Notices by Winchell Chung ⚛🚀 (nyrath@spacey.space)

@SecureOwl

I am no aerospace engineer, but it seems to me highly unlikely that the vulnerability is restricted to this make and model of aircraft.

https://www.space.com/space-exploration/launches-spacecraft/cosmonaut-removed-from-spacexs-crew-12-mission-for-violating-national-security-rules-report

Scifi Mastodon, please come to my aid! I am trying to remember the name of a scifi novel.

The protagonist is a teenager boy, whose father is a chief executive at NASA.
A villainous woman is staging a coup to take over the US.
The father wants to get his son to safety. At midnight he takes his son to NASA's electromagnetic launcher, sending him to the small lunar colony.

Most of the novel is a Heinlein-esque slice of life as the boy learns how to fit into lunar society.

Ring any bells?

https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2025/10/31/nasas-orion-space-capsule-is-flaming-garbage/

Article implies that hexanitrogen is the perfect rocket fuel. Except later on it admits that unless it is cooled in liquid nitrogen, it detonates at the clank of a falling molecule.

https://www.acsh.org/news/2025/06/27/perfect-rocket-fuel-no-fires-no-chemicals-just-energy-49569

Foundation third season, first episode is up on Apple TV.

I liked it. Followed the novels a bit closer than second season.

As always, I enjoyed the baroque style of the title credits.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83zju57w1BU&list=RD83zju57w1BU&start_radio=1

@aeva @Doomed_Daniel @guamwatt @cjust @USBTypeSTeve

How does one switch to expert mode?

Eric Geusz is a software engineer and artist who turns common household objects into spectacular spaceship designs

https://spacegooose.artstation.com/

Is it just me? Or is this a catastrophically bad idea?

Can AI Help Manage Nuclear Reactors?

https://m.slashdot.org/story/440875

In America, it is time to get your Madame Defarge on, and learn how to knit steganographic codes as part of the resistance to 🍊🐖, Tale Of Two Cities style.

https://www.popsci.com/story/diy/secret-code-messages-knitting/

https://www.cs4fn.org/ada/dickensknitting.php

@Hcobb

https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/485:_Depth

I am watching a 1956 movie called The Battle of the River Plate (a.k.a. Pursuit of the Graf Spee in the United States).

Because i am the Atomic Rockets guy, my first thought was this would make a great space opera movie. Just replace the naval cruisers and pocket battleship with star cruisers and space pocket battleships.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Battle_of_the_River_Plate_%28film%29

Interesting points were

* The Graf Spee and her sisters were designed to outgun any cruiser fast enough to catch them
* The Graf Spee sustains some damage and takes refuge in the neutral port of Montevideo, Uruguay, for repairs. According to international law, the ship may remain in a neutral harbour only long enough to repair for seaworthiness, not to refit for battle; any overstay will lead to the ship and its crew being interned for the duration of the war.

"The Graf Spee and her sisters were designed to outgun any cruiser fast enough to catch them"

But would not that always be the case? If a naval ship design based on a cruiser was modified to have more guns so it outgunned a cruiser, wouldn't the added mass automatically make the new design slower than a cruiser?

Tested to see if the fuel elements were resistant to being shattered, and exiting into the exhaust plume in a glowing radioactive cloud of death.

https://www.ga.com/ga-successfully-tests-nuclear-thermal-propulsion-reactor-fuel-at-nasa-marshall-space-flight-center

https://xkcd.com/3037/

@SFFMagazineCovers

Well, that is because one of the biggest cheerleaders of Dianetics was John W. Campbell jr, who just so happened to be the editor for Astounding magazine.

Mastodon spaceflight mass-mind, please come to my aid. My google-fu is failing me.

In the Apollo program, Saturn V’s S-II (second stage) employed four ullage motors situated on the aft interstage skirt. Additionally, the third S-IVB stage incorporated an Auxiliary Propulsion System designed for ullage purposes. These settled the fuel so the engines did not injest vapor and shred.

Question: why didn't the ullage motors need ullage motors?

@mattblaze @simplenomad

I remember when I was a child being taught to "Duck and Cover". And being shown some cartoon about a turtle.

https://phys.org/news/2024-12-astronauts-unique-visual-lunar-south.html