YNM

NRHO looks nice but honestly it is pretty difficult to connect down to the surface if you're only going over them every now and then. Mascons doesn't make things easier I suppose. And yeah idk how Orion is going.

I mean the criticism is whether it can work with existing payload demands or not, or would it makes excess supply. (that does work to lower cost though so a good thing in a way.) NASA considers the fact that the vehicle in itself is supposed to work as-is in a commercial variant as 'highly sustainable', compare and contrast with BOs which really you wouldn't have someone else pay for it, with at most what they have is take the technology developed on it and put it in a different product that's more commercialized. At least with Dynetics they were considering fully autonomous landing platf

Probably a bit of both. They basically wanted to sell a lander for HLS, in contrast with SpX which sees HLS as a side project (their vehicle goes up regardless how it goes on HLS) and Dynetics which wants to tap off the extra moon missions onwards. "Sustainable" here is basically saying that you can continue make your things happen for decades to come and not have a problem anywhere (incl. if we stop buying it). If it's reusable then there's a mix of longevity and production, if it's disposable then that's on production. There's a good reason it's called "high risk". Even then SpX

NASA only accepted the high-risk on-orbit refuel development because they're all proposed to be completed in LEO. Honestly I think this partly depends on whether they'll launch Starship by itself to LEO or would they have Superheavy to lift it... maybe it'd only need like one refuel, if they don't reuse Superheavy ? Or if it's no superheavy then yes that'd be a lot of refuel needed (they basically get the same fuel fraction per launch and I don't think we have an SSTO here). Reading the selection documentation, honestly seems like a no-brainer to put SpX again, this is basically CCDev nex

If only they expected it beforehand and know where to look I'd say. Still think that if this was a sudden event (aka. no prior predictions made) you'd only notice that it had gone past. Kind of the same with how I see satellite flares or meteor shower. The one complication is the lighting angle itself. A good amount of your FoV is still going to be filled with the bright surface of the Earth, and depending on the orientation it might be difficult to see (or notice) against ambient lighting.

A plot of the encounter (was over Alaska) : And yep, we're absolutely clear of this particular close encounter. Unless if it's a Bond villain lair... oh wait wrong genre.

Tank ?

Maybe more like a short essay...

From LeoLabs, their results seems to indicate lower probability : Still no update on whether it hit though.

Thanks for the plots ! But yeah this seems really serious if it does collide and breakup. Okay maybe not yet ? Welp, fingers crossed I guess...

Not necessarily, esp. remembering that this is a polar orbit and there are many orbital planes used for it (unlike GEO where there's only one plane possible). Orbital planes can intersect at almost any angle imaginable, both due to inclination and ascending node position. The collision back in 2009 was a bit more than perpendicular (102.2 degrees), and that made for 11.7 km/s of relative velocity at collision, so I presume that this time it's even more than that. Early last year a close approach at head-on had happened before as well.

If you need something to worry about :

Will say that I initially wanted to re-use this thread, but I guess better to start a new one. (Not really willing to maintain it, though ? I'm not really up to satellite news.) Apparently it's going to be a DMSP sat + Russian upper stage collision. Since the satellite is launched 43 years ago I'll assume that it is dead (upper stage is definitely dead, like most upper stages do after launch is complete). Sorry for mostly relying on Twitter. Really just knew this.

Welp, wouldn't thought we'd be host to two TCs at one time. The result is obvious... Thankfully I'm not in the affected area, but it's not a common occurrence. I think. It is moving away though (as it's supposed to be for this time of the year).

Honestly I think without the "it's obviously a miniature set" aspect of the old these movies loose some of the charms they once had. Kind of interesting to note that the first meeting of those two was made by Toho, so in a sense we're seeing the reverse version of it. Would be interesting to compare the two I guess.