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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: August 11th, 2023

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  • Like a “best practices” type thing? In the US, Federal Regulations cover lighting requirements on passenger car and commercial trucks. FMVSS 108. If your machinery is ever driven on the road they most likely have lights according to this regulation.

    https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-49/subtitle-B/chapter-V/part-571/subpart-B/section-571.108

    There should be a section near the top that covers “incorporated by reference”, where they list all the industry standards referenced. A lot of those are available on archive.org. That’s probably as close to a “best practices” as you’re going to find.

    Search by images for FMVSS 108 and you’ll find various diagrams showing light location requirements.

    NTEA publishes some information about lighting, but I don’t know if you have to be a member to get it.

    If you’re talking about flashing beacons, that’s not covered federally, and each state usually just says what color the flashers can or can’t be (blue reserved for police, red for emergency vehicles, green for snow plows, etc.)

    If you have a more specific question, I might be able to answer.






  • The earth gains somewhere between 40,000 and 100,000 tons every year, just naturally due to space debris. But I’ve also read that that’s offset by atmospheric gasses leaving the atmosphere, so the earth is actually losing mass.

    But there’s also the question of how much of that mass entering or leaving is actually affecting the system mass. Any additional mass entering orbit of the earth and moon should affect the earth’s orbit as well.

    And then, there’s the “slingshot” effect where items traveling /with/ the earth’s orbit can steal orbital speed from the earth, or when traveling /against/ the earth’s orbit can add orbital speed to the earth.

    So, the answer is: it’s complicated.

    I personally don’t think it’s much to worry about. Before we add enough mass to the earth to affect the orbit, I think we might notice a gravitational change.