With image resolution this high, ground accuracy becomes an important factor as many people that prefer higher resolutions also want geospatially accurate images. Did you have any findings or results on this?
We actually didn't get to that part of the payload calibration campaign unfortunately, but all indications pointed towards getting geolocation between 5-10 meters on this first mission, driven primarily by star tracker quaternion error. Ephemeris and field angle map error was right in spec, so we were prepped to do an iterative line of sight pointing calibration but with the CMGs down, we didn't get to get there.
Future systems we've got a few updates though based on learnings, and we'll be shooting for closer to 3-5 meter geolocation error without ground control points (GCPs)
It's great we can bring them down. What a terrifying experience to have a medical issue on the space station. Kidney stone? Ruptured appendix? intestinal blockage? How could you keep calm so far away!
In the US, many astronauts start as Air Force pilots.
And for the preternaturally calm and confident who don't have the perfect eyesight required to enter the Air Force, many of them apparently serve instead on nuclear submarines...
The point of training someone to their breaking point is not to make them immune to breaking. It's to give them experience with a realistic battlefield situation and their own physiological responses during it so they stand a basic chance when it does occur.
Totally, they put a bunch of people in those giant spinning chair things and weed out the ones that puke or freak out. Those are the astronauts, they have the right stuff.
I used to work in ISS mission control, this is not an emergency return but an early return
Also coming down on the Soyuz is pretty routine and only takes a few hours- I’d say it was overall a far less risky situation than being in Antarctic on a deep ocean vessel with appendicitis etc
We have dozens and (hundreds behind them) of men and women monitoring those folks from a global network of control centers 24 hrs a day- The station is mostly commanded from the ground and plans and procedures exist for everything
- if anything its all over orchestrated and over-planned in my opinion, owing to national politics, corporate contracts and international bureaucracy
Is it risky- yes obviously-but I’d argue its less risky then being out at the south pole in winter
Astronauts are of a breed apart. They're strapped onto a literally bomb which launches them into a vacuum, and windows where there is no chance of a mission abort. They've pretty much accepted a risk of death that most would simply not tolerate. Ex-military is common for astronauts for a reason.
Not that it really changes the point but modern spacecraft do have an option to abort (begin returning to earth) at just about any time. There's still contingencies where that won't save you of course.
Not really, no. The point of the "we" is too highlight the incredible collective effort which was required from all these massive endeavors. It goes all the way from the steel cool astronaut to the great machinists which had to build the parts.
I think it's one of the greatest benefits of ever working on a massive industrial project. You quickly realize how incredibly complex these things are and how utterly powerless a person alone is.
Don't dismiss the yearning for space/new frontiers/adventure that a lot of us have. If you offered tickets to the moon today for the price of a cruise, you would probably have people standing in line from Cape Canaveral to Tallahassee.
As I understand it, the studies done with mice suggest that microgravity prevents normal embryo development. The ISS should therefore be regarded as a teratogenic environment, and I'd be shocked if women of childbearing age weren't prescribed highly-effective contraceptives (ie. IUD/IUS or implant) before, during, and after spaceflight.
I’m sure they were prescribed, but it’s always possible for them to fail.
I’m curious at what point in the embryo’s development the zero-g becomes an issue, if its immediate vs long term thing. It’s very possible that if it was pregnancy, the embryo is already not viable but she still needs some procedures to ensure her own health (a DnC, etc) that are important but not enough for an emergency evac.
Yeah it’s definitely just a thought. Getting pregnant in space the sort of sordid thing that’s fun to speculate on, but ultimately we just don’t have enough information. We’ll probably never know, either.
Yes. Sex isn’t allowed on the ISS due to complications with pregnancy, but it’s not crazy to imagine that maybe they just did it anyway. (Who wouldn’t want to? It’s sex in space and it sounds amazing.)
They should have just taken some research notes to let them leverage the Mythbusters excuse: "The only difference between screwing around and science is writing it down."
