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GD_American posted:I've never seen a starfield like the one over Baqubah. On a blackout base so no light pollution from there, and the town, well...obviously didn't put out much light. I do miss that The best I've seen was in 2005 when I was camping on a Navajo reservation. It was seriously the prettiest sky I've ever seen, the first time I saw the milky way too.
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Aug 7, 2021 02:23
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Thanks to Starlink you’ll never see it again. lovely, expensive internet sold by a sociopathic douche!
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Aug 7, 2021 03:37
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The Gila Wilderness was the best for me in southern New Mexico. Backpacking for a few days into no where and actually watching the glow of satellites pass overhead. We had some jets doing low low level flying pass over us one night. Loud for 30 seconds then nothing. I was on a mountain top one night and saw the orange beacon in the distance then another and another. It turned out to be some sort of military plane convoy flying below the peak I was on I think there was 4 of them. We watched a storm roll in one night as we were on another mountain peak and ran downhill before it showed up. It was a very bad electrical storm. We heard tree's cracking as they got struck by lightning. Wild night for sure. I want to head north and see the Northern Lights how do those look from being in the boonies vs a City?
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Aug 7, 2021 07:05
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One of the few good things about being deployed or stationed in the middle of nowhere, as I've been for a few years, is being able to actually see the night sky as intended. It's a trip seeing LEO satellites with your own bare eyes every few minutes. And the milky way is gorgeous! Edit: I've yet to see starlink, but it sounds like it's straight-up sky pollution based on what other space nerds think of it Jimmy Smuts fucked around with this message at 08:53 on Aug 7, 2021 |
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Aug 7, 2021 08:50
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stinkypete posted:The Gila Wilderness was the best for me in southern New Mexico. Backpacking for a few days into no where and actually watching the glow of satellites pass overhead. We had some jets doing low low level flying pass over us one night. Loud for 30 seconds then nothing. I was on a mountain top one night and saw the orange beacon in the distance then another and another. It turned out to be some sort of military plane convoy flying below the peak I was on I think there was 4 of them. I was out in the field at Wainwright, and happened to catch the aurora one night. It’s the strangest/coolest thing I’ve ever seen. Stretched across the entire sky, and made me think of a curtain billowing in the breeze if you were looking up at it from below. That shade of green is one of the prettiest I’ve ever seen. I know they’re supposed to be silent, but seeing something that large that was moving around fairly fast, it felt weird to me that it was completely quiet that night. I’m not even sure what the field op was anymore, i literally forgot my troubles and hate for my unit for that short and beautiful span of time.
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Aug 7, 2021 09:19
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Jimmy Smuts posted:One of the few good things about being deployed or stationed in the middle of nowhere, as I've been for a few years, is being able to actually see the night sky as intended. It's a trip seeing LEO satellites with your own bare eyes every few minutes. And the milky way is gorgeous! Best thing about mineral exploration in the Australian outback, by far. Finish drilling at around 6:00-6:30pm as we lose the light, cook over a campfire, generator off at 8:00pm for a 6:00am start. Sit up chatting poo poo with the drillers until around 9:00pm and by that time your eyes have acclimated and the stars are phenomenal. Never got deployed anywhere really remote when I was in, but I made up for it spending nearly a decade traipsing around the country and the world looking for shinies.
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Aug 7, 2021 09:31
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Pine Cone Jones posted:I have a weird but fond memory of hanging out on top of the command post on our fob smoking at night. The only cooler thing was seeing random jackals or a fennec once I think. Isn’t it a bad idea to light up at night in the clear? Light discipline and all that?
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Aug 7, 2021 13:32
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Scratch Monkey posted:Isn’t it a bad idea to light up at night in the clear? Light discipline and all that? I'm sure the Taliban or whoever have no clue that there's an American FOB somewhere at night unless a soldier smokes
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Aug 7, 2021 14:38
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Whatever you do, don’t light a cigarette. A good sniper can see a hot cherry for miles.
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Aug 7, 2021 14:51
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Yea there was a page or two in all quiet in the western front where the main character writes about shooting French recon patrols at night by waiting for the cherry of the cigarette to glow brighter then shooting at it. I never served but I would have thought that wouldn't be something you'd do in the open but idk.
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Aug 7, 2021 15:21
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I was quoting the venture bros.
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Aug 7, 2021 15:35
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One of my dad’s best friends from childhood was a Green Beret who did a few tours in Vietnam. He once told me a story about how he was walking around his fire base with another soldier, who offered him a drag off his joint. He declined, and a few minutes later, the other soldier got shot through the mouth by a .22 LR round fired by VC sniper. He lost a bunch of teeth but lived.
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Aug 7, 2021 16:04
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Mr. Nice! posted:Whatever you do, don’t light a cigarette. A good sniper can see a hot cherry for miles. We had dudes hide the cherry inside of rip it cans. Seemed like overkill to me. Thank you Mr Taliban for sparing me during my smoke breaks, the most sacred of labor breaks.
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Aug 7, 2021 16:13
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I didn't see smoking outside at all asad as dangerous, mostly because it's literally in the middle of nowhere.
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Aug 7, 2021 16:30
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Yeah, there's a difference between smoking at night on a large FOB and smoking at night while out on a patrol or whatever.
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Aug 7, 2021 17:08
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Casimir Radon posted:Thanks to Starlink you’ll never see it again. lovely, expensive internet sold by a sociopathic douche! Yep. I cherish my last trip to the high desert, because I will never see a sky that unpolluted again thanks to Musk's ego. Current plan is for starlink alone to put 42,000 leo sats up. That's over five times the number of leo objects we're currently tracking total. Utter pollution to sign Musk's name across the sky. Liquid Communism fucked around with this message at 23:47 on Aug 7, 2021 |
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Aug 7, 2021 23:43
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It's not even that, it's just make work for Space Exploration Technologies Corporation.
