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   Charlie Stross (cstross@wandering.shop)'s status on Friday, 08-Dec-2023 21:34:46 JST Charlie Stross

   Hollywood vs. Reality: space station edition

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     Sepideh (sepdroid@androiddev.social)'s status on Friday, 08-Dec-2023 21:34:48 JST Sepideh

     in reply to

     @cstross Space needs more Marie Kondo.

     clacke likes this.
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     ǝlqɯnɹ uoɯᴉS (shermozle@aus.social)'s status on Friday, 08-Dec-2023 21:34:49 JST ǝlqɯnɹ uoɯᴉS

     in reply to

     @cstross
     Makes me feel way happier about my perennially messy workspaces...

     clacke likes this.
   • Embed this notice
     Charlie Stross (cstross@wandering.shop)'s status on Friday, 08-Dec-2023 21:34:52 JST Charlie Stross

     in reply to

     • ailepet

     @ailepet The ISS core was originally going to be called Mir 2, then the USSR imploded and paying Roscosmos to launch the pieces gave NASA an orbital construction shack (while they played catch-up) and kept a bunch of Russian rocket scientists in paid work so they didn't emigrate to China or North Korea.

     clacke likes this.
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     ailepet (ailepet@peoplemaking.games)'s status on Friday, 08-Dec-2023 21:34:54 JST ailepet

     in reply to

     @cstross That's because we followed the Mir-influenced school of space station interior design, instead of Raymond Loewy's designs for Skylab (I guess?)

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     Slothdude (slothdude@mastodon.online)'s status on Friday, 08-Dec-2023 21:34:56 JST Slothdude

     in reply to

     @cstross Not visible in the picture: the smell.

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     Robert Petersen 🇺🇸 (sonikku@techhub.social)'s status on Friday, 08-Dec-2023 21:34:58 JST Robert Petersen 🇺🇸

     in reply to

     • Slothdude

     @slothdude @cstross or the sound. I’ve heard it’s never ever quiet, always whrring and buzzing and clunking

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     Chris Armstrong (rhodium103@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 08-Dec-2023 21:35:01 JST Chris Armstrong

     in reply to

     @cstross
     Also feels like The Expanse on screen vs the books, as the adaption has fairly typical sci-fi sets, and the book is like "It was the largest office he had seen in space, 2 metres wide..."

     clacke likes this.
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     -dsr- (dashdsrdash@tilde.zone)'s status on Friday, 08-Dec-2023 21:35:04 JST -dsr-

     in reply to

     @cstross

     There's a SF/comedy series, Avenue 5, in which the passengers ride around in the Apple Store picture and the crew below live and work in the second picture.

     In fact, the captain and the shiny bridge crew are all actors...

     clacke likes this.
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     clacke (clacke@libranet.de)'s status on Friday, 08-Dec-2023 21:35:06 JST clacke

     in reply to

     • -dsr-
     @dashdsrdash @cstross Love Avenue 5.
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     HighlandLawyer (highlandlawyer@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 08-Dec-2023 21:35:10 JST HighlandLawyer

     in reply to

     @cstross Production version versus prototype.
     (Although the Nostromo is probably a better comparison as a work rather than passenger/consumer production version)

     clacke likes this.
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     HairyChris (hairychris@mastodon.world)'s status on Friday, 08-Dec-2023 23:30:33 JST HairyChris

     in reply to

     @cstross Oh, as long as they focus on the commercial launches they should be OK. The fancy lunar/martian part of Starship won't work.

     Twitter is on it's arse. Tesla is overvalued as an auto maker, and has lost it's edge in actual tech so there is going to be a reckoning there some point.

     How SpaceX survives will be an interesting watch, especially wrt any projects strongly linked to Musk's over-promise-under-deliver technobabble schtick!

     clacke likes this.
   • Embed this notice
     Charlie Stross (cstross@wandering.shop)'s status on Friday, 08-Dec-2023 23:30:35 JST Charlie Stross

     in reply to

     • HairyChris

     @HairyChris SpaceX currently has 70-80% of the GLOBAL space launch market sewn up tight.