The operating depth of most submarines is ~300 -- 500m (980 -- 1640 ft), roughly one-third to one-half the depth you cite.
The two USN nuclear submarines lost due to pressure-hull failures, the Thresher (1963) and Scorpion (1968) both failed at depths of 1,200 to 2,000 ft. Threser's test depth was 1,300 ft (400m), and she was operating at about this depth when communications were lost. Scorpion likely failed at 1,530 ft. (470m).
There are other submersible vessels in the US Navy which can and have operated at greater depths, notably the submersible Alvin and bathyscaphe Trieste II, but those are not combat vessels. Alvin's test deopth is 6,500m (21,300 ft). Triest II's predecessor, Trieste, reached the floor of the Challenger Deep in the Marianas Trench, deepest known spot in the oceans, at 10,916m (35,814 ft). Trieste II incorporated the pressure sphere from its predecessor.
A more conventional, but still experimental, submarine, the USS Dophine (AGSS-555) was a deisel-electric research submarine which reached a depth in excess of 3,000 ft (910 m), probably in 1969. The boat was in-service through 2006.
Everyone on the ISS needs to have a seat reserved for them in a docked spacecraft, in case they need to evacuate the station quickly (or for a medical issue like this). You can’t bring back just one person from a 4-person crew; the other 3 would have no way to leave.
Well, yes? The medical issue is apparently severe enough to warrant return. Because the crew dragon is the only way for those astronauts back, barring sending another one up shortly, they also have to come back.
The reason they are bringing the whole crew back is most likely cost related. The whole crew was due back in February anyway. They are bringing everyone home a bit early; otherwise they would need another flight a few weeks later.
And nobody is retreating: there will be 1 American and 2 Russians left on ISS. All of this from the article.
Bruh, you're talking about one of the most protocol laden risk averse organizations known to man. That's an absurd speculation compared to the thing you would naively expect, which is exactly what is happening.
Chase sucks so bad, I would spend a lifetime encouraging anyone to bank elsewhere. I know Mitch is nice enough to say Chase wasn't the problem, but their "controls" are so archaic it makes doing business with them a chore and not a pleasure.
I'm not a fan of Chase, and I don't think I'd bank with them again, but they are a 'large national bank'. If you value having local branches mostly where ever you go, they're part of that group. That comes with all the usual exciting attractions like negligible interest on balances, and miscellaneous fees. But if you want a large national bank, eh, I guess they're fine?
My California based credit union doesn't even offer business accounts. And using the co-op network to do in-branch business at other credit unions is not as easy as the marketing lead me to believe, so I had to get a local credit union account where I moved as well. My Washington credit union does do business accounts, so that's a nice option if I need one. Plus, it's fun being a member of two aerospace/defense employee credit unions when I only worked in tech :P
Lots of local branches sounds great for personal banking, but for businesses? Unless you have a nation wide franchise business or a logistics business, doesn't seem as important.
On the contrary, a highly concentrated bank might be better, everyone is on the same building, there are no encapsulated branches, you get assigned a banker that is the best fit, rather than the one who was born closest to you.
The thing is that if there is a single branch (or few branches), then there's processes designed to be able to be completed remotely, with phone calls or faxes, etc...
When the bank has many branches, there will always be some steps that require visiting the main branch, and the opening branch.
With a single branch bank, the main branch and the opening branch are one and the same. And it's the best branch.
Stuff like this troubles me. I am in defense tech working with LLMs and I am here to tell you the guards and fences are down at the chow truck while commoners are using LLMs.
I think it means people in the military and contractors are already using openai and other tools and nobody is able to stop them, even if it leaks secrets.
I hate to be that guy, but here's what ChatGPT says:
This expression uses metaphorical language to describe a situation where traditional barriers, hierarchies, or protections have been removed, allowing broader access or disrupting the status quo. Here's a breakdown:
1. "Guards and fences are down" - This implies that the usual controls, restrictions, or gatekeepers are no longer in place.
