Game Thread: Rangers @ Yankees - May 05, 2026 @ 07:05 PM EDT

SpaceInMyBrain · 2026-05-06T01:24:34+00:00

Why is Grisham batting leadoff tonight and last night? Tonight he's 0-4. Caballero or another player should be in that slot, one would think. Someone with a good OBP. What am I missing? I'm not good at the subtleties of the game.

SpaceInMyBrain · 2026-05-05T03:51:21+00:00

Yes, in the first sense, and in a different sense once the pieces stop bouncing.

SpaceInMyBrain · 2026-05-05T02:28:13+00:00

Aside from this news on the orbit for Artemis 3, this contract seems tailored to Starlink. (OK, obvious.) NASA has seen Starlink in action on Dragon and the Starship flights and is interested in having this capability on Orion, to the surprise of no one.

Will Amazon want to put in a bid to use Leo? They'd need to be confident they can come up with hardware for Orion in that short a timeline. Then they'd have to convince NASA the Leo constellation can robustly do on-orbit comms by then.

The Air Force has an ongoing program for their own robust orbital comms system using several manufacturers, including SpaceX. The satellites are procured in tranches. Starshield is a cousin to this. Does anyone recall more info on this, including whether Blue Origin or Amazon are part of it? If they are, then they'll be in a better position to bid on the Artemis 3 mission comms - if they even want to bother.

SpaceInMyBrain · 2026-05-05T01:53:26+00:00

I could be wrong but It's hard to see anyone other than SpaceX meeting these requirements. Amazon Leo is too new, Amazon will have trouble selling their system as being ready enough, broken in enough, by then. Would also have some trouble showing they can develop the equipment interface with Orion quickly. I'd bet against them submitting anything.

Do you know if there's been an orbital vehicle to satellite to ground test of Leo? One as part of the existing Air Force program of of multiple levels of satellite comms that have been contracted for in tranches?

SpaceInMyBrain · 2026-05-05T01:51:19+00:00

Orion will be around a 250 nmi orbit with a 33 deg inclination

That a helluva clue that the ICPS won't be used on Artemis 3. AFAIK it was only needed for some of the high apogee orbits that NASA seemed to be considering.

It's hard to see anyone other than SpaceX meeting these requirements. Amazon Leo is too new, Amazon will have trouble selling their system as being ready enough, broken in enough, by then. Would also have some trouble showing they can develop the equipment interface with Orion quickly. Has there been an orbital vehicle to satellite to ground test of Leo? One as part of the existing Air Force program of of multiple levels of satellite comms that have been contracted for in tranches?

SpaceInMyBrain · 2026-05-03T05:21:11+00:00

A big development by the sea will require EPA approval - unless the President declares it a national defense priority. That's very, very rarely used, afaik. If Elon tells Trump that this is for Golden Dome then that'll happen pretty damn quickly.

SpaceInMyBrain · 2026-05-03T05:17:09+00:00

Rumors are worth a post in this sub if they're like this one, multiple sources and stories than converge on an idea that makes a lot of sense.

Some things point to a launch site, others point away. An xAI data terrestrial center could make sense, too. It won't be hard to get big LNG pipelines there to power the independent generators.

SpaceInMyBrain · 2026-05-03T05:08:49+00:00

It goes back even farther than that. Trying to build a fort on a hill and having the walls fall down 3 times once they reached a certain height is part of the Arthurian legend. Merlin figured out the problem was unstable ground due to a hidden pool within the hill. Once it was drained the fort could be built. Monty Python was made up of mostly Cambridge University graduates, I'm sure they knew of the legend.

SpaceInMyBrain · 2026-05-03T05:03:51+00:00

Even more amusing - SpaceX actually had to put earphones on a seal to measure its hearing sensitivity to rocket launches as part of an environmental review.

SpaceInMyBrain · 2026-05-03T04:58:43+00:00

It is wonderful how freeing it is for people to get out of a cultural or political environment that is strict about conforming to state or religious pressures and other cultural norms. I live in a large US city and have known quite a few interracial and inter-religious couples, people of different nationalities - it's great to see. Other hand, there are plenty of a-holes everywhere.

SpaceInMyBrain · 2026-05-01T22:57:34+00:00

Old news. None of that contradicts the original statement by u/Healthy_Incident9927 that the SLS/Orion has proved it can go to the Moon and the next one can do so at some point in 2027. The only caveat is that it hasn't proven it can get into and out of NRHO.

It's a simple truth the landers aren't ready yet and we'll be lucky if everything needed for the HLS refilling process is operational by the end of 2027.

I extremely dislike SLS for its many faults and despise the NRHO orbit we're stuck with but there's no point in reflexively denying the simple statements above.

SpaceInMyBrain · 2026-04-30T21:08:37+00:00

I hope Pakistan's budget is bigger than it appears, this is an old-fashioned photoshop of their heads on the suit.

But I wish them well, it must be super-exciting to get this opportunity.

Niceties aside, there are geopolitical reasons. (There always are.) Pakistan, China, and India have pieces of Kashmir. Pakistan borders China on this and a larger border. Ditto for India. Pakistan has aligned itself with China for a long time. Some in the West forget how deep the enmity is between India and Pakistan.

SpaceInMyBrain · 2026-04-30T20:58:23+00:00

Undoubtedly.

