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David Burbach (also @dburbach Bluesky) Profile picture
@dburbach
Oct 3, 2020 • 4 tweets • 1 min read • Read on X
Me: I'll put on ratty sweats and my reading glasses and finally get on that basement painting project

World: Every notable local Dem candidate plus Sen. Jack Reed, with a crowd of local media, will ring my doorbell without warning
My ability to cognitively transition turns out to be much weaker than I would have hoped. "Tonight at 11: Local professor says incoherent stuff while squinting, needs shave"
Hope it's not a Hatch Act violation to identify myself as a DoD employee to a federal politician while telling said politician I'm intending to vote for him
Let me rephrase since that failed to convey the full horror:

"Tonight at 11: Local *war college* professor says incoherent stuff to *ranking SASC member*, needs shave"

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More from @dburbach

David Burbach (also @dburbach Bluesky) Profile picture
Jun 24
After I RTd yesterday, a few people asked why China doesn't launch from their coastline vs from an interior populated area? A thread! tl;dr: national security initially, now also sunk costs and not giving a damn 1/
An ideal launch site is near the equator and has wide open ocean to the east (most efficient given Earth's rotation) and either north and south for polar launches. Florida fits the bill nicely for the US! 2/ Image
Some countries don't have good options. Israel launches west over the Med (safety & security over efficiency). USSR's Pacific coast was remote and rugged so they built an Arctic site and a Central Asian site that's virtually unpopulated downrange 3/ Image
Read 16 tweets
David Burbach (also @dburbach Bluesky) Profile picture
Jun 10, 2023
Yes, I am thinking "rods from god" today.

This 2002 RAND study has the best quantitative analysis I've seen. Notably, they conclude conventional penetrators are often *better* than hypervelocity impactors against deeply buried targets.

rand.org/pubs/monograph…
The kinetic impactors lose energy *too* quickly, very rapidly ablating and vaporizing when they enter the rock or soil surface.

I don't know where advocates get their "destroy bunkers hundreds of feet deep" as published studies just don't support that
More or less, RAND saw some potential value in pre-positioning conventional strike weapons in orbit, i.e., with aerodynamic maneuvering and explosives, and very few scenarios where true kinetic impactors would make any sense.
Read 4 tweets
David Burbach (also @dburbach Bluesky) Profile picture
Dec 7, 2022
Last 747 ever to be made. 50 years is quite a run for an airplane but it's sad to see them fading out -- beautiful lines vs the generic twinjet (and we shall not speak of the lumpy 380).
My first 747 ride was Pan Am LAX - JFK in 1986, last BA Johannesburg to London, 2012. Honestly not my fav as a passenger, too crowded
Last time I saw an airline 747 was this summer in Boston, LH still using.
Read 4 tweets
David Burbach (also @dburbach Bluesky) Profile picture
Dec 7, 2022
Yeah, I know "it was satire", but I was familiar with the eXile at the time and a core theme for years was how Western women are fat-ankled pantsuit wearing feminazis, while Russian girls were thankfully skinny and economically desperate sluts. What, exactly, was the satire?
I dont doubt a lot of specific extreme stories were just stories, but that's just a *lot* of effort, and a great job of never breaking character, to... what, spend years satirizing that some dudes thought exactly that about the advantages of getting laid in Moscow?
They did do some gonzo journalism, and didn't sugarcoat things the way some other expat English-language mags did. And god knows there was plenty to skewer about Russian politics or how US government, business, and mainstream journalists dealt with Russia. 3/
Read 5 tweets
David Burbach (also @dburbach Bluesky) Profile picture
Nov 19, 2022
Comparison of the Apollo capsule and service module to the new Orion spacecraft.

The Apollo SPS engine was, as it looks, more powerful -- 21,000lb vs 6,000lb, but the Apollo engine was overdesigned
Overdesigned as in, from an early mission concept where the CSM stack would land and then take off from the moon, before the LOR with separate landing craft was chosen.
Other notes:

Apollo got its electricity from Oxygen / Hydrogen fuel cells, vs solar panels for Orion. That reduces weight and size, though the crew still needs O2 and water, so it can't eliminate *all* the Apollo fuel cell system weight
Read 7 tweets
David Burbach (also @dburbach Bluesky) Profile picture
Oct 25, 2022
There's no point in arguing but I do see people arguing US COVID deaths were << the official 1 million.

Almost never see them have any explanation for the 1 million excess all-cause deaths 3/2020-today, several standard deviations away from normal
I do see some people argue the deaths were simply faked, "liberal" coroners and state vital stats agencies and federal CDC / Census all together massively fabricating death certs and other numbers
Perhaps a more serious attempt is to claim those excess deaths were the result of "lockdowns": a ginormous epidemic of suicides plus people unable to get their treatments for cancer, diabetes, etc., and mostly not COVID
Read 7 tweets

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