He seems *almost* back to normal. I think the only major thing left is that he’s perpetually hungry, a result of him concluding that he doesn’t like his new food. Given that he needs to lose some weight anyway, I guess this is a problem with a silver lining.
Buttons and Speedbump plotting world domination.
The sky: damned photogenic. The parking lot: meh.
Oh, well. I did my best, damnit.
SpaceX has successfully not only launched Americans into orbit from American soil with an American rocket topped with an American capsule, they have also successfully recovered the first stage booster. Woo!
Now if they could lob those rioters to the Moon, that would be great.
Also: they included a zero-g indicator in the capsule:
That’s cool and all, but something more active would seem to be called for. And now that capsules are spacious and need not be nightmarishly cramped, it might be time to consider launching a kitten:
This could be the crowning achievement in the history of human spaceflight, or it could be a blood-soaked disaster. Either’s good, so long as it’s adequately live streamed. But I expect that a cat will be able to accept freefall… maybe not instantly, but eventually. Cover the inside of the capsule with something like burlap and the cat will be able to hang on and move around. I’ve designed, over the years, a couple different “zero g litterboxes” that cats would *hopefully* be able to accept and use. Thing is, we won’t know any of this for certain until someone actually tries. Now that Dragon is up and running, the cost of spaceflight just might drop enough that we can finally, at overly long last, try this necessary step on the road to conquering space.
SpaceX is not having the best luck with their Starship prototypes. Number 4 spectacularly exploded after a successful engine test yesterday; this seems to not necessarily be a problem with the Starship itself or its engine, but with either the plumbing, the procedures or maybe even jsut a manual mistake. Scott Manley goes through the available videos.
Unrelated, SpaceX will try – weather permitting – to launch their Crew Dragon again today at 3:22 PM eastern time. At this writing there doesn;t yet seem to be a live stream set up on YouTube.
UPDATE: here ya go…
A cop kills a guy, and so…
And…
I’m left to wonder if the same media, politicians and talking heads who ripped “lockdown protestors” for violating social distancing rules during their nearly universally peaceful and riot/looting-free protests will be as judgemental about *these* “protestors.”
Libertarian protestors show up with guns… and no violence ensues. Left wing protestors show up without guns, and burn their own cities to the ground.
In short: he’s home, he *seems* fine. His personality is back. He’s long since stopped wailing and barfing. But he’s on a new restricted diet… and he ain’t havin’ it. Absolutely nothing he’s *supposed* to eat, will he eat. I procured for him a number of options, from cheap to insanely expensive… and none if it is up to his standards. Actual chicken -probably the best thing for him – is not up to his standards. So, I suppose I’ll stick with the blandtacular dry food that was recommended, and if he gets hungry enough, I suppose he’ll eat it.
He seems to had made it through this crisis, though he has a few weeks of antibiotics (which, hilariously, are supposed to be taken with food) ahead of him. Many thanks to all who hit that “donate” button; it’ll help a lot. The vet clinics here are not exactly cheap.
Huh. Someone finally launched Solar Power Satellite equipment designed to turn sunlight into transmittable microwaves. The weird thing is it’s a Navy experiment loaded onto the latest Air Force X-37.
it’s 12 inches by 12 inches. We’ll get that sucker scaled up to 12 kilometers by 12 kilometers in no time, just as soon as we devote a tenth the energy onto the effort as we’ve blown on Russiagate.
Buttons came home from the vet about three hours ago. He was reported to have been doing reasonably well at the vet, but he had refused to eat and was apparently freaked out (unsurprising). So the plan was to send him home where he could relax and eat some. In the mean time he has to wear the cone of shame because he still has a catheter jammed into his right front leg, wrapped in tape; if everything goes well tomorrow AM he’ll go back and get the catheter removed; if it doesn’t go well he’ll go back for further hospitalization.
He has so far refused to eat. He keeps wandering around flopping down in random places and whining slightly; how much is the needle still stuck in his arm, how much is the fact that his innards are a mess… dunno. It is nevertheless a vast improvement over the night before last when he was calling out of help and barfing nonstop. Shudder.
Found on the Flickr account of the San Diego Air & Space Museum is this bit of concept art:
The description: “Flaunt Fleet Air Ultra Naval transport sitting 25 above waves on rsbs retractable spar buoy stabilizer concept and design by Thomas P. Faulconer artist Joe Ferrara date 1985 includes plaque and article by designer on back”
This came from an article published in the April 1985 issue of the US Naval Institute Proceedings by Thomas Faulconer, an article I don;t have. So… there ya go.
If you’ve got It, FLAUNT (fleet air ultra naval transport) It. Thomas P.Faulconer. tab lllus US Nav Inst Proc 111:135-139 Apr »85
With any luck at all, the United States will return to first-world status at 4:33 PM eastern time. Watch live:
UPDATE: Nope. Weather socked ’em in. Trying again on the 30th.
