Category Archives: R.I.D.I.C.U.L.O.U.S.

Epidemic of Control Freaks: “Nobody Here Gets Any Pussy”

 

/r/SpaceX has finally succumbed to inevitable fratricide…it will only end when moderators let Reddit be reddit by allowing participants to moderate comments through up/down voting. [Something positive did come from this nonsense: it precipitated creation of /r/SpaceXLounge.]

via retiringonmars: To anyone interested, here’s the timeline of events (times in BST / UTC+1):

  • Aug-Sept – Several differences of opinion happen within the mod team, tensions fluctuate.
  • 16 Sept – New internal procedure trial begins. Leads to a massive increase in workload.
  • 27 Sept, 19:30-21:00 – Elon Musk hosts the talk “Making Life Multiplanetary” at IAC 2016.
  • 27 Sept, 22:00 – Trialled procedure is disabled.
  • 28 Sept, 04:30-05:00 – Tensions on the mod team reach a peak, and the worst of the argument happens.
  • 28 Sept, 04:47 – Wetmelon leaves the mod team.
  • 28 Sept, 20:00 – Echo leaves the mod discussion group.
  • [interim period] – Things break, we realise it’s impossible to have a mod that isn’t available for discussion.
  • 29 Sept 14:42 – Echologic is removed from the mod team.
  • [interim period] – equally unworkable.
  • 30 Sept 09:30 – TheBlacktom is seemingly the first to comment on what’s happened, here.
  • 30 Sept 12:30 – interoth tries to make this topic a top-level post here.
  • [interim period] – I remove interoth’s post but continue to answer questions, while frantically trying to alert the other mods, so that we can release this as a proper meta discussion.
  • 30 Sept 15:30 – The shitstorm we’re in is officially revealed to the community.

screen-shot-2016-09-30-at-4-54-46-pm screen-shot-2016-09-30-at-4-53-47-pm

Initially that comment had about 5-6 points, before discussing pussy….

Live links used in the graphic above:
http://factualfiction.com/marsartists/2012/10/20/mars-to-stays-rethinking-mars-cover-images/
http://factualfiction.com/marsartists/2013/09/08/mars-to-stay-cheerleaders/

LOL, badge of honor…can’t help but wonder what these people are like in person:

screen-shot-2016-09-30-at-5-25-36-pm

Humans:

This shameful ridiculous waste of talent goes on and on…

https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXMeta/
https://www.reddit.com/r/UndeleteSpaceX 

Apparently this humorless moderation will continue in 2017:


https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/5mx13d/just_read_the_instructions_were_accepting/dc7neeb/

Miseducating Millions of Taxpayers en Masse

Unacceptable: “I just wanted to be as accurate as I possibly could. There are, there are a few places that are inaccurate. The
biggest place that’s inaccurate is right at the beginning. Um, don’t – don’t tell anybody but if you’re in a dust storm on Mars
you’re not even going to feel it. Mars’ atmosphere is less than one percent of Earth’s – so a 150 kilometer per hour wind, would
feel like about a 1 kilometer wind does on Earth. It wouldn’t do any damage to anything. Shhhh. […] Most people don’t know
how Martian dust storms work. People don’t realize that it’s not like being in a sand blaster and it’s just more dramatic that way,
so I just made that concession. I know I’m a liar I just – I just, uh, wanted that more, it’s just more dramatic.”

Update: Weir‘s turning out to be a decent guy…(speaking at the Mars Society’s conference helps too!)…from a Reddit AMA:

“If you were given the opportunity to go back in time to change one thing in The Martian, would you
change anything? A character, a plot point, or something to do with the story?”

“Yeah, I’d probably make the initial disaster an engine test failure instead of a sandstorm. It’s the most
glaring physical inaccuracy in the book and I wish I hadn’t made that concession to drama. I think I could
have set it up so an MAV engine test blasted Watney, impaling him with debris, and started leaking
fuel, forcing them to launch. Something like that.”

Also:

1) You have to actually write. Daydreaming about the book you’re going to write someday isn’t writing. It’s daydreaming.
Open your word processor and start writing.

2) Resist the urge to tell friends and family your story. I know it’s hard because you want to talk about it and they’re (sometimes)
interested in hearing about it. But it satisfies your need for an audience, which diminishes your motivation to actually write it.
Make a rule: The only way for anyone to ever hear about your stories is to read them.

3) This is the best time in history to self-publish. There’s no old-boy network between you and your readers. You can self-publish
an ebook to major distributors (Amazon, Barnes and Noble, etc.) without any financial risk on your part.

