CriticalTinker-er

My Inguinal hernia is getting a bit larger. I might have to change my personal carry from a subcompact 9 to a full size Glock. .. sorry best I could do today and it was a strain.

Just posted new Fi-Sci 5-minute Sci-Fi story - enjoy.. teapawt.net/AndPuns2/status/211192…

Question of the day to enumerate scale... "Hi Grok, could a Space-X Starship be launched from the deck of a aircraft carrier without sinking it or otherwise destroying it?" The answer is another demonstration the scale of the Starship which if you already understand is just about everything you can imagine... Grok: teapawt.net/i/grok/share/4cf928bf8… " Sea launches of large rockets have been done (Sea Launch used a converted oil platform for much smaller Zenit rockets). SpaceX has looked at floating platforms for point-to-point Starship flights. Those would be purpose-built vessels with proper ballast, flame management, and structural reinforcement—not a standard aircraft carrier whose job is launching 30-tonne fighters.In short: the carrier would not sink from the rocket simply sitting there, but attempting to launch would wreck the deck, destroy stability, and very likely result in the ship being lost. You would need an entirely different kind of ship. No. A SpaceX Starship could not be launched from a U.S. aircraft carrier without destroying the ship, and very likely sinking or capsizing it. The mismatch in scale, structure, and physics is extreme.twz.comA Ford- or Nimitz-class carrier is a ~100,000-ton floating airfield whose flight deck is built for jets weighing tens of tons. Starship is a 121–124 m tall, 9 m diameter, fully fueled stack of roughly 5,000–5,300 metric tonnes with 33 Raptor engines producing about 74–81 MN of thrust (roughly 7,500–8,200 tonnes-force).en.wikipedia.orgWeight alone would not immediately sink it, but everything else wouldAdding 5,000+ tonnes is only about 5% of the carrier’s displacement. The ship would sit a bit lower in the water (flight deck freeboard is typically around 20 m / 65 ft), but reserve buoyancy is large enough that the extra mass by itself would not submerge the deck.slashgear.comThe problems start immediately after that:Stability. You would be placing a 124 m tall, slender 5,000-tonne object on the flight deck. That raises the center of gravity dramatically. Carriers are designed around their own island superstructure; they are not built to carry a skyscraper-sized rocket. Even modest roll or pitch at sea would make the stack lean, and the ship would become extremely tender (low metacentric height). Capsize risk would be high before engines even ignited. Deck strength. The flight deck handles F-35C-class jets (~30+ tonnes) and, in a famous 1963 test, a C-130 at ~55 tonnes. It is not designed for a concentrated static load of thousands of tonnes on a 9 m diameter footprint, plus the hold-down hardware. The deck and supporting structure would crush or buckle. The launch itself would be catastrophic. When the 33 Raptors light, two things hit the ship at once:The rocket is pushing down through its mounts until it lifts off. The exhaust plume slams the deck with enormous heat, pressure, and acoustic energy. SpaceX’s first integrated Starship flight (no proper flame trench) excavated a ~7–8 m crater in concrete and soil and threw large chunks hundreds of meters. Later pads use massive water-cooled steel plates and flame trenches precisely because the plume destroys ordinary surfaces. A carrier flight deck has none of that infrastructure. The steel would melt, buckle, or be blasted through, opening the hangar deck below, starting fires, and compromising watertight integrity. Vibration and overpressure would wreck the island, aircraft, and electronics.en.wikipedia.org A hole in the flight deck plus fire and possible flooding is how you go from “damaged” to “sinking.”Other show-stoppers Cryogenic methane and liquid oxygen (thousands of tonnes) on a warship at sea is an extreme fire/explosion hazard. The stack must stay perfectly vertical. Any list and the vehicle falls over. After liftoff the ship still has to survive the residual blast and heat. "

New Fi-SCi (5-Minute Sci-Fi) entry "The Insurance Agent" - a man signs up for a matchmaking service, not knowing that "match" was the kind that burns... teapawt.net/AndPuns2/status/208359…

When you go to the worst possible website.. don't say a word.

There is a simple tool that can be used on ALL voting machines that will guarantee that they can NOT be hacked to cause election fraud. It's called a Dumpster.