SunlitZelkova

So I’m assuming when I write some space alternate histories I can take liberties with the way some celestial events happen. For example, I assume asteroids bouncing around the solar system during its early era was so chaotic, an asteroid or comet (I can’t remember which I was told it would be off the top of my head) could have hit Mars and given it the thick atmosphere needed for the 1950s glider missions to succeed. But what about solar activity? Is that pretty random (like how weather can be plausibly altered in alternate history) or is it something you can expect to happen no matter what? Kinda like how the isthmus of Panama was always going to form, and you can’t really write it away without going into fantasy territory when it comes to tectonics. I ask because there was a big CME in 1973, which would have ruined the Apollo Manned Venus Flyby project. I’m wondering if an alternate history in which it succeeds would be more realistic writing away the CME or just having the astronauts all die.

Lol TikTok being banned isn’t going to kill the culture associated with it. Someone’s just going to make a new app with the same features and it will continue. YouTube shorts is already a viable backup. Vine existed long before TikTok. The “short video-short attention span” brains are never going to go away.

Hey now, Skylab was pretty big in its own right.

They said on the SpaceX stream they were deliberately not going to soft land it. There were no recovery assets out there, after all. What is your point? The answer is that problem, if it exists, is just to do more testing. I imagine your solution to this would be to build a single stack SLS based lunar landing architecture, but that is not going to solve the problem any faster than further testing of Raptor- it will just take longer. If you want to get to the Moon fast, we need to have faith in Starship and continue testing it. Not drop it and start on a new design. Starting a second design when something is already in testing is what helped kill the Soviet N1 lunar landing program, and it is often speculated that if NASA had elected to build any of the Lunar Gemini concepts that were touted as a “faster” way to the Moon- that coincidentally are not unlike your SLS based frankenrocket proposals- it probably would have delayed a Moon landing past Kennedy’s 1969 goal.

I'm glad the "Alaska" flight I'm flying on this summer is actually a Horizon Air flight on an Embraer something.

It kinda makes sense to me. “If you don’t have a smart phone you probably don’t have the money and sense to buy our products.” It’s cruel, but there is a twisted logic to it. I for one will not be frequenting Dutch Bros because even though I have a smart phone I dislike how they don’t have a proper physical menu. I’ll stick with Starbucks. I tried to tell my sister it was elitist for them not to have physical menus and she didn’t believe me!

Not exactly. The only thing launching next year is the LEO version of the Long March 10, which is a single stick/core. We don’t even know when recovery will begin, construction has not begun on a recovery ship. We would know if this was happening probably, believe me, there are A LOT of people watching what happens at Chinese shipyards. I do not believe a Falcon 9 Heavy based plan will allow any cheaper or regular access to the Moon than a Starship one. Now, that’s not to say it could be improved. Instead of trying to rework the lander (which hopefully IFT-3 will prove is coming along just fine tomorrow), the crew launch vehicle needs to be reworked. To do this all we need to do is throw out SLS. Have crew launch to LEO on F9 and Crew Dragon, dock with Starship and then go to the Moon. This removes the dangerous flight in a tiny capsule, something Apollo dealt with by having a separate lunar module (lifeboat). It also uses an existing vehicle, not requiring any new dev which could take years. Even with SLS the chances are still pretty high we’ll be on the Moon at least a couple years before China. But if we try to build a new lander vehicle? Kiss that goodbye. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, and China doesn’t seem to care whether they beat us or not, but apparently a lot of Artemis supporters do. I for one couldn’t care less.

Kind of expected from the mission statement (focus on cheap materials instead of reusability), but I hope they can work it out. https://jp.reuters.com/business/5XP3FIQZQVOYLKL3VUCN5QVA5U-2024-03-13/ According to a press conference with the CEO, investigation is underway into what happened.

It's a much better take than the Netflix documentary. I like how they review past aviation incidents when talking about possibilities. Although they do talk about a couple conspiracy theories, it only last for a minute or so, and it isn't presented as a "subtle truth" in the same way the Netflix one did. Compared to this, the Netflix one really looks like it was created to peddle conspiracies.

