Crystalworksgallery on Ig

Imagine doing full-body stims in weightlessness in outer space

Mars, from pole to pole (ESA’s Mars Express Mission)

Animated gif for a class that I procrastinated on for like a month! It’s Sally Ride, who I had a mild obsession with in like elementary school

Space looks very different to how film and television might show. Lots of sci-fi shows or movies portray the stars and galaxy behind a planet, and while it can look pretty, it also is very unrealistic. Stars are very dim. The galaxy is even dimmer. Anybody that lives in a light-pollluted area knows these things. Sunlight, and the light from it that shines onto the planets, is very very bright. This is why you can’t see stars during the day time. You can turn the exposure of your camera up to see both the planet and the stars, but then the planet becomes blindingly bright, and you get lots of camera glare.

Images taken using Space Engine 0.990.37.1720

Unrelated spiritual stuff below

This post probably sounds like nitpicking, and I guess it is. I’m not sure if I like the spirit of space being tampered with just to make things look better in a blockbuster movie. I believe the darkness and quietness is what contains the energy of space, and that feature of it is sacred. Space to me is an ocean, and filling space with clouds/nebulae and planets in a fictional setting feels a lot like completely filling the oceans with seaweed and sand. Planets are extremely far apart, and that is a blessing, as otherwise they would collide with each other. I don’t really have any personal grudges on people that exaggerate space for visual or story related reasons, I think it’s more of a cultural issue, and one that will be resolved over enough time as life on Earth begins to wander into space.

Spectrum of overwhelm, now in triangle form due to popular demand

[Image description: A triangle chart titled, ‘Spectrum of Overwhelm.’ The three points are ‘404 Error,’ showing a person with an empty thought bubble; ‘wet beast,’ showing a person sweating and sobbing; and ‘rage beast’ showing a person clenching their fists in an outline of orange fire. The peak is the ‘404 error’ vertex, and the inside of the triangle here is coloured beige and labelled, ‘shutdown.’ The lower half is labelled ‘meltdown’ and is red on the rage beast side and blue on the wet beast side. \End description]

Blue Moon really should go first. It's a more practical, less ambitious design, with better inherent safety. We shouldn't splash out on the towering ambitious megarocket just because we can. That stuff should come later, once we've gained confidence and experience. That should be obvious.

NASA does not need a lander with a dry mass of 100+ tonnes to put 2–8 astronauts on the Moon. The lander's excessive size and mass actually make several problems, such as the hatch being 30 m above the ground and there needing to be a crew elevator system with no current plan for a backup if it fails.

Big spaceship does not equal good spaceship. Don't be fooled by spectacle and awe. Starship HLS is ill-suited to taking humans to the surface of the Moon. The best case for it is as a heavy cargo vehicle, perhaps in service of a Moonbase. Again, that comes later. Skylab after Mercury-Redstone, not before.

It's genuinely possible that Starship HLS might not be ready before Blue Moon MK 2 is.

Retired Space Shuttle Endeavour joined with the SCA, flying over Los Angeles (2012)

(Copyright Stephen Confer)

It's genuinely possible that Starship HLS might not be ready before Blue Moon MK 2 is.