Serious answer- SpaceX is building the deorbit vehicle then turning it over to NASA, who will have full control over it.

One of Starship's engines on the lowest setting would tear the station apart. Regardless of whether they make this based on Starship instead of something more reasonably sized like a Dragon or Falcon 2nd stage, it'll still need either a new engine design or a big cluster of Dracos. It'll be something custom.

Regarding their Artemis work- the payments are milestone based, so they get money as they pass milestones. Engine relights and ship to ship prop transfer are some of the next ones.

Regarding their other customers- the Starship manifest includes another moon cruise, several satellite launches, and a lot of Starlinks.

There's no way Russia builds a new station. The timeline for them getting Nauka to orbit basically proves that it's impossible. They've been trying to buddy up with China to visit theirs, though.

I was kind of hoping for Impulse Space, but they're probably too unproven.

Speed limit changes should be accompanied by speed humps / raised crosswalks, narrower lanes, narrower vertical space using trees, planters, bollards, etc, more frequent stops or mini roundabouts, curb bumpouts, etc etc.

Just changing the speed limit without changing the physical space will only do so much.

Are you talking about protesting by not voting or wasting a vote on a 3rd party? Without ranked choice voting, the only good spot for that is primaries and small local elections. The lesser of two evils is still the lesser of two evils. Life will be a hell of a lot worse for tons of people if the former guy wins again.

What? It could absolutely be worse. Look at the policies in Florida/Texas/Idaho against education, trans people, voting rights, labor rights, etc. I'm glad we at least got who we got. We could have done way worse.

What kind of reactions? I guess, personally, I'd rather have reactions like what I've had than long covid.

I'm planning on getting my flu+covid vaccine double tap the 1st week of September.

I think you're overestimating the power of a "Democratic Majority" anchored by Manchin and Sinema.

Ouch. I'm glad you talked to a doctor about it.

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.

"Security as a Service"

It's so frustrating how expensive this thing is.

I get that SLS and Orion have insane congressional approval. And keep getting overfunded because of it. And a lot of that money would go away without them. And there's a lot of interesting development in HLS and CLPS that wouldn't exist without them. But it still just stinks to see how expensive SLS is and that there's basically nothing that can or will be done about it.

Anyone who has had to take any kind of training about dealing with government documents should be beside themselves after seeing the bathroom picture. It's just insane.

Wirecutter and RTINGS both do a lot of testing and reviews, including for headphones.

This feels like a good spot to remind folks that you can get free at-home covid tests from covid.gov.

If you haven't gotten one in a bit, covid vaccines are also free in the US, either through your health insurance or through the Bridge Access Program.

So they really just turned off the Apollo token out of spite, then?

And it will hallucinate and give wrong answers

I wish they would just say "I don't want one" instead of trying to justify it with myths about lifetime emissions or whatever. It's the same thing with SUVs vs station wagons or hatchbacks- just say "I want the big one" instead of trying to peddle myths about safety or something.

Wait, does Lemmy federate with Mastodon? How does that work?

That's a heck of a rideshare!

I'm so here for this moon cavalcade, and that's the less interesting mission of the two. Best of luck to JAXA.

"Only" $29 billion for the Space Force.

Whatever "special space activities" procurement means, it got about a half billion dollar cut.

It's just maddening. The money could go to so many better things, but it has to get funneled to the same bloated old Shuttle contractors.

Tab groups?

Maybe this is a better question for degoogle@lemmy.ml, but:

What's a good way to get off Google Photos and Drive on my phone? It looks like Proton seems like the right fit, but compared to Google One for $20/year, Proton for $120 seems like a bit much. I guess you're paying to not be the product? Although, shoot, my VPN auto-renewed for $100 a year, so I guess I'm already paying $120...

Let's do both?

I completely agree with you that big industrial polluters are the main problem. I also think that having the mindset every day to live more sustainably and reduce personal waste is valuable, even if it's really just a drop in the bucket overall. It can be eye-opening and a step toward bigger steps like voting, advocacy, boycotts, and conversations with others.

I would rather do something infinitesimally small than nothing.

Hmm, counterpoint, I ask that he not try to take democracy from me?

Hopefully they can get get to a root cause, corrective actions, and return to flight pretty soon. They had a good launch success streak going and were hitting a pretty solid launch cadence, so this really stinks. Electron has been the best (practically the only?) smallsat launcher, and I'm looking forward to their bigger Neutron rocket, so I wish them the best.

Their stock dropping 20% this morning really reinforces my dislike for the stock market.

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.

I mean, on the bright side, there are worse ways they could have spent the money. But yeah, I'm not exactly praying for a stunning success for them.

Twitch having 1400ish employees before the layoffs doesn't seem too crazy, right? Cutting 35% is insane, though.

One of the jobs that I worked for awhile had a bunch of old timers waiting for their pensions to be ready and newer people who only lasted a few years, with basically nobody in between. The old timers seemed weirdly surprised that everyone who didn't have the same heritage/grandfathered in incentives and benefits didn't want to stick around. I got to watch the tail end of the transition from the old engineer-run company that all the old guys talked about, to one run by beancounters who stiffed people on raises, bonuses, and promotions when times were good, and had plenty of layoffs when times dropped to ok. Thanks Jack Welch. I left pretty much right after my 401k match was fully vested.

STOKE HOPPED!

Stoke is one of my favorite new space companies. I love their giant capsule aerospike 2nd stage thing. This is my favorite among the different concepts for fully reusable rockets. Starship will kill people of a heart attack if the impact doesn't get them. Blue... I'll comment if they ever do anything. But a capsule? I'm here for a giant capsule.

It looks like there are a few new articles since this one came out:

https://spacenews.com/gao-report-calls-for-more-transparency-on-sls-costs/

https://spacepolicyonline.com/news/gao-nasa-not-transparent-about-unaffordable-sls-costs/

Neither of those mention SpaceX at all, and the OP article just mentions them and Blue in the context of engine prices.

On the EV point specifically- big EVs are bad, too. They're still spraying tire particulate, and their high weight is more dangerous for pedestrians, small cars, bikes, kids, etc.

For clarity's sake, I think it's worth pointing out that you're talking about the City of London, the 1 square mile with a population of under 10,000.

Rev up those space tugs!

It'll be interesting to see which approaches companies take, like whether they opt to take a slight payload/Delta-V hit to keep prop for deorbiting or heading to a graveyard, or if tugs are more popular.

Time for The Expanse?

If China can help push the next space race, I'm all for it. I know that papers like this have come and gone in the past, but it's starting to feel more attainable.

Same. The tab sync from desktop to mobile is also really cool.

They've actually done 2!

The 1st, in 2019, didn't get to the ISS. Bad clock code made thrusters fire like crazy and run out of fuel.

The 2nd was on the launch pad in '21, but Florida air made valves seize. It launched in '22, had 2 thrusters fail, but still got to the ISS and back.

Before this crewed flight test, they've been replacing parachute harnessing and flammable tape.

It kinda just looks like ground pork