"T-Plus 30" By Aviation Artist Mark Waki

cigarette wife meets crowbar husband

this year we’re asking ourselves if the people we’re supporting are supporting us too 

wlw

The first West Coast SpaceX launch captured by photographer Dylan Schwartz.

Tiny Shuttle inspects the engines of a huge Soyuz

The Milky Way Deconstructed

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.

Space history

It’s a hobby of mine to listen to and watch archives from the Apollo era.

There’s many places where you can just browse transcripts and video archives, but I’d recommend https://apolloinrealtime.org/11/ and https://apollo17.org.

Watching some of the videos from that time is eerie, because these people are so distant and isolated on this dark surface, illuminated by an inclined sun.