This two-hour EVA will see the mission crew donning the EVA suits before the Dragon spacecraft is depressurized. After this, commander Isaacman and mission specialist Gillis will egress the vehicle’s forward hatch and perform a tethered spacewalk. In addition to the new suits, the Dragon spacecraft has been appropriately modified to support this mission profile.
I still find it incredible that they've come up with a plan to depressurize and repressurize an entire Dragon. If it works well, this could enable missions which haven't been possible since the Shuttle days.
No, but magnets are, kind of by definition.
In the case of magnets, there’s also a risk of the objects attracting each other within the digestive system
Do not eat a magnet. Definitely do not eat two or more magnets, spaced a few hours apart.
Potential solutions to the heat shield issue for Artemis II include altering the spacecraft's trajectory during reentry or making changes to the heat shield itself. The latter option would require partially disassembling the Orion spacecraft at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, something that would probably delay the launch date from September 2025 until 2027 at the earliest. Another alternative could be to do nothing and fly the Artemis II mission as is.
"The entire trade space is open," Koerner said. "But as far as the actual Artemis II mission, right now, we're still holding to the September ’25 launch date, knowing that we have still a lot of work to do to close out the heat shield investigation.”
Oof, a 2-year slip in the Artemis schedule would be a bit of a setback, but those chunks missing out of the heat shield didn't exactly inspire confidence. Hope they can figure out the root cause and apply a fix in a timely manner.
Other than Stoke, none of them are trying full reuse.
Blue Origin are also investigating the feasibility of a reusable upper stage for New Glenn, at least for now. Jeff touched on this briefly in his recent interview with Tim Dodd (timestamp 46:15).
Blue Origin Suffers Fiery Setback
Was there actual fire involved?
The upper portion of one rocket crumpled into itself, in part due to worker error, while it was being moved to a storage hangar, according to people familiar with the situation. In a separate incident, another upper rocket portion failed during stress testing and exploded
Neither of these sound like an engine test, which is where the fire would be.
In any case, the chances of making that Mars transfer window are looking slimmer and slimmer... I hope they can pull it off.
I wonder what happens if they miss the window? Would EscaPADE go into storage for two years, or would it be transferred to another launch vehicle at the last minute?
Starbase activities (2024-08-21):
Other:
Which thread would meme communities like [email protected] or [email protected] fit in? Are they entertainment, or more casual?
I could watch that weed wacker model train for hours. It's just... delightful.
Hm, it does seem to be a decade or two early for asteroid mining to profitable, but I am nonetheless curious to see what they can do.
Infographic source: rykllan
https://x.com/_rykllan/status/1824161314538729844
https://x.com/_rykllan/status/1824161318523359567
I agree that welcome messages are often just clutter, but I don't think that this means the feature should not be included. For some communities, a welcome message is appropriate. Moderators don't need to use every feature for a given community.