ETA:
Speed averages to almost exactly one foot per hour.
Solar-Powered Device Turns Moon Dirt Into Bricks, a Potential Breakthrough in Lunar Construction
Not to put too fine a point on this and it’s a neat idea and I may remember this all wrong, but using a parabolic mirror to focus solar radiation to melt down regolith… Yeah, I think this was in some The Usborne Book of [insert futuristic topic] or other I had as a kid in the 1970ies.
Dude, where’s my jet pack Spandex jacket.
Setting up a colony or research station on the moon will be necessary for more complicated space ventures involving humans, but my biggest concern is that the moon is basically a ball of asbestos.
I distinctly remember seeing some PBS science show 25 or 30 years ago where they were showing some academic researchers performing regolith brick-making experiments with this exact technique. If the Chinese are doing something new maybe it’s the idea of channeling the concentrated sunlight through fiberoptics rather than having the brick itself located at the focal point of the dish.
Fair enough, but in my book that’s a clever tweak - not a breakthrough.
So apparently objecting to the theft of Smithsonian property counts as illegal lobbying now.
And why the hell is Chief Justice John Roberts also a regent of the Smithsonian?
I loved this comment:
Rirere said: If the transfer is blocked or otherwise stymied and it’s for any reason due to Smithsonian staff agitation, I half expect these senators to shout “and if it weren’t for these meddling kids, we’d’ve gotten away with it!”
When Ted Cruz’s mask is ripped off, it will be revealed that, all along he was Ted Cruz.
We’d better rip off the second mask too, just to be sure…
A lot of the other comments in that article are really pointing out how, despite being such a huge and influential state, Texas is so incredibly insecure about itself and repeatedly does these stupid kinds of things to compensate, and have been doing so since the state’s founding. This is the state, after all, who back in the 1880s modeled their state capitol building after the U.S. capitol, only making it even bigger.
fun fact: the red Burnett County granite that the texas capitol building is made of, is radioactive 
!
Copying here because it’s relevant to both threads:
Every flavor of granite is slightly radioactive.
Thorium, uranium and the ever popular potassium-40. As in banana equivalent dose for size.
The Texas Capitol won’t be worse as other large structures like, say Grand Central Terminal. People who work full-time in the station are technically radiation workers (like 'nauts) and receive an average dose of 525 mrem/year, more than permitted in nuclear power facilities.