SpaceChampion

Quote

So in the immediate aftermath, someone at NASA, probably within the crew office, initiated the capability of a commander to lock the hatch if he or she felt uncomfortable about a crew member. It was used frequently in subsequent missions involving payload specialists.

Now i want to rewatch season 1.

Final Season?

On 1/20/2024 at 7:00 PM, A Horse Named Stranger said:

I just assume after HoD she has a few interesting offers, which are not sidekick.

???

Are you confusing Millie Gibson for Millie Alcock?

Quote

A lot of folks have been asking for the final Table of Contents for HARLAN ELLISON'S GREATEST HITS. Here it is.

Preface by me.

Foreword by Neil Gaiman

Intro by Cassandra Khaw

 

Stories

"Repent, Harlequin," Said the TickTockman

I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream

The Deathbird

Chatting with Anubis

The Whimper of Whipped Dogs

Jeffty is Five

Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes

Shatterday

Mefisto in Onyx

On the Downhill Side

Paladin of the Lost Hour

The Beast that Shouted Love at the Heart of the World

I'm Looking for Kadak

How Interesting: A Tiny Man

Djinn, No Chaser

How's the Night Life on Cissalda?

From A to Z, in the Chocolate Alphabet

Eidolons

All the Lies That Are My Life

 

(The Barnes & Noble special edition contains a bunch of rare photos, and a copy of Harlan's typescript for an early version of On the Downhill Side with his handwritten annotations/edits.)

I'm sure some will ask why their favorite story isn't here, or why that story is there, because everyone has their own favorites. These stories are the most timeless, the most relevant, the most award-winning, and the ones most likely to draw the attention of new readers and critics who have not been exposed to Harlan's work before.

Greatest Hits and the relaunch of Dangerous Visions have also been licensed to a significant number of foreign markets, many of whom have never had Harlan's work available to them. This includes Russia, Korea, China, Germany, Turkey, and many others, with more licenses being negotiated as I type this, making this reintroduction of Harlan's work a global event.

There will also be audio-book versions of all three Dangerous Visions volumes available for the first time ever, again making Harlan's work accessible to many folks who have never previously been able to experience it. Blackstone has assembled a murderer's row of some of the best readers around to handle each of the stories.

Both GREATEST HITS and the first DANGEROUS VISIONS edition are coming out the same day, March 26th, and are available for pre-order now at the bookstore or online shop of your choice.

from jms

The audition script for whom is likely Sammael was posted too.  He's going to involved with things in Tanchico.

https://www.wotseries.com/2024/01/17/scoop-a-small-forsaken-sneak-peek-in-season-3-audition-tape/

I think it likely the doorway ter'angreals will be used to go from Tanchico to Rhuidean.  Only question is if there is a world of the finns in between, or something else.

My fancasting based on this audition script rather than the books is Wes Chatham should play Sammael.

4 hours ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

Rewatching Galaxy Quest. First time in a long time. 

Galaxy Quest turns 25 this year. Twenty five. 

Go watch Galaxy Quest. 

The "Ty and That Guy" podcast episode about Galaxy Quest is great look at it.

meanwhile, Axiom Space was hoping to launch a private human crew on a Falcon 9 / Dragon today to the ISS, but it's been delayed at least a day for additional safety checks.

Quote

All four members of the crew have backgrounds as military pilots. Michael López-Alegría will be the commander as an employee of Axiom; Walter Villadei from the Italian Air Force will be the mission pilot. The mission specialists are Alper Gezeravcı who will be the first astronaut from Turkey; and Swedish Marcus Wandt is the first member of the 2022 European Space Agency Astronaut Group to receive a spaceflight mission. It is also "the first commercial spaceflight mission for an ESA-sponsored astronaut". Wandt's component of the mission is called "Muninn" as it will overlap with fellow-Scandinavian ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen's mission – "Huginn". This will be the first orbital spaceflight mission where all crew members have European citizenship.

Rumours of an exoplanet with biosignatures remain rumours while scientists collect and discuss the evidence....

Quote

But is it a hard no? That's a more difficult question. The Spectator featured comments by some serious British scientists, including astrophysicist Rebecca Smethurst, who said, "I think we are going to get a paper that has strong evidence for a biosignature on an exoplanet very, very soon."

Additionally, there was British astronaut Tim Peake fanning the flames with this comment: "Potentially, the James Webb telescope may have already found [alien life]… it’s just that they don’t want to release or confirm those results until they can be entirely sure, but we found a planet that seems to be giving off strong signals of biological life."

Sounds like a pretty hefty planet:

Quote

K2-18 b, an exoplanet 8.6 times as massive as Earth that is 120 light years from our Solar System. Astronomers believe this may be a "hycean" exoplanet, meaning it has water oceans on its surface and a hydrogen-rich atmosphere.

Both methane and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere reported too.  But also dimethyl sulfide.

Quote

So what is dimethyl sulfide? It's an organic compound that you may have smelled if you've ever cooked cabbage. It is emitted by phytoplankton in the Earth's oceans as part of their metabolism process. Critically, on Earth, dimethyl sulfide is only produced by life. That does not prove the existence of life on K2-18 b—but if dimethyl sulfide exists there, it is certainly a hair-raising clue.

So maybe an Algae Planet.  Hopefully not with cylons.

Someone in the comments pointed out an interesting fact.  Since it's only 120 light years away, our radio broadcasts would be reaching it around now.

33 minutes ago, Ran said:

An Englishman having an afternoon walk in the UK telling me this is rubbish does not exactly inspire confidence. Why is this guy supposed to actually know anything related to an American studio and an American production company working on an American franchise? Has he been correct about other Trek-related things in the past, or is he just giving us his opinion disguised as anonymous leaks?

I don't watch most of what he posts, and its a lot of Stargate rumours, but he says he has contacts in MGM mainly, and a few other studios including Paramount.  Some appear to be contacts in the marketing departments that are passing on internal company rumours (which might be true at the time).  But if I remember correctly was right about the Babylon 5 stuff, and that the Michelle Yeoh Section 31 series was becoming a movie instead.

On 1/11/2024 at 2:09 PM, DaveSumm said:

https://deadline.com/2024/01/andor-toby-haynes-star-trek-movie-seth-grahame-smith-writing-1235712646/

Difficult to know what to make of that, an origin of what exactly? Decades before the main bit? Or the George Kirk bit? The Kelvin-verse? Or as far back as Enterprise times, maybe a Romulan War story?

This guy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnceAiZEJKQ says it's a leak by Bad Robot, and they're just pitches that Paramount has not approved, and are now quite pissed off about. 

2 hours ago, Mr. Chatywin et al. said:

Was it any good?

Yes.

So far no philosophy nerd nihilist monologues though.

So.... no True Detective thread that gets 20 pages by morning this time around? 

7 hours ago, Ran said:

For All Mankind finished it's 4th, and possibly penultimate, season (IIRC, they have said they were aiming for five years). It's much better than the 3rd season, despite its flaws.

 

A quick google says 6 or 7 seasons.

6 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Would that scare content producers away from ME projects if it does flop… or… would it push them to get the rights to post LOTR works and try do make these shows properly?

At this point, don't you want them scared off? 

or they've become Reavers from Firefly / Serenity.

2 hours ago, Erik of Hazelfield said:

Those are ambitious goals for the Starship! If they succeed with just half of those then that’d be a resounding success.

If all this came to pass - what would still be needed to be done before a manned trip to Mars could happen?

If what is necessary means you can leave out things needed for the long term plans, then:

1. getting Starship to mars -> orbital refueling
2. getting Starship back from mars -> fuel production on mars from frozen and atmospheric sources of CO2 and water.
3. getting the humans inside Starship to mars -> life support in space (some of it can be scaled up from Dragon)
4. keeping the humans inside Starship alive on the surface of mars -> life support on mars

the last could involve landing near a source of ice to use to make drinking water and breathable oxygen, or they could plan to cache enough of that with prior cargo ships (along with the food, medicine, and other consumables).

What SpaceX engineers have said is that the first missions won't need totally closed-loop recycling of air and water.  The benefit of taking 100 to 200 tons per cargo delivery is you have a lot of mass to use for consumables.

Update from NASA regarding the Artemis Program:

* Artemis 2 (the four-person crewed circumnavigation of the Moon) will be delayed to NET September 2025

* Artemis 3 (landing the crewed Starship HLS) postponed to NET September 2026

- the reasons for the delays on NASA's side of the  equation is that there were 3 issues found:

1) unwanted erosion of Orion's heat shield was seen in the Artemis 1 mission back in Dec 2022.

2) issues found in the life support circuitry.

3) issues found in Orion's electrical systems found in various scenarios of the launch abort sequence.  Probably would work just fine but might not maintain power margins needed from separation all the way to touchdown.

Update from SpaceX:

* reason for the IFT-2 Starship RUD traced to when they vented extra oxygen that wasn't needed since Starship wasn't carrying a payload to orbit.  If they had been carrying a payload, and thus didn't dump the oxygen, they would have made it to orbit.

* expected to get to orbit with IFT-3, aiming for mid February. 

* Sounds like carrying the new Starlink v.3 as payload, and ejecting them while on a suborbital trajectory to Hawaii, but apparently still high enough to deploy the Starlink into proper orbit.

* want to solve orbital refueling this year, but likelier next year.  Will perform an inter-tank (still within a single vehicle) propellant transfer for NASA on IFT-3.   About 10 tons of oxygen from the header tank (containing LOX used for landing) to the main tank, and back again.

* plan to test the payload door in this next launch as well.

* and do a zero G burn of the vacuum Raptors for the first time.

* with Starship there is a path to 200t to orbit with full reusability.

* Aiming for up to 150 orbital launches in 2024

* Qualifying Falcon 9 boosters for reuse on up to 40 flights each

* Demonstrated 3-day launchpad turnaround, aiming for under 24 hours by the end of this year

* Shipped the 4th generation Starlink Terminal and introducing Starlink Mini later this year that "can fit in a backpack."  

* Starlink V2 mini sats: upgraded from 88TB/s to 165TB/s .

* Building a second Starship tower in Texas.

That Monarch: Legacy of Monsters season 1 finale was fun: