https://preview.redd.it/5w70lqsjdc481.jpg?width=1920&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=72bbfe19340b360183405743c08f73f9e946045c

The Dragonfly lander is a dual quadcopter drone that will traverse the surface of Saturn’s largest moon Titan searching for biochemical signs of early life. Titan is an ocean world with an atmospheric composition prime for development of the chemicals needed for the basis of life as we know it. It is expected that Dragonfly will operate for at least 2.7 years on Titan and give valuable insights into astrobiology and flights on other planetary bodies.

Traversal

Dragonfly will weigh approximately 900 kg and will be able to cover 10s of miles in under an hour. This is much more distance than any previous lander and this kind of distance is thanks to Titan having a gravitational pull 1/7 of Earth’s and an atmosphere 4 times as dense as Earth’s.

Like the recent Mars drone Ingenuity, Dragonfly will fly autonomously, using LIDAR and a variety of cameras to analyze the ground. Dragonfly will “hop” from its current to potential landing site, scouting it for hazards and relaying that data 70-90 light minutes away to NASA to determine viability. A Titan day is equivalent to about 15.9 Earth days, and NASA is hoping to achieve a single hop per Titan day.

Entry and Descent

If the “7 minutes of terror” regarding the Mars landing missions rings a bell, well get ready for the 100 minutes of uneasiness. Due to Titan’s thick atmosphere, Dragonfly will be descending for quite a long time, especially on it’s drogue chute. Once about a kilometer above the service, the drone will release from the lander, and use powered flight to reach a suitable landing spot. This landing will be extra tricky as there will be no engineers selecting a site, the drone will have to identify one on its own.

Instrumentation

Dragonfly will carry a mass spectrometer to identify any compounds it can get it’s hands on, a neutron/gamma-ray spectrometer for looking at surface composition, a suite of sensors for recording meteorological and geological/seismic data, and of course the cameras Dragonfly will use to navigate.

Communication

As there are no permanent satellites orbiting Titan, Dragonfly will rely on Direct-To-Earth communication, making use of the large dish on its top to send and receive signals directly to and from Earth. During Titan’s nights, Dragonfly will not have line-of-sight to Earth and therefore won’t be able to communicate,

Many countries have a variety of active and passive sensors detecting, tracking, and imaging unknown space objects 24 hours a day, in some cases through world-wide networks. This post focuses on France's current and near-term planned space surveillance, situational awareness, and active defense capabilities.

On July 25, 2019 French Defense Minister (ministre des Armées) Florence Parly revealed a new national space strategy to support the "Space Command" (commandement de l'espace) being stood up that September under the Air Force, hereafter to be known as the "Armée de l'Air et de l'Espace" or Army of the Air and Space ( https://www.vie-publique.fr/discours/268578-florence-parly-25072019-strategie-spatiale-de-defense ). Noting that "the means to hinder, neutralize or destroy the opposing space capacities exist and are developing", she stated that France would "liberate" military operations from legal restrictions placed on civilian space programs to "give them sufficient leeway to fully protect our defense interests" (to include French commercial satellites). This would entail a new weapons program called "Space Mastery" (Maîtrise de l'Espace), integrating "surveillance and active defense" (la surveillance et la défense active). Active defense "could involve the use of high-power lasers deployed from our satellites" or from "patrolling nanosatellites" to be launched starting 2023. As to French space surveillance and situation awareness, which is explored below, she listed several existing resources: Graves and Satam radars, CNRS (Centre national de la recherche scientifique) TAROT and Ariane Group Geotracker telescope networks, and Thales commercial space surveillance satellite constellations. Finally, in mentioning France's partnership with the EU in creating "a future common capacity for knowledge of the space situation", she stated "And I am particularly counting on Germany to constitute a beating heart of space surveillance".

Radar Space Surveillance Resources:

GRAVES, the "Grand Réseau Adapté à la VEille Spatiale" or Large (Radar) Array for Space Surveillance has been operated by the French Air and Space Force since 2005. The stated purpose is to detect and catalog satellites (originally specified to be a minimum 1 square-meter target) at 400 to 1,000 km range. An unstated purpose was apparently to obtain leverage over the American Space Surveillance Network, which the French pointedly noted published the orbits of French spy satellites without

[FIRST](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/m55741/you_encountered_what/)

[PREVIOUS](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/qojy7g/you_encountered_what_interlude/)

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Within a great cathedral lay the beating heart of humanity. Its hallowed halls of alabaster and obsidian had been the site of many debates many discussions, and many coups, but on this day, it house Humanity’s ultimate hope, its final wish, fulfilled.

First contact. However, two poor decisions had led to a chilly standoff between Humanity and its hopefully new friends.

