SunlitZelkova

"In the shadow on Callisto" by Jo Takahashi, aka SunlitZelkova. Acrylic on canvas, 2023.

I think you’re right. Star Wars: The Clone Wars was basically a children’s TV show with a 14 year old fighting in a glorified war, so perhaps unethical things in children’s media is more common than we realize.

Random guess- you wanted snow to stay in front or go under the vehicle, not pushed off to the side- right in front of the infantry walking alongside the tank.

The Partial Test Ban Treaty is still in full effect, meaning no atmospheric nuclear explosions. So no Orion/PK-5000. We can journey deeper/lower though, because underground stuff is allowed once dropped.

A question for @DDE or @kerbiloid. What was Russia’s plan for space exploration if the ISS did not go through? Would they have built a reduced Mir-2 on their own? I’m writing a story where the US decided to go forward with the First Lunar Outpost project because the New Union Treaty is signed and there is one less political reason to motivate an ISS. So what does Russia/Union of Soviet Sovereign Republics do?

The ultra positive side of me wants to say Borisov realized how corrupt Roscosmos was, and thus learned they were overstating the needed amount previously. So the bloat has been cut and things are getting set straight.

Thrawn’s actor was decided back in 2016 or so when they cast his voice actor in the animated series Rebels. This was before Musk became controversial, and the resemblance is coincidental.

You can’t because tank engines have a closed rear area. There would be no way to access the coal without extensive modifications.

16 year olds apparently look different where you come from then. Or when you come from, if your impression is based on memories. General Solo was likely around the same age as her, based on Solo being in his 20s around Solo the movie (10 years after Order 66) and Hera being 10 around Order 66 in The Bad Batch. She was already a general at the time of Rogue One/Ep. IV. I wasn’t referring to Dawson btw. I assume you haven’t gotten to that part yet?

Artemis III actually has some landing sites chosen. They plan to go in 2025, but realistically it will probably be 2028. They have already started building the Orion MPCV for Artemis III, so it is most likely happening. Unless some radical political change occurs, SLS is here to stay for awhile.

https://x.com/rcsboii/status/1708850971332510102?s=46&t=Jd73T2beq0JLNtwTy1uR5A @Beccab @tater thank you for sharing some of your NASA NTRS files with me in the past. EDIT- I hope this properly embeds. X embeds don’t work on mobile for me when I myself put them in.

Well, that’s understandable. Ahsoka was 17 in the final season of TCW. I don’t think it is too off, but she does have a bit of a baby face while animated Ahsoka seems more mature. For all its writing flaws, I think Obi-Wan Kenobi did a good job of explaining why Vader and Kenobi seemed so calm despite (previously) having not met since Mustafar until Episode IV. Ewan Macgregor’s performance was very good and it was nice to see Vader’s violent side during his first appearance.

I don’t what you mean by “the general is cast wrong”. He’s the same voice actor who played the character in one of the animated shows. I saw a meme where someone is replying to someone on Twitter who said “Space whales is my line. No thanks Disney”. Replier says something to the effect of “Because space wizards fighting with laser swords is oh so realistic”. I assume you haven’t watched The Clone Wars or Rebels animated shows. It’s much better if you have watched those. Of course, animation isn’t for everyone, so I’m not telling you to watch those. The prequels were treated the exact same way, and the kids that grew up with them now form a large enough portion of the fan base that they are respected movies now. I don’t think a quality drop occurred with him selling to Disney.

No. Thomas doesn’t have a tender.

SLS can not do a single launch mission without using a tiny open air lander like Gemini LOR was intended to use, and even then SLS probably would not be able to put it in an orbit where the lander could get to the surface and back. Yes, NRHO was chosen because of a lower delta v requirement, but only because SLS can’t do anything better. I’m sure @tater and @sevenperforce can give a much more detailed response breaking down the numbers.

Their ballistic missile and cruise missile tests have actually been largely successful so far. Space development on the other hand is not really developing.

Lol, this is just what my boats look like when I try to build them with airplane parts! This is officially the most Kerbal thing ever.

No Kerbal no life.

I had one of these when I was in Japan at an okonomiyaki restaurant. It had a cat face though and spoke to us after delivering the food. In America maybe the criticism of robots replacing humans is justified, but in Japan it’s necessary due to declining population. That said, there was a bizarrely high number of young female workers in the restaurant and retail service business, both in Tokyo and the countryside of Tokushima. I’ll post a picture of mine when I get back to my PC on Monday!

https://x.com/colinzwirko/status/1707197941503643914?s=46&t=Jd73T2beq0JLNtwTy1uR5A National Aerospace Development Agency is now called National Aerospace Technology General Bureau (NATGB). Time for thread name change, @steve9728?

