My Apartment Manager is not a News Thread, #2

[Labster]

Paddington Bear given valid UK passport by Home Office

Kuma shock!

[robkelk]

Abandoned US Army 'city under the ice' imaged in serendipitous NASA find

Includes a map of the sub-surface facility.. which we could possibly use as a basis for Residence 51, maybe.

[robkelk]

We call our setting Refuge, both in and out of story.

Today is World Refugee Day

[Labster]

LA’s Museum of Jurassic Technology damaged by fire

Goddamn it, Cinder Fall! Not our greatest collection of curiosities!

[robkelk]

Why blow up satellites when you can just hack them?

tl;dr: Modern satellites run (or, rather, used to run) unpatched code. The researchers showed how to take over a simulated satellite's computers, and separately take over its thrusters.

Why it's here: Just where does "space" start, and who owns it? The Silver Millennium (whose leader believes in Love and Justice and thus wouldn't get along with a particular someone who had a lot of political power in 2017), maybe? And what kind of leverage could they bring to keep their independence?

[Dartz]

Ah. Space Piracy.

[Labster]

Why blow up satellites when you can just hack them?

tl;dr: Modern satellites run (or, rather, used to run) unpatched code. The researchers showed how to take over a simulated satellite's computers, and separately take over its thrusters.

Why it's here: Just where does "space" start, and who owns it? The Silver Millennium (whose leader believes in Love and Justice and thus wouldn't get along with a particular someone who had a lot of political power in 2017), maybe? And what kind of leverage could they bring to keep their independence?

Generally space starts at 100km up, more by convention than anything else.  Property ownership was traditionally given "from hell to the heavens" -- but essentially it's kind of inconvenient if a different person ends up owning Mars every few seconds, due to the rotation of the Earth. The Outer Space Treaty prohibits parties from claiming ownership of celestial bodies, outside of their own facilities on those bodies.  Basically everyone with a space program signed that one 50 years back, but of course the Moon Kingdom isn't bound by this... and honestly the US and Russia and China are probably going to decide they're not bound by it either in a decade or three.

Low Earth Orbit is generally governed by physics more than anything else, since Kessler syndrome is bad for every participant in Earth orbit.  Geostationary orbit is "crowded" because it's a thin band at a particular altitude, but that band is huge, and "close" might be tens to hundreds of kilometers apart.  Satellite breakup here would be harder to deal with in GEO, where LEO would fix itself faster with natural orbital decay, so extra caution is necessary.  Again, mainly regulated by the fact that no one wants to lose their expensive toys and face lawsuits from other people who lose their expensive toys.

Selenostationary orbit is apparently not a thing -- apparently any tidally locked body cannot have a synchronous orbit, because it lies outside the body's Hill sphere.  And lunar orbits beyond 690km are generally unstable due to Earth's gravitational influence.  It would make a good boundary.

In 2017, no one can get the the moon without alien tech.  Threats to independence aren't a problem until threats can actually get there.

[Bob Schroeck]

and honestly the US and Russia and China are probably going to decide they're not bound by it either in a decade or three.

Of course, with Trump being president in the middle of all our action, and being the cautious, thoughtful person he is, the moment the Crystal Millennium becomes a thing known to the world at large he's going to throw the treaty out the window and start screaming about illegal aliens stealing American territory.

[Labster]

Fireball ‘bright as the moon’ lights up sky over western Japan

that's no moon, it's a starlight breaker

In 2017, no one can get the the moon without alien tech.  Threats to independence aren't a problem until threats can actually get there.

Quick addendum: we can probably send a nuclear weapon to the moon, though I doubt on any existing missile -- it would need to be mounted inside a Dragon capsule or atop some real space launch vehicle, just to get enough Delta-V to hit a lunar transfer orbit. Whether actually doing so would be a good idea is left as an exercise to the reader. But it turns out missile defense is much easier if you have 3 or 4 days to stop something. Also if it has an RUD on launch... NASA has done very few launches with nuclear power for a reason.

[Dartz]

But the chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one.

[Bob Schroeck]

But the chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one.

"Million-to-one chances crop up nine times out of ten." -- Terry Pratchett, Mort

[Labster]

I swear I had used that "million to one" joke about the undines from Mars, but I can't find it.  I'm starting to wonder if it was retconjured out.

The moon's grand canyons were carved in the blink of an eye

No, it wasn't your fault, Artoria North, nor yours, Salem-chan, but actually was caused by the Youma attack.