While I Get It

I understand that sending Artemis up and around the moon was something that needed to be done to confirm that the equipment worked...

It's the same mission that Apollo 8 did.

All the "ground breaking" is 58 years old.

We're retracing our old steps, and I'm OK with doing it, but I refuse to act like it's never been done before.

We have done it before.

Do we even have a vehicle for the Apollo 9 and 10 analogs?

Do we have a lander for those mission analogs?

Are we even going to use this same capsule past the next Artemis launch?

There's only one more SLS stack, right?

I am excited we're going back to the moon, but...

There's only one instance of Kitty Hawk.  There's just one Blériot flight that matters.  There's just one Spirit of St Louis flight that crossed the Atlantic.  There's just one Apollo 8...

The firsts matter.

Who made the second powered flight?

Who was the second person to cross the English channel in the air?

Who was the second person to make a trans-Atlantic flight?

Hell, who was the crew of Apollo 8?  Because their absolutely essential mission to prove the gear pales to insignificance against the Apollo 11 mission.

Nobody was watching the Apollo 13 mission until everything went wrong.

I have the newspaper clippings for Apollo 17...  It's not first page news.

I want to participate in the hype, but I worry that if we don't get back to the Moon before Trump leaves office, we're not getting there until SpaceX ignores the FAA and launches his mission that doesn't come back; but establishes a base.

So, goody for the crew of Artemis II and I wish the program all the luck in the world.

But we need to get on with it and stop with dead ends like SLS.

Photobombed

 

Marv tried to take a nice picture of this bald eagle, but NASA decided to shoot off some fireworks in the background.

He's secured legal representation.

Interlocks

We've all seen the scene in a movie where they space someone out an airlock.

It's been in a couple books too.

I've worked in a couple industrial settings and attended "lock-out, tag-out" classes.

I've been involved in builds where the premature opening of a valve means sewage gets into drinking water, so there's interlocks to prohibit that from happening.

Which makes me think the person being spaced will have a hell of a while to contemplate their fate as the executioner bypasses all the safeties to get the outer door open.

I can see vacc suits getting some form of RFID deal that transmits that the suit is sealed correctly to the airlock.

I can also see needing keys and passwords to work the doors at all.

Dicking around with the airlock is dangerous.  Someone could vent the compartment, or worse, the whole ship. 

A simple, mechanical, locking mechanism that keeps both doors from being open at the same time will probably be mandatory.

The execution, once the alarms are bypassed, will probably be less dramatic than the movies as well.  Vent then open is how it will likely work because pressure on the outer door makes the mechanism work much harder...

"Great, his body is halfway out because the door got stuck half open because of YOUR flair for the dramatic, Dave!"  If that's the ship's only airlock, you have a problem.

You did remember to put an emergency, portable, airlock in the ship's locker, didn't you? 

Scale

The Lego Lunar Module is about double the scale of the minifigs. 

Limitations of the media, I suppose. 

Three Days In History

July 19, 1969:

 July 20, 1969:

 July 21, 1969:

 

Update:  All instances of "June" have been replaced with the correct Homeline dates in July.  The management of Infinity Unlimited would like to apologize for this oversight.

I Do This Every Year

I have the Lego of both Apollo 11 and Eagle.

Every year on July 20, I think I should build the LEM because I can find space for it. 

I still wish they'd made a Columbia in the same scale. 

PS: I think this year is THE year. 

Gemini Cricket

Gemini really IS supposed to be pronounced Jimminy.

That's the proper Greek pronunciation.

It's not Jim-In-Eye.

I was twitching every time I heard Amy Shira Teitel saying it and thinking she got it wrong and it turns out that she had it right.  And she was just saying it the same way that NASA had been saying it since the beginning of the program.

Cargo Flight

Passenger is a form of cargo that complains, but it's cargo.

The Blue Origin flights send up passengers, not crew.

The vehicle is a robot.

The people on board don't have a means to affect anything.

They're cargo.

Don't get me wrong, if I had the means to buy a ticket I'd be in line waiting for my turn to be on the manifest. 

But having the means and taking the flight grants me nothing.

It also does fuck-all to contribute to anything.

Which isn't bad.

Bezos gets to make some money.  Maybe...

But it's a sight seeing trip.  Like helicopter ride over the Grand Canyon.

It's not a vital contribution to Mankind.  It does not advance women's rights.  It does not suppress minority rights.

It simply is what it does.

366.24

Did you know that every year the earth actually rotates 366.24 times?

"But there are only 365 days in a year!" I hear you object.

Both are true.

We lose a "day" each year to our rotation around the sun.

Neat, huh?

It Wasn't Like AAA Came And Got 'Em

 

The Science Is Settled

Neil DeGrass-Tyson says there's only eight planets.

OK Boomer. I have a different scientist of equal credibility!

Interplanet Janet says nine.

 If you've ever answered a test question by singing a School House Rock song to yourself, you might be Gen-X.

Blood Moon

 Got it right at peak!

Canon EOS M50; EF-S 55-250 IS II; f/5.6; 1/15"; 250mm; ISO 12,800

I'd have made a cropped version, but it's pretty fuzzy from the -3 exposure stops and the relatively high ISO.

Hand held, auto-focus, stabilization on...

Lucifer's Hammer

A plot point from the book Lucifer's Hammer is the constant reassurances that the comet is going to miss... right up until it hits.

Every time I read the reduced chance of 2024 YR4 hitting I think of Niven and Pournelle's book.

Yay?

 

Are You A Space Fan?

Pretty neat stuff.

Precision

One item of precision that I'm not seeing much mention of is the alignment of the lugs on the Starship booster when the chopsticks grab it.

They are 180° apart and there's just two of them.

That means they have to be sticking out perpendicular to the chopstick arms when they move in to grab the booster.

Just a couple of degrees of roll on the part of the booster and it falls instead of getting grabbed.

Idle Speculation

This story makes me wonder.

If the heliosphere contracted enough to fuck weather on Earth, could that explain why Mars is so bleak now?

We keep finding that Mars had more water and a thicker atmosphere once, that kind of contraction would hit there first and lesser contractions could affect Mars without the same effects on Earth...

Fire In Space Ace Ace Ace Ace

I've seen people talking about a fire on the outside of the hull of a space ship in the new Star Wars: The Acolyte.

Fire needs fuel and oxygen.

Both are notoriously scarce in hard vacuum.

But the ship could be covered in stuff that's fuel, and it won't matter without oxygen.

I found the scene and it's a cheery little bonfire looking flame.

I can conceive of a couple of ways to get fire on the hull of a ship in space.

A hole in the hull expelling a fuel/oxygen mixture past an ignition source would do it.

There are several forms of self oxidizing chemicals which might burn in vacuum.  Hypergolic fuels, for example.

But none of the likely explanations for a fire outside the hull are going to look like a cheery bonfire.

Ugh.

I have to keep remembering that Star Wars is as much science fiction as Lord of the Rings.

I Know Someone Who Shouldn't Read This

Starship can do something The Shuttle couldn't.

Fly with a wing burned off!

Too soon?

Remember, kids, the color of aviation humor is so black that a black hole looks bright and cheerful.

Squeeked

A couple of astronomers are saying the recent coronal mass ejection might have been similar to the discharge from the Carrington Event.

I sure hope so.

Because that means we're ready for one and can stop freaking out every time the local main sequence variable star burps.

Inconstant Moon

I had just finished reading Niven's short story, "Inconstant Moon" when the first word of the coronal mass ejection was announced.

"That was odd," I said to myself.

I forgot to even check the moon...

Prolly better to be taken unawares by something like that.  Florida being very close to sea level and all.