…looks like it meets the International Docking Standard. It’s a sensible thing to do, even if they don’t currently have permission to dock with ISS.
Category Archives: Space
Meanwhile, In Potential Future Catastrophes
Good progress in validating an asteroid-deflection code.
I’ll have a lot more confidence when we get out there and establish some ground (so to speak) truth.
Space-Age Gas Stations
Isolation thoughts from Lileks.
[Update a while later]
We went for a drive on Saturday into Manhattan Beach, where the beach (like all LA County beaches) was closed. It was a ghost town, with just a few people walking around, and we could have parked almost anywhere. The most surreal thing was to see The Kettle closed. That restaurant has been 24/7 for decades. They’re not even doing takeout, just shuttered.
Picard
I haven’t been watching the series because a) I wasn’t a subscriber, b) I’m not that big a Trek fan and, c) Picard was the worst of all of the Enterprise captains (and don’t pollute my comments section with your garbage opinions to the contrary). But Ed Driscoll has been watching it so you don’t have to, even though they’ve made it available to non-subscribers for isolation.
SpaceX
…has just been awarded a contract to supply the Gateway (assuming the Gateway ever actually exists).
NASA And The Coronavirus
How it is affecting the agency.
Bigelow
…has become a casualty of the virus (and perhaps overzealous government in Carson City).
Bigelow has had ups and downs for years, perhaps because of an incoherent business plan. He was expecting transportation to come along a lot sooner than it has, without doing anything to help it along other than promise demand.
Quarantine Lessons From Spaceflight
Meanwhile, we’re back home. As noted, we did drive up to Cambria (with the cats, which was…interesting — it was their first road trip, and Ember cried most of the way). It was relaxing up there, but a little weird, with all the restaurants being closed except for delivery or carry out, and most of the motels empty (we had a vacation rental across the street from the beach). We drove up to Ragged Point on Saturday (which was also closed except for gas and the general store), but no further into Big Sur, then perused the elephant seals on the way back to town. Not that many on the beach; it was just past mating season. A few week ago the beach at Piedras Blancas would have been full of them, fighting and fu**ing (I could have just written “mating,” but I liked the alliteration), and the mothers and pups trying to avoid being crushed by the bulls.
Did a three-mile hike Sunday on the bluffs above the ocean, and shot lots of pictures of breaching and fluking gray whales and their spouts as they migrated north. Very weird being up there on a weekend with so little traffic. I may post some, after we look at them to see how they came out.
Got back to Redondo Beach yesterday (the lack of heavy traffic on the 405 through Sepulveda Pass and West LA on a Monday afternoon was a little eerie), and now get to put the house back together after fumigation. The cats (who cried all the way back) are looking around and at each other like they’re wondering “Was that all some sort of weird dream?” Not infected, as far as we know (seems unlikely, considering that we were already hermits before this all started; it’s an introvert’s paradise).
[Update mid-morning]
One thing we saw up there that we never see in LA: Stars. We were across the street from the beach, and it was quite a dark neighborhood. Orion was very obvious, and I could easily see the Pleides naked eye. Milky Way wasn’t obvious, though.
NASA’s Latest Excuse
SLS will be further delayed by the virus.
But they’ll continue to be paid, so the overruns will just be higher.
[Late-afternoon update]
I wish that publications wouldn’t report this as a fact: “The Space Launch System is a powerful deep space rocket to transport astronauts to the Moon and beyond while Orion is the crew module.”
At least say that “NASA claims that…”
Buzz
He knows something about quarantine, and he’s protecting himself.
[Update a few minutes later]
This is good news for Buzz (and me) if he’s otherwise healthy: 99% of the deaths in Italy were people who had other illnesses.