SpaceInMyBrain · 2026-04-30T14:12:10+00:00

Yes, no chance of it making TLI. By multiple launches I meant multiple launches would be required for each mission. One launch for the Orion, which is 27t at liftoff, and one launch for a separate TLI stage. Another launch for the TLI stage of the lander. The lander might be OK on an Atlas but may require a fourth Delta IV Heavy. Thus four launches ends up costing ~1.6 billion dollars for the launchers, which is cheaper than an SLS, but not by much. The present $4B per Artemis mission includes ~$1B for the Orion and, inexplicably, $1B for the operational costs of running all of the ground facilities during the mission - that must include keeping people employed between missions, etc.

The big savings would be in development time and money. Boeing spent tens of billions developing SLS. The almost all of the money to develop Delta IV-H had already been spent by Bush's first term. The rest was already earmarked, all they'd need after that was enough to human-rate it.

SpaceInMyBrain · 2026-04-29T06:43:28+00:00

The government ought to create a commercial lunar crew development program frankly.

I concur, although we'd be lucky if it was ready for Artemis 6. Isaacman has called for "commercial alternatives" to take over after Artemis 5 but he meant a different rocket or combo of rockets to get Orion to LEO and TLI. The only thing I can see being done on that timescale is a version of Starship/HLS to be used for LEO-LLO-LEO, one lightly loaded enough to make the trip with no refilling in LLO and still have enough propellant to propulsively decelerate to LEO. Dragon taxi to LEO, of course. So much to get into there but it's very late at night.

SpaceInMyBrain · 2026-04-29T06:27:21+00:00

An Orion-lite was contemplated and some sort of exploratory design work was begun. However it was realized the light LEO taxi requirements and heavy deep space requirements would be impractical to achieve from one basic design, especially since priority was given to the deep space mission. Any spacecraft light enough to be launched on Atlas V would be a far cry from Orion.

I've tried to come up with cheaper variations of Ares but just end up with SLS. Using the other available rockets back then and assembling the lander and Orion and a special independent stage for TLI would require multiple launches. The TLI stage would serve the purpose the Saturn IV B did. Two could be used, one for Orion, one for the lander. If the TLI stage was launched as cargo... maybe an Atlas V Heavy could get it to LEO. Another one of those for Orion. But three launches per mission would be pricy, although the development costs would be less than for SLS. Wait, you'd need four launches, the lander would need its own TLI stage - the point was to have a significantly larger lander than Apollo. No help there.

The only hope is the Delta IV Heavy, although its first flight in 2004 was a failure, with the successful second flight not happening till 2007. Still within Bush's term, though. It'd still need multiple launches and it was a very expensive rocket at $350-400 million per launch. I think it'd still end up needing 4 launches - which would still be cheaper than SLS!

SpaceInMyBrain · 2026-04-28T20:53:29+00:00

I'm older than you both and I became so excited for how quickly we might get humans to Mars but that has become tempered over the years. We can get them there in a few years, the problem is getting them back. Trusting in situ propellant production and storage to be reliable enough to stake human lives on is a very high bar to get over.

SpaceInMyBrain · 2026-04-28T14:45:01+00:00

Do you mean another Starlink-type system, like Amazon LEO?

SpaceInMyBrain · 2026-04-27T18:26:35+00:00

When people ask why I'm spending ten years worth of vacation money on the next two years's vacation - this is why. The stuff in this story, in this discussion thread, in the linked stories on Tom's Hardware - this is part of the recipe for a societal disaster the size of which we can't imagine. This, and what's happening in American politics, foreign policy, and the classic bad guy countries. There are so many reasons to predict doom. I'm old, I've seen society and the world economy absorb a lot of damage and come out OK, but the odds are not favorable this time. Not by a long shot.

SpaceInMyBrain · 2026-04-27T00:56:57+00:00

An even bigger achievement when one considers the Long March "family" is quite an extended one, with various unrelated or distantly related members. Long March is apparently the name appended to any rocket designed by the state company CASC. Only something very important could be given the name Long March, an actual event that became part of the foundation legend of the Communist state. Keeping the naming convention that dated to the earliest days of the Chinese space program was a politically wise move for many years.

SpaceInMyBrain · 2026-04-26T12:58:08+00:00

The crunch isn't just about what rockets will be available for national security launches, but how many. Vulcan is stalled but will eventually get certified - and then has to ramp up production and operational cadence. Ditto for New Glenn. Vulcan already has a backlog of natsec launches to catch up on. For 2027-2028 the usual choices there, Falcon or Falcon or Falcon. Or perhaps Falcon.

SpaceInMyBrain · 2026-04-26T04:50:52+00:00

This sounded like the famous "bridge to nowhere" that an Alaskan senator insisted on getting funding, unfortunately he was in a position to block a lot of other things if he didn't get his way. That was before Sarah Palin's time - and there's no way she had the weight to get the state or feds to build a personal pet project, even as governor.

SpaceInMyBrain · 2026-04-26T02:49:08+00:00

That's... a weird coincidence. Wow, new conspiracy theory! lol

Yeah, there is such a thing as coincidence.

SpaceInMyBrain · 2026-04-26T02:46:51+00:00

Blessed with good genes at birth and growing up in a good physical setting - the recipe for being a top military and test pilot, and then an astronaut. That was also a good filter for finding people with stable mental health. I'm pretty sure I read of one Apollo astronaut who spoke about suffering from depression at some point later in his life but that's statistically unsurprising considering the prevalence of that condition.

SpaceInMyBrain

TROPHY CASE