In the US, libraries are often part of a network, and we have access to all the materials in the network. So if my local library doesn't have it, I simply request it from another library. They ship it to mine and I pick it up (and return to mine).
Then we also have a larger inter-library loan, where I can request things from libraries far, far away (even in another state). It takes much longer, though, and if it is deemed a popular/useful item, my local library may decide to purchase it and give that one to me rather than use ILL.
You may want to check if your local library has something similar.
It's difficult to decoy because the missile's processor is programmed to know what typical aircraft profiles look like; for example a transport aircraft has two or four propellors with hot leading edges, numerous turbine exhausts and warm leading edges. A flare is a seen as a hot ball, in contrast.
To decoy that, the decoy needs to basically _be_ the aircraft.
Iran enriched over 450kg of uranium to at least 60%.
There's no need for anything over 5% for powerplant use. They were preparing HEU for weapons; whether those weapons were to be built now or in 20 years is irrelevant.
Per international agreements, it was their right. The idiotic thing about this argument is that now everyone knows they want nukes and that not having ones is strategic mistake. Because Iran and Ukraine did not have one. Meanwhile, countries with nukes are safer.
Yes, I agree, except it's not irrelevant whether they built functional nuke or not, because this is used as a justification for war. (Not to mention, as a justification for war, "they could have built a nuke" is even more barbaric than "they have built a nuke".)
Still, that doesn't counter the fact they didn't actually make a nuclear bomb out of the material, nor the fact that their highest moral authority banned them from doing that, so it doesn't do anything to disprove that culturally they are more civilized (in that respect).
(Maybe an example from a corporation would clarify this better - the fact that there is a group of people in it doing things unethically doesn't mean that the company as a whole condones this behavior, even if structurally - how the corporation or capitalist society is constructed - might lead to some people doing it internally off the books. But once it is known to the CEO - the highest moral authority in a corporation, if he is not to be implicated in this, he must tell them to stop.)
It's frankly just moving the goalpost in an attempt not to accept your own barbarism. Is your culture OK with using nuclear weapons, even in self-defense? If yes, how do you dare to judge?
> their highest moral authority banned them from doing that
This means nothing. Iran says one thing publicly, then privately does another. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said his country will not develop ballistic missiles with a range exceeding 2,000 kilometers [0]; yet they secretly developed missiles with a range of 4,000 km [1].
Probably a risk worth taking; defending a pipeline is much easier than escorting huge, slow-moving ships through a 24km-wide Strait laced with mines and peppered by artillery and missiles.
Pipelines can be protected. Just putting it in the ground for example. Or you build a "bomb" proof shelter over it - Iran's missiles are not bunker busters, we know how powerful they are and can design for that. Air defense systems are getting better too.
I can't blame them. We've been force-upgraded to Windows 11 at work and that OS and its apps do their upmost to obscure where files are located.
I've frequently saved on OneDrive instead of locally, by accident, and then been perplexed when I try to reopen the file later.
And I've been using filesystems for 35+ years, so I feel sympathy for those who don't understand the abstraction. At this point Android is more transparent about its files.
> We've been force-upgraded to Windows 11 at work and that OS and its apps do their upmost to obscure where files are located.
That's because there's research that users don't understand filesystems. So then stupid companies who make bad decisions like Microsoft and Apple decide that that means they should pretend filesystems don't exist.
More like Microsoft has incentives to push people towards their cloud storage. If there were studies involved in these changes they are just excuses for things that were already decided without them.
The new NASA administrator, Isaacman, seems to have done a very good job of convincing the various Senators to, if not get rid of the pork, allow him to allocate it in a way that benefits the lunar program.
The result was the Ignition event, which looks like it's planning to send up 17 small and 4 crew-capable landers by 2028, along with a fleet of orbital assets.
You can find out more https://www.nasa.gov/ignition/ , especially the "Building the Moon Base" section. The cost is $10B spread out over 3 years.
Possibly none, until we can figure out how to engineer political institutions that function without pork.
We tend to look at pork as unambiguously bad because it's wasteful or often has more than a whiff of corruption, but the picture for political scientists is more mixed.
Turns out it's easier to bargain with legislators when policy can give them a win in their districts or states. It greases the wheels for negotiation or provides levers to flip opposition party members. Legislatures often become more sclerotic and dysfunctional after reforms to pork barrel spending.
I don't want to call pork good, but there are real trade-offs to pork-free government that we haven't figured out how to solve any other way
The reality is that "anything" can be pork - if you have large amounts of money sloshing around, someone benefits from getting it, and you can use that benefit for negotiations.
The first question for me is always is this a thing worth doing - which has an aspect of price involved, but isn't the definitive answer.
Also, if you dont think Apollo had pork in it, you're not aware enough of the history, the various assembly plants were placed mostly for political support, the shuttle and now SLS follows the same pattern.
Honestly isn't worth the effort to visit my local one, unless I want to join a crochet club or do 'mindfulness' jigsaws.
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