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[scrdest]

You could probably do it now, it's just everyone's too chicken.

Goddamnit, we're giving people feathers and beaks and I didn't get the notification? :^)

[TheBiggerFish]

I think the real thing we should be asking is: Tentacle arms when?

Tentacles...With hands on the end.  Totally.

[martinuzz]

You could probably do it now, it's just everyone's too chicken.

Damnit, who swapped the tentacle genes with the chicken genes? We should stop using interns.

[Starver]

Damnit, who swapped the tentacle genes with the chicken genes? We should stop using interns.

It's the visible externs I'm most worried about... 

[Shadowlord]

I think the real thing we should be asking is: Tentacle arms when?

Tentacles...With hands on the end.  Totally.

No, no, no, that's not how you fulfill tentacle monster fantasies!

But in science:
http://www.nature.com/news/software-error-doomed-japanese-hitomi-spacecraft-1.19835

That's an expensive mistake. Well, a series of mistakes.

[Sergarr]

I think the real thing we should be asking is: Tentacle arms when?

Tentacles...With hands on the end.  Totally.

No, no, no, that's not how you fulfill tentacle monster fantasies!

But in science:
http://www.nature.com/news/software-error-doomed-japanese-hitomi-spacecraft-1.19835

That's an expensive mistake. Well, a series of mistakes.

The satellite managed to make one crucial astronomical observation before the accident, capturing gas motions in a galaxy cluster in the constellation Perseus. The instrument that made the observation, a high-resolution spectrometer, had been in the works for three decades. Two earlier versions of it were lost in previous spacecraft failures.

Looks like Japan cannot into space.

[Aklyon]

More like Japan cannot precision instruments into space.

[Sergarr]

More like Japan cannot precision instruments into space.

Nope:

Hitomi’s troubles began in the weeks after launch, with its 'star tracker' system, which is one of several systems on board that are designed to keep the satellite oriented in space. The star tracker experienced glitches whenever it passed over the eastern coast of South America, through a region known as the South Atlantic Anomaly. Here, the belts of radiation that envelop Earth dip relatively low in the atmosphere, exposing satellites to extra doses of energetic particles.

Somewhere along the way, the problems with the star tracker caused Hitomi to rely instead on another method, a set of gyroscopes, to calculate its orientation in space. But those gyroscopes were reporting, erroneously, that the spacecraft was rotating at a rate of about 20 degrees each hour.

Once the reaction wheels reached their maximum spin, a magnetic rod would normally deploy to keep them from accelerating out of control. But the magnetic rod must be oriented properly in three dimensions to work, and so it failed to slow the reaction wheels.

The spacecraft then automatically switched into a safe mode and, at about 4:10 a.m., fired thrusters to try to stop the rotation. But because the wrong command had been uploaded, the firing caused the spacecraft to accelerate further. (The improper command had been uploaded to the satellite weeks earlier without proper testing; JAXA says that it is investigating what happened.)

Literally every single movement and positioning instrument have failed at the same fucking time. This is not simply a "precision instrument" problem, satellites cannot function without those things!

[Aklyon]

I should've read that more carefully then.

[Starver]

ObXKCD: https://xkcd.com/1356/
(Or https://xkcd.com/1244/ if you want...)

[Shadowlord]

I read an article at some point recently that claimed it was possible to make a "laser" for gravity, but I can't seem to find it again for some reason. It would probably help if I could remember anything else about it.

[Reelya]

Maybe it was related to this:
https://arxiv.org/abs/1604.02762
Full text:
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1604.02762.pdf
I found it via searching for "graviton laser", since "gravity laser" gave back too many irrelevant hits.

[Shadowlord]

Yes, that's it exactly!

[Egan_BW]

Pew pew gravity laser?

[Starver]

Pew pew gravity laser?

That's heavy, man...  Keep it light, ok?  Unless you're just going for mass appeal.