenal would be enough to "kill" something the size of Russia (Pluto has much less defenses than Russia, and their targets are probably less hardened against military attack), then we need 450 W87 warheads, which weigh about 250 kg each (I don't know the exact number). In other words, 112500 kg of warheads. The New Horizons probe weighed 478 kg and was launched on an Atlas V 551. 478 is pretty close to 250*2, so I'm going to say each Atlas V 551 can put two warheads on a Pluto intercept trajectory. This means we would need 225 Atlas Vs. 74 Atlas Vs have been launched since 2002, just over 4.5 per year. However, given sufficient incentives and/or money, I'm going to conservatively assume ULA could double the production rate, to 9 rockets a year. Therefore, using the Atlas V, there are 225/9 = 25 years until we have enough rockets to kill Pluto. Add in the 9.5 year transit time (from the New Horizons mission), and if we start today, we could cleanse Pluto of life by the year 2043. With other rockets, like Falcon Heavy, SLS, or BFR, it's probable that we could throw more warheads per launch and reduce the number of rockets needed. However, the production rates of these launch vehicles, as well as their performance on a trans-Plutonian trajectory, is unknown. If we decide to go with something like an Orion drive that could get to Pluto quicker (and drop sufficient warheads in one go), we need to factor in research+development time, and I am not an expert at those sorts of things. For a more extreme case, if we want to completely erase Pluto from existence, it will be harder. Pluto has a mass of 1.31*10^22 kg. To disperse this mass, I will assume we need to accelerate it to Pluto's escape velocity. From wiki, escape velocity is given by the following formula; (side note, I'm going to say r is the radius where half the volume of Pluto is outside that radius. This is (1/2)^(1/3) times Pluto's radius, which is .7397*1188 km = 878.8 km = 8.788*10^5 m). Solving for escape velocity, we find that the escape velocity is 1410 m/s. Therefore, the kinetic energy needed is .5 * 1.31*10^22 kg * (1410 m/s)^2 = 1.30*10^28 J. According to the Atomic Rockets page, the Sun puts out 3.9*10^26 J per second (watts). Therefore, we need to harness 33 seconds of the Sun's output and focus it simultaneously on Pluto. This is well beyond the technical capabilites of our civilization at the present time.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/12/tsa-surveillance-laptops-cellphones-domestic-flights TSA is useless and always has been. Glad somebody is calling them out on this bullshit (even if it is the ACLU).

@Sturgeon better keep practicing those PUBG skills

For reference, rollback testing of an old lift at Winter Park (weighted with concrete to simulate people)

Scary as fuck video from a ski area in Georgia (country)

I think Saudi building (or buying) nukes in response to Iran has been discussed here before; https://news.google.com/news/video/CujfC5ixGKQ/dPVNBz5utGTz-DMzy0iBtGW7-HTXM?hl=en&gl=US&ned=us Rumors I've heard elsewhere is that the Saudis put a significant amount of money into Pakistan's nuclear program in exchange for the right to buy a few if they ever wanted. Though, I think even the Saudis could build some shitty fission bombs if they wanted to. North Korea did it with much less resources (though their scientists/engineers are probably more competent than the Saudis).

https://www.tetongravity.com/video/news/big-sky-announces-the-first-eight-seat-chairlift-in-north-america At that point just put in a fucking gondola. (Also, more uphill capacity isn't always better, though it usually is.)

The next one is supposed to only get down to about 990 mb, so it shouldn't be too bad, I'm mainly interested in it as a snowmaker for the Adirondacks and Southern Vermont. Although forecasts for winter storms are notoriously shit so

Strong storm near South America. Also, the Northeast US is predicted to get its 4th noreaster this month next week (after a bunch of places got 2+ feet today), with possible model support for a 5th.

I liked A Wrinkle in Time when I was younger, so I'm sure the new movie probably broke it horribly.

Atomic Rockets has added some info about Pluto to their site; http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/planetaryattack.php#projectpluto

Haven’t thought about it that much, but I’d like somewhere with decent very, and definitely above-treelike skiing. Can’t get much of that back east.

But Russia did it so it is dumb jingoistic posturing. (Russia, please do more of this instead of dumping nerve gas in british towns) An F-15E could handle the weight of an SM-3 or SM-6 (they weigh less than a GBU-28, which the F-15E was rated to carry), the actual volume might be a problem though. F-15+SM-3 would be a worthy successor to the ASM-135. Comedy answer; We already put Standards on our planes.

Magic had a shitload of moguls this past Saturday. They're getting 18+ from this storm, so I might be heading back Friday. @Oedipus Wreckx-n-Effect, what are your favorite areas out west? I have vague plans of doing a trip out west in the winter of '19-'20 (considering Colorado, Montana/Wyoming, BC, and Alaska).

Low enriched uranium strikes again! Without going into too much detail that could get me in trouble, the US Navy is looking into switching to low enriched uranium for future reactors. Or at least they were, since the election of Trump it's probably dropped off. But in any case, there would be some ~interesting~ challenges associated with putting LEU in subs and still keeping a long interval between refuelings. Also, it'd be a long time before an LEU reactor got into a sub; Columbia's reactor design (S1B) is already pretty advanced, so the earliest you'd get it is in a Virginia replacement. And considering how weird an LEU reactor would be (at least compared to current fuel fabrication techniques and reactor layout) the Navy would probably want to do a land-based test reactor.

The top story on weather.com right now is the developing noreaster. The second story is "Northeast storm forecast, what could go wrong?" Translation: we have no idea what the fuck, don't blame us when NYC gets 2 feet of snow (I'm hoping they underestimated the snowfall totals and the Adirondacks and/or Southern Vermont get multiple feet of accumulation)

CRS-7 accident report; https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/public_summary_nasa_irt_spacex_crs-7_final.pdf

Never seen proposals to put missiles there before. (from the F-11 doc recently posted in the documents thread)

I have rediscovered the best aerospace pictures

Good day at Magic Mountain today. Definitely made the right choice going there. Snow conditions were excellent; I couldn't actually go into the really deep powder in my 70mm wide skis without sinking up to my knees. Still, lots of shallower powder left, and the packed down stuff was pretty good. Moguls everywhere, which made it difficult, but is a nice change of place from the groomers everywhere else. Think Magic only groomed one or two non-green trails. Only complaint was that one of the lifts was running at half capacity due to mechanical issues, and the only other lift they have (other than a small tow in the kids area and stuff like that) is a double chair. Well, at least it kept the trails clear (they also stopped selling walkup tickets about 45 minutes after I got there, which thinned out the crowds). I also found out that my technique still sucks. I have a pretty good idea what to do in my head, but whenever I push myself to the edge of my ability I keep going back to shitty habits like shifting my weight back and turning my shoulders.

I'm curious about how old it is. Don't really old Native American remains occasionally show up due to erosion? Odds are this is more recent though.

I'm guessing the SAS has a bit more freedom in their procurement (like most special forces units seem to).