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Aug 8, 2021 00:01
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Liquid Communism posted:Current plan is for starlink alone to put 42,000 leo sats up. That's over five times the number of leo objects we're currently tracking total. edit: i'm dumb Nuclear Tourist fucked around with this message at 00:49 on Aug 8, 2021 |
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Aug 8, 2021 00:19
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GPS satellites aren't in LEO, they would be fine.
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Aug 8, 2021 00:34
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I can't help but think he's taken the Bond villain chat to heart and that when Starlink is completed he'll be all "pay me a trillion dollars or I'll run them all into each other."
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Aug 8, 2021 02:22
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https://twitter.com/nocontextafgwar/status/1424182428944510980?s=19
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Aug 8, 2021 02:40
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Yeah, I don't think that needs much context.
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Aug 8, 2021 02:52
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DON'T keep clucking that chicken!
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Aug 8, 2021 03:26
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One of my best memories from my enlistment was when I got dropped off on a mesa out in the 29 Palms training area and got to spend a few days out in the middle of nowhere enjoying the view. Another good moment was when we got to use NVGs for the first time at MCT and all of the city kids lost their minds seeing stars for the first time.
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Aug 8, 2021 03:57
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What was the best part about that trip?
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Aug 8, 2021 04:43
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Internet Wizard posted:One of my best memories ... 29 Palms What?
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Aug 8, 2021 09:33
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Source4Leko posted:Yea there was a page or two in all quiet in the western front where the main character writes about shooting French recon patrols at night by waiting for the cherry of the cigarette to glow brighter then shooting at it. I never served but I would have thought that wouldn't be something you'd do in the open but idk. I checked an insanely crusty old doctoral dissertation on the writing process of All Quiet out of my local uni library once to win an internet argument and basically Remarque was a REMF who went out and collected soldier anecdotes as material for his book and all that page in his book tells us is that someone told him that this was something that totally happened 
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Aug 8, 2021 13:22
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aphid_licker posted:Remarque was a REMF This bit may be nazi propaganda. They did slander him, burn his books and execute his sister.
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Aug 8, 2021 14:57
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Steezo posted:This bit may be nazi propaganda. They did slander him, burn his books and execute his sister. This article basically describes what I remember from the dissertation, which was written way post the Nazi era (google translate it): https://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/erich-maria-remarque-im-ersten-weltkrieg-sechs-wochen-in-der-hoelle-1.1921119-2 He spent six weeks near the front, some of it close enough for the unit to get shelled rather badly and suffer casualties while digging backup trenches, caught shrapnel, and then reconvalesced until the end of the war. REMF probably was putting it a bit strongly, but he def did not have personal experience with snipers.
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Aug 8, 2021 15:47
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cigarette glow is a thing.
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Aug 8, 2021 17:17
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'All Quiet on the Western Front' is a novel, right? It's fiction. It feels a bit like critiquing it by calling Remarque a fobbit or whatever is a bit like slagging 'Moby Dick' because Herman Melville wasn't a real whaler.
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Aug 8, 2021 18:19
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Just LOL at that LOSER of an author doing research for his historical novel about a war in which he only got shrapneled the once. 
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Aug 8, 2021 18:39
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Japanese Destroyer Captain by Tameichi Hara, mentions an encounter in which an enemy submarine is spotted south of the Philippines due to one of the sub sailors on deck lighting a cigarette. The sub was spotted at an estimated 4.000 meters distance after the initial flicker of light brought the attention of the crew upon them. Page 82-83 for those interested in looking it up.
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Aug 8, 2021 19:18
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jesus loving christ nerds this whole thing started because some idiot doesn't understand that lighting a cigarette on a FOB is not the same thing as being in a place where light discipline is something that truly loving matters. Yes, you can spot people smoking in the pitch black. A FOB is not exactly a ship at sea in WW2 or the trenches of the western front.
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Aug 8, 2021 20:23
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dont slander are soldiers, sir
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Aug 8, 2021 20:33
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Godholio posted:dont slander are soldiers, sir gently caress em. What have they done for us ?
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Aug 8, 2021 20:42
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freedumb
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Aug 8, 2021 20:42
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UP THE BUM NO BABY posted:jesus loving christ nerds this whole thing started because some idiot doesn't understand that lighting a cigarette on a FOB is not the same thing as being in a place where light discipline is something that truly loving matters. Yes, you can spot people smoking in the pitch black. A FOB is not exactly a ship at sea in WW2 or the trenches of the western front. How do you know???
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Aug 8, 2021 21:56
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UP THE BUM NO BABY posted:jesus loving christ nerds this whole thing started because some idiot doesn't understand that lighting a cigarette on a FOB is not the same thing as being in a place where light discipline is something that truly loving matters. Yes, you can spot people smoking in the pitch black. A FOB is not exactly a ship at sea in WW2 or the trenches of the western front. Who's the real nerd? People arguing about cigarette cherries or someone who follows the conversation on an Internet Message Board? Huh?
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Aug 8, 2021 23:08
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Absurd Alhazred posted:Just LOL at that LOSER of an author doing research for his historical novel about a war in which he only got shrapneled the once. I like Guy Sajer, who wrote "The Forgotten Soldier" for this. When questioned about the veracity of information in his book he basically had two things to say, 1: Most episodes are a pastiche of events and people. Never said they weren't. My memory isn't that good and there is too much to write. 2: I was kind of busy panicking, getting shot at, or getting into auto accidents to absorb every detail, especially as a common mechanized infantryman.
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Aug 8, 2021 23:08
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