@envy I've probably got an unfair advantage in the excitement department because of having been a space nerd since 2001, i.e. 1968. >.>
@truthout_rss_bot Mission Accomplished™.
Destroying public services has long been a goal of the Right.
@artemis I feel like this is related to the "you're overthinking it" thing.
...but yeah, NT people seem to get weird around clarity.
@paranoiapen @NatureMC @SamanthaJaneSmith
I don't know what the fuel mix is in general, but I know that at least some rocket fuel is just hydrogen -- combines with oxygen, leaving behind deadly DHMO (aka water) exhaust.
I think the SRBs (solid rocket boosters -- the first stage) are something different -- let me check it...
Wikipedia confirms that the main rocket is hydrogen+oxygen... and the SRBs are apparently:
I don't know the exact production processes; I suppose the nitrogen (which is in both the oxidizer and binder molecules) might be fossil-fuel derived, but I suspect not?
:queer100:
More space exploration, more science, more caring and empathy.
Less bombs and stupidity.
(I was too young for Trek's first run, but I do remember the moon landing. One of the good things my dad did...)
@SamanthaJaneSmith @paranoiapen P.S. for a little more on how this sort of thing provides scientific benefit, I suggest a little Hank Green.
@SamanthaJaneSmith @paranoiapen
Personally, it gives me optimistic feels that we are still able to do stuff like this despite all the BS we are also doing.
Watching an ISS spacewalk during the previous Tr#mp misadministration was one of its few bright spots (for me) -- a brief view of extreme competence amid all the self-serving twittery.
@Asuyuia 🖖
I find myself thinking optimistic when I think about getting all the sensible people worldwide to collaborate and decide what we want to do, without having to find some way to placate the conservabrains.
...and now I'm watching a live, high-def color feed from a spacecraft approaching high earth orbit...
(Earth slowly rotating in the background as the craft goes around it...)
This is the future I signed up for.
I tend to reserve my ire for the moneylickers who decide things like "it's better if the user has to click more to get what they want because then we get more ad revenue".
We watched the Artemis II launch, with the sound muted, on a laptop screen, while also watching Episode 3 of Starfleet Academy on the main screen.
<anecdote>
I first encountered Dr. Who when my family spent 1973-74 in England (I was 8). The the last episode of the season ended with Doctor #3 regenerating into #4... and then we returned to the US, where nobody even knew what "Daleks" were because, well, there was no way to see the show here. If it wasn't on TV, then you couldn't watch it. (No VHS, no regular international TV.)
...and then in 1980 or so, more or less out of nowhere, PBS started rerunning some then-older episodes, beginning with Doctor #4 -- so I finally got to see the next episode 6 years later.
Now, rewind a couple of years...
I remember being really, really disappointed when the Apollo program was cancelled in the mid-1970s -- after many formative years of having read and watched SF stories where we had Moon colonies and Mars outposts by the 1990s.
This was followed by decades of barely-perceptible forward movement. Nifty-sounding programs were repeatedly proposed, then stripped down, and finally cancelled before ever getting off the ground.
We finally managed to launch a (sorta kinda) reusable shuttle... but then Skylab was allowed to burn up ...and then one of the shuttles blew up. We made another space-station (definitely better than Skylab), but then another shuttle melted while landing and they understandably decided to stop doing shuttles, and it became kind of like having to look under the cushions for rockets to use for each new routine crew-rotation and it felt like we'd just kind of stopped looking up.
</anecdote>
Watching Artemis II zoop off entirely on schedule (on the first actual launch-attempt, as I understand it) -- intercutting multiple live HDTV views from the vehicle and transmitted over a world-wide computer network, no less (no fiddling with the TV antenna to get a clear signal) -- and knowing all the plans they have for future missions -- feels kind of like finally getting to see the next episode of space exploration, 50 years later.
Austerity actually *increases* govt power, because it invariably is pointed at the least powerful people, workers, single moms, children, whatever, rather than say the Marine Corps or Air Force or whatever.
@artemis Having been a parent to 4 kids, hellzyeah -- respecting kids, trying to answer their questions, letting them have earned autonomy: these are not the same as "letting them do whatever they want"; treating someone like a human being does not mean refusing to set boundaries or limits. This is something authoritarians seem to have a really hard time understanding :-/
Wishing all my cool friends a great trans day of visibility. Punch a Nazi in their honour.
@Raeyn Save those antispoons -- in the future, we will be able to combine them with regular posi-spoons to generate virtually infinite energy. ☀️ #lowQualityFacts
...except they don't make anything from any of us here at Hypertwin Manor because UBlock Origin is a thing.