One of their competitors, ABL, just gave up on their commercial launch ambitions. Another one bites the dust.

There are actually tons of nuclear power systems like this in space:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_power_systems_in_space

Idk, Millennium, a Boeing subsidiary that makes satellites, just got a pretty good contract.

https://spacenews.com/millennium-space-secures-386-million-contract-for-missile-defense-satellites/

And now released.

https://spacepolicyonline.com/news/crew-8-astronaut-released-from-hospital-back-in-houston/

The suborbital one? At least this one sort of goes to orbit.

It might have been hit by something. Or it could have had a failure and blown itself up. The history of these buses and some previous observations on this satellite, plus Boeing being involved, makes me inclined to think it blew itself up.

It looks like some small pieces blew off the booster and there was a little fire at the end, but they recovered it and can work on solving that for the next flight. What a catch.

Oh wait that’s always been the case, but it is getting worse due to climate change. Florida weather has been a big downside of the Cape all the way back. Ctrl+F “hurricane”:

https://sma.nasa.gov/SignificantIncidents/assets/space-shuttle-missions-summary.pdf

I just want canyons covered with a fish tank growing algae and shielding cool Adobe cities

Hey, it’s more like a big Vulcan with little legs.

Yeah, Axiom is working on a private space station that would bud off the ISS when it deorbits. Although they have some money problems right now.

For asteroid mining, look up AstroForge. They’re working on mining platinum group metals from near Earth m-type asteroids. They launched a forge demo sat and soon will launch an asteroid RPO demo sat.

We’re in a new space race.

There are too many rocket companies to list. This commercialization drives down launch costs and increases capacity, which benefits private companies and public research institutions.

There was just a record number of people in orbit (19) that’ll get broken again in the coming years. The ISS will get new modules. Tiangong has been expanding. The Lunar Gateway station is under construction. Several private space stations are under construction. And multiple companies and countries are working on new crewed vehicles.

Starlink has customers in 99 countries as of March. It’s a global service.

Yup, and they have to be specifically tailored, and, even then, keeping them tight-fitting at joints is a challenge. There are some concepts with pressurized traditional gloves to work around some of that.

Hopefully some day we get mechanical counterpressure suits.

Companies like this make me wish I had the gall to sell snake oil to venture capitalists.

What a classic recipe. It’s a YC company with a McKinsey CEO.

Let’s go with “as routine as a cruise”, then. We just need a good space elevator, orbital ring, skyhook…

I meant for the 3 weeks between when Starliner leaves and the Crew 9 Dragon gets there.

Their backup plan is to have the extra 2 astronauts lie on the floor of the Crew Dragon and reenter without suits. Yep. That’s still safer than Starliner.

Agreed. Hopefully they can keep Gaganyaan moving.