What are they accessing facebook, twitter/x etc. with then? This isn't 1988 any more.

What do you mean by "fall". @Weird Tolkienish Figure

Get reversed? Did I commit some great sin?

I'm not against solar. I am a fan. Distributed solar makes sense to me, with buy-back deals with electric companies, the consumer level cost would be paid for in 10 years or so, and your average suburban or rural home could be nearly self-contained.

That's a big, robust, distributed system, with the lion's share of the energy already at the end-point... so less transmission and transmission loss. Hard to knock down. That's worth looking at.

But I am dead against big solar.

The surprise is not that Boeing lost commercial crew but that it finished at all

ars Technica by Eric Berger 5/6/2024

"The structural inefficiency was a huge deal."

NASA's senior leaders in human spaceflight gathered for a momentous meeting at the agency's headquarters in Washington, DC, almost exactly 10 years ago.

These were the people who, for decades, had developed and flown the Space Shuttle. They oversaw the construction of the International Space Station. Now, with the shuttle's retirement, these princely figures in the human spaceflight community were tasked with selecting a replacement vehicle to send astronauts to the orbiting laboratory.

Boeing was the easy favorite. The majority of engineers and other participants in the meeting argued that Boeing alone should win a contract worth billions of dollars to develop a crew capsule. Only toward the end did a few voices speak up in favor of a second contender, SpaceX. At the meeting's conclusion, NASA's chief of human spaceflight at the time, William Gerstenmaier, decided to hold off on making a final decision.

A few months later, NASA publicly announced its choice. Boeing would receive $4.2 billion to develop a "commercial crew" transportation system, and SpaceX would get $2.6 billion. It was not a total victory for Boeing, which had lobbied hard to win all of the funding. But the company still walked away with nearly two-thirds of the money and the widespread presumption that it would easily beat SpaceX to the space station.

The sense of triumph would prove to be fleeting. Boeing decisively lost the commercial crew space race, and it proved to be a very costly affair.

With Boeing's Starliner spacecraft finally due to take flight this week with astronauts on board, we know the extent of the loss, both in time and money. Dragon first carried people to the space station nearly four years ago. In that span, the Crew Dragon vehicle has flown thirteen public and private missions to orbit. Because of this success, Dragon will end up flying 14 operational missions to the station for NASA, earning a tidy fee each time, compared to just six for Starliner. Through last year, Boeing has taken $1.5 billion in charges due to delays and overruns with its spacecraft development.

So what happened? How did Boeing, the gold standard in human spaceflight for decades, fall so far behind on crew? This story, based largely on interviews with unnamed current and former employees of Boeing and contractors who worked on Starliner, attempts to provide some answers.

More: https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/05/the-surprise-is-not-that-boeing-lost-commercial-crew-but-that-it-finished-at-all/

I carry a multi-tool on me, along with an Uncle Henry Papa Bear For rough work, and a wicked sharp old Western Rancher for a sliver gitter.

But I have a SWAK Vitorinox in my go-bag... And it's a pretty big one.

They didn't drop the knife, by the way... just on that model.