I just watched the MH370 documentary series on Netflix and boy is it a steaming hot load of garbage. 1. These people seem to not know a lot and be in total denial. Aircraft vanishing without a trace has happened before, and yet we moved on. Finding things in the ocean is hard, yes, iN tHis DaY aNd agE things do go missing and can’t be found. There are still massive WWII ship wrecks we can’t locate. How are we supposed to figure out where a plane that’s been blown into pieces is? 2. It legitimizes conspiracy theories. There’s a funny moment in the first episode where a journalist called Jeff Wise talks about “going through heaps of trash” on the internet; baseless theories about what happened. But his arguments and the theory of a French journalist called Florence basically rely on the same logic, rhetoric, assumptions, and tactics as any other more fantastic conspiracy theory involving aliens or the Bermuda Triangle. Yet, the producers chose to present their theories as the mainstream ones. 3. It is too heavily dramatized and focusing on shock and mystery instead of facts. The wreckage found in Madagascar, the route on the computer simulator, and the military radar data are rejected for ridiculous reasons (“One guy couldn’t possibly find that much,” “The pilot seemed like a good man/there was this random peculiarity in the flight simulator data,” “there are no radar images,” “they didn’t scramble.” Aircraft control and air intercept radars don’t produce recorded images. It isn’t satellite SAR. Of course one guy will find all the debris if no one else is looking on the beaches. Of course the pilot would use the cursor to drag the plane to the southern Indian Ocean, who would fly in a straight line for hours on their flight sim just to crash? Did the journalist even know if fighter jets were based at the airport it flew over? It could have been full of transports? The documentary’s one saving grace is Blaine (the guy who found wreckage on the beach), Mike (an aviation expert who worked on the fact supported Indian Ocean theory), and the former commander of the search effort from Australia. As the former commander says, “opinions are like [redacted], everyone’s got one.” At the very least after leading people along with these garbage theories backed up by pure rhetoric and connect the dots instead of evidence, it tries to debunk them in the end. Unfortunately, I’m highly skeptical the average viewer will see it that way. By allowing the conspiracy theorists to paint themselves as “journalists” and “experts,” they legitimize the theories in the eyes of the average viewer and cause them to stick compared to the 3 minute rebuttal at the end. I swear, I’m afraid for the world and society if this is what passes as good journalism or education nowadays. It’s very disappointing compared to how well done the Challenger disaster documentary series was done. I believe the families interviewed are simply in denial. MH370 is not “the future of aviation safety” as they claimed recently on the 10th anniversary. It’s an echo of the past, and can just be thrown in the disappearance bin alongside Star Tiger and Star Ariel. In this world things go bump in the night and sometimes can’t be found anymore. They need to accept that instead of becoming conspiracy theorists rivaling David Icke in their tenacity. It’s not healthy and is a bad precedent for how we as a society respond to future disasters and incidents.

Knowing it’s his 90th makes me wonder how long he would have lived if he didn’t die in the plane crash. Leonov lived to 85, and Tereshkova is still alive.

Here’s a video of the planned recovery in case anyone was having a hard time visualizing it. https://x.com/dsshhh114/status/1764478340013170785?s=46&t=Jd73T2beq0JLNtwTy1uR5A Only for the LEO version apparently, although I swear I remember hearing it would be used for the lunar variant too. Perhaps the vehicle just doesn’t have the performance to do a landing while lofting an upper stage capable of taking the capsule or lander to the Moon.

In answer to my own question, I think it is really an open ended question. I still find the deterministic argument compelling, but on the other hand, I’ve found out about this book called The Dawn of Everything. It proposes that instead of each generation being constricted to one or very few choices because of certain environmental factors, choices made throughout history are instead highly creative responses to whatever the conditions may be at the time. It also proposes that the notion that history is inevitable and evolves to a certain point (for example, the idea that things like the atom bomb and internet were inevitable), are holdovers from Enlightenment era philosophy. They propose the reason things have been so samey recently (wars and empires, just different names) is because we have forgotten how to be creative and make decisions based on the conditions of the time instead of past experience/tradition (which points to @ColdJ’s response). During my brief schooling in anthropology I was taught to look at bias and ethnocentrism/centrism of ideas. Perhaps we (really I) need to be aware that the people who write history and record it are not immune to distorting the story and getting it wrong because they too are a part of history and cannot “stand aside” from it all. I bet one day we’ll look back on deterministic theories of history in the same way we look at geocentrism and creationism.

I’m probably going to get a very specific class of answers by asking a forum of science buffs, but here it goes. Is the future predetermined? Some say history is not inevitable. But the words of a random historian on Reddit have me questioning that: “People made the decisions they did because they were influenced by a variety of factors, and therefore that is the only way it could have happened because those factors could not be changed,” to paraphrase. But if history is inevitable, doesn’t that mean that by extension the future is predetermined and inevitable? Because once upon a time 1962 was the present day, but if what happened between 1963-1973 was inevitable, doesn’t that mean that what happens in the future (2025-2035) is inevitable too? Ironically from a philosophical POV I’ve already come to the conclusion what happens now is predetermined by something in the past. But now I’m asking from an academic, historical/scientific POV. Because one of my hobbies is writing alternate histories for myself to prove the world could have been a better place and people have the power to make good decisions, but it’s only now I realized that doesn’t mix well with my philosophical beliefs (the revelation was about a week ago). But what about from a materialistic historical/scientific POV? Because it’s kind of only interesting if the alternate histories can be realistic to some degree, and if everything is predetermined they are pure fantasy no matter how small the change. In which case I’d rather abandon those projects and just focus on researching real life stuff (in other words, shy away from history to a great extent).

https://news.biglobe.ne.jp/smart/amp/domestic/0309/ym_240309_6002487817.html A little about it. It’s from a Tokyo based company called Space One. Its planned payload was a “small government satellite.” The launch site is called Spaceport Kii, located in Wakayama Prefecture. This is interesting as it’s only an hour’s ferry ride from where my grandma lives. Space One’s website- https://www.space-one.co.jp/ Payload capacity of the vehicle is 150kg to 500x500 SSO @97 degrees, or 250kg to LEO at 500 km altitude @ 33 degrees. Company mission is the basic spiel. Lower cost access to space and get space economy going. They want to launch about 20 times a year during the rest of this decade, and the first launch was originally scheduled for summer 2023. The vehicle is a solid fuel launcher. The route they’re going to lower costs is using cheap materials instead of reusability. They aim to have a very short time to launch after signing the contract, about one year to be exact and launching within 7 days after taking delivery of each satellite for integration. This makes me curious what the lead time on a Rocketlab or SpaceX launch usually is.

