AckSed

Fascinating article from 2022 on the IM-1 comms: https://blog.jatan.space/p/moon-monday-issue-93 Long story short, they're not using NASA's Deep Space Network, but renting time on other commercial ground stations around the world. They tested it (with NASA's help) by connecting to the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.

My good fellow is probably thinking of the problems Skylab astronauts had. But there probably would be a handhold, well, at hand at all times if the designers were halfway competent. If not, I'd make up a folding version of one of those grabby sticks used for picking up litter and wear it on my belt. Hell, make two and I can be the king of the swingers.

Carbon. Luna is remarkably low in carbon and the first few settlements might cause a brief 'carbon rush' to set up 'dry ice' cartels at the permanently-shadowed craters in the South Pole. Then people would be outright shipping in compressed blocks of artificial graphite for chemical feedstocks, electrodes for electrolysis of magnesium and aluminium, carbon dioxide foaming agent for silica insulation, methane rocket fuel and so on. Or polyethylene, as it can count as radiation protection... and then be cracked for its carbon and hydrogen. There might then be a carbon Prohibition from shipping away Earth's 'natural' carbon, even though it's not true and the Earth could definitely use a lot less of it, and the cartels are also sneaking in their own because the crater CO2 is running dry. Then Prohibition collapses just as asteroid mining and production is set up, leaving the cartels and the former 'carbon crackers' now dependent on the influx of carbonaceous asteroids. Or worse, left behind altogether.

Varda finally gets to come home: https://spacenews.com/varda-gets-reentry-license-for-space-manufacturing-capsule/

Axiom's lunar EVA suits being put through their paces: https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/axiom-space-tests-lunar-spacesuit-at-nasas-johnson-space-center/

I wonder if it's Australia's aviation authorities taking on this, or they've finally convinced the FAA to drop it, so to speak.

This has become the Hazegrayart thread. Not complaining, just remarking - they're good at digging out the strange and somewhat plausible. On that note, absolutely check out that video's description for a 40-page article on reusable booster concepts. Edit: There's a two-stage HTHL spacecraft that's called... POBTATO. POBTATO! Its second stage is a flying wing and it didn't rely on mid-air refueling, so I suppose they just leaned into its wide shape.

Can't say it's not inspiring to see a new rocket being raised, even if it's not a 'real' one.

I did notice they just lowered it on, with the arms making small adjustments to set it down near-exactly. Checking to see what the damage was?

The ESA stream for Axiom-3's splashdown shows how they egress the Dragon capsule after landing and being winched aboard: there's a little slide! I never knew the seats rotate down for landing and egress, either. Further, there's space for 3-4 people to assist the astronauts.

It came out in 1982. So, let's see: https://oldcomputers.net/grid1101.html So it was basic, but out-of-the-box it had BASIC and spreadsheet, and graphing software, and a personal database. You could autocomplete commands by using the CODE key. It could connect to GENIE over POTS thanks to its built-in 300/1200 baud modem. It had a bright EL screen, 256K bytes DRAM, 384K bytes bubble memory, an arithmetic co-processor. It was 4.6kg mass and a briefcase form-factor, when IBM's later 5155 Portable was a 13.6kg monster the size and weight of a sewing machine. Later it would gain a DOS 3.0 ROM, and an integral floppy drive, allowing it to run Visicalc and Lotus 1-2-3. So when the engineer who worked there and later started Palm Computing states that that was the original reason it didn't take off with businessmen, I think that was what was said to them at the time.

Wait a sec... Bennu's samples have a crust of phosphates. Asteroids like Bennu make up a large proportion of all asteroids. And Earth's atmosphere is under bombardment all the time from meteorites and micro-meteorites. How much phosphorous is deposited on Earth yearly by these? It's probably miniscule, but over a million years? Two? Fifty? How did almost all mammalian and reptilian life on Earth come to have biological scaffolds utilising phosphates?

It's about time. Good to see flight hardware.

One of the first laptops, the GRiD Compass, was unpopular with the businessmen it was aimed at because typing scared them: Of course, it then went on to be a military darling (hence why it's in Aliens: Extended Cut as the sentry gun controller) and flew on the Shuttle. So they made out alright, despite it costing over $8100 at launch.

Five percent of Roman/Greek scroll burned in the eruption of Vesuvius is finally read... and it's a treatise on the philosophy of pleasure: https://scrollprize.org/grandprize Hopefully coming soon, the rest of it, as well as 600 other scrolls they also found. And there are almost certainly be more to be excavated. Edit: this is also a good description of how to run a project like this.

Dream Chaser has passed its vibration testing: https://phys.org/news/2024-02-rattle-chaser-spaceplane-vibration.html

My limited search-fu wants to find the results of research conducted on Skylab, specifically the M553 sphere-forming and M555 GaAs semiconductor crystal growth experiments run in the M512 Materials Processing Facility. I'd also like to see the results from the M518 Multipurpose Electric Furnace System. Lots of stuff that could and should be dug out again in this up-and-coming era of heavy lift. I found the '73 guidebook detailing what was going up, which let me narrow down the names, but nothing afterwards. Does anyone have leads?

Made of steel, built in the open air by welders in hardhats... Robert Truax would appreciate it. Huh, expendable Starship currently matches half the proposed Sea Dragon, in potentially lofting 250 metric tons of mass to LEO.

Towerless vertical-axis wind turbine that replaces the traditional rigid tower with pre-stressed blades and tensioned centre supports could make energy from offshore wind as cheap as $55/MWh: https://energy.sandia.gov/programs/renewable-energy/wind-power/offshore-design-optimization/arcus tl;dr only 18% of offshore wind farm cost is in the actual physical structure. If you make it lighter (over 50%) and easier to install (vertical-axis turbines can use simpler floating anchorings and can be towed, fully-assembled, from port), costs plummet. You can also use a larger generator in a housing on the base to capture more energy.

Speaking of robotic arms, this was part of the cargo:

They don't have to be on the main body at all: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blohm_%26_Voss_BV_141 Yes, this flew.

I answered 'Yes' because although I think you can go to Mars in one shot, the advantage of building the Mars infrastructure on Luna means you can have practice with pressure vessels, partial gravity, life-support, ISRU, learning to mine in space-suits... Plus, the energy needed to lift, say, a spacecraft off the Moon is much smaller, and can use ISRU propellant e.g. aluminium/oxygen.

Solar farms planted with wildflowers and native grasses saw increases in insect and plant biodiversity across the board, and the increased bee population even helped pollinate nearby soybeans: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ad0f72

After one payload specialist on the Shuttle said if his experiment didn't work he "wasn't coming home", commanders began locking the hatch: https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/01/solving-a-nasa-mystery-why-did-space-shuttle-commanders-lock-the-hatch/ Key takeaways here: The Shuttle's hatch doubled as an escape system, and so it could be opened with a single lever. That it still worked while the crew were in orbit, and would have spaced the whole crew if opened, is alarming to say the least. 'Do not do this thing' is only mostly fine when everyone has the same level of training. Screening everyone for "the right stuff" will not be feasible with greater access to space. Mental health in a high-stress environment must be addressed yesterday. Designing safety systems to be safe when someone panics is damn hard.

It had an unique landing pattern, so maybe it's on its side? https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/01/japans-moon-sniper-mission-aims-for-precise-lunar-landing/