     Musk self-destructing ... well, as SpaceX is basically run by Gwynne Shotwell, getting rid of Musk might make things run more smoothly.

     clacke likes this.
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     HairyChris (hairychris@mastodon.world)'s status on Friday, 08-Dec-2023 23:30:36 JST HairyChris

     in reply to

     @cstross Maybe, but the NASA funding for Spaceship's lunar stuff is dependent on them hitting some very precise targets (which SpaceX & Musk signed up to). They got ~$3bn and must have blown through most of that, with many more launches required.

     They didn't hit LEO last time either.

     I wonder how much cash SpaceX has, and whether it can fully self-fund Starship. Any engines used here can't be used for their commercial shipments.

     Plus if Musk self-destructs the jury is out on everything.

     clacke repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Charlie Stross (cstross@wandering.shop)'s status on Friday, 08-Dec-2023 23:30:37 JST Charlie Stross

     in reply to

     • HairyChris

     @HairyChris Naah, Starship's going to fly again within a month or two: the last test achieved most of its goals and SpaceX (currently floating with a valuation of $175Bn) absolutely needs it to launch the Starlink 2 cluster (the new sats are too big to fly economically on Falcon 9). I reckon they'll lose at most 1-2 more prototypes during the test program then get it working smoothly.

     clacke likes this.
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     HairyChris (hairychris@mastodon.world)'s status on Friday, 08-Dec-2023 23:30:38 JST HairyChris

     in reply to

     @cstross Oh yes, for sure. Totally inefficient use of voulme ramps up the cost to orbit too!

     And Starship? Yes, it's a chonker but I don't see it working ever. It's looking like NASA isn't going to give them any more cash...

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     Charlie Stross (cstross@wandering.shop)'s status on Friday, 08-Dec-2023 23:30:40 JST Charlie Stross

     in reply to

     • HairyChris

     @HairyChris Don't forget the size of payload shrouds and the space shuttle's payload bay—while there's a prototype expandable module docked to the ISS (BEAM) most of the modules are rigid metal pressure vessels that had to fit inside a launch vehicle's payload.

     (Starship, with a 9m diameter, is a huge increase over the Shuttle's 4.6M wide payload bay.)

     https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bigelow_Expandable_Activity_Module

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     HairyChris (hairychris@mastodon.world)'s status on Friday, 08-Dec-2023 23:30:41 JST HairyChris

     in reply to

     @cstross Ah, the joy of a massive $/lb rate to get crap into orbit!

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     Rachel Greenham (strangenoises@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 08-Dec-2023 23:30:53 JST Rachel Greenham

     in reply to

     • Zach Weinersmith

     @cstross in fairness if we're going to do mad things like go to mars we're going to need to do it in something that earns the name of "ship”, not the barely-afloat row-boats we've been using so far. like we needed ships to get across the oceans, notwithstanding the odd nutter in a rowboat (with GPS and satellite radio and rescue services on-hand).

     wait and go big, as @ZachWeinersmith & Kelly say…

     clacke likes this.
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     Charlie Stross (cstross@wandering.shop)'s status on Saturday, 09-Dec-2023 19:38:06 JST Charlie Stross

     in reply to

     • Ricardo B�nffy
     • HairyChris

     @rbanffy @HairyChris Boeing as it used to be is dead—eaten from the inside-out by McDonnell-Douglas management after the merger and reconfigured in McD-D's image, they're now a bloated trad defense industry contractor who can't innovate or build spacegoing hardware to spec and on time.

     clacke likes this.
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     Ricardo B�nffy (rbanffy@mastodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 09-Dec-2023 19:38:08 JST Ricardo B�nffy

     in reply to

     • HairyChris

     @cstross @HairyChris I can't wait to see what Bigelow(Boeing?) can fit inside a Starship cargo bay. Or, even cooler, a Superheavy-launched expendable second stage.