I'm excited for CLPS to actually get going. One payload that I'm interested in on this mission is the International Lunar Observatory (ILO). I think moving more observatories off the Earth has real benefits, so I'm happy to see someone start that on a small scale.
I keep hoping for another big gain like Kharkiv and Kherson, but all that time let Russia dig in their fortifications and mine everything, so the line just won't move that quickly anymore.
I'm gonna get my shots. I haven't had bad enough effects to matter, so I'll try to do my part for herd immunity. And I work with too many antivax suburban moms to feel safe, so it's also for me, lol.
Virgin Galactic seems so much more exciting than the Blue Origin tourist hopper. They're starting to hit an actual cadence now, so hopefully it's getting less risky. I hope they make it through their financiap trouble and introduce the next gen Delta class. Even if their whole concept isn't commercially viable, at the end of the day, it's cool as hell.
Luna-25 launched on a Soyuz rocket, which is actually derived from an ICBM in the R-7 family. There aren't any active ICBMs in that family anymore, and it seems like their newer liquid fueled ICBMs use different fuels and engines. They could share avionics, structures, and upper stages, but the heavy lifting is done pretty differently.
*As far as I can tell from memory and a quick Wikipedia scan
So, the ISS still relies on the Russian side to stay up. Russian Progress spacecraft do most of the reboosting for it to stay in orbit. It stinks, but that's still the reality up there. At least the war got every Western satellite off Russian rockets, but we're still doing crew exchanges, where a Roscomos Cosmonaut flies on a SpaceX Dragon 2 and a NASA Astronaut flies on a Soyuz.
I wish NASA would have been able to fund ISS replacements sooner so we could get out of there before 2030.
I've worked with a couple "senior technicians" (companies will probably be goofy with titles without a degree) who were indistinguishable from some of the software engineers, other than the title. Some were hired off the bat as a software technician, and other started on the hardware test side and moved over.
I guess I'll give NASA the benefit of the doubt until they say what the alternate mission profiles are? Repeating Artemis II feels like a waste. I could see some value in going to a minimal Gateway (just HALO+PPE) or just to NRHO before Gateway is ready. If they could launch an SLS+Orion per year then yeah, maybe, but we'll be lucky to get 4 total this decade.
Ouch. Deprioritizing Rocket 4 seems like their least bad option. It doesn't even seem like there'll be a market for it if it ever gets made. I'm honestly surprised they're still around at this point.
Ax-3 is scheduled to fly in January with paying customers from Italy, Turkey (their 1st astronaut ever), and Sweden. It's cool to see that there's demand for this type of mission, and I'm glad that Axiom is getting more practice en route to having their own station.
This is the last Antares to fly with a Ukranian 1st stage and Russian engines.
The Cygnus is also bringing up a fresh batch of hardware, which is always interesting. Most of the payloads go way over my head and outside my area of expertise, but it's fun to dig into and read up on them.
The core of the bill would direct NASA to establish an active debris removal program. That would include funding research and development activities “with the intent to close commercial capability gaps and enable potential future remediation missions for such orbital debris,” the bill states. NASA would also fund a demonstration mission for debris removal and allow it and other agencies to procure debris removal services.
Let's clear out some big targets! This is great. We aren't anywhere close to Kessler syndrome, but proactively going after some dead sats and rocket 2nd stages will help prevent a lot of future headaches.
That feels like a stretch. They're hosting their own instance. The only accounts on their instance are their own verified ones. There are literally some European governments that have also done this on Mastodon. If you're worried about them over moderating comments sections, that sounds about the same as a comments section on any news website. Other instances can defederated from them. Other people can post a link to their article and have comments go off in an instance where the BBC isn't also the admin/moderator.
There are some immediate smaller problems that could eat some quick money, like funding Mars Sample Return, uncancelling Janus, some one-off funding for an ISS deorbit tug and commercial stations, and probably untold amounts of facility maintenance.
But yeah, an immediate doubling without warning doesn't sound like a recipe for success.
I'm excited for CLPS to actually get going. One payload that I'm interested in on this mission is the International Lunar Observatory (ILO). I think moving more observatories off the Earth has real benefits, so I'm happy to see someone start that on a small scale.