Okay, but what happens if AI generated content was planted somewhere inconspicuously, and repeatedly put in front of gullible journalists. Then I plant AI generated emails and other communications on people's computers to make it look like the news organization deliberately portrayed AI content as real, in order to frame them. Or what if those events actually happened but sinisterly (the newsmen really did deliberately portray AI as real), but I used AI to generate evidence making my news organization look innocent when it is in fact not? Or, or what if I told everyone I was interested in the truth and was following standards to protect against AI, but in reality I was secretly churning out AI generated articles with a sinister motive behind them? And the people who noticed this and realized exposed what was happening, but I, who am in power, just wrote off their evidence as AI generated? I think truth is already done for. I think it was inevitable, because there is some discourse on other websites I've seen and the difference between what people think happened is like night and day. We can't protect truth if we barely even agreed on it before AI generated content became a thing.

Nice idea for a thread! I had some 1/100 Soyuz printed out but threw it away. I’ll have to print another and get it put together.

It still hasn’t hit me there are now two super heavy lift launch vehicles flying again (SLS and Starship). Too much other stuff going on in the world and in life. Last time we had this was either the early 1970s (N1 and Saturn V, although N1 only flew for a couple of minutes or seconds) or, if you count Shuttle as an SHLV, 1988 (Energia-Buran and Shuttle both flew that year).

CNSA claims its plan to semi-reuse the future Long March 10 lunar rocket are much farther along than was known. A 4 m diameter version of the rocket will launch in 2024 (!!!), and a single stick version of the 5 m diameter core, which is intended to also be a future LEO transport rocket, will fly in 2025. They have completed the hop test phase, which is impressive considering Long March 8R and the private Chinese companies started earlier than them and are still doing hop tests. Speaking of which, I haven’t heard anything about LM-8R in a while. Some optimistic plans had it having its first reuse attempt in 2022. My guess is it was cancelled because landing the triple body first stage was unworkable. https://x.com/raz_liu/status/1764890946360242513?s=46&t=Jd73T2beq0JLNtwTy1uR5A In case you don’t know, the plan to reuse Long March 10 is to have it deploy long arms outwards, and be caught by a set of wires aboard a recovery ship in the South China Sea. Basically the SpaceX chopstick plan but the arms are on the first stage of the rocket, and it is caught by wire. Like Superheavy, it could easily be equipped with legs instead if it doesn’t work out. Given they plan to recover it on a ship, it’s not like they have a requirement for rapid reuse anyways.

When does this image date from? I don't recall the early 1970s, planned post-Apollo Reusable Nuclear Shuttle carrying such a lander, and I don't recall the RNS being re-proposed at a later date. The 80s and SEI stuff had conventional engines.

Incorrect, the lander was manufactured by Lavochkin, which wasn't in the space business at all when Sputnik launched. And it was managed by the Russian Academy of Sciences, which played no role in Sputnik's launch. I don't believe there is anything special about Luna-25's failure that can actually be tied to a "modern day" problem of the Russian space program. Since the very beginning, the Soviets and now Russians have had numerous failures of robotic spacecraft. Just look up how many early Luna missions they launched that didn't actually get named because they failed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luna_programme#Mission_success_rates Essentially only 1 in 3 missions succeeded overall, with that ratio getting worse for landers in particular. Luna-25 is just a drop in the bucket.

I think he’s saying that the types of accidents Russia has can be found in the US too, and thus the problem should not be characterized as Russian but rather something every space program goes through. Russia does have its own problems specific to it but the failure of spacecraft themselves feels like normal teething pains. The “we forgot to turn on the laser altimeter” of IM-1 feels a lot like Nauka’s “we forgot to take the cover off of the star tracker.”

I think such a situation would only be possible after years of UFO/Close Encounter like study of the race-to-be-contacted. The aliens sending the satellite would need to learn the other aliens’ language first. But if they have to do that, why not learn each other’s language at the same time?

Is the Amazon dealer third party or from Amazon itself? If the latter, it will probably be restocked for while, in which case you should find out how long it will remain available before deciding to purchase. In addition, it depends on how much you desire the new computer and whether there is something else you'd really want. For the first one, remember that computer parts are always available (although I don't know anything at all about price fluctuation so that's a factor), so if there is something that might go off shelves soon it might be better to get that if you want it. And if there is some other ship or pack of figures you want, if it's new it will probably remain available for awhile, whereas the old gunship could disappear, so it might be better to get that- if you want a brand new one. If I was in such a situation with electric trains or plastic aircraft models I'd just get a new one.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syrian_Space_Agency