SpaceChampion

Tim Dodd, Everyday Astronaut tours a new space company caled Stoke Space that is using an aerospike engine for it's upper stage, and landing too, since it's fully reusable.

Did you know there was a Buffy reboot where she moves to New York?

B5 going to Roku and Tubi. I think it was a year ago today or yesterday we heard CW finalize it's 2022-23 slate, and delaying the decision on B5 by a year. So I imagine we'd hear soon. JMS is very active on twitter at the moment, trying to read the tea leaves is foolish but I want to believe it's a good sign. heh.

I know little of DC comics outside getting hit by second hand hype for some of the bigger events and whatever the hell Superfriends were. I haven't watch a single DC show on CW for instance. Does the political and social setting of Themyscira lend itself to a "Game of Throne style" show, or is this going to be a lot of new invention? Are the Green Lantern Corps really lend itself to True Detective style storytelling, or is it going to be just a buddy-cop scenario?

Kate Winslet to star in HBO's limited series The Palace.

Investment in the space industry took a turn in 2019 when Virgin Galactic became the first space technology company to be acquired by a Special Purpose Acquisitions Company (SPAC). SPACs have a long history of being poor investments, as their trading price typically fall well below their IPO. SPACs are a way for private businesses to quickly become publicly traded by merging with an investment company that's already public. Since that first acquisition, more than a dozen other launch or satellite companies have been acquired by SPACs, as listed in the index here. (Virgin Orbit was spun off and acquired by a different SPAC separately.) Well, now Virgin Galactic's shareholders are suing the company's board for withholding information that cost them money, information relevant to assess the company's viability, such as safety defects. Furthermore, VG board members has been accused of insider trading, with the SPAC's CEO and Richard Branson himself both selling off hundred of millions of dollars of their shares right before bad news was revealed publicly. Former Virgin Galactic Chairman Accused of Insider Sale of Shares Worth $315M Virgin Orbit, on the other hand, has recently received some tiny investments from Branson, not enough to pay the payroll for more than a few weeks. What's going on with that? These are secured investments, which if I understand correctly means he has first dibs on assets if VO goes bankrupt. A sketchy and shitty manoeuvre that's going to get him sued for sure. Out of all the other companies on that SPAC index, I only know somewhat of Rocket Lab and Planet as two great companies that actually launch, and have viable businesses. Their share prices however are below their IPO just like all the other ones. This makes me wonder what's going on behind the scenes.

I hope the next thread has a good Gunn pun title.

20 years ago today, the space shuttle Columbia broke up on descent, losing all her crew. R.I.P. Rick Husband, Willie McCool, Kalpana Chawla, Laurel Clark, Michael Anderson, David Brown, and Ilan Ramon.

Director Ben Mekler is pretending to live tweet from an imaginary DCU press event announcing James Gunn's plan for the DC movies....

Did you have a point? You know the thread and article linked in the thread has to do with a lot more that salutes, right?

America is not ok volume 998

Edit to add: She was apparently diagnosed with cancer in the summer of 2020, and it caught up with her today. R.I.P.

Meanwhile, New Zealand's Rocket Lab successfully launched it's first Electron rocket from U.S. soil, at the Wallops Island launch site in Virginia.

latest trailer for 65.

Most popular streaming shows for 2022: https://variety.com/2023/digital/news/stranger-things-most-streamed-tv-show-2022-1235503095/ Interesting that the most viewed MCU movie was Eternals.

On Monday SpaceX stacked the Starship on Superheavy and did a full wet dress rehearsal of launch procedures, filling the stack with 10 million pounds of propellants. The cold temperatures of the supercooled liquid oxygen and liquid methane caused the stack to shrink by about a half a meter! Nothing blew up! Huzzzah! A further sign that the test went well is they've announced they're moving on to do a full 33-engine static fire test for the Superheavy booster, possible in the next week or two. If that goes well, then next will be the first orbital launch attempt. Could be end of February, could be end of March.

Its just got to be better than Battle Beyond the Stars.

Yes. Though the story is another retelling of Seven Samurai. Hopefully that's just a jumping off point and more is done with it. It was originally conceived as a Star Wars movie, so hopefully Snyder leaned away from that to do more interesting worldbuilding than making it a Star Wars pastiche. The release artwork and photos so far do look great, but the pastiche is clearly there. One of the minor cast is a guy i know, says it's the best set he's ever been on, so there's that.

I ended up enjoying it, it goes in fun directions when they spend most of the season sledding/sailing down the Dnieper with a bunch of people with secret identities trying to get to Constantinople. I couldn't help but think of Sailing To Sarantium. The Jomsberg plotline is good too.

Attack on Titan Season 4 Part 3 will be released in two parts................ seriously, Part 3 Part A and Part 3 Part B??? I think we're in a Zeno's Paradox situation here. March 4th for the first chunk, "some time" in 2023 for the rest.

Falcon Heavy launch today, 5:56pm Eastern

Yes, but the Fisher King is often not the main protagonist, but a part of the Hero's arc as the Sick King that the Hero must go on a quest to heal. I'm not sure Covenant has a comparable hero that finds what he needs to heal. Heroes often have something else less literal than a literal king they must heal too. Repairing a broken sword for instance. These are one time events they want to make happen. Kings are trying to avoid an event. Taking it out of the fantasy genre, where metaphors are literalized, the sacrifice is about their ego. They cannot grow their ego unless they accept a truth and reject a lie that their ego was relying on to protect the protagonist's self image. All stories where characters change are in the end about changing their ego. Sacrificing their self-image is a part of that.

Jason Ning is developing a series for Sony based on Wang DuLu’s Crane Iron Pentalogy, from which most of us know part of the story as told in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.