Recent content by mfb

Artemis III crew announcement Randolph Bresnik (previously flew on the Space Shuttle and Soyuz) Luca Parmitano (ESA, previously flew two Soyuz missions) Francisco Rubio (previously flew a Soyuz mission) - no relation to Marco Rubio as far as I can tell Andre Douglas (no flight yet) - was...

Update on SpaceX's computing satellites 16:00 shows the satellite concept with some numbers. Around 2 tonnes per satellite, 120 kW average computing power. Two large solar panels, a central computing point and then some smaller radiators. Google pays SpaceX $0.9 billion/month for ~250 MW of...

The air leak on the ISS is getting worse. Looks like it doubled its leak rate on Monday. The Soyuz crew was trying to fix it while the Dragon crew was ordered to suit up and wait in Dragon as there was some risk of a rapid pressure loss. They paused the work now.

I found this 1998 publication: Stop Production at Hadron Colliders The authors are all particle physicists. Why would they ask for that?

Surprise maiden launch of Long March 12B. No announced launch date, no hazard areas for aircraft to avoid, it just launched. This rocket is designed to reuse its booster in the future, but the first flight made no recovery attempt. The launch was successful. Good news from Blue Origin. They can...

That's a big dent in the tower that's still standing. They probably have to rebuild that as well. Even if something looks like it's still intact, it could have taken internal damage from the explosion, making it weaker and more likely to fail later. All the exposed plumbing can't be trusted any...

Daylight pictures (very high resolution, zoom in!) The launch pad is a big mess of steel from the collapsed tower, remains of the transporter/erector and soot. The rocket is just gone. Looks like the integration facility (big white building) is fine overall but the tents near it are damaged. Not...

New Glenn prepared for a return to flight after its upper stage malfunctioned on the previous flight. The result of the static fire test was ... less static than expected (but it didn't take off like Tianlong-3). The most spectacular rocket explosion since N1 just happened in Florida This...

No statement about being profitable, so it's probably losing money at the moment. At 30 SEK per coffee they sold ~1500 coffee equivalents in 14 days, or ~100/day. Many of them might be people just going there for the novelty. LLMs keep making progress with mathematics. Assuming it didn't use...

Just buy a car with a square hole.

Popes and cardinals must be natural enemies. Whenever the pope population in the Vatican decreases, the cardinal population skyrockets, only to drop again when the pope population recovers.

30 min ride, 15 min prep for the short ride: $55 for 45 min of work ($1.2/min) 1 hour ride, 40 min prep: $120 for 100 minutes of work ($1.2/min) 2 hour ride, 40 min prep: $200 for 160 minutes of work ($1.25/min) - $1.2/min would be $192. It's the river crossing that makes the 1 hour ride more...

More images: Video from the ground - look at these shockwaves!

View of the pad before and after launch Looks like some paint or other coating was ablated on the right and there is a bit of black stuff (presumably soot) on the launch table, but otherwise things look great. Scott Manley made a video It looks like the booster didn't rotate in the expected...

Liftoff! Edit: