WPenner's Blog

One of the weird things about squirrels is that they love to bury food, especially seeds, in as many places as they can get to safely. That would be totally normal if they later dug that food up. Instead, random things pop up out of the soil because a year (or maybe more) ago, a squirrel buried that...

Maps of Content (MOC) are widely used in the PKM world, and yet I choose not to implement them as they're usually presented. MOCs are a way of linking related ideas in a single note that brings all the ideas together. The recommended way of using this is to create a series of stand-alone documents...

Demographic hollowing out is like a cobra: fascinating and deadly. This topic will shape our world of the next 100 years in profound ways, yet receives very little public attention.

The Canadian Situation

The Canadian demographic situation is very similar to other countries, having seen a declin...

image: U-Battery

I have a non-professional interest in nuclear power as one of the highest density power sources we have yet discovered. Its carbon emissions rating is lower than hydro and despite dramatic accidents and contrary to the histrionic reporting, kills fewer people per year than any...

Mission to Psyche

🚀 LAUNCH UPDATE: NASA will move forward with the #MissiontoPsyche!

A planetary window is set to open October 10, 2023 for the Psyche spacecraft to head to a metal-rich asteroid of the same name.

Psyche will arrive at the asteroid in August 2029. 🛰https://t.co/E1MBrsyLDH

— NAS...

SpaceQ recently teased readers with an article titled Earth Observation Satellite Market About to Boom. Though behind a paywall, the gist of the article, to everyone paying attention to the satellite sector, is clear: Earth observation is hot and getting hotter. In a previous article, I examined t...

Hyperspectral Imaging

Satellites are the most profitable sector of Canadian space, and earth imaging is the most profitable portion of the sector. To understand satellite imaging, I am exploring several earth observation (EO) technologies. This area is fascinating and changing rapidly, so it's wor...

I was first exposed to the idea of space-based power in George Friedman's 2010 book The Next 100 Years.¹ The idea is fairly simple, locate solar panels above weather and Earth-based obstructions and at a point where the sun shines continuously. Geo-synchronous (GEO) orbits achieve the correct po...

Photo by Laura Ockel on Unsplash

THREAD: The US government's new export controls are wreaking havoc on China's chip industry.

New rules around "US persons" are driving an "industry-wide decapitation."

— Jordan Schneider (@jordanschnyc) October 14, 2022

I heard about this first from Peter Z...

Most important, in a practical sense, would be the construction of factories that could make use of the special properties of space — high and low temperatures, hard radiation. Unlimited vacuum, zero gravity — to manufacture objects that could be difficult or impossible to manufacture on Earth, so...