YNM

Well it'd mean they'd overfly straight through South America, but I guess by that point it's just the 2nd stage most of the time.

Apollo 12 and Challenger are fairly harrowing examples of what could happen if you push it outside the boundary set by nature. Exact weather in an instantaneous window is almost impossible to tell days or even hours or tens of minutes before. Given that the baseline predictions was pretty high anyway (40% is still somewhat hopeful), it's better for them to risk having a scrub rather than missing out a window at all by not even preparing for it. If there was a tropical storm over the launch site obviously they wouldn't even try to prepare, but if it's only somewhat overcast, who knows ? Although I'll say that, given these experiences, NASA might make a new guideline for when one can launch based on forecast percentages. Falcon 9 is not Space Shuttle that has a lot more tolerance on the launch window.

Ah ok, so they do avoid to overfly Haiti / Dominican Republic and the NE coasts of South America. An SE launch to ISS inclination would have to launch at ~135° azimuth, which is well outside the approved azimuth range or requires significant dogleg. (they should launch NE to ~45° azimuth assuming no doglegs.)

That can be arranged by a hurricane much further to the west...

And you'd have to overfly The Bahamas and Carribean as well, so maybe that's that... Night for you, midday for me XD

Is it possible for them to launch southeast instead ? Weather looks much clearer in that direction on Saturday and Sunday as well

Crap, I didn't know it was that bad. Hopefully people managed to get through...

Plasma is simply a state of matter, as a function of their energy and density. Depending on what the kind of matter is in the plasma, their overall thermal properties may differ, but the individual particle's specific properties are more or less the same. For this reason, normally "cold" plasma is merely utilizing the lightest matter normally encountered - electrons - and as such, they have low energy density and doesn't really bother with the much heavier atomic nucleus. Fluorescent lamps and CRT tubes are technically utilizing electron plasma in order to generate light. Problem is, fusion specifically has to do with the much heavier atomic nucleus - at least 1000 times heavier than electrons - which means that, whether you like it or not, the energy density required would almost always has to be high enough for it to happen in a meaningful rate, and that energy is manifested in heat.

JAXA-hosted HTV-9 capture and berthing livestream link (docking scheduled on May 25 21:15 JST (UTC +9) / 12:15 (UTC) / 08:15 (UTC -4) :

Yeah but they wouldn't be in one piece...

Yeah, one thing sure is that an autonomous module would generally require connections that allows docking or at least berthing. Most of the USOS connectors doesn't allow this - hence they need to send it up in a shuttle and then do manual work for connecting the modules up. However I have to note that none of the currently available berthing and docking ports are anywhere as large as the fixed connectors they have on the USOS. There's also no way so far for one to dock / berth a truss structure, so stations built from autonomous modules definitely have to be of lower profile. One thing that's been missing since the Shuttle is the capability to return whole crafts (modules / sats) back, although I wonder if such capabilities are ever required again...

It can also be somewhat intentional - John Glenn, one of the Mercury astronauts, was later re-flown on the Space Shuttle in 1998. I'm actually wondering how they'd launch new station modules into space for stuff like Artemis - will there be a common tug of sorts, in the same way Pirs/Poisk utilizing Progress, or like Zarya and Zvezda (being able to fly autonomously) ? (Merged by Mod upon request)

They might be already more familiar - one has flown as pilot twice, the other as mission specialist. The same way how they flew Apollo crews on STS-1.

I sure have missed out a lot - didn't know Crew Dragon with crews is only next week...

I know that they plan to test the H3 rocket by the end of the year, but seems to me it's never really mentioned that this would be the last H-IIB rocket launch (it was clear that this is the last HTV though). H-IIA will still fly so the upper stage, SRB and first stage engine is there; H3 will utilize the same extended tank so it's not a stretch to think they will still be able to fly it again as long as H-IIA remains on the table.

JAXA-hosted livestream on YouTube for the (hopefully) last H-IIB launch / last H-II Transfer Vehicle (Kounotori 9) : (new archival video link) Livestream description contains advisory against spotting the launch directly (the livestream link has been up since like 3 weeks ago). Launch time approx. May 21 02:30 JST (UTC+9), or May 20 17:30 UTC / 13:40 UTC-4 .

Are there keyboard key shortcuts for the roll control ? Also, apparently Zvezda doesn't feature a collision box...

Science Principal Investigator disliked, too much RCS clouds around station

Pretty sure they would rather not have anyone else on their dirt, be it "east" or "west". (I'm not from the US or Russia.) That depends on how one wants to see it honestly. How long is the other superpower going to pretend that they are concerned ? Not sure about that now - Sri Lanka's Hambantota was done with no single ammunition utilized, meanwhile the rooster has become old and senile. It wasn't entirely secluded and in secret, but they definitely have a lot of such moves being played across the world. Also they've definitely dominated the marketplace, so much so that the whole world was crippled when they gone awry. Their immediate neighbors do generally keep them in check, but we don't know for how much longer.

What most of war effort sums up to IMO. Hiding in plain sight until the last possible minute (or even beyond). Best kind of war is wars that doesn't even look like one - physical warfare is overrated, just make the ruling structure collapse and install your puppet.

CubeSat deployment livestream :

Not a song - just a combination of stuff.

But you said the humans are also immortal ? Also, if they understand "honor and glory", doesn't that make them competitive, and practically the same as humans ? Though, even if it wasn't, I'd honestly like to know what kind of alien psyche you could turn up. IMO most depictions of aliens right now are far too simplistic - which kinda works insofar as to make them "alien" - but it does make you wonder if they really never learned anything in their course of civilization.

Yeah but they'd still be vulnerable to, say, an explosion, or a collision, or being vaporized. Sure average lifespans would increase greatly, but all obituaries would be "killed in an explosion", "killed in a crash", "killed by vaporization". Honestly ? I'd rather have shorter lifespans as long as my death won't be in a sorry state.

You mean a non-zero chance for something to happen, regardless of how slight it is, would never add up to one ?