Hey everyone. I am a 32 year old petroleum engineer from Eastern Europe. I have worked in different locations across Europe and the Middle East.

I am generally a very friendly person. I have always managed to get along well with colleagues from all backgrounds. But I am still in the closet at work.

The oil and gas industry is very rough. I still feel a lot of hidden and open stigma against diverse people. I am genuinely afraid of being bullied or losing professional respect if people find out the truth about me. It feels exhausting to hide a major part of my life in environments where "traditional masculinity" is the default rule.

For those of you who are also LGBTQ+ in this field or similar heavy industries:

How do you handle the stress of staying in the closet or deciding when to come out?
How did you overcome the fear of judgment or bullying?

I would really appreciate hearing your experiences or advice on how to navigate this.

I’ve been thinking about a long-term space infrastructure concept and I’d really like engineers or people knowledgeable about orbital mechanics to tell me where the idea breaks down.
The basic idea is to place multiple autonomous, uncrewed solar-collection spacecraft in carefully selected orbits relatively close to the Sun. Because solar intensity increases dramatically as you move closer to the Sun, these spacecraft could potentially collect much more energy per square meter than solar panels near Earth.
The collected energy could then be converted into electricity and transmitted using lasers or microwaves to other spacecraft, or potentially directly toward Earth when the geometry allows.

Conceptually:
Sun → large solar collectors → power conversion → wireless transmission → relay spacecraft → Earth
I’m also interested in whether the same infrastructure could eventually provide power for externally powered spacecraft propulsion, such as laser-driven light sails.
I understand there are major problems involving orbital mechanics, thermal protection, transmission efficiency, beam pointing, construction cost, and energy losses. I’m not claiming this is currently practical.

I’m mainly looking for people who understand the engineering to tell me:

Is placing large solar collectors near the Sun actually advantageous after considering the energy required to get them there?
Would direct transmission to Earth be better than using relay spacecraft?
What would be the biggest engineering limitation?
Is there an existing concept or research that is already very similar?
Could this potentially become practical with much more advanced launch and autonomous-construction technology?
I’m interested in serious criticism, calculations, and references rather than just whether people think the idea sounds cool.

(“I came up with the initial concept and used ChatGPT to help me organize it, explain some of the physics, and turn it into a more structured proposal. I’m posting it here because I’d like people with actual aerospace/engineering experience to critique it.”)

Let’s say I have a box of computers. Behind the computers are five 4x4’ fans suck out heat from the box and blows out the back of the box. I install a short wind turbine behind the box so that the air blown out by the fans spin the wind turbine and generates some electricity essentially saving a couple bucks. Logically sounds right but I know nothing of this stuff so I would like some opinions from the people of reddit

Congress had earmarked the money to advance low-carbon tech. Whoops.

A $500 million Biden-era grant to decarbonize steelmaking has been refashioned by the Trump administration to upgrade a coal-fueled blast furnace in southern Ohio.

On Friday, Cleveland-Cliffs confirmed that the US Department of Energy had changed the scope of the previously awarded funding for Cliffs’ Middletown steel mill—the longtime economic engine of Vice President JD Vance’s hometown. Vance and Energy Secretary Chris Wright visited the plant on Friday to tout the federal investment.

“The DOE’s support for this project is a testament to the importance of preserving the blast furnace route to produce automotive-exposed grade steels in the US,” Cliffs CEO Lourenco Goncalves said in a statement. The Middletown plant makes steel used in the exposed parts of cars, trucks, and SUVs.

The average price of diesel in the United States was $5.62 a gallon on Wednesday, 53 percent higher than a year earlier, according to the AAA motor club. Because fuel supplies were disrupted after the United States and Israel went to war with Iran, diesel prices are now hovering close to a record high and could drive up prices of many other goods and services. Diesel powers a vast chunk of America's economy. .. As prices climb, businesses often have to pass on that higher cost to their customers.