StrandedonEarth

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?

Yeah, it’s on my playlist too and it does have some good comm clips: “39 nautical miles in altitude, 42 nautical miles downrange…. [something that sounds unprintable but must be ‘nice view, nice view,’ it seems late for MaxQ]… 6200 feet per second.” So I had to do some research, if one can call Wikipedia research. The commentary was by Hugh Harris, KSC Public Affairs Officer, so I’m guessing he was using the numbers available to him. There’s also a story on that wiki page about how the song came to be: I think they succeeded... Not-on-mobile edit: I so wanted to do a Kerbal re-creation of the Countdown video, but I don't have the time for my fledgling skills to pull it off

The difference between actual cost and amount billed goes into the “black budget” for top secret alien military research projects…

Obligatory:

… unless you need to launch a battleship to fight the alien invaders who hold the orbital high ground… The first boom isn’t the problem. It’s getting the second boom to fire at the right time…

Did they now…? Officially? What altitude did they reach?

I don't know that this gives you what you're looking for, but have you tried holding your mobile in landscape mode? You can also see how some of those icons don't stand out very well in dark mode....