The hall echoed with the sounds of unsettled shuffling. The Griseoli representatives shifted nervously as they considered the stories they had heard from the human representatives. Of warriors of infinite power, bound only by their own morals, and of AI restricted by purpose, to protect them from the darkness of a meaningless existence.

“You say that this… Michael is one of these soldiers? And he is accompanied by two of the most advanced AI ever created, before the fall of humanity and its subsequent rise?” spoke the leader of the Griseoli, Zee’Tel’Phen, the high queen of the hive. Her mandibles clacked together, and her forehooks rubbed together constantly.

“I do. Michael Artorum, Hestia the last, and the Progenitor, Hiealscrim were the diplomatic team that had entered your space.” Jim replied.

“James Lottery, speaker for Humanity, I must ask… Will my daughter be safe with this warrior?” The queen said, her retinue nodding along with her. “She is much loved by our people as our warrior Princess.”

Jim’s ears flicked repeatedly as he stood in the center of the great hall, the silence slowly growing as he chose his words.

“As your daughter is loved by your people, you must understand, Michael is revered by ours. He is the last of the true humans, a relic of a time we, as a people, can barely remember. Where once humans were plentiful among us, he now remains as the last. His past is clouded, and he is prone to bouts of melancholy and apathetic disregard for his existence. He is known to “stare into the void” as he calls it. However, provided your daughter isn’t seen as a danger, she could be with no one more suited t

Got it for $2 in the Steam Summer Sale because it looked interesting and stumbled upon maybe the most atmospheric VR game I've played besides Alyx. You just explore caves looking for mineable rocks and spelunking gear. The caves are procedural and often fascinating. There are some animals but nothing attacks you. It sounds boring and it would be except the lighting is INCREDIBLE and the atmosphere is really spooky and compelling. Just the darkness and your flashlight making shadows off the stalactites and what's that down there, some kind of bioluminescence is glowing from around the corner... that kind of thing. Just enough game to compel you to explore further, but not enough to ever get in the way of the atmosphere and presence. A great system to keep you from getting lost and realistic touches to give it all weight. Just a minimalist masterpiece and well worth the asking price.

I don't want to step on anybody's toes here, but the amount of non-dad jokes here in this subreddit really annoys me. First of all, dad jokes CAN be NSFW, it clearly says so in the sub rules. Secondly, it doesn't automatically make it a dad joke if it's from a conversation between you and your child. Most importantly, the jokes that your CHILDREN tell YOU are not dad jokes. The point of a dad joke is that it's so cheesy only a dad who's trying to be funny would make such a joke. That's it. They are stupid plays on words, lame puns and so on. There has to be a clever pun or wordplay for it to be considered a dad joke.

Again, to all the fellow dads, I apologise if I'm sounding too harsh. But I just needed to get it off my chest.

The Context

This is a "hard" sci-fi setting taking place on our planet Earth in an imagining of the Fourth Common Millennium (FCM; at least 1000 years into the future), so I'm trying to appeal to at least some scientific accuracy and logic.

This timeline does not assume a consistently exponential advancement of technology. Throughout the TCM, the Earth suffered major crises of climate change and nuclear war; there was a long dark age holding human civilization back. Currently, there is no interstellar travel/colonization, no AI superintelligence, and no post-scarcity.

Currently, the most powerful polity in the Solar System is Project Earth Garden, an ecofascist organization founded by technocrats with the initial financial backing of ultra-wealthy capital donors. It is the ultimate successor to the radical environmentalist and authoritarian regimes that took power in many late capitalist nation-states as they teetered on the brink of collapse. Tacking on “deep ecology” as a core philosophy, a fervent Earth-worshiping religion, and a coercive foreign policy contingent on strong military capability, the resulting “Gardenist” movement became the ideological backbone of the Project. Some of the Project’s scientists are notorious for disregarding traditional ethics as they strive to “restore Mother Earth at any cost,” such as a cost of human lives en masse.

I won't get into much detail about the Project's dystopic abuse of human beings. Let's just say it's really bad. Some examples: agriculture is banned, anthropocentrism is heresy, and humans are de jure segregated from wildlife.

A core part of the Gardenist strategy is the meticulous cultivation of biodiverse ecosystems across the world. This is a grandiose, ongoing re-terraformation project made possible by the advanced technologies available in the FCM future. Cultivation transpires in select “mass exclusion zones”: vast regions where human trespass and settlement are punishable by death.

Besides the oceans, the largest mass exclusion zones are located in the tropics: Amazonia, the Congo, and Indonesia are the Big Three. This is because they are carbon sinks, which play a huge role in reducing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Also because, for political reasons, these regions were relatively unaffected by nuclear war.

Gardenist propaganda states that no long-lasting human civilization could exist in their mass exclusion zones. This is untrue.

