4994

ALIEN LIFE FOUND ON MARS!!!

4995

At the end of the Starship day talk. A local parent ask Elon if he would come to the local school carnival/fundraiser here is with Ash-12 in tow

4996

More follow up on Starlink for Ukraine

4997

We may have found Earth 2.0 boys!

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00400-3

4998

On the other hand, we may have lost coronal loops:

4999

This is something that happened a while ago, but it is space-adjacent!

Love that this history is being kept alive.

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There are (unfunded!) plans for catching up with 'Oumuamua. If our yet-to-be-built probe launches by 2028, we could catch up to it by the 2050s.

“Heeeeyyy, leaving the solar system so soon? We haven’t even really had a chance to chat yet.”

Once a rendezvous occurs, the article gets fuzzy as to what would happen after that. Our probe almost certainly couldn’t house a boarding party. At least not one with human marines. Maybe our probe and the extrasolar visitor would just drift together to 'Oumuamua’s next rest stop.

5001

You do know what might happen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KB6iAjfpBPk

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Think this is 394ft… or about 22 giraffes.

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Half-giraffes!

5006

That’s about 70 and a half smoots.

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Some really important good news in that article:

“We now have achieved what’s called diffraction-limited alignment of the telescope. The images are focused together as finely as the laws of physics allow,” said Marshall Perrin, JWST deputy telescope scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute. “This is as sharp an image that you can get from a telescope of this size.”

Rigby said that, at this point, if something goes wrong, such as a problem with one of the instruments, there would be “partial degradation” of the science but not a total loss, which would have been the case in earlier phases of commissioning. “There were parts on this mission where this was going to work or we’re done. We’re past those points now.”

5008

The sanctions against Russia will impact a bunch of space missions, according to the FT. There’s a European Mars rover that would have used a Russian rocket, but will now miss the intended launch window, and Russian launches from French Guiana that won’t happen.

5009

NASA supposedly has the announcement of a major Hubble discovery next week.

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Too bad the NASA IG estimates it will cost $4.1 billion per launch, and will be able to launch at most once a year.

5011

And it’s chance of taking the title of heaviest lift vehicle ever launched seems to be about zero. There seem to be every indication that SpaceX will get a launch of Starship/BFR in before a SLS block 2 launches. Also the Starship will likely be cheaper. I don’t have a source for that, just going by SpaceX reputation for efficiency in these things.

5012

On top of Elon’s whole getting to Mars thing, SpaceX is banking their future on Starship due to the fact that they expect the price/weight to be even lower than Falcon9.

5013

SpaceX is hoping to be able to launch Starship for less than $10,000,000 a pop. That’s 1/400 the price. The magic of re-usability and designing stuff to be mass produced, rather than bespoke components carefully sourced from each congressional district.