Zubrin: “The Matt Damon character in The Martian isn’t interested in Mars. He doesn’t care about the search for life on Mars, or about Mars as humanity’s new frontier. He just wants to get home. In contrast, Howard’s ensemble crew is fascinated by Mars. For them, the Red Planet is not just a place of peril; it is also a place of wonder. So while Mars may not have the star power of Matt Damon, it has something that The Martian lacks: the star power of Mars.

Counterproductive. Vile. Garbage. "Mars Frontier" Facebook App Game

Why do people waste their lives creating such illiterate nonsense??

Thanks for making space ‘a problem’…
…with the potential to be educational…
…could familiarize kids with Mars quite well…
…instead…
…Curiosity armed and dangerous…
….’wasteland’…
…surface habitats…
…on Mars??
…”Hellion”…that’s imaginative?
…”droids”??
…the next generation of this uplifting wonder will start educating us in two days.

“Permanently deranged from an asteroid that leveled his base, Rabe Crater, believes himself a God sent to destroy. Commanding a massive army, he’s entered your region hungry for conquest. Can you defend yourself against the full force of Rabe and his terrible horde?”

Obscene Headline Seeking POS PLOS Study on Alzheimer’s Prone Mice vs Cosmic Rays

[illustrative purposes only]

An improperly designed “study” by amateur scientists generated headlines worldwide:

“Cosmic Radiation Could Cause Alzheimer’s in Mars Astronauts” ABC
“Astronauts and Alzheimer’s: Mouse Study Shows Cosmic Radiation Is Associated With Disease” ABC News
“A mission to mars could damage astronauts’ brains” Business Insider
“Study: Mars-Bound Astronauts Exposed To Heavy Radiation; More Likely To Have Alzheimer’s”
CBS Houston
“Mission to Mars Could Mess With Your Brain” Discovery News (LOL)
“Houston, we have another problem” Eureka Alert
“Can humans journey into deep space without cosmic radiation frying our brains?” iO9
“Space Flight Linked to Alzheimer’s” News Max
““Sad Science Fiction Plot Becomes Reality: Space Radiation Could Cause Alzheimer’s” PopSci
“Does Deep Space Travel Cause Alzheimer’s?” Smithsonian Blogs Surprising Science
“Technology News: Space: Alzheimer’s Could Be the Trade-off for Deep-Space Pioneers” Tech News World
“Space Travel Could be Dealt a Blow with Discovery that Cosmic Radiation Could Cause Alzheimer’s Disease” Cleveland Leader
“Cosmic radiation can cause Alzheimer’s in astronauts: study” The Financial Express

A few questions:
1) who authorized this study
2) are they fired yet
3) is there a single j school grad capable of reading it?

“Galactic Cosmic Radiation Leads to Cognitive Impairment”… generates worldwide headlines, whereas “After a Single Acute Burst Exposure to an Accelerated Beam of Iron Nuclei at Three and a Half Months of Age Transgenic Mice Brains Predisposed to Alzheimer’s Examined Only Four to Six Months Later Suffered Inflammation, with Males Showing Enhanced Plaque Pathology and Females Showing Absolutely None Whatsoever” might lead the public to question how close this poorly written study cloaked in jargon corresponds to actual humans exposed over six months to much smaller gradual increments of radiation. Specifically whether “These pathological increases are particularly concerning for astronauts who will be exposed to [Galactic Cosmic Radiation] in upcoming deep space missions” actually means Mars pioneers will suffer dementia, as so many scientifically illiterate journalists are now reporting. Low level six month exposures might be worse than a single burst, or, with proactive medical treatment might not be a concern at all. We do not know…….at the very least the next similar study ought to expose mice over a longer period of time to radiation at lower doses and not euthanize females two months early.

Months of low level cosmic radiation was supposedly compressed into a single meaningful 10 to 100 minute “acute dose”?

“…one major caveat of our model is that mice were subjected to acute exposures with a single HZE species [iron particle beam]. It is not known how the CNS [astronauts] will respond to the complex and chronic low-dose GCR [galactic cosmic ray] environment of space. Moreover, astronauts will not likely be familial AD carriers [genetically predisposed to Alzheimer’s]. Therefore, while many of the pathological processes are believed to be similar, this model does not reflect the complete human condition.”

Intergalactic radiation is halved on the Martian surface and zero in habs buried beneath it. The only way to know whether humans can live on Mars is for us to go to there and strive to stay.

