Spaaaaace (Part 1)

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How many people will be mooning?

https://www.nasa.gov/nasamoonsnap

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James Webb Space Telescope finds first evidence of CO2 in exoplanet atmosphere

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Communicate Star Trek GIF by Bayerischer Rundfunk

Star Trek Bones GIF

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Chances of launch not looking great right now

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Recommendation to scrub again. :frowning_face: I’m getting the feeling that the only thing to do at this point is roll back to the VAB to fix the hydrogen leak. When means probably months before they try again.

ETA: Launch director doesn’t want to scrub yet! Interesting. When the guys in charge of monitoring and fixing the problem tell you you should scrub, it’s wild that you don’t just say “okay.”

ETAA: Aaaaaaand… scrubbed.

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A new space race, because the generation that remembers why the last one was silly is dying off

Everything from smart phones to electric cars and the technology to power them need natural resources to build and maintain them. Too little of those natural resources exist on Earth to keep the production lines going. Mining operations have environmental consequences that are hard to mitigate.

Mining natural resources from the moon, asteroids and other venues outside Earth will become increasingly important if human civilization is to survive and thrive. Every resource from industrial metals such as iron, aluminum and titanium to rare earths is out there for the taking.

thehill.com/opinion/international/3625065-why-china-is-fuming-over-nasas-artemis-program

That article is really something. We need to beat the Chinese in this space race in order to mine iron?? How could space Iron ever possibly be cheaper than getting it on earth? Pig iron generally costs well under $1000 per metric ton.

I’m not against space exploration when done right, but most of the plans I’ve heard about mining precious elements like Helium-3 on the moon have stuck me as a post-hoc rationalization. People who wanted to build permanent manned moon bases anyway are looking for any available explanation as to why it wouldn’t be completely pointless. Not that I really blame them. If I was still excited about the idea of a moon base I’d probably be doing the same thing.

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Just dumping all our old stuff in the ocean and then distilling rare elements back out of the seawater might be really inefficient, but I bet it’s still way cheaper than mining asteroids and sending some shiny rocks back to Earth :rocket:

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Jovian Mario Kart.

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And they usually never discuss how they’re going to get that stuff down to the ground without destroying a large amount of real estate.

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Still images of the moons and Jupiter, edited to look like they were filmed in motion during a flyby. At least the artist was credited.

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Yes, I saw.
All the individual components are true, but the final image is a composite.

Personal point of annoyance: I think these types of creations give the general public a false sense of what is to be expected in space photography and blurs the line between science and art. The artist posted the pictures from his account that touts his NASA credentials which makes it difficult for a lay person to parse what is real and what is manipulated.

And dont get me started on pictures of Nebulae

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