A meteor isnât a bunch of space junk?
A space probe searching for weird organic molecules on Venus? Reminds me of that scene from season 2 of The Expanse.
âAll the space probes we sent into the Venus atmosphere blew up for some unknown reason, so letâs just go ahead and fly our manned spaceship in and see whatâs up!â
netflix has some new space show that i watched long enough to realize the americans were the underdog good guys and the russisans the underhanded bad guys, and the sheer stupidity of the trope made me turn my tv off.
( okay, okay. i went and watched old new dr who again. where the underdog ex british empire gets to be the good guys. thereâs no winning trope wars i guess. )
the point here actually being: when the breathless presser happened in the netflix show and the intrepid reporter asked: is it true your trip only has a 50% chance of survival?
that should have been my cue.
To bring data down from the heavens, come to GSaaS, says Microsoft as it launches Azure Orbital
Named Azure Orbital and promising ground-station-as-a-service (GSaaS), the offering is aimed at satellite operators whose assets arenât in geostationary orbits and must therefore deal with multiple ground stations to retrieve their data.
SpaceX scuppered by weather once more as skygazers win a Starlink reprieve
That sounds like âAwayâ. Can you imagine any of hose people actually making it through screening?
And now for something completely different: Ultraviolet aurora spotted around comet for first time
Astronomers have discovered an aurora in an unlikely place: Comet 67P.
Itâs the first time the phenomenon has been detected around an astronomical object that wasnât a planet or a satellite.
Iâm on episode 2, and already shaking my head in disbelief. These folks supposedly trained together for a long time, but theyâve got crew members openly discussing mutiny during the initial stages of the mission. 
ETA spoilers
Microsoft will spread its eyewear for the wealthy (or corporate sponsored) across more countries, and has said it is seeing action in NASAâs repeatedly delayed mission to the Moon.
While astronauts don Varjo VR headsets for training on Boeingâs calamity capsule, the CST-100 Starliner, Lockheed Martin has gone down the HoloLens route for the assembly of NASAâs long-delayed Moon ship, Orion.
[âŚ]
For Lockheed and other users of the technology, however, the headset (and tech like it) has brought forth another unexpected boon. Microsoft has long banged on about the collaborative possibilities of the tech, but the distancing arising from the current pandemic has meant that the gimmick of one employee remotely checking anotherâs work, or giving advice based on what is in view, has suddenly become rather significant.
I assume youâre talking about Away.
I watched the first episode of that show because it was recommended by a co-worker, but Iâm probably not going to continue with it. For me, an unforgivable plot element in that first episode was that:
-
The spaceship has an
acidic waste treatment fluid running through its plumbing. -
This fluid instantly ignites in flames if it contacts sweat.
-
The commander of the spacecraft was completely unaware that
the stuff ignites if it contacts sweat. -
How is such a dangerous substance supposed to work as a waste treatment anyway? Pee tends to be salty too, after all.
There was also enough foreshadowing in that first episode to indicate that a big part of the showâs dynamic is about the crew hating each other and not working well together, which begs the question how they would have been selected for the mission in the first place.
Maybe It wasnât a science mission, It was a sci fi reality show like âBig Brotherâ or âIâm a CelebrityâŚGet Me Out of Here!â And they were chosen because It would make the ratings reach the stars.
Sounds more like Space Cadets, which was a reality show in which the producers attempted to convince some gullible, scientifically-ignorant contestants that they were actually traveling into space. They made up some dumb excuse about being in âlow earth orbitâ so the contestants wouldnât experience zero g.
It was a stupid idea because, while thereâs no shortage of dummies out there, itâs next to impossible to find a group of people that gullible. A friend of mine actually worked on the production of the show and said there was a crisis very early on when the contestants all started figuring out that it was complete B.S. well before their supposed space launch, and the producers took them aside one by one and begged them to please not let on that they knew.
I never watched it. Itâs possible that a few viewers were successfully tricked by the producers of the show, but the contestants most certainly were not.
yeah.
i think i got halfway through episode 2. absolutely none of it makes sense. and while i get that netflix always pads its plots with song montages, or long shots of people walking around and whatever â the viewer should have some reason to watch the show.
i couldnât figure out what the heck the hook was supposed to be other than: isnât space cool. ( excuse me: spaaaaace. 
) but they hadnât even gotten on their ship yet.
From my post on another thread:
Imagine if NASA screened its astronauts based on a reality-TV dating show. This is the anti-âRight Stuffâ; itâs âLost in Disfunctional Spaceâ. Itâs as though the worldâs space agencies got together and decided to solely recruit astronauts from characters that Gary Oldman has played in movies, or maybe Steve Buscemi. Everyone either hates each other, is blind, repressed, diseased or has had a state-disapproved affair. So not the people youâd think were plausibly selected to work together in a confined space for three years by a risk-averse government agency.
NASAâs hefty Martian rover will use an AI brain on a robot arm to map out signs of ancient life on Red Planet
Perseverance, NASAâs latest Martian rover, will extend its two-metre robotic arm and use an AI-powered control system to carefully aim X-ray beams at ancient rock samples that might contain fossilised microbes.
Bennu Jerryâs, anyone? OSIRIS-REx probe to attempt 3 scoops of asteroid next month before bringing samples home
NASA intends to scoop up material from the surface of the Bennu asteroid on 20 October, and has planned up to three retrieval attempts before returning any samples back to Earth.
âBennu is like a time capsule,â said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASAâs Science Mission Directorate, on Thursday. âIt has been out there since the Earthâs beginning 4.5 billion years ago.â
FYI: Mind how you go. Weâre more or less oblivious to 75% of junk in geosynchronous orbits around Earth
Three quarters of the orbital debris floating among satellites in geosynchronous orbits around Earth is not being tracked, an astronomical survey has revealed.
