@solowinged / solowinged.tumblr.com
To update this, the astronaut didn’t actually do it, she and her wife were getting a divorce and the wife plead guilty to lying to the feds about it
And framing your ex for a crime mid-divorce while they are actively in space is some Agatha Christie level shit
Hilariously funny that they let the guy known for wandering off without warning to look at birds was allowed to do this
ok. i survived 25 years outside the international space station. who gives a shit
Technically most moss is outside the international space station
this is so cool are u guys seeing this!!!!!
𝙻𝙰𝙸𝙺𝙰 𝚃𝙾 𝙶𝚁𝙾𝚄𝙽𝙳 𝙲𝙾𝙽𝚃𝚁𝙾𝙻 — I miss you , Have I told you that yet?
the cultural object of the black hole is kind of remarkable. It's almost an anti-God in a sense, a negative infinity. Yeah there's this kind of dead sun that's collapsed into an infinitely dense point, and if you fall past its event horizon you're fucked. Every schoolchild knows this. A black hole can be introduced in a superhero blockbuster without any explanation except for its established look and the name "black hole", and this will be understood as the ultimate natural disaster, which even superman could not hope to defeat. truly S-tier cosmic object
If there's any proof we need that our reality is made of math, it's that graph function singularities exist as physical features of our world. Undefined algebraic points exist, we can see them, they float around space touching things and fucking them up beyond all recognition, and they look like marauding black death wrapped in a spherical gradient of tortured spacetime.
Like, words literally cannot describe how cool black holes are. If they did not actually exist, I doubt that the world's 100 top rated sci-fi writers locked in a room for a month brainstorming could come up with anything nearly as good. When do you ever get something that is as top tier psychologically impactful as it is so deeply rooted in fundamental scientific truth about reality?
A billion and a half years ago, 2 black holes in a suicide pact of a too-tight orbit finally collided and merged into an even larger black hole.
This event produced a shuddering in the fabric of reality that spread out through the universe at the speed of light. During the brief milliseconds of the merger, these two black holes were radiating 50X more power than all of the fusion in all of the stars in the entire observable universe, and turning all of that radiated energy directly into distortions of the coordinate system of the universe.
Eventually, we detected the first such event in 2015. Two mathematical abominations of gravity collided on the other side of the universe, and it rattled spacetime so hard that we felt it quake here on Earth billions of light years away.
Black holes are genuine cosmic horrors.
There's this sort of anthropomorphizing that inherently happens in language that really gets me sometimes. I'm still not over the terminology of "gravity assist," the technique where we launch satellites into the orbit of other planets so that we can build momentum via the astounding and literally astronomical strength of their gravitational forces, to "slingshot" them into the direction we need with a speed that we could never, ever, ever create ourselves. I mean, some of these slingshots easily get probes hurtling through space at tens of thousands of miles per hour. Wikipedia has a handy diagram of the Voyager 1 satellite doing such a thing.
"Gravity assist." "Slingshot." Of course, on a very basic and objective level, yes, we are taking advantage of forces generated by outside objects to specifically help in our goals. We're getting help from objects in the same way a river can power a mill. And of course we call it a "slingshot," because the motion is very similar (mentally at least; I can't be sure about the exact physics).
Plus, especially compared to the other sciences, the terminology for astrophysics is like, really straightforward. "Black hole?" Damn yeah it sure is. "Big bang?" It sure was. "Galactic cluster?" Buddy you're never gonna guess what this is. I think it's an effect of the fact that language is generally developed for life on earth and all the strange variances that happen on its surface, that applying it to something as alien and vast as space, general terms tend to suffice very well in a lot more places than, like... idk, botany.
But, like. "Gravity assist." I still can't get the notion out of my head that such language implies us receiving active help from our celestial neighbors. They come to our aid. We are working together. We are assisted. Jupiter and the other planets saw our little messengers coming from its pale blue molecular cousin, and we set up the physics just right, so that they could help us send them out to far stranger places than this, to tell us all about what they find out there.
We are assisted.
And there is no better way to illustrate my feelings on the matter than to just show you guys one of my favorite paintings, this 1973 NASA art by Rick Guidice to show the Pioneer probe doing this exact thing:
"... You, sent out beyond your recall, go to the limits of your longing. Embody me. ..."
Gravity assist.
patron saint of one way trips
@lakefucine | patti white | the reverent marigold | eleanor hsieh | gus greshem | oleg gazenko | alan shapiro | boston manor | @