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The new Chief Scientist of the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute is a woman.
Doctor Jessie Christiansen
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looks like something out of a movie. that’s wild!
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Russian Rocket Booster, Not Military Exercise, Prompts Airspace Warning Off California
Anyway, by now it looks like the booster will make itself a nuisance somewhere else (or not at all) and the warning has been retracted.
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Yup. This is pretty much where we are. I find that it leaves out a couple of bits (like congress making NASA reuse Shuttle parts, especially the main engines) and oversimplifies others, but that’s somewhat pedantry on my part and doesn’t alter the fundamentals one bit.
A bit surprised that one of elephants in the room not addressed is the minor detail that not even the bleeding space suits are ready yet. Whatever they are called this month.
(Contractually owed tangent: a 1:75 chance of killing the crew would make Artemis safer than the Shuttle. Ever so slightly, but well done indeed!)
The long and short of it all is: forget a crewed Moon landing in the 2020ies.
(And forget a crewed Moon landing in the 2030ies if Starship stays the HLS. The base model hasn’t flown successfully once yet. A lot of the problems it still has are stuff that absolutely, positively has to work in microgravity and vacuum. Like relighting engines and stuff. Then they have to develop the tankers and the depot. And figure out how to safely transfer a total of ~90 tonnes of cryogenic fuel and oxidizer in at least a dozen flights. And somehow tame hydrogen, which is enough of a jerk on Earth already, in spaaaaace. And so on. I don’t say that it can’t be done, I say that it will need more than five years to do it. No matter how much money you throw at it.)
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Another week, another leak for Boeing’s Starliner crew capsule
[…]
the current launch date and time is NET 3:09 pm EDT on May 25.
[…]
No bet.
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Probably not a meteor, but a big chunk of a comet.
[Comet Fragment Explodes in Dark Skies Over Spain and Portugal - The New York Times (nytimes.com)]
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Pieces of comets are some of the most common meteors. They’re actually what meteor showers are from – the Earth passing through debris that comets leave behind as they pass near the sun.
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You are right. I was thinking it was a rocky metorite.
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Could have been Rocky
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I’ve read about most of those shortcomings in the Artemis program before, but that was a really well-written summary with a lot of great quotes. Depressing as hell, though.
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