Should your concern lie with individuals transcribing their own conversations, or with mass surveillance and wiretapping actively being executed by a broad range of official and corporate entities without your consent?

Woah, that's a classic logical fallacy you got there, buddy. I can't be upset about A because B is related and also bad. One of the greatest of all time ways to derail an argument.

Shouldn't you be more concerned about starving children or something than my post?

See how productive of a conversation we are having when we both use these fallacies?

You're welcome to care about as many things as you desire, at the same time, friend. It's a question of perspective and relative importance. The reply didn't comment about A and B and C, only A - implying A was the most important thing to consider and discuss.

Kinetic energy scales with velocity squared (0.5mv^2), so this result makes sense. Brakes dissipate constant energy, but the amount of energy it needs to disapate is going up much faster.

Make up a code phrase/word for emergencies, share it with your family, then use it for these types of situations.

Fair, but that also assumes the recipients ("family") are in a mindset of constantly thinking about the threat model in this type of situation and will actually insist on hearing the passphrase.

This will only work once.

In addition you're attempting to recycle space junk ("bullets") when you're quite literally standing on planet packed to rafters with junk. The energy required to harvest the material in orbit makes it extremely hard to make a case that it is economical.

You didn't read the article. The point is that you want to use the space junk as a mass filler for your skyhook. The skyhook needs a lot of mass, a thousand times more mass than the payload. To boost a 100 ton payload, you need a 10000 ton skyhook. Junk on earth is worthless as that has to be launched into LEO.

My biggest concern however is how they are going to keep the skyhook rotating. If it needs energy from earth the entire concept is kind of meaningless.

I'm sorry, "harvest space junk"? How on earth could that possibly be profitable? There is zero mystery why any VC, Midwest or otherwise, would not be interested in that business model.

Isn’t it a simple case of NASA is paying for a contract so if we do it with a good enough margin we make a profit?

Its really a play on real estate. There are a finite number of spots available in geo-synchronous orbit. Plenty of long dead satellites that could provide new spots if only they were placed in a lower orbit where they would eventually crash into the Pacific ocean.

The only reason that there isn't an active market is because there is no way to free up space. Once there is such a method I predict there will be auctions for prime spots.

Is that understanding based on any evidence or is it a personal theory?

I would take a citation on literally any single one of your statements

What kind of chair is that?

It's a zero gravity recliner -- they cost a few thousand dollars new, but they pop up on craigslist every now and then for a few hundred dollars. You can also get a patio version on amazon for $50-100, and it's arguably more comfortable, but less stable. I used one of those for a couple years before upgrading to the leather version.

No, you definitely could not do it 20 years ago with hobbyist grade parts. The software basically did not exist and whatever tech there was was strictly hidden behind government arms control restrictions (ITAR) because of fears that the tech could be used in ballistic missiles.

"Military aviation accidents have killed 224 pilots or aircrew, destroyed 186 aircraft, and cost more than $11.6 billion since 2013"[1]

"Combined with information from the Federal Aviation Administration, an average of 383 pilots die every year in the US." [2]

[1] https://taskandpurpose.com/news/military-aviation-mishaps-de...

[2] https://www.skytough.com/post/how-many-pilots-die-a-year

That is 32 pilots or aircrew killed in military aviation accidents total per year from 2013-2020. The article claims 30 pilot die every year from spatial disorientation alone. I find it unlikely that 30 out of 32 deaths of "pilots and crew" are pilots, and also unlikely that all of these accidents are due to spatial disorientation.

(Edit- just read the source article- https://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/?date=19990606&slug... it says 30 lives, not 30 pilots... the posted article got it wrong. Even then, I have some doubts as to the number, but its definitely closer to the truth).

I think the sentence is just poorly worded. I see this "it costs $300 per year" and "30 lives" as two separate ideas. I think we might just be assuming that its also 30 lives per year, when it might just have been $300 million and 30 lives in recent years. I struggled with that sentence too, so I could also be totally wrong.

It costs a lot of money to train a military pilot. All thr trainig, all the simulators, even salary.

Then fuel for hours of flight every year. Aircraft mainenance.

That's why everyone tries to save them when shot down (also they know secrets).

As far as journalism goes these days, that looks like an accurate portrayal of the numbers.

So in this case, they are trying to say that this costs the U.S. military an estimated $300 million every year, and also kills 30 (non-military and military combined) pilots?

I think they're two separate ideas maybe. The "per year" in that sentence is ambiguous. It's unclear if it applies to the $300 million, or both that and the 30 lives.