What is Russia’s motivation for confirming this?

Yup, I always tell people I’m biased about WI because I left. I’m sure OH has a lot of similar reasons.

Welcome to the resistance… Dick Cheney?

Hubris. They were up in the polls at the time and didn’t think they needed to expand their appeal, so they caved and took Thiel’s guy.

There are private/paywalled Discord servers and forums out there, too, so this could replace some of those. I think the Reddit format is better than a lot of alternatives, so I don’t actually hate this idea.

I’m not really into the idea of moving everything to a baby Google, even if they’re currently good about privacy. They just added an AI tool to email and a crypto wallet, which could be either awful or great signs depending on your perspective.

Ron Desantis’s “Weekend at Bernie’s president” joke at the RNC, like every other accusation from the GOP, was just more projection.

A DA will be a nice foil to the convicted felon.

Regarding ballot eligibility- I think part of timing for this is that the Dems are about to have their “roll call” in the next week or two to officially nominate a candidate to get on ballots before the official full convention.

I was kind of hoping for Impulse Space, but they’re probably too unproven.

One of Starship’s engines on the lowest setting would tear the station apart. Regardless of whether they make this based on Starship instead of something more reasonably sized like a Dragon or Falcon 2nd stage, it’ll still need either a new engine design or a big cluster of Dracos. It’ll be something custom.

Regarding their Artemis work- the payments are milestone based, so they get money as they pass milestones. Engine relights and ship to ship prop transfer are some of the next ones.

Regarding their other customers- the Starship manifest includes another moon cruise, several satellite launches, and a lot of Starlinks.

Serious answer- SpaceX is building the deorbit vehicle then turning it over to NASA, who will have full control over it.

There’s no way Russia builds a new station. The timeline for them getting Nauka to orbit basically proves that it’s impossible. They’ve been trying to buddy up with China to visit theirs, though.

Realistically, there’s a SpaceX Dragon docked to the ISS, so that’s probably their emergency shelter and ride home.

Good ole egulatory capture

I expected nothing and I’m still disappointed

Better than nothing. Hopefully this prevents some deaths.

And it will hallucinate and give wrong answers

I’m rooting for Stoke and Radian to pull off full launch vehicle reuse.

I really want to see space agencies put out orbital debris cleanup bounties, especially for big things like spent upper stages and dead satellites.

They’ve actually done 2!

The 1st, in 2019, didn’t get to the ISS. Bad clock code made thrusters fire like crazy and run out of fuel.

The 2nd was on the launch pad in '21, but Florida air made valves seize. It launched in '22, had 2 thrusters fail, but still got to the ISS and back.

Before this crewed flight test, they’ve been replacing parachute harnessing and flammable tape.