My reference was to an element of the series For All Mankind, where alt-history astronauts living on the moon had a few tapes of TBNS to watch over and over.
Hi Bob!
Well, they got off the ground okay today, but with a new configuration on the 2nd stage. They now have two battery systems and discard one (eject it from the vehicle) half-way through and hot-swap to the other battery. It now has one successful launch, so we’ll see.
SpaceX aborted with about 40 seconds to go. Apparently, the strong arm had an issue and wouldn’t retract properly. I think this is at least the 2nd time they’ve had to scrub due to strongarm malfunction. Might need to look at adjusting the PM specs there.
In the process of watching it, but Everyday Astronaut got a tour with Jeff Bezos at the Blue Origin facility:
Good to see Bezos actually getting involved with BO again. He’s obviously a capable person. The hands off approach wasn’t working.
The Royal Institution is uploading this wonderful series of Christmas lectures by Carl Sagan in 1977 - the 150th anniversary of the Christmas lectures by Michael Faraday where he demonstrated electricity. It’s fascinating to realise how much we’ve learnt in the intervening years.
It was gthe 150th anniversary
It’d be totally cool if they had a vid of some re-enactor delivering Faraday’s, and later Maxwell’s, speeches to a period-costumed audience in a period-appropriate venue.
We have indeed come a vast distance since. The complete set of those almost 200 lectures to date would represent a truly fascinating time-lapse glimpse at one of capital-H Humanity’s greatest collective accomplishments.
SpaceX plans to launch 4 civilians into the first manned polar orbit, for the lulz.
At least according to 1960s science fiction, doing that during heavy aurora activity could cause the crew to land back in time, in another dimension or inside the hollow Earth.
This just came up in my news…
Exclusive: Boeing, Lockheed Martin in talks to sell rocket-launch firm ULA to Sierra Space | Reuters
I suppose that not everyone has gotten the message yet, but that’s been known and expected since the beginning of the Commercial Crew program. For better or worse, there’s no common interface between suit and spacecraft for Boeing and SpaceX (or Soyuz or anyone else). Probably worth pursuing one day, but it’s not true today.
Sounds like a breakdown by NASA. They could have standardized the suit-ship interface and required anyone building a crewed capsule to build to that standard.
They certainly could have. The docking port adapter is standardized and allows any of Dragon, Soyuz, or Starliner to dock at the same port. So there’s precedent.
Still, one might argue that the progress in private spaceflight is such that you don’t want to constrain the design too much in advance. Wait a bit until the private companies work out some different approaches, then pick the best one. Sorta like they did with EV charging adapters.
Coming up soon. Set to launch Aug 26.
Doritos, for their part, is contributing to the scientific effort with space-safe tortilla chips:
Hoping to avoid this near-disaster:
I tremble when I think of what could’ve happened without that blessed Inanimate Carbon Rod
Just rumors, but:
We’ll find out for sure tomorrow. There’s still the question of how to safely undock the capsule from the station. If the thrusters are a risk to the occupants, they’re also a risk to the ISS itself.
I don’t even know what to say about this. It isn’t April 1st. Is it real? Is anything real?
The thing is, it’s almost plausible. You actually could make large, orbiting film reflectors that beam light to the ground. They could even be pretty cheap if made in large quantity. It’s still totally ridiculous.
The environmental concerns alone would spark lawsuit after lawsuit.
It’s not clear they’d have any basis. As far as I know, there is no regulation of light pollution from space. It’s all voluntary at the moment.
It’s also just a spot beam. It only affects the target. And they’re the ones that ordered it, presumably. I guess I might face a lawsuit if I ordered it to literally keep my enemies awake at night.
Be great for thinning out the vampire population.