2. "At the chow truck" - The chow truck symbolizes something previously exclusive or regulated, like access to resources, opportunities, or knowledge.
3. "While commoners are using LLMs" - Refers to everyday people (as opposed to elites or specialists) now having access to advanced technology, specifically Large Language Models (LLMs), like AI tools for generating text.
Together, the expression likely means that AI-powered tools have democratized access to knowledge and creativity, breaking down barriers that once limited these capabilities to experts, institutions, or privileged individuals. It highlights a significant shift where advanced tools are now accessible to "commoners," disrupting traditional power dynamics.
I read this and I still am uncertain about what it means. I believe ChatGPT also failed to understand this, it differs from my interpretation: GGP is worried that while people access "aligned" models military deployment don't have the guardrails.
Basically he’s worried about gen pop having access to LLMs thinking only govts should have access to the technology for some strange reason. Probably because he works in defence contracting so he benefits directly from having that stance.
The real revolution will come (hopefully) when voters start using LLMs to figure out which of their representatives actually vote for policies that improve their life.
I don't really understand why people bash so hard on LLMs. In some cases it is a spectacularly bad tool, I get that. But it is only a tool.
Imagine if you have a judge giving out sentences based on astrology books. I don't think anyone would argue the problem would be resolved by banning astrology books from our libraries.
Reminds me of a quote that says that science progresses one scientist's funeral at a time as push back against new ideas often comes from older scientists regardless of the empirical merits of the idea.
I believe the main issue in regard to LLMs is that there is a real chance of the prevalence and ease of use of LLMs to erode critical thinking skills. Regardless of boilerplate warnings to "check the validity of answers" coming from the LLM, plenty of people in society outside of this tech savvy audience wouldn't even know where to begin. There was a recent Big Think article on this: https://bigthink.com/thinking/artificial-intelligence-critic....
To be fair, I do think there are plenty of uses for LLMs, but with adoption skyrocketing there really are no guardrails against misuse.
I don't really believe that LLMs will make us dumber. It only changes what we decide to put our attention. It's the same that happened with Google, it changed our relationship with information. Even though it has several shortcomings the ability of just look things up instead of having to hold everything in our heads was a net positive for society.
And I suspect the same will happen for LLMs, in the end we will just start thinking in "another level of abstraction". We are still in the early days and still have a lot to learn about how to properly use this new toll but I think LLMs are a positive change for society.
Sure, that judge is a problem, but I think your metaphor is a bit mal-formed.
In your example you should probably drop the judge, but you should also make a rule saying astrology books aren't a legitimate source of sentence guidance. That's what people are annoyed about re:LLMs. People keep insisting they are a legit source in different situations.
You wouldn't ban them overall, but you do want some kind of society-level taboo against relying on them. You can't just deal with it on the level of people who get fooled into using them.
>you should also make a rule saying astrology books aren't a legitimate source of sentence guidance
My example was absurd on purpose, I didn't want to bring an example where people could respond with "well, actually..."
But in the real world that is rarely the case, imagine substituting "astrology book" for "Bible/Quran/..." Would that be considered a legitimate source of sentence guidance? I'm sure people would spend years arguing about that...
As a society we need to understand that LLM hallucination is no different than a bloom filter giving you a false-positive.
That's all well and good except that we look out and see all of the actively bad uses being hyped as the way of the future, at untold expense in both dollars and energy. The LLM is just a model that is what it is, bashing it doesn't make sense. People are bashing how it is used, both currently and in prospect.
You and I have to compete in this "competitive" job market thanks to AI, but we can't have US megacorps compete with China who might develop better tools used to swindle us.
In seriousness, this make Meta's decision to push open weight models incredibly valuable. Now there's no restrictions on their geographic use or "Security Standards" unlike their competitors.
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