Nobody would deny that the military can waste vast amounts of money, that has been proven time and time again. So on that point you have absolutely no argument from me!

But buying a couple of cars is not hard, so if something about the contract for this purchase made the prices go up, the airforce could always just back out and have some Colonel use discretionary funds to purchase 2 new trucks outright for 80k each.

But trust me, the airforce does like blowing stuff up, and they would rather spend 4 million on a single missile than a fleet of trucks.

Sure, but the military isn’t going to pay more than they have to. The less they spend on trucks, the more they have for things that go boom. And nonfunctioning cybertrucks are likely going to cost under 20k each. (Probably less than the munitions being tested on them).

So while I appreciate the cynicism and generally agree, I don’t think that’s what’s going on here.

Why?

What does that even mean?

It’s two vehicles.

I suppose that’s true. Sigh…

I’m not sure they should be trying to survive. Perhaps they shouldn’t try their hardest to keep these magnificent parks running, they shouldn’t work unpaid overtime or find creative new revenue streams.

Maybe they should demonstrate what happens to all your nice stuff when you don’t maintain it. You lose it. And then you find out that it’s way more expensive to rebuild and restore things after you’ve let them deteriorate.

Small claims would get you a payout though. A bunch of bricks could get you arrested.

It’s a fantastic idea, really clever. But I’m afraid it’s too late, it doesn’t have the necessary Delta-V. We could have tried it if we had planned the mission a month ago, but at this point we just can’t get there in time (We didn’t know its trajectory a month ago, so it’s a moot point). What it comes down to is this, to make a flyby it would need about 2.5k Delta V, Juno has about half that.

Also, we’re not confident Juno’s engines will light. We’ve previously refrained from using them for some planned manners because we recorded abnormalities the last time they were fired. There’s a decent chance engines would explode if used again.

If we want to be able to take advantage of this kind of situation in the future, we’ll need at least one of two things… More probes, just sitting around with more fuel to spare, or better detection abilities so we can find these objects with more time to get to them. I’m betting on the later approach.

Pretty sure it works for all things, because value is subjective.

it seemed like between 7,000 and 8,000 the air is not suitable, but I figured the pilot wasn’t likely to be taking risks like that, so there must be some explanation

Yeah, I mean the atmospheric pressure at altitude varies, it’s definitely not black and white. And it’s true, pressure does start to really drop off around 7000ft, but it’s just starting to drop significantly at that point, that just makes 7k a good ceiling.

So yeah, this all seems pretty much consistent.

And I would’ve gotten away with it too if it wasn’t for you meddling kids!

7000 ft is relatively common for small planes like cessnas, they don’t even keep pressurized cabins, but It’s fine if you stay low. So there’s nothing wrong with that altitude, but it’s awfully low for a jet. The jet will be flying at low fuel efficiency the whole way and it certainly won’t have much wiggle room if something really goes wrong. (You can lose 7000 ft of altitude very quickly)

And remember, those donations can be written off in your taxes!

When the keys cost several hundred dollars to generate? I’d say the price vastly outstrips the reward.

It does not necessarily have to cost that much… But even if it did, the key to my Honda cost a couple hundred dollars to copy, so that’s not really different.

I don’t expect to change your mind, but it seems worth pointing out that the things you’re saying are pretty dumb.

A can of tuna is about a dollar, that’s probably good for 2 sandwiches.

I think that qualifies as cheap. I mean 1 tuna sandwich probably costs about the same amount as a pack of ramen, and it contains actual food.

So you really think the ability to trade digital keys is useless? That’s honestly weird.

I mean there are so many instances of people actively using digital keys right now, so clearly that part of the functionality has value. Surely there are situations where one might want to sell access to something, and the ability to transfer a digital key with a single transaction would be useful.

I think you’re being overly dismissive based on preconceived notions.

Sandwiches and soup. I always preferred tuna, but grilled cheese or ham and cheese are solid too.

And people with good aim and a sense of humor always left their last shot for the dog.

So I’m hearing that perhaps the idea I talked about in my example didn’t sound cool to you. But it was cool to a lot of people, and your opinion doesn’t speak for everyone. And it does work, like today.