Spaaaaace

Already mentioned upthread, posted for additional infos/links:

This ain’t Boeing very well: Starliner’s first crewed flight canceled yet again

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I keep looking for a source that explains what the “flammable tape” could be. Kapton is used widely but it isn’t known for flammability.

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Do they (Boeing) have Australian subcontractors?

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At least this was a fixed-price contract so taxpayers aren’t on the hook for quite at much as they would be otherwise.

The SLS is another story. Part of the whole design approach for that was supposed to be that the propulsion system made use of existing designs and was supposed to be a known quantity. Didn’t work out that way.

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But, but, but - they re-used so much of the propulsion system parts left over from the space shuttle to save money! Unpossible!

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Clicking through, Pablo Carlos Budassi does make prints, posters, and metal plates available for sale. But, there is also a Patreon account asking for support to keep making infographics under Creative Commons licenses and lower quality versions are uploaded to Wikimedia Commons.

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I won’t hit us? That’s too baaaaaaaad

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Sheep’s guidance systems are notoriously unreliable and usually rely on some measure of external input.

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Like a sheepdog

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Space Collie

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NASA Animation Sizes Up the Universe’s Biggest Black Holes

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2023/nasa-animation-sizes-up-the-universe-s-biggest-black-holes

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28 sheep… what is that in marmots? :thinking: or in sloths?

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James Webb smells someone having barbecue in galaxy 12 billion light years away

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(I think their server must be on Mars from the lag.)

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Researchers have figured out that direct photochemical reactions could provide the oxygen and hydrogen humans need for long-term habitation of Mars or the Moon.

The International Space Station (ISS) relies on photovoltaic-driven water electrolyzers to get oxygen from water. But the two-stage process – converting sunlight into electricity and then using electricity in the electrolysis of water – is costly.

A paper published this week said about 1.5kW out of the 4.6kW energy budget of the Environmental Control and Life Support System on the ISS is used up by the Oxygen Generator Assembly (OGA), which relies on electrolysis. The approach was a dead end in terms of future space exploration and habitation, the study published in Nature Communications states.

[…]

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Addition/emphasis mine.

The launch delay [of 14 months] means that Psyche is not expected to reach its target asteroid, 16 Psyche, until August 2029 instead of 2026.

Space moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you might miss it.

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