StrandedonEarth

If anything, what sci-fi gets wrong is the relative velocities in space. Any attack or "joust" in space is going to happen at relative velocities of at least 1 Mm/h, if not multiple tens of Mm/h. It's easier to just release a cloud of lead marbles in the path of oncoming wessels. Defense against ships will be easy, just shower them with gravel. The simplest offence is attacking with a rubble pile. The ultimate outcome of a space battle is that space gets filled with high-speed debris and no-one can use it safely.

I accomplished my first Moon landing in RSS/RO/RP-1 today, and it actually went quite well. My only reload was to attend to the impactor contract on the EDS stage, but I actually managed to survive the descent on the first try, even though I ran out of props (lousy suicide burn calculator; I should have had some reserve) and impacted at 20m/s. The landing gear, descent engines and tankage was destroyed, but the procedural avionics/instrument package and solar panels survived just fine to secure the landing contract. Sorry, no pics; nothing really exciting to see anyways

I posted these in the photo showcase thread, but they are related to West Coast geology, so here's some pics from Port Alberni on Vancouver Island, at a little place called Hole-in-the-Wall, where you can see where the sedimentary layers were folded in some ancient seismic event:

Cool animation...

It can be argued that since no planetary orbit is a perfect circle, at some points the planet is moving away from the primary, and at other points it is moving towards the primary…

Well, as far as I can tell, Spot is much like a horse: a self propelled chassis. What it can do depends on what you equip it with; with Spot that's usually cameras and other sensors for inspections, although there is also an arm available. And it can operate follow a programmed route autonomously. I think it's the ATLAS testbed that's still under remote guidance. https://www.bostondynamics.com/resources/blog/doing-more-spot Just replace/upgrade the controller tablet with AI and stand back...

Psyche On! https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/06/nasa-says-its-metal-mission-psyche-is-back-on-track-for-an-october-liftoff/

So Boston Dynamics has put SPOT on the market at $75k, IIRC. They reallly need to make that chassis mass-producible to bring the cost down by a couple of orders of magnitude. Then the attach node could mount a vacuum cleaner, with a robotic snake-hose to reach wherever it needs to. The AI would be needed to identify dirt and then steer the hose to remove the dirt. Yeah. That would be scary, never knowing where it'll decide it needs to stick the hose, and how it'll get it there...

Whole lotta Rosie...

Boeing is finding itself between a rock and a hard place with Starliner. https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/06/to-keep-starliner-flying-boeing-must-make-some-hard-choices/

Now if only one of these livestream opportunities would coincide with Saturday night. SNL could have a field day with that!

You’re probably right, although fact-checking the AIs will be a probably be a growth industry for awhile. Except if they’re using google to fact-check, then how does one know the Google AI is giving accurate results? It’ll be the same old tailchasing of bogus papers supporting bogus claims ad infinitum. Robotics was supposed to be a game changer for the last 50 years. While automation has been a boon to productivity, I still don’t have a full-service robotic housekeeper. The marriage of AI and robotics opens the door to the proverbial post-apocalyptic scarcity future.

This is… wow. How many wiring harnesses need to be fixed? How many miles of harness?

The thing is, SpaceX already has a market for Starship in Starlink, which benefits from every dollar Starship can save them on launch costs. So they are providing both the chicken and the egg, and ideas that could never leave the drawing board because there was no way to launch it finally have the possibility of cutting metal. Commercial Lunar has already emerged.

Map of all active and planned Solar System missions and their destinations as of June 1st 2023:

Oh wow. Some friends are on holidays at a wedding in Mexico. Three hours ago, the resort staff (Bahia Principe, outside Cancun; same resort we went to a few years ago) went on strike because they hadn't been paid. The restaurants shut down one by one, so there's no food being served, just booze. They're rationing their bag of popcorn. Reports are that no one is allowed to leave, and only returning day trips are allowed in

Probably posted before, but still gorgeous.... https://i.imgur.com/r05ERqW.mp4

Makes sense. Cylinders can be spun or wound/wrapped. The squared-off portion of the circular section could carry infrastructure pipes and conduits.

Nailed it!

I recall an old story about how the instrument panel light bulbs in a Lear jet are identical to the dashboard bulbs in cars, but cost (10X? 100X?) as much for that reason. Guess which replacement bulb was usually used?

Bad luck and incomplete simulations. Space is so freakin hard....

And if I have both?