DDE

https://t.me/fotozak/6548 A helicopter refueling while carrying an external load...

I can fetch you a Trotsky quote about how slave labor is less effective under capitalism, but that is "not necessarily true" for socialism, and taking that as an axiom is backwards thinking. The stuff millenarianism does to people's brains...

Russia vetoes UNSC resolution against placement of nuclear weapons in space after a Russo-Chinese amendment adding a call against conventional weapons in space fails in a closely-tied vote https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/04/1148951

In my experience, that's usually the opening salvo, because... ...because too much of Internet "debating" is a spectator sport that involves preaching to the converted and throwing out "sick burns".

...which of course is undermined by the Jedi being pointedly apolitical to the point of apathy, which the old fluff explored in-depth. Your post kind of reminds me of the in-universe early Imperial propaganda claiming the younglings were mind-controlling the local populace, and so Vader and the 501st did nothing wrong. While I won't entirely disagree, this is a case where a sci-fi cliche muddles our perception. Sci-fi doesn't generally know how to do non-sentient droids. Accordingly, it's not clear how sentient the droids are - and then we wonder into the real-life debate of what sentience is and how AIs can passably "fake" it by simply responding in-line with out expectations. All tha before the question whether sentience is even the primary factor to consider when asking whether droids deserve rights. Also, when SW did finally have a crack at the droid rights problem, it produced a character so obnoxious I signed up with the Butlerian Jihad.

Sci-fi isn't to blame, it's a reflection of the thinking applied to the real world, especially by third-party well-wishers.

Korolev's brainstorming for the name "Vostok" Everything up to and including Volna, Vulkan, Veter (wind), Vykhod (escape), Voskhozdeniye, Vzlyot (ascent) and Vozrozhdeniye (renaissance). Love how Vostok was still his first idea, followed immediately by Voskhod

The first Salyut station had a fairing stenciled "Zarya". TASS didn't care, so that's how the station is known now.

I think the missing link is the unexpected commercial success and the Shuttle woes. Basically, at roughly the time you'd have expected a resurgence of government space spending, instead the mamy-named Russian space industry first began to scoop up commercial space launches, and then it got the biggest one of all - the Soyuz seat-sharing agreement with NASA. I think at this point a dubious decision was made to wean it off into a commercial venture, despite little evidence that it would be sustainable, which was promptly exemplified in the pre-Rogozin disaster spree. Premature attempts to monetize something are not an uncommon problem, and politically it's rather difficult to fish not for a one-time bailout, but a near-permanent garden hose of money.

That was one of the proposals, yes. Ah, yes, I found the IRL Helldiver pod.

A person far braver than I am.

It keeps coming up and coming up. I know several sides in WWII had this sort of kit. This was the latest known attempt to bring it back:

The opthalmologists won't be free. Sorry, I still can't get over how people just stare up at the sun to the point of sustained damage.

Yeah, basically Khrunichev went bust developing it exclusively out of their own pocket. This in turn became a great excuse to sell off the expensive land under Khrunichev, forcing Angara's production to move to the stillborn Energiya Block A production line at Omsk, which didn't do the timeline any favors.

Probably closer to Kampfgesetz or whatever, with a side helping of "thermoethics". The world isn't a prison, but it is what you make it out to be, and if you don't out in a constant, coordinated effort, if you leave things be and let them slide, they degrade, rust, rot, decay and die. Not exactly an unnatural mindset for a space traveller, eh?

I doubt it. I do believe there is an initial bias towards empathy. You can't rely on it to run a big society, though. Yes. But life is an unnatural phenomenon. Any increase in complexity comes not from some synergistic murmuration, but through a coherent push with a unified will. Both the free market and government dictate have their niches. "The form is the despotism of the internal idea that prevents matter from disintegrating. If the bounds of this natural despotism are broken, the phenomenon dies."

Hence the civilizationists' argument why humanity needs more backups that are still here but different. At which point... bye-bye international Mars colony run by some sort of a global government. That's just capitalism allocating resources more efficiently, as advertised.

Oh, it is possible to deliver in that timeframe. But what if, hear me out, we gave the rocket scientists about a tenth of the necessary budget, and were utterly amazed they preferred to twiddle their thumbs, find excuses and set up rat lines and Swiss bank accounts instead of working? After all, that's how Angara happened. For the first decade, it received 4% of the funding it was supposed to. Combine that with a stalwart example of KB feudalism (Makeyev's pet Korona) and you have an absolute swamp that needs a new authoritarian like Korolev or Webb to sort it out. Borisov, meanwhile, just rattles off what his grammar-deficient PR team pushes his way. Be happy they don't boast of building a factory to produce carburetors for electric cars (there's such a scandal going on right now, someone included a news article from the equivalent of the Onion in a regional ministry's annual report, to great public embarrassment).

Oh, how very, very familiar. Unfortunately, going from experience, the late Uber driver was involved, she just didn't know she was being used as a courier. Heck, there's been a dozen cases in Russia where the couriers realized what they were being used for and opened up the packages to find thick wads of cash. https://edition.cnn.com/2024/04/16/us/ohio-uber-driver-murder-charge/index.html Warn your relatives, folks, you're now in the same boat as us, it seems. Unexpected calls from the FBI, FRS or Bank of America, "secure accounts", urgently needing you to read that code from a text message or installing an "anti"-virus on your phone, oh no, someone's taken a loan on you and the only way to rescind that loan is to set fire to a local public building while yelling (e.g.) "Glory to Comrade Kim!" And that's before deepfakes go industrial-scale.

Korona SSTO has been making rounds in the press again. I find it alarming that it's still a thing alongside Amur-SPG (Falcon-Methanski) and is getting more and more official endorsement. The last thing Roscosmos needs on their plate is a Korolev-Chelomei situation, but instead they're just throwing more and more things at the wall (Angara, Soyuz-5, Bartini's Krylo, even Don/Yenisei SHLV is still making noises).

During the closing days of WWI, the Germans developed the B-1E Elektronbrandbombe, a 1 kg incendiary bomb with a thermite payload in a casing of an aluminum-magnesium alloy known as Elektron. It was the predominant Luftwaffe incendiary in WWII, leading to many raised eyebrows as contemporary materials keep referring to "electron(ic) bombs".

Ah, a six-day work week due to upcoming Labor Day. I only learnt about it on Monday. It's a barrier that never goes away. Frankly, I think the bigger problem is the pathologization of any eccentricity. You're expected to be "quirky" in ways that are seemingly harmless (and easily commoditized), but that genuine strangeness is actually a lot more dangerous and untolerated in this ultra-connected, hyper-socialized world than it used to be. It has become an impairment. Although I do sense there used to be a pretty severe asymmetry of tolerance based on the sex (will this get censored?) of the individual, guess we achieved equality of discrimination. I can't promise it will get better. Maybe take a gap year while you can, because afterwards HR will look at you funny for having a hole in your resume. Then months will start to fly past like days, and you'll be headed to an early midlife crisis, just like me. ****...

As someone who experienced the lockdown in a city of twenty million... you will quickly find people not wanting to ever be in a crowd. Intsead, they could likely succumb to parasocial relationships...

Rebel Moon's premise belongs here. An interstellar-capable empire bullies peasants to give up grain.

Bunch of mission patches https://t.me/fotozak/6529