In the long term we may use water from asteroids to shield Earth-Mars cyclers, in addition to creating portable mini-magnetospheres:  http://www.minimagnetosphere.org/

More information on the challenges of intergalactic radiation:

http://www.bt.cdc.gov/radiation/arsphysicianfactsheet.asp

Much literature on radiation poisoning still uses the deprecated ‘rad’ unit of measurement. Readers may note these equivalences: 1 J/kg = 1 Gy = 100 cGy = 100 rad. 1 Sv = 100 rem. (Conversion from Gy/rad to Sv/rem depends on biological effect.) See also:

____

Apparently Slate is the only publication in the entire world with a journalist capable of deciphering this nonsense, Konstantin Kakaes:

“…basic flaw in the University of Rochester study is that it relies on subjecting mice to acute doses of radiation….

The researchers acknowledge these limitations in print, though they don’t seem to take their own caveats seriously: “Differences in mouse strain, timing, and radiation beam energy limit our ability to extrapolate from these studies,” they write at one point. They later continue, “while many of the pathological processes are believed to be similar, this model does not reflect the complete human condition.”

So headlines like “Study: Space Radiation Could Cause Alzheimer’s” are true in a narrow sense: Space radiation could cause Alzheimer’s. But this study doesn’t establish that it does. The real news here is that overreliance on mouse models continues, as does selective interpretation of data. In this study, significant changes in the amount of brain plaque thought to contribute to Alzheimer’s were seen only in male mice—but there’s little discussion of the fact that female mice appeared relatively unscathed. All of the mice had been genetically engineered to be susceptible to Alzheimer’s, something not likely to be true of astronauts. Even so, irradiated mice performed differently to non-irradiated mice in only two of three simplistic cognitive tests.”

http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/01/03/cosmic_radiation_may_give_astronauts_alzheimer_s_says_study_don_t_cancel.html

Thank you Konstantin for making an effort to publicize the flaws of this biased study. Yours is the only article I have yet found that does so. Bravo, good work.

Go Home, Stay in Houston. Send a Young Woman.

We need to train astronauts as couples in their twenties. We do not need data on 48 year old
men. Scott Kelly and Mikhail Kornienko were selected to study the health effects of long-
duration flights to Mars. We should send a young couple with birth control instead. Nice guys,
wrong mission. Enough with the test pilot paradigm.

WHERE ARE THE WOMEN? PANEL OF WHITE MEN? WHAT ARE YOU THINKING?!!?!

Fact: we know many women and non-European Americans more intelligent than most anyone on this panel. You probably do to. What is wrong with JPL’s ability to attract intelligent women?!?!?!? All white?? Are these people in a time warp?? It’s at the point someone should be fired for this. Mars attracts female space enthusiasts and persons of all ethnicities. So what’s wrong with Cal Tech?!?!? Inexcusable. We paid for this. Many engineers are more than qualified to be on this panel. Anyone walking onto that stage could have said, “Wait a moment, this is wrong. Let ___ take my place. [a long time ago]” It must not happen again. Absolutely shameful. Like something from the 1950s. Regressive, obscene, embarrassing and stupid. Unacceptable. What the hell went wrong here. Shesh. A shocking disappointment. This is not what Mars is about. Immediately alienates most of America, would-be-space-enthusiasts, worldwide, and sets us all back! Very disappointing.

In contrast, this is the crowd (of taxpayers) watching at Times Square:
“Each time Mission Control released an update informing the Times Square crowd that the
rover had entered the atmosphere, or that the parachute had been deployed, cheers roared
out. Each step closer to a successful landing increased the intensity. For those walking down the
street unaware of the events unfolding before them, it must have seemed odd… Then the
largest roar of all broke out, as everyone heard confirmation that Curiosity was safely on the
Martian surface. Cheers of ‘NASA — NASA — NASA’ and ‘Science! Science! Science!’ broke out. It
was an intensely emotional release: NASA knew the risks, and, so it seemed, did the crowd.”

Images courtesy Navid Baraty

What the Hell Happened to Our Space Program?? Can you imagine the Right Stuff generating these fucking headlines??

ONN: NASA Scientists Plan to Approach Girl by 2018
“Our backup plan: using the Hubble Space Telescope to take high-resolution photos of her and
then masturbating furiously while hating ourselves for it.”

