Troy – Invader from Zim

We're at the tip of the iceberg when it comes to space medicine. There are so many unknown unknowns it's crazy. For example, bacteria that we use to produce our antibiotics as secondary metabolites, do so much faster in zero gravity. Brain cancer cells just die in zero gravity. Nobody knows why.

@vast This is the way

Announcing Vast’s strategic collaboration with Cedars-Sinai, home of the Center for Space Medicine Research, on a range of biomedical research initiatives. Haven-1, scheduled to be the world’s first commercial space station, will also host a Cedars-Sinai experiment with Exobiosphere. vastspace.com/updates/vast-a…

@JK_Lundblad The mythical whale meat Japanese lunch... jokes aside, they do understand that meals are important but then they just leave it to the parents in high school after going out of middle school. That is a bit odd.

The food that we feed our children in public schools is insufferable. I remember getting served a chocolate milk, a small bag of fruit, and a sad, soggy piece of bread with cheese on it, something that vaguely resembled "pizza." I took this photo of a typical meal served in a regular Chinese high school. Soup. Eggplant. A Banana. Beans. Some meat. It was positively delicious. Food is energy, energy for our minds. The same minds that we expect to vote, to pay taxes, and to innovate and build the future. If we don't feed our young well today, we are hindering our capacity tomorrow. I hope you will subscribe to Risk & Progress as we work to build that better future.

@CatboyRocketry @peterrhague Keir Starmer killed it x.com/PronouncedAlva…

@Lusavitch @peterrhague CharlieXCX said this is SpaceX Summer

Bit odd they didn’t name the launch provider

@Al_Rationale1 Saw a guy turn off onto an offramp and roll his car (a small bakkie). Fortunately it was uphill so his kinetic energy was scrubbed quickly and he didn't plow into other cars.

causing this kind of damage to a defender should make the punishment more severe

Guess we going back to war over bat guano to fertilise our fields then

@MarieleRedclaw Nice! It looked Starfield/Star Citizen-ish but didn't know you could rebuild the ships. Now if only you can fix the demon-possessed NPCs looking into your soul.

@Lusavitch Starfield I hijacked a ship and redid it from scratch

I build terrible looking ships 😆 But they fly. And space enemies get vanquished.

@PositivFuturist South African corruption is old school, man. Range Rovers and bin bags full of cash. Blame Britain when you get caught, bump off the lawyers and judges when that doesn't work.

Corruption isn’t bald middle age businessmen getting on private jets with briefcases of cash.. It’s charities.. it’s government grants.. it’s migrants helping other migrants cheat our systems.. it’s money laundering fronts and councils run by foreigners for their own interests.. Domestic corruption by foreigners is hidden and defended by wokesters, institutions and media for ideological reasons. Pretty much anything that “helps the poor” requires a deep audit.

@ToughSf "Tanking" is now the official term for travelling somewhere in hibernation.

The smooth blue of Uranus with its rings made visible. Low-energy transfers to this gas giant tank 12-16 years. #space #art by sirgerg. deviantart.com/sirgerg/art/Gl…

Agreed, it's not a major issue. Back before they were generally required to be deorbited, spent upper rocket stages used to just heat up and their residual propellant caused them to explode in orbit, making a whole lot of debris. Since cryogenic fuels simply don't explode without mixing and ignition source, a fuelling accident with a ruptured tanker would be a big cloud of ice crystals and the Starship flailing around like a loose fire extinguisher. Like what happened with Apollo 13. There would be plenty of torn bits and pieces but since the depot would be in low orbit, the debris would drop out fairly quickly. And likely nothing as catastrophic as an actual orbital collision between two satellites, or an anti-satellite weapon test.

@Thargat @Lusavitch I am pretty sure that scenario is not a major hazard. Compared to stuff like TPS I don’t think on orbit refuelling is going to be as big a deal as some make it out to be

There isn’t some magic trick to going to the Moon or Mars. There isn’t any scientific discovery needed. Contrary to bad pop science there isn’t some great problem to be solved. It’s just “do you have a Saturn V or equivalent?” The US built the Saturn V. They went to the Moon almost as soon as it was flying. The Soviet Saturn V never completed a test flight, so they didn’t go to the Moon. The Soviets did build a Saturn V called Energia, flew it twice, and had some plans to go to the Moon with it but their empire fell apart at that moment. The US could have used Energia for lunar/Mars missions but preferred their own stuff. After a lot of time and money NASA built a new Saturn V called SLS and have stated sending astronauts back to the Moon. Critics point to its high cost and low cadence, and suggest it does not provide enough Saturn V for a serious program. Meanwhile, China is developing a partially reusable and then a fully reusable Saturn V for their Moon ambitions. SpaceX wants serious interplanetary travel and so is aiming to mass produce Saturn Vs and make them dirt cheap through full reusability. This will allow them to build bases on the Moon and Mars. You CAN do it by throwing Saturn V mass across larger number of small rockets. Each year Falcon 9 hauls about 30 Saturn Vs worth of mass to orbit. But nobody has even gone beyond paper studies of doing it with lots of little launches. So we build Saturn Vs. Really, we should never have stopped doing that.

@peterrhague Netflix and Labour.

Send this image to someone when you what to absolutely, definitively end a relationship.

@MarieleRedclaw Hmmm. Career in avionics development, or in fact any tech development that involves actual hardware? I think secret volcano bases are an outlier though.

Uh oh. My based sisters, beware. Buzzfeed is on to us!

@peterrhague Truly the material of the future. It will be everywhere. Asbestos jackets, asbestos women's house dresses, asbestos baby clothes.

Need a startup to promote this remarkable mineral!

We had three of the four co-founders of @mastenspace at one place at the same time, for the first time in ~16yrs. Legends.

@SimulantStimul1 @toffee_32 To be fair, this is because Trekian sci-fi showcases humanity's diversity as its strength, and most people use Trek as a template for everything sci-fi.

@toffee_32 literally just saw a post asking why an alien (human) race had different ethnic groups... i dont think people think too hard about this stuff.

I really wish modern sci-fi would've picked some of Jack Vance's mind. So many future human races are so unrealistically homogenous even spread through million light-yeas, in Vance's worlds you have an interesting and bizarre culture for every little town he writes

@Michael41739926 @adesertdryad @toffee_32 Basically the Spacing Guild in Dune.

@adesertdryad @toffee_32 A truly spacefaring people -given the looong travel times involved- would likely become institutionalized -utterly dependent on the artificial environment of space travel- insulated from icky things like gravity and nature.

@simonroyart I've been meaning to delve into the earlier "foundational" classic SF/F writers, like Fritz Leiber. I'll read Vance next. Some of the modern books I've been reading have a clear Vancian influence.

@Lusavitch Yeah I grew up on Niven but I have a real love for the sort of oriental gaze, for lack of a better phrase, of Vance. He has a nice mid century touristic way of describing his strange worlds

Truly one of the finest minds in sci fi, and one who I am always returning to when I need to recharge my own batteries. Who else has books that range from bizarre speculative evolution of man and alien to competing riverboat theatrical troupes?