Attacking a friendly Typhoon SSBN for some reason…

Refueling is necessary to reuse the lander, lowering cost. Having a singular Moon rocket would mean building a new spacecraft each time and throwing it away, something unviable in the long term. Artemis is trying to build a lunar base, and to do that within a realistic budget, you need to reuse stuff. Is it a little dangerous? Yes, but I don’t think it is any more dangerous than a singular Moon rocket. It’s just a matter of deciding what is dangerous. With reuse, you leave the lander up there for a long time. You can’t inspect every component after each flight in the same way you can with a Space Shuttle returning to Earth, so something could fail due to prolonged use. But with a singular Moon rocket, you are building a brand new spacecraft each time. There are bound to be defects eventually, as happened with Apollo 13. Note that most spacecraft have been lost to production defects, like Soyuz 1, Soyuz 11, Apollo 1, and Apollo 13. Challenger and Columbia were not lost due to a problem with the vehicle itself, but rather external damage. Perhaps someday a lunar dockyard could be built for looking over Starship HLS’ in detail.

I forgot to put a “know”. As in “you know people are trying to stop sea level rise, right?” I had only three hours of sleep. Apologies! If that’s the case that’s fine, but no one should expect regulators to go along with SpaceX’s “break things and move fast” philosophy. They will take the time they need to approve things. They work from their own schedule, not SpaceX’s. ”Please start the regulatory process now even if you don’t feel like you will have all the data necessary to properly assess the conditions,” or “just start now because we need you to do it now or have it done by this date” is basically asking them to rush it. Obviously you don’t want them taking years to approve things, but I don’t think waiting a couple months is outrageous and it is totally understandable on the part of the regulators. It’s not the end of the world and is not going to significantly impact anything. I mean let’s be real, the only real reason to do it now instead of two months later is for the popcorn and X views. Especially as testing picks up the pace later on, SpaceX will certainly be able to meet all the goals. But before that, we need to let the regulators do their jobs. If they said it was going to take another year to finish it I would be sympathetic to the outrage, but a few months is not that bad. Upsetting the environment excessively anywhere is bad. Just because it’s happening in Florida doesn’t make it ok in Texas. But as I said above, if those conditions exist that make Florida unviable, that’s fine, but don’t expect regulators to bend over backwards for them. They need to hold a Q&A session to explain it. But lack of explanation does not indicate malicious intent. They need to gather data now because letting things go on and potentially harming the environment is not only bad, it’s illegal. I think the “please provide Starlink for free” thing is over. This is about whether Musk has the right to restrict the users of his product. I think he should get a pass. As Pavel Podvig, an expert on Russian nuclear forces said, “never try to stop someone who thinks he is preventing a nuclear war”.

The point isn’t to say they should move there now, it’s that they could have chosen an existing rocket launch site where regulations might be easier to overcome. It is a fallacy to think that building an entirely new launch site should be as easy now as it was in the 1960s. They were always going to have a big regulatory slog, whether they built it in Boca Chica or the Bronx. As I said, these things take time. If you don’t let the regulators do their job, and push for “do it according to my needs and my timeline”, instead of what the regulators need to do to get the job done, you will end up with another Challenger disaster. Just because you disagree or it seems outrageous does not make it cheap. People make emotional statements sometimes, and sometimes that emotion comes in the form of a strong exclamatory or seemingly hyperbolic nature. I have done this myself in the past and ended up walking it back when people corrected me. Perhaps that was your intention too (to correct/advise and not shun), but it just came off to me as a put down. Apologies if there was a misunderstanding.

If three doctors told you you had a risk of dying from liver cancer in your 50s, would you start drinking a wine bottle everyday, or try to live a healthier lifestyle to prevent yourself from getting cancer. You people are trying to stop the sea levels from rising, right? Not just throw their hands up in the air and say we’re doomed. That’s like… the whole point of climate action. If it wasn’t for nuclear weapons being controlled by bureaucracy they probably would have been used in every major Cold War proxy war. How about KSC? Don’t they literally have a second launch site there, currently being converted for Starship ops? The processes take time. Unless you can prove that they are being done for superfluous reasons, criticism of their pace of work as being a sign of incompetence is conspiratorial. This is also conspiratorial. Unless you have evidence of some kind to support this accusation. It’s his opinion. There is no “bad form”. Correct him and move on, never discourage someone from sharing their views just because they might make a mistake.