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• Post #4269314

  I appreciate living in a small town that is so excited for its new bike parking (occupying what was two on street parking places outside a pizza joint) that they are having a full ribbon cutting ceremony for it next week.

• Post #4269313

  Ooof. Things not going well for the commercial reboost mission to Swift space telescope. https://science.nasa.gov/blogs/swift/2026/07/28/commissioning-update-for-spacecraft-to-boost-nasas-swift/

• Post #4269312

  I've seen a lot of stupid space startups over the years. A lot. @KO6YQ can attest that at least half the ideas at Space Access circa 2010 were extremely dumb (and that was part of the fun!). But believe me when I say this is the second* dumbest space startup idea I've ever heard. *Number one was a one way trip to Mars in a modified Curiosity rover https://mastodon.social/@sundogplanets/117009801533407828

• Post #4154680

  Just some random photos looking back on 2024. #1 Descending on the narrow gauge Alishan Forest Railway in Taiwan in June. Greenest place I've ever been.

• Post #3821263

  Alex Parker, Tod Lauer, Carly Howett, and myself (L to R) as we saw the first really good image of Pluto, a dozen years ago. We four, plus John Spencer (who took the picture), pulled an all nighter to turn the raw data into a usable color-corrected press release image. I remember my arm violently shaking when I first saw the image, as it was just so much more interesting and complex than I had expected. My nickname for the crew was "The Amalgamated Union of Pluto Colourists". Pretty s...

• Post #3711665

  So apparently the initial plan for the Hayabusa 2# encounter with Torifune was to flyby at 100 km distance, but that was too far for the cameras. So engineers got it down to 10 km, which was better and made the scientists happy. So then the engineers got it down to a few meters, and that terrified the scientists. The eventual flyby distance was 800 m, just larger than the assumed max diameter of the asteroid. And it worked! This image was taken 1 second before the closest approach. #ACM2026

• Post #3546585

  Not bad for municipal fireworks, a week early to deconflict with the neighbors.

• Post #3546584

  The problem of making a decent refreshing lager in the summer and having it on keg is that it's easy to drink a bit too much. #homebrewing

• Post #3546583

  Obligatory Canada Day Avro Arrow posting #avgeek

• Post #3546582

  Yup. Boeing thought they could (because they were taught they could) submit a half baked design and NASA would throw infinite money at it to make it work. Dragon was a life-or-death program for SpaceX, so they put the effort into making it work from the start. And now one might argue that SpaceX is now in that position, expecting that NASA will throw infinite money at them to get Starship to work... https://spacenews.com/report-links-starliner-problems-to-overconfidence-and-unrealistic-schedu...

• Post #2448197

  This is the most important thing that so few outside the space industry seem to understand: Low Orbital Constellations Are Not Permanent Infrastructure. They cost an awful lot to launch and only last a few years. This is not a problem that SpaceX solved, they just spent absurd amounts of money launching a constellation so they could sell it off to to suckers for more the the launch cost before the depreciation kicks in. It's just old fashioned shady business. https://mastodon.social/@...

• Post #1983571

  Time to update the sign: It has been 0 days since I last had to use some weird astrophysical quantity measured in centimeters. #astrodon

• Post #1866907

  If you're an #avgeek, I'm sure you've heard that the reason the F-117 Stealth Fighter was so angular was that computers couldn't calculate the radar signature of complex shapes. This the guy who wrote that code and ran those simulations in the 1970s, creating the modern stealth aircraft from seemingly unrelated maths developed by Maxwell in the late 1800s. https://www.airandspaceforces.com/denys-overholser-stealth-pioneer-whose-work-led-to-the-f-117-dies-at-86/

• Post #1863271

  That's Leo *13*, who refounded the Vatican Observatory. Current Chicago Pope is Leo *14*. Once someone becomes a politician (including head of state of Vatican City), they have to be dead for 100 years before they get an asteroid. https://www.vaticannews.va/en/vatican-city/news/2026-05/vatican-observatory-astronomy-asteroids-pope-leo-xiii.html

• Post #1762663

  Randomly thinking about the wall art in my motel room at the Nullarbor Roadhouse, about 4 years ago. Possibly the most Australian thing I have ever seen.

• Post #1762660

  I might be a simple country astronomer, but this the second time this week that I had to suggest to a confused IT person it might be DNS My /etc/hosts grows longer #ItsAlwaysDNS

• Post #1462352

  Thinking back to 2022 when there were reports that New Glenn's upper stage was in development hell and they were actively funding two separate upper stage efforts (the apparent loser was a reusable upper stage codenamed Jarvis). This was around the same time that it came out publicly that the ex-Honeywell Blue CEO was a massive sexist jerk. At any rate, AST's most recent comm sat will be converted to upper atmospheric ozone-destroying aluminum more rapidly than planned.

• Post #1416552

  Turns out, Americans actually do want trains, even in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. #trains #amtrak https://www.fox8live.com/2026/04/18/amtraks-mardi-gras-line-exceeds-expectations-nearing-100000-passengers-since-august

• Post #1277194

  Starting to look a lot like Christmas #cowx #boulder

• Post #1121533

  If you're wondering who the #Artemis2 recovery ship is named after...

• Post #1044827

  @cvvhrn@sfba.social And last weekend, at it's forever home

• Post #1004330

  @cosmos4u@scicomm.xyz @AkaSci@fosstodon.org @markmccaughrean@mastodon.social @bert_hubert@eupolicy.social It's probably a good question if it was integrated on the ESM before or after arriving in the US. After would've been a whole lot less paperwork.

• Post #980072

  @Pepijn@mastodon.online Cats care not for human obstacles

• Post #951959

  Saw an old friend yesterday. I got to fly on SOFIA for the Arrokoth occultation in 2017. I calculated the ground track we used, and extracted the occultation light curve from very noisy data. Now at the Pima Air & Space Museum, Tucson, Arizona, USA. #astrodon #avgeek

• Post #893597

  Thinking about the Lockheed Martin engineer who has been working on the Orion toilet for 20 years, only to see it fail immediately when someone tries to use it. #Artemis2

• Post #892742

  @isaackuo@spacey.space Same factory, same people. Quality control is critical for solid rockets that can't be tested before flight.

• Post #891646

  Somehow #Artemis2 beat me to finishing

• Post #864978

  @reedmideke@mastodon.social Beefy

• Post #853930

  @sundogplanets@mastodon.social @hannorein@mastodon.social IIRC they use radar primarily, so I bet it means they didn't see anything moving fast until they suddenly saw a lot of things moving fast

• Post #853886

  @hannorein@mastodon.social @sundogplanets@mastodon.social "Internal energetic event" It done blown up