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SpaceX NASA returning human spaceflight to United States today (canceled)

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Re: SpaceX NASA returning human spaceflight to United States today (canceled)

#162

Godspeed to the men on board. And God bless the SpaceX team for bringing it all back home.

It really warms my heart that the landing pad is called "OF COURSE I STILL LOVE YOU DRONE SHIP"

In a consumer era where almost all naming is done by marketing and void of any soul, it really, really makes me happy to see a little bit growing through the cracks in the concrete.

Re: SpaceX NASA returning human spaceflight to United States today (canceled)

#167
post #87

For those who aren't giant space nerds (like me) the very best place to get info on SpaceX and SpaceX launches has always been Reddit's /r/SpaceX[0]. The launch today (like all launches) has a dedicated thread[1] with mods keeping all details up to date, all links that matter organized. It's 100% not sponsored or run by SpaceX, but honestly it's probably doing a better job than a corporate PR side could manage. Fanta…

Many reddit communities are like that. Not sure what they did to collect such folks on single place, but reddit is something else.

Well, mostly, they replaced Usenet and a hodge-podge jumble of forum sites running generic interfaces where you have to click to a new page for every 50 comments (or less), which have no comment reply nesting.

Reddit brought a more useful/readable interface, allowed anonymous accounts with no email address, and had a very simple & powerful (if flawed) voting system. This attracted content creators of all kinds, which led to a rapidly growing audience, and it snowballed.

I don't like one company owning all this stuff, but I do love what users in niche subs have created there. With a massive general audience comes better populated niches, excellence riding the coattails of the mediocre. Also, should Condé Nast ever screw the pooch here, plenty of clones are waiting in the wings.

Re: SpaceX NASA returning human spaceflight to United States today (canceled)

#168
post #161

I see they are using touch screens. What would they do if the screens froze?

If one freezes then use the other 3. If they all freeze let the autopilot do it's job.

I find it sort of weird to not have buttons in there: with all the vibrations you would think it's rather difficult to touch the exact control that you want. I guess they considered that...

Re: SpaceX NASA returning human spaceflight to United States today (canceled)

#169

Godspeed to the men on board. And God bless the SpaceX team for bringing it all back home.

It really warms my heart that the landing pad is called "OF COURSE I STILL LOVE YOU DRONE SHIP" In a consumer era where almost all naming is done by marketing and void of any soul, it really, really makes me happy to see a little bit growing through the cracks in the concrete.

The name is just "Of course I still love you". They're named after vessels from Iain M Banks' "Culture" SF setting.

Culture spaceships have AI "minds" and the mind of a large ship-constructing ship will name its offspring. They tend to have an odd sense of humour, there are plenty of sites with lists of Culture ship names, and Banks wrote footnotes excusing the obvious references to 20th century human culture as matters of translation (e.g. there is an Offensive Unit named "I said I have a big stick" which is a reference to Theodore Roosevelt's "Speak softly and carry a big stick").

https://theculture.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_spacecraft_in_the...

Re: SpaceX NASA returning human spaceflight to United States today (canceled)

#170

Godspeed to the men on board. And God bless the SpaceX team for bringing it all back home.

It really warms my heart that the landing pad is called "OF COURSE I STILL LOVE YOU DRONE SHIP" In a consumer era where almost all naming is done by marketing and void of any soul, it really, really makes me happy to see a little bit growing through the cracks in the concrete.

It's actually a drone ship (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_spaceport_drone_shi...) named "Of Course I Still Love You" after the fictional ship of the same name from Bank's novel "The Player of Games" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Player_of_Games).

- Your friendly neighborhood pedant.

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