OceanGate Expeditions shot the footage earlier this year with a manned submersible.

Until recently, it was common for some Tibetan families to send one of their young sons to the local monastery to become a lifelong, celibate monk. Historically, up to one in seven boys became monks. //

We found that men with a brother who was a monk were wealthier, owning more yaks. But there was little or no benefit for sisters of monks. That’s likely because brothers are in competition over parental resources, land, and livestock. As monks cannot own property, by sending one of their sons to the monastery, parents put an end to this fraternal conflict. Firstborn sons generally inherit the parental household, whereas monks are usually second or later-born sons. //

Until recently, it was common for some Tibetan families to send one of their young sons to the local monastery to become a lifelong, celibate monk. Historically, up to one in seven boys became monks.

"Every time we saw a leak, it pretty quickly exceeded our flammability limits." //

So why does NASA use liquid hydrogen as a fuel for its rockets if it is so difficult to work with and there are easier-to-handle alternatives such as methane or kerosene? One reason is that hydrogen is a very efficient fuel, meaning that it provides better "gas mileage" when used in rocket engines. However, the real answer is that Congress mandated that NASA continue to use space shuttle main engines as part of the SLS rocket program. //

Among the idea's opponents was Lori Garver, who served as NASA's deputy administrator at the time. She said the decision to use space shuttle components for the agency's next-generation rocket seemed like a terrible idea, given the challenges of working with hydrogen demonstrated over the previous three decades.

"They took finicky, expensive programs that couldn't fly very often, stacked them together differently, and said now, all of a sudden, it's going to be cheap and easy," she told Ars in August. "Yeah, we've flown them before, but they've proven to be problematic and challenging. This is one of the things that boggled my mind. What about it was going to change? I attribute it to this sort of group think, the contractors and the self-licking ice cream cone." //

niwaxArs Tribunus Militumet Subscriptorreply3 days agoReader Favreportignore user
Update: At current funding levels, the delay to mid-october costs $495 million, or the total development cost of Falcon Heavy, or the total development cost of Falcon 9 plus four flights.

AI image synthesis goes open source, with big implications. //

Realistic image synthesis models are potentially dangerous for reasons already mentioned, such as the creation of propaganda or misinformation, tampering with history, accelerating political division, enabling character attacks and impersonation, and destroying the legal value of photo or video evidence. In the AI-powered future, how will we know if any remotely produced piece of media came from an actual camera, or if we are actually communicating with a real human? On these questions, Mostaque is broadly hopeful. "There will be new verification systems in place, and open releases like this will shift the public debate and development of these tools," he said.

That's easier said than done, of course. But it's also easy to be scared of new things. Despite our best efforts, it's difficult to know exactly how image synthesis and other AI-powered technologies will affect us on a societal scale without seeing them in wide use. Ultimately, humanity will adapt, even if our cultural frameworks end up changing radically in the process. It's happened before, which is why the Ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus reportedly said, "the only constant is change."

In fact, there's a photo of him saying that now, thanks to Stable Diffusion.

Is it a coincidence that the people who said Western civilization was unsustainable are making it so?

The Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment can make oxygen at anytime during the Martian day or year.

Yesterday's Tomorrows: Past Visions of the American Future

Joseph J. Corn, Brian Horrigan
Published by Simon & Schuster, 1984
ISBN 10: 0671541331 / ISBN 13: 9780671541330

This stellar nursery is located in the Large Magellanic Cloud.

"We cannot work with a partner who is completely trampling on those values." //

Half a year after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the implications of this war for the European space industry have been profound. Most notably, Europe has severed all connections with the Russian launch industry and canceled a joint mission to place a European rover on Mars with the help of a Russian rocket and lander. //

Soon after the Russian invasion, relations between the two space programs broke down. Russian workers at Europe's main spaceport in French Guiana walked off the job and returned home. A launch of OneWeb satellites on a Russian rocket, brokered by the European Space Agency, was scrubbed. Those 36 satellites remain stranded in Kazakhstan, and OneWeb recently took a $229 million writedown.

Prior to the war, Europe had relied on Russia's Soyuz rocket for its medium-lift needs—for payloads larger than its Vega rocket could accommodate but not large enough to necessitate the more expensive Ariane 5 rocket. That partnership had been expected to continue even as Europe brought a new generation of rockets, the Vega-C and Ariane 6, into service. But no longer. //

"I cannot see a rebuild of the cooperation we had in the past," Aschbacher said. "I am speaking here on behalf of my member states. They all have very much the same opinion. And this is really something where the behavior of ESA will reflect the geopolitical situation of the member states on this point. And I think this is very clear."

Susan Shelley @Susan_Shelley
·
How's the electric grid doing in California? It's high noon, and renewables are only producing 32.4% of the state's electricity needs. State officials want to close the gas-powered plants that are currently providing 45.1% of the electricity that keeps the lights on.
3:06 PM · Sep 6, 2022 //

As of 2:50 p.m. Pacific Time, that figure is even more drastic, with natural gas dependence at 47.8 percent and renewable dependence at 29.1 percent.