NASA Launches David Bowie Concept Mission
“These new suits are veneered with a protective silver lamé to complement the multicolored lightning bolts emblazoned across the helmets’ sun visors. They’ve also been updated with several improved components to ensure the team is completely safe when it’s time to leave the capsule—if they dare.”
NASA Is An Industrial Subsidy In Disguise
I grew up with the romantic notion that NASA is not merely a government agency, but an organization dedicated to bravely propelling the human race forward into a glorious future of scientific advancement and discovery […but…] NASA exists largely to provide an economic boost to the American aerospace industry, particularly Boeing. NASA gets away with this thinly veiled pork-barrel politicking, the piece contended, by distracting the public with “bread-and-circus” space missions that emphasize thrills over genuinely useful scientific discovery.>
Consider the hoopla surrounding John Glenn’s return flight to space. He got a ticker-tape parade and front-page coverage, but what did science actually gain? …it’s time we started making NASA accountable for its wasteful, PR-driven expenditures.
NASA Baffled by Failure of Straw Shuttle
$68 billion straw space shuttle [… ] “It was nice and crisp and dry,” Toshikima said. “Which is the best condition for straw headed away from the earth’s gravitational pull.” The Explorer 2, like its predecessor, was headed for the sun, where it was to be the first spacecraft to land on a star. “We’d hoped to bring back and study sun rock,” Toshikima said.”
NASA Announces Plan to Bring Wi-Fi to Its Headquarters by 2017
An ambitious mission to make Houston’s Johnson Space Center wireless-Internet capable within one decade. We are not content to rest on our laurels. It may seem like an impossible task, but if we commit all of our focus, technology, and resources, we can get Wi-Fi into NASA’s offices and research labs within our generation.”  Griffin was confident that NASA’s estimated $655 million plan to install a wireless broadband router by 2017 could reap huge benefits for the entire space agency.
NASA has suffered from a public credibility crisis in recent years due to perceived incompetence, a failed mission to Mars, the damaged and dormant Hubble telescope, and its inability to procure a long enough USB cable to reach all the way over to engineer William Chen’s cubicle. But NASA officials argue that a secure high-speed line could prevent disasters such as a 2005 incident in which an employee attempting to download the movie trailer forCheaper by the Dozen 2  crashed the Mission Control Center mainframe computer for two weeks.
NASA Embarks on Epic Delay
The unprecedented delay has reportedly brought together the nation’s foremost aerospace engineers, whose combined efforts have already added 18 months of rescheduled meetings to the daring mission. “Delays of this magnitude were once the stuff of science fiction,” Scolese told reporters during a noon press conference Monday that actually started around 3:15 p.m. “But now, thanks to a number of long-overdue technological advances, this historic delay will stretch the very limits of what humankind can push back indefinitely.”
“Never before has man dared to fall behind on such a sweeping scale,” said Brenda Win, head administrator of the newly established delay-management team, which is expected to be named sometime next month or maybe the month after. “A postponement like this only happens once in a lifetime. This will be the series of setbacks you’ll tell your grandchildren about.”

“When we have finally finished here, the universe will see there is no end to what man can entangle in red tape,” Scolese wrote in the stirring statement. “Even as we speak, our top people are dragging their feet on what will become the longest and most profound delay in the planet’s history.”

 

“Mark my words: In our lifetime, NASA will delay putting a man on Mars,” Scolese continued. “Well, maybe not in my lifetime. I’m almost 50.”
Vows to Put Man on Moon Before It Disappears At End of Month
The president went on to propose the construction of a lunar capsule that could land on a concave surface.
NASA Delays Shuttle Launch Out of Sheer Habit
NASA To Send Earth Into Space

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/35905

People Living On The Moon
“Golden throne so tourists can have their pictures taken as the Moon King.”
Scientists Ask Congress To Fund $50 Billion Science Thing
I have always said that science is more important than it is unimportant,” Committee chairman Rep. Bart Gordon (D-TN) said. “And it’s essential we stay ahead of China, Japan, and Germany in science. We are ahead in space, with the NASA rockets going to other planets, so we should be ahead in science too.”
“Now, I’m no science major, but if I’m being told by a group of people that the protons, neutrons, and electrons need unifying, then I think we owe it to the American people to go in and unify them,” Rep. Mark Udall (D-CO) said. “After all, isn’t a message of unity what we want to send to our children?”
Conspiracy Theorist Convinces Neil Armstrong Moon Landing Was Faked
According to Armstrong, he was forced to reconsider every single detail of the monumental journey after watching a few persuasive YouTube videos, and reading several blog posts on conspiracy theorist Ralph Coleman’s website, OmissionControl.org.  “This is all just common sense, people,” he added. “It’s the moon. You can’t land on the moon.”
NASA Announces Plan To Launch $700 Million Into Space
fficials at the Kennedy Space Center announced Tuesday that they have set Aug. 6 as the date for launching $700 million from the Denarius IVspacecraft, the largest and most expensive mission to date in NASA’s unmanned monetary-ejection program. “This is an exciting opportunity to study the effect of a hard-vacuum, zero-gravity environment on $50 and $100 bills,” said NASA Administrator Michael Griffin, who noted that prior Project Denarius missions only studied space’s effect on fives and singles.