But it was fun!

“Don’t drive like my brother.”

Or like this guy:
https://www.livescience.com/61680-will-spacex-roadster-survive-in-space.html

BONUS: Checked Wikipedia just for nostalgia’s sake and found an episode I missed!

Astronaut and engineer John Grunsfeld called into the show during Space Shuttle mission STS-81 in January 1997, in which Atlantis docked to the Mir space station. In this call he complained about the performance of his serial-numbered, Rockwell-manufactured “government van”. To wit, it would run very loud and rough for about two minutes, quieter and smoother for another six and a half, and then the engine would stop with a jolt. He went on to state that the brakes of the vehicle, when applied, would glow red-hot, and that the vehicle’s odometer displayed “about 60 million miles”. This created some consternation for the hosts, until they noticed the audio of Grunsfeld’s voice, being relayed from Mir via TDRS satellite, sounded similar to that of Tom Hanks in the then-recent film Apollo 13, after which they realized the call was from space and the government van in question was, in fact, the Space Shuttle.

In addition to the on-orbit call, the Brothers once received a call asking advice on winterizing an electric car. When they asked what kind of car, the caller stated it was a “kit car”, a $400 million “kit car”. It was a joke call from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory concerning the preparation of the Mars Opportunity rover for the oncoming Martian winter, during which temperatures drop to several hundred degrees below freezing.

Click and Clack have also been featured in editorial cartoons, including one where a befuddled NASA engineer called them to ask how to fix the Space Shuttle.

Second Bonus — for use in dissing the white-collar elites who look down on blue-collar workers.

The Magliozzis were long-time auto mechanics. Ray Magliozzi has a Bachelor of Science degree in humanities and science from MIT, while Tom had a Bachelor of Science degree in economics from MIT, an MBA from Northeastern University, and a DBA from the Boston University School of Management.

https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2025/03/20/police-arrest-suspect-in-viral-video-of-tesla-vandalism/

even if you find the technology alarming the technical challenges he is attempting,
https://futureofbeinghuman.com/p/7-key-takeaways-from-elon-musk-and-lex-fridman

“I’m an aerospace engineer.
==
Who is flummoxed by ranked-choice voting. Innersting..”

I’m also an engineer, who’s clueless about it too.

So, has anyone been following the Toyota hydrogen engine?

What do NPR, Joe Biden, and the White House have to do with any of this?

“What do Biden and the White House have to do with any of this?” NASA answers to the White House, and Biden was in it at the time this started. Ditto Boeing which as a contractor also has to work to order. As for NPR, they are the main source of the “rebuttal” to Musk.

To say the least, none of the three have inspired confidence in their honesty, even in comparison to the admittedly mediocre-at-best track record Musk, Trump, and co have for it. Remember when Obama demanded NASA focus on outreach to the Muslim world? Or the Biden era vaccine purges of the military and much of government? Or how often NPR has been caught lying?

It’s also worth noting a few things about NPR’s rebuttal.

A: The identity of the two sources, and particularly Mr. Nelson, who has proven himself to be happy to supplicate the core missions of NASA to leftist race mongering and so on, even if he is not quite as bad as his predecessor.

https://thefederalist.com/2021/06/16/nasa-abandons-actual-space-mission-to-focus-on-implementing-critical-race-theory/

B: The exact phrasing of the statement. They’re not DENYING it. They are instead claiming they are “not aware” of it. That’s the “I cannot recall” family of legalese. Sure, it is actually used when one is not aware of something, but it’s ALSO used when one is and wants to pat dirt on something without actually denying it and thus possibly being on the hook for defamation.

C: As Neo pointed out, the narrative makes very little sense.

In short, even if I was inclined to give any of the particular people or individuals the benefit of the doubt that they are telling the truth, I would have no way to verify it. And I’m not so inclined.

I’m an aerospace engineer. I’ve lived this life for 35 years and have followed first Space Shuttle and then Space Station operations daily for almost 40. I don’t need NPR, Joe Biden, or the White House to tell me about ISS crew changes because I’ve followed most of them as they happened. I don’t care what NPR said about this issue. I’m speaking from personal knowledge.

That is impressive, no joke. It is certainly far beyond my qualifications on the matter and I will not pretend otherwise.

But it’s also talking past my point. The fact is those two astronauts spent more Months on the ISS than the *days* they were expected to. On some level that’s understandable, given how this was an experimental test run for a design that showed itself to have serious problems, and how when dealing with stakes on this magnitude caution is often the better bet than not. But they were left up there without safe egress for months, especially after the Starliner was brought down empty because the planetside techs did not know what was wrong with it and so the decision was made not to hazard bringing them down.

That’s stranding, especially as far as NASA and American assets are concerned.

And while it might be a stretch to say that this operation was a “rescue” one, it’s even more of a stretch to try and argue this was an entirely mundane or normal crew rotation.

And if you’re going to try and tell me that this was the very shortest possible safe turnaround to bring them back, I flatly do not believe you. And what is more, I am not the only person who does, nor am I am *anywhere* near the most qualified person to believe so, including more than a few people with qualifications that dwarf even your own.

I’m not going to go hair on fire and blame Biden’s cabal for everything that went wrong on this mission; indeed I’ll flatly defend the decision to play this cautiously given the unknown issues at play and the stakes, and the astronauts seem to be in good humor and to not have viewed this as a particularly partisan issue for blame, and I’ll defer to them. I imagine they will likely suffer some effects from such prolonged time in low G, but with God’s help it will hopefully be mild and pale in comparison to the experiences, and in any case it absolutely IS minor in comparison to the prospects of burning up in re-entry or drifting agonizingly in space if something went wrong with Starliner past the point of safe return.

I’m more than willing to entertain the possibility that Musk was simply wrong and that nothing NASA or the Biden Admin did in this case was wrong, and indeed I can and will defend a lot of caution. But I’m not willing to jump to the conclusion that is the only possibility and that organizations and people that have been caught lying for blatantly partisan reasons are incapable of doing so on this.

Wilmore was a Navy Pilot, until 2000 when he was selected, so hes an older version of the type that they drew Mercury through Apollo,

ranked choice was a solution to a non existent problem,

does the lack of a mandate influence the demand and hence
the number of vehicles sold,

Is that the two-step braking maybe? First regenerative braking and then the friction brakes kicking in? That was something I was warned to expect for mine…

Niketas,
Yes, the two step braking is noticeable in feel and deceleration. And initially, I thought the transitions were fairly impressive, but later it struck me that it’s rather hard to control it smoothly and gradually near the transition during slow braking. That may or may not be typical in a proper operating Prius.

The other thing is a rapid, but not quite full on, emergency braking event. So it’s quick, fairly hard braking, but I’m not really stomping on the pedal. And the damn front wheels lock up on me. That can’t be normal. Plus, there is a huge clunk sound when the wheels lock up.