Brutkey

Prof. Sam Lawler
@sundogplanets@mastodon.social
Prof. Sam Lawler
@sundogplanets@mastodon.social

This is blowing my mind

https://mapfight.xyz/map/saskatchewan/

Saskatchewan is bigger than every European country?!

Prof. Sam Lawler
@sundogplanets@mastodon.social
food

WOW lacto-pickled asparagus on a grilled cheese sandwich is AMAZING. Just had to broadcast this information.

Prof. Sam Lawler
@sundogplanets@mastodon.social

Tow truck drivers in Saskatchewan are superheroes!

(Everything is fine now! Everyone is ok, and tow truck drivers are awesome.)

Blue is "travel not recommended" which is pretty much everything around Regina now. I really really hope the schoolbuses are running this afternoon... School bus drivers in Saskatchewan (and everywhere), also superheroes!

screenshot of a map showing current road conditions in the area around Regina, Saskatchewan. Most of the major highways are currently coloured blue, which means "travel not recommended"
Prof. Sam Lawler
@sundogplanets@mastodon.social

The very fluffy dogs are very happy about more snow. The goats are very happy to have a barn to snuggle in and will avoid the snow, thank you very much. (The chickens won't even consider coming out of the coop. Fair.)

A view across a field of snow and frost-killed grass poking through, with some scrubby bare trees along the edge of the field. It's snowing and the sky is grey, and there's a yellowish dog standing in the field looking back over his shoulder at me, wondering why I stopped. A whole bunch of black, white, and brown goats snuggled around a large fuzzy brown llama. They're all relaxed, laying on straw inside a big barn building with their heads up, chewing cud. The walls of the building they're laying in are made out of old railroad ties, which is kind of neat.
Prof. Sam Lawler
@sundogplanets@mastodon.social

This dog has a barn full of warm piles of snuggly goats and 2 insulated dog houses to choose from, and where does he sleep? On top of the pile of hay for the goats to eat.

A large yellowish dog, happily laying on top of a metal hay feeder full of hay. He's about 3 feet off the ground in the hay pile. It's dark out, and there's a tall wooden fence barely visible in the background.
Prof. Sam Lawler
@sundogplanets@mastodon.social

The blizzard is going to start with a few hours of "freezing rain mixed with snow." It just keeps getting better and better! Going to try to get a lot done outside before it gets terrible... (edited to add a screenshot of the gross mess that's coming)

A screenshot of the hourly forecast. It's supposed to be several hours of "freezing rain mixed with snow" which has the disturbing icon of triangles falling from clouds, and then several hours of "Blizzard" which looks like a fanciful blowing wind cartoon surrounded by pretty snowflakes. I'm guessing it'll be a little more awful than that...
Prof. Sam Lawler
@sundogplanets@mastodon.social

Well, all the assorted yellow warnings coalesced into an orange blizzard warning. Fuck.

Screenshot of the Weather Canada "ORANGE WARNING - BLIZZARD" statement
Prof. Sam Lawler
@sundogplanets@mastodon.social

A single Falcon 9 rideshare launch had 115 satellites in it, several of which were tugs that will deploy additional satellites. So, 126 sats deployed from that one launch. On the one hand, great, because rocket launches pollute a lot. On the other hand, holy crap that's a lot of satellites at once.

42 rocket bodies in orbit from all these launches (rocket bodies are often bus-sized or larger, so this is scary). 23 were promptly deorbited, 19 left for uncontrolled reentry later.

Prof. Sam Lawler
@sundogplanets@mastodon.social

131 catalogued objects reentered, 41 were Starlinks. (Still a bit more than 1 Starlink per day reentering on average). Not many reentries were observed, no new debris reported on the ground. We had a bit of discussion about whether or not this is observation bias (northern hemisphere winter so it's cloudier, and people aren't outside as much, maybe?)

With more than 600 new objects in orbit in just over a month, the CRASH Clock is not going to go down anytime soon. https://outerspaceinstitute.ca/crashclock/

Prof. Sam Lawler
@sundogplanets@mastodon.social

Relatedly, one of the Chinese-launched satellites had a 200 meter close approach with a Starlink satellite 2 days after deployment https://www.space.com/space-exploration/satellites/spacecraft-from-chinese-launch-nearly-slammed-into-starlink-satellite-spacex-says

China (and every single other entity launching satellites) really really really has to share their orbital data with everyone else.

Prof. Sam Lawler
@sundogplanets@mastodon.social

A single Falcon 9 rideshare launch had 115 satellites in it, several of which were tugs that will deploy additional satellites. So, 126 sats deployed from that one launch. On the one hand, great, because rocket launches pollute a lot. On the other hand, holy crap that's a lot of satellites at once.

42 rocket bodies in orbit from all these launches (rocket bodies are often bus-sized or larger, so this is scary). 23 were promptly deorbited, 19 left for uncontrolled reentry later.

Prof. Sam Lawler
@sundogplanets@mastodon.social

Jonathan's traffic report for yesterday included the 35 days since our previous subcommittee meeting. A few highlights:

There were 42 launches in the last 35 days, 16 of which were Starlink.

There were 617 new objects catalogued in orbit, 455 of them Starlinks (all V2 "mini", which are like 800kg, scares me that they consider that "mini"). The next largest batch addition after Starlink was 32 of China's Guowang megaconstellation.

Prof. Sam Lawler
@sundogplanets@mastodon.social

Relatedly, one of the Chinese-launched satellites had a 200 meter close approach with a Starlink satellite 2 days after deployment https://www.space.com/space-exploration/satellites/spacecraft-from-chinese-launch-nearly-slammed-into-starlink-satellite-spacex-says

China (and every single other entity launching satellites) really really really has to share their orbital data with everyone else.