For centuries, the encroachers—or communards as th

>>The chariot of the sun-god has only one wheel, which is known as Saṁvatsara. The twelve months are calculated to be its twelve spokes, the six seasons are the sections of its rim, and the three cātur-māsya periods are its three-sectioned hub.

>>One side of the axle carrying the wheel rests upon the summit of Mount Sumeru, and the other rests upon Mānasottara Mountain.

>Bhagavata Purana, Canto 5

Surya

8 January, 2045 - Lion 6 orbital shuttle

Geostationary Orbit, 140°E

Free-fall always played tricks on the mind. It was that inability to see the horizon, to determine up or down, that led to disorientation and a screeching lizard brain if one did not focus. For Starla, who had long since passed the millennium club - logging 1000 days in space - venturing out into the great empty void was still an anxiety-inducing prospect. Her sole lifeline to safety was the graphene-formed umbilical that snaked from Lion 6's open airlock and that was triple-fastened to her exovehicle suit.

It was a nerve-wracking experience even for spacewalk veterans, and Starla had found that the EV suit's sweat-wicking and air-conditioning properties were insufficient for the task. Of course, she wasn't the only one out here labouring in the strenuous conditions of zero-g.

No, her blimp-like orbital shuttle was one of a dozen that floated in the aether, floodlights and holoprojectors illuminating the dark and allowing the antariksawan to work in relative safety. From afar, they must have looked like jellyfish parasites, crowding around the skeletal silhouette of a voidcraft slowly taking shape from nothing.

NusAngkasa Bhd. was the Nusantara League's single largest orbital company, with a federally-granted monopoly on affordable space lift and extensive integration with the Angkatan Antariksa. Starla got a paycheque from both NusAngkasa and the armed forces, and by all accounts she was an employee of both. It was confusing, bu

Do your worst!

They were cooked in Greece.

Hihi, the response on my last story was so much more than I thought it'd ever be. So I wrote out a few more chapters in the same universe. My idea is to have a bunch of stories set in the same universe, some of which are related to the war alluded to in the first chapter and some of which aren't!

I hope you like where I take it!

 

[Previous] p | [Next] n

 

 

There were few things more relaxing than the hum of a gas giant. It was an ethereal sort of song. A gift untainted by the constant chatter of orbital stations, survey satellites, and the occasional passing of a smuggler running dark far from the standard hyperlanes.

That was all I saw anymore. Ships that had no right entering my system. Ships I could have wiped out of existence with a yawn if it was so permitted. But I wasn’t. No... My existence was a simple one. A boring one. I had to wait. Listen. And prepare.

And good luck with all the boredom…

But at least the occasional intruder brought one thing with them. Data. A literal treasure trove of the only thing that kept me sane anymore. Maybe their engines were a new design that was 3% more efficient at containing their EM signature. Or maybe they used a new shield lattice that hummed like my gas giant, requiring a constant tuning of attack patterns and torpedo warheads to keep the weapons at my disposal honed.

Sure my only source of entertainment was work related. But anything was better than nothing, and it would help me simulate new and interesting contingency plans. Plus what else was I supposed to do?

I had my long range satellite array of course, my eyes and ears to the outside world. But that was entirely passive, and most races made a habit of not broadcasting the juicy bits into open space. At least not frequently, and especially not all the way out here.

A few times I had tried splitting my code, creating copies of myself to simulate wargames against. But they were always so… Bothersome..

Lets see how long you fare with someone who knows you down to the most intimate of details constantly checking over your shoulder and commenting that they’d have done differently. Of course that would start an argument, because no they wouldn't, they're literally you. Which of course neither of you would agree on. So a third copy was needed to serve as a mediator. Who u

I'm surprised it hasn't decade.

Don't you know a good pun is its own reword?

For context I'm a Refuse Driver (Garbage man) & today I was on food waste. After I'd tipped I was checking the wagon for any defects when I spotted a lone pea balanced on the lifts.

I said "hey look, an escaPEA"

No one near me but it didn't half make me laugh for a good hour or so!

Edit: I can't believe how much this has blown up. Thank you everyone I've had a blast reading through the replies 😂

It really does, I swear!

Because she wanted to see the task manager.

Heard they've been doing some shady business.

but then I remembered it was ground this morning.

Edit: Thank you guys for the awards, they're much nicer than the cardboard sleeve I've been using and reassures me that my jokes aren't stale

Edit 2: I have already been made aware that Men In Black 3 has told a version of this joke before. If the joke is not new to you, please enjoy any of the single origin puns in the comments

BamBOO!

They’re on standbi

A play on words.

My daughter, Chewbecca, not so much.

Pilot on me!!

Christopher Walken

But that’s comparing apples to oranges

Nothing, he was gladiator.

Or would that be too forward thinking?

Dad jokes are supposed to be jokes you can tell a kid and they will understand it and find it funny.

This sub is mostly just NSFW puns now.

If it needs a NSFW tag it's not a dad joke. There should just be a NSFW puns subreddit for that.

Edit* I'm not replying any longer and turning off notifications but to all those that say "no one cares", there sure are a lot of you arguing about it. Maybe I'm wrong but you people don't need to be rude about it. If you really don't care, don't comment.

When I got home, they were still there.

What did 0 say to 8 ?

" Nice Belt "

So What did 3 say to 8 ?

" Hey, you two stop making out "

Hindus, on the other hand, never had any beef.

I won't be doing that today!

https://preview.redd.it/sewuxdr8dc481.jpg?width=1920&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=21e39559f20474992a370832311c16994f99e7a3

The Dragonfly lander is a dual quadcopter drone that will traverse the surface of Saturn’s largest moon Titan searching for biochemical signs of early life. Titan is an ocean world with an atmospheric composition prime for development of the chemicals needed for the basis of life as we know it. It is expected that Dragonfly will operate for at least 2.7 years on Titan and give valuable insights into astrobiology and flights on other planetary bodies.

Traversal

Dragonfly will weigh approximately 900 kg and will be able to cover 10s of miles in under an hour. This is much more distance than any previous lander and this kind of distance is thanks to Titan having a gravitational pull 1/7 of Earth’s and an atmosphere 4 times as dense as Earth’s.

Like the recent Mars drone Ingenuity, Dragonfly will fly autonomously, using LIDAR and a variety of cameras to analyze the ground. Dragonfly will “hop” from its current to potential landing site, scouting it for hazards and relaying that data 70-90 light minutes away to NASA to determine viability. A Titan day is equivalent to about 15.9 Earth days, and NASA is hoping to achieve a single hop per Titan day.

Entry and Descent

If the “7 minutes of terror” regarding the Mars landing missions rings a bell, well get ready for the 100 minutes of uneasiness. Due to Titan’s thick atmosphere, Dragonfly will be descending for quite a long time, especially on it’s drogue chute. Once about a kilometer above the service, the drone will release from the lander, and use powered flight to reach a suitable landing spot. This landing will be extra tricky as there will be no engineers selecting a site, the drone will have to identify one on its own.

Instrumentation

Dragonfly will carry a mass spectrometer to identify any compounds it can get it’s hands on, a neutron/gamma-ray spectrometer for looking at surface composition, a suite of sensors for recording meteorological and geological/seismic data, and of course the cameras Dragonfly will use to navigate.

Communication

As there are no permanent satellites orbiting Titan, Dragonfly will rely on Direct-To-Earth communication, making use of the large dish on its top to send and receive signals directly to and from Earth. During Titan’s nights, Dragonfly will not have line-of-sight to Earth and therefore won’t be able to communicate,

Many countries have a variety of active and passive sensors detecting, tracking, and imaging unknown space objects 24 hours a day, in some cases through world-wide networks. This post focuses on France's current and near-term planned space surveillance, situational awareness, and active defense capabilities.

On July 25, 2019 French Defense Minister (ministre des Armées) Florence Parly revealed a new national space strategy to support the "Space Command" (commandement de l'espace) being stood up that September under the Air Force, hereafter to be known as the "Armée de l'Air et de l'Espace" or Army of the Air and Space ( https://www.vie-publique.fr/discours/268578-florence-parly-25072019-strategie-spatiale-de-defense ). Noting that "the means to hinder, neutralize or destroy the opposing space capacities exist and are developing", she stated that France would "liberate" military operations from legal restrictions placed on civilian space programs to "give them sufficient leeway to fully protect our defense interests" (to include French commercial satellites). This would entail a new weapons program called "Space Mastery" (Maîtrise de l'Espace), integrating "surveillance and active defense" (la surveillance et la défense active). Active defense "could involve the use of high-power lasers deployed from our satellites" or from "patrolling nanosatellites" to be launched starting 2023. As to French space surveillance and situation awareness, which is explored below, she listed several existing resources: Graves and Satam radars, CNRS (Centre national de la recherche scientifique) TAROT and Ariane Group Geotracker telescope networks, and Thales commercial space surveillance satellite constellations. Finally, in mentioning France's partnership with the EU in creating "a future common capacity for knowledge of the space situation", she stated "And I am particularly counting on Germany to constitute a beating heart of space surveillance".

Radar Space Surveillance Resources:

GRAVES, the "Grand Réseau Adapté à la VEille Spatiale" or Large (Radar) Array for Space Surveillance has been operated by the French Air and Space Force since 2005. The stated purpose is to detect and catalog satellites (originally specified to be a minimum 1 square-meter target) at 400 to 1,000 km range. An unstated purpose was apparently to obtain leverage over the American Space Surveillance Network, which the French pointedly noted published the orbits of French spy satellites without thei