Proud to say that in Colorado, ranked choice voting is on the ballot this year! It’s even supported by the big political names here, including the governor.

Which is why I am happy to be a metallurgical engineer who can blacksmith…

It’s real! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Widdershins

Widdershins. It means counter to the sun’s direction , and was seen as inauspicious. Counter-clockwise, before clocks.

Proud to be a supporter of CPR…

The right to arm bears…

I think I’m saying that mining on asteroids will probably never be profitable or realistic (with a possible exception of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen CHON once people are living on orbit). Mining on other planets might require understanding different geology and maybe different refining technology. Anything mined on a planet will likely stay there. But there just won’t be any ores on asteroids because they never had a chance to differentiate into higher and lower concentrations of various useful metals.

Metallurgical engineer here. One thing I never see talked about on this topic is how astreoids don’t have nearly the mechanisms for concentrating matals into ores like planetary bodies do.

So while there may be a higher proportion of, say, iridium on an asteroid than the average of Earth, it is pretty homogenous. You would have to refine the whole thing to get a little bit of iridium. On Earth, it may be more rare on average, but Earth also concentrates metals into ores via heat, gravity and water action so that you can mine a small area to get what your want economically.

Metal meteoroids are mostly iron, which is cheap on Earth and of little use in space. Aluminum, which is useful in space, is one of the most common elements on Earth and even higher on the Moon, but it’s only economically mined in tropical soil that had ages of water erosion. Titanium, different process but similar story.

Given the economics of getting to where you want to mine, mining a non-concentrated rock, and then transporting it back to Earth’s for sale I just didn’t see any path for mining asteroids.

Once there’s is an established human presence in space, there might be a reason to mine organics (CHON) but that is not now and not what people think of when they tout asteroid mining.

The Supreme Court has no jurisdiction over a political party’s nomination process. That said …

From a jury I was being considered for (sexual assault), is not that you have no opinion, it is that you think you can be objective based on the evidence.

After you’ve had the Ultimate Love Affair that has broken you, leaves you certain love has been poisoned in your system, then, and only then, can you be saved and uplifted by the Post-Ultimate Love Affair. - Harlan Ellison http://www.baen.com/Chapters/ERBAEN0072/ERBAEN0072.htm

Deleted my 8 year old account and posts just last week. Feels great man.

Well to be fair to the actual journalists, a lot of those articles are published by random people with an agenda that are labeled “Contributor” as opposed to staff.

Next week on Star Trek…

Shrug maybe they could. They have yet to prove it in the real world in the US, as you mentioned.

I like that my ISP has no profit motive and is driven solely by customer/taxpayer satisfaction.

I wouldn’t like it if it became a political football, but so far so good. I think its safe for now because it is the same network used by the fire and police departments. Comcast really tried to kill it off.

I love it! It kind of sells the “we’re in the middle of a war and have to slap a bunch of stuff together just to field some more ships for defense” vibe. Even if really it was just a kit bashed computer model.

We taxpayers built a municipal fiber to house broadband in Longmont Colorado. Stable service, one of the fastest in the nation and inexpensive.

I love it when a telecom asks me to"upgrade" to their service. It messes up their script when I ask them if they can beat 1 gig up and down for $45.

This is the way competition should work. Some things private companies do better, other things the government can do better. Let them hash it out in the market without loading the dice.