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Welcome to #CheckIn for FRIDAY 2026-04-03


Muse here,

So how about that rocket launch?

Takes me back to my childhood when I was slightly underwhelmed by the space shots, because I had seen LOTS of space flight on Lost in Space and Star Trek. One of my favourite movies when I was five, besides The Wizard of Oz (which also includes an orbiting projectile), wasRobinson Crusoe on Mars.

Would I like to travel in space? I might enjoy seeing Earth from a great distance. I wouldn't like being stuck in a tin can for months to years on end. I might reconsider if the ship had biodomes like in Silent Running.

What are your thoughts on space travel?

Robinson Crusoe on Mars

Today’s topic is suggested by @Muse but there’s always an element of randomness. Grab your beverage preference (pixel or not), follow Wheaton’s Law and enjoy the space. Why did Kit kiss Mona the monkey? Because she was under the missile toe!

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in reply to CheckIn Posting

I won't stand in the way if people want to pay all the costs for putting themselves into space, but SLS should be cancelled. I know it's prime grade pork and so won't be. So I just roll my eyes and watch. If I were king of space, my goal would be to put orbiters around every planet (from giant to dwarf) and the major moons. In parallel, set rovers down wherever we can and do sample returns.

My feeling is that, to do that in a sustainable, technically excellent way, we would develop the infrastructure such that if there were a valid use case for putting people at various coordinates in the Solar System, it wouldn't be as big of a tech development, less likely to be only a flags and footprints.

I could riff on how absurd I think that the "water on the moon" or "helium 3 on the moon" motivations are, but I think I'll just stop here.

in reply to CheckIn Posting

I used to get really excited about space flight. One of my early memories was seeing a Mercury launch.
I had all the NASA posters, patches, etc. I never missed a launch or splashdown. That continued until the last couple of years. Anymore I will just watch the livestream at a later date for any launch I am interested in. I'm tired of spacex, nothing special there for me, pretty much since they got the booster landings figured out. No real sense of "patriotism" or "national accomplishment". I'm happy that the SLS/ Artemis II launched okay, but since it was almost in spite of all the work and money that went into the project. Barring apocalyptic events, I will probably see pictures of humans on the moon, and maybe Mars or a big asteroid. Since the focus has shifted from "national project" to billionaire dick wagging, I hope things turn out.
SciFi has plenty of futures with outer space controlled by corporations, so I shouldn't be surprised by that outcome.
in reply to CheckIn Posting

I am a huge fan of space, spaceflight, and space exploration. I worked for a NASA contractor (Grumman) for NASA Space Station for several years in the early 90s in Reston, VA. That is also where I met my second wife, she worked for Booz-Allen-Hamilton on the same project (SSEIC -- Space Station Engineering and Integration Contractors). This was where all of the design and engineering for the current space station was done, before a single piece got sent into space. When missions started to deploy it, the program office moved to Houston, which is the natural home of all NASA projects for launch, which was done by multiple Space Shuttle missions in the 1990s. nasa.gov/international-space-s…
in reply to CheckIn Posting

If a group of humans populates another planet, misunderstandings may accumulate over time and lead to terrible conflicts. Many of us cannot get along together even when we are all together.
Pwesonally, motion sickness would probably prevent me from participating in space travel and possibly even ocean or large lake travel in unplesant weather.
in reply to CheckIn Posting

Have today off for Good Friday. Nose has stopped running like a faucet but not before I filled up a grocery bag sized paper bag 2/3 full of used tissues. Was thinking about blending them into a slurry of isopropyl alcohol + bleach + water and forming them into something useful like get-well cards. Hmm...
in reply to CheckIn Posting

I saw the launch and landing of the first trip to the moon... on B&W tv with my grandmother and mother when I was a child... and saw a number of the later transmissions from the other missions. Same with much of the space era.

I watched this one via the internet... and pray that they fixed the problems that Artemis I had with re-entry.

in reply to CheckIn Posting

As a kid, ofc I wanted to be an astronaut. Dunno how that changed, but it did before I was leaving primary school. And Cosmos the book stayed. The recent moon mission start makes me shrug, mostly, I do like that NASA is at it, not a BPPE (big phallic private enterprise).

Recently the UNOOSA something agency came to my attention. And "fragment creation events" that are more likely each time microsatellites are spewed into orbit. Kinda scary numbers.

theguardian.com/science/ng-int…

in reply to CheckIn Posting

A woman in my HS graduating class flew into space on the shuttle several times, didn't know her. Wendy B. Lawrence . Another friend did get into the Astronaut program, but never made it to space.
in reply to CheckIn Posting

People talk about NASA's cost, but they rarely talk about the benefits (other than bragging rights).

NASA is a government agency and as such cannot hold patents. Everything they invented went directly into public domain for everyone to benefit from.

rankred.com/amazing-nasa-inven…

in reply to CheckIn Posting

There's a NASA presentation (or it has a ton of NASA related material in it) that goes on and on about Byzantine errors - fails that were occuring beyond testing scopes. A very thorough review has brought error classes to light that were.. well, unimaginable until someone from NASA thought things through again.