I can absolutely see China sticking to that 2030 landing goal. They’re nailing their R&D goals so far.

NASA says it needs to haul the Artemis II rocket back to the hangar for repairs

This is the SLS rocket, an unholy abomination of legacy space shuttle parts kerbal’d together and using the latest in 1970s rocketry technology. It was designed this way because the US senate, holder of NASA’s pursestrings, specifically wrote it into law that NASA must build and fly this stupid thing so that the defence industry contractors who made the space shuttle could continue their grift without investing into new R&D.

This specific vehicle is intended to carry four astronauts on a looping orbit around the Moon as a dress rehearsal for the Artemis III mission intended to land astronauts on the Moon. Bringing it back to its hangar for repairs after several launch delays is yet another indication of what a grifting clusterfuck the entire Artemis program is. Cost estimates are officially USD $2.5 billion per launch just for the rocket, no payload, and unofficially-but-credibly-sourced as being about USD $4 billion per launch. The primary contractor is Boeing. They can build one roughly every 18 months. It costs about USD$26000 per kilogram to lift a payload to orbit even using the optimistic official-NASA numbers, but probably more like USD$40000 in reality. And it uses solid rocket side boosters of the exact same design that killed the Challenger crew. You can’t turn solid rockets off in an emergency, they either burn themselves out, or explode.

(Insert standard “my respect for SpaceX accomplishments is strictly for the scientists and engineers and technicians and not the know-nothing shithead who owns the company” disclaimer here.) SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy in comparison can lift about 70% of what SLS can do on a single launch (64 tonnes in expendable mode vs SLS’ 95 tonnes). And it can do it for about USD$2350 per kilogram, less than 10% of SLS’s per-kilogram cost. And it can launch every week. And it uses propulsion that’s basically the safest you can get in rocketry: turn-off-able liquid engines running on kerosene and oxygen - the same as the renowned Soyuz itself.

Watching spaceflight R&D nowadays is basically full-time

Good license choice (AGPLv3, the best there is for online services), good code of conduct (for example explicitly protecting things like gender identity and expression of contributors), but effectively headquarterted in Sweden (new NATO member state, member of the Fourteen Eyes, and a government pushing backdoored-encryption laws).

I think the lead dev’s heart is in the right place, but by an unfortunate accident of geography it can’t be immune to NATO shenanigans. Whether or not that’s a dealbreaker is up to the individual.

I wonder when Trump will learn the term “stacking the court”.

A reminder, this is the country where Hexbear is hosted.

I’m going to buy a metal baseball bat and have the words “Spirit of Clair Patterson” engraved in huge letters on it.

since the law is exempting politicians

But only politicians who toe the capitalism line. If this guy had advocated for living wages instead of sniffing underwear, he’d probably have a mysterious car accident.

Teleportation.

Oh come on now! It’s a decisionmaking system where there’s no actual thinking involved, just mindless algorithmic responses using half-baked processes and crap input data. I don’t see how AI can replace that system anytime soon.

I can’t wait to see where everything goes!!

I wouldn’t dare spoil anything, but I have a hunch you’re not going to be disappointed.

Whoever was involved in the planning of the latest No Man’s Sky expedition is absolutely diabolical in the choice of terrain. That was a ton of fun. I love the overhaul of the Colossus customization and the new gravity gun mechanics.

I still think this is all because Trump is too stupid to understand mercator projection.

This is amazing. Without spoiling anything, the major running plot is extremely relevant to current world events. It’s aged very well. It’s refreshingly free of “end of history” brainworms for an American sci-fi show made in the recent-post-USSR era. The CGI is a little cheesy but it’s not as bad as some people would claim. And I know for damn sure that hexbearians will love the S1 episode “By Any Means Necessary”. If the episodes are embeddable I think it would make for a fantastic hextube experience, the moral of the story is basically “shoot fascists on sight” which is a message that I think many reading this can get behind.

Trekkies are going to love a lot of the guest stars. Fans may have bickered, but the production crews and actors of TNG/DS9 and B5 were on very friendly terms, you’ll see a lot of familiar faces getting to play against type in fun ways.

Spoiler-free advice to new viewers:

Don’t google anything. Go in totally blind. This is not a “Lost” situation, plot questions do get answered in very satisfying ways.

Skip the opening credits for seasons 2, 3, and 4 until you’re about 4 episodes into each. I don’t know if the youtube versions have spoilery credits as I can’t watch at the moment, but most streaming platforms have the spoiler-credits. I’ll update this later when I can watch the youtube version and confirm.

The first season is a little uneven. I’d say it’s about on par with DS9 in that respect, it’s certainly nowhere as bad as TNG S1/S2 were. It soon finds its feet in S2 onwards. It took a little time for some of the characters to be fleshed out and for the showrunner/writer and actors to nail down the performances. There’s a tragic IRL reason for one famously wooden S1 performance, but that’s resolved by S2.

I’m wondering if it’s also about having factories in places difficult for Russia to bomb.

I’ve spent too many decades with C and its cousins to wrap my brain around Python. These days I’m pretty much just using Go, with a little C++ for microcontroller-powered projects.

That’s fair, it does have a steep learning curve and the gameplay isn’t everyone’s cup of tea.

The key is to build small bases on resource hotspots, and to start with a focus on the resources needed for survival and base building. Rusted metal to refine to the various ferrites to build prefab base modules and mineral/gas extractors, copper to refine to chromatic metal for several things, gold for solar panels, oxygen and sodium for basic survival, multi-biodome base on a good power hotspot for lots of fungal mold to refine to carbon for batteries and to power carbon-fueled tech, runaway mold to refine to nanites, etc. Once you kick start the base building resources and basic survival consumables then you can build tons of bases for everything else really quickly, no more scavenging for basic supplies for hours.

Of course that’s just one play style. I’ve been doing that in an abandoned-universe game the last few months and I find it very relaxing and contemplative. It’s almost Red Dwarf-ish, you’re the last person in the universe. I’ve been exploring a star cluster on the edge of the galaxy and setting up dozens of resource bases and a few elaborate decorative bases in locations with great views.

I’m excited to see further R&D successes for the Mengzhou capsule. It’s a good design, a big improvement over the Soyuz-derived Shenzhou. At this point I have little doubt China will land on the moon on schedule. There’s always the chance of some showstopper issue in the future, but so far so good.

I really like Long March 10. In a way it’s like a scaled down Saturn V, and almost certainly way cheaper on a kilos-to-space basis. And I especially like the crew-safe propellants. No solids, no hypergolics, just plain old kerolox and hydrolox which is about as safe as it gets in spaceflight.

I adore this game. Star Trek meets Minecraft meets pulp sci-fi cover art visual style. It’s the game I’ve dreamed about since I was a kid watching first-run Star Trek TNG.

I’d bet it works for a day or two, then your account will be suspended due to “suspicious activity” and will require this ID process to unlock the account.