Bimfred

joined 7 months ago
[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Right now, the Earth is losing mass at about 55 000 tons per year. Yes, losing. About 100 000 tons of hydrogen and helium escapes the upper atmosphere, partially offset by roughly 45 000 tons of dust and meteorites getting scooped up along our orbit.

Considering this has been happening for millions of years, I think we're quite safe from affecting the Earth's mass and orbit within the span of even centuries.

But it's much more likely that the majority of material mined and processed in space will not be coming down to Earth. It's much better put to use in orbital construction, or shallower gravity wells like the Moon and Mars.

You're entirely right that getting to the rocks, and getting the mined stuff to where it's actually useful, are gonna be a problem. Maybe we'll finally get some nuclear thermal engines, cause the shite ISP of chemical rockets is really insufficient for these trips and ain't no one wanna wait on the gravity assists.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

Fingers crossed this woman doesn't end up with a Zydrate addiction. It comes in a little glass vial, you know.

[–] [email protected] 44 points 3 weeks ago

NASA has the measurements of all their astronauts and Dragon flight suits for Butch and Suni are already made.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

Crew Dragon has been solely responsible for the US side of ISS rotations for four years, without incident. 8 successful missions, not counting the privately funded trips. Cargo Dragon has been doing resupply missions since 2012.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago

Yep. And if they fail to deliver on the lofty expectations they've created here, the backlash is going to be epic. I don't want to root for their downfall, but.... Imma stock up on popcorn.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

A lot of that time, if not the vast majority, is likely performance testing. That's trivial to automate and can be run across 100+ systems simultaneously.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

Because now it's practically a necessity. Before that, you could easily not put a case on your phone, exercise some basic care with it and you would've been fine. None of my previous phones had a case on them. Not a one. Because I don't drop them, I don't throw them and I don't use them for hammering in bolts or whatever. But the camera bump finally got me to put a case on my phone, because the damn thing not sitting flat on a flat surface annoyed me too much.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

The show made a fair few changes from the books, mostly for the better. Off the top of my head, Avasarala and Draper are introduced earlier in the show, Drummer got the consolidated stories of several other side characters and Elvi Okoye's and Ashford's personalities were significantly changed. IMO, Show Ashford is a much more interesting character than Book Ashford. In addition, the season 6 side plot with the kids is told much later in the books.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

Admittedly, I'm not up to date on how the preparation is going, but a Space News article from last month claims they're still looking good for the launch window. Blue may have hoped that ESCAPADE wouldn't be the very first launch, but that ship has sailed. Wouldn't count them out just yet, not until some critical failure lifts its ugly head. But for my money, the most likely, and most disappointing, outcome is that they scrub due to technical problems and end up missing the window. First launches rarely go off without a hitch. Still gonna be rooting for them and watching whatever stream is available.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I'm glad to see Blue starting to aim high, but all of this is heavily dependent on New Glenn's first flight going well. Fingers crossed, there's no major problems with the rocket and they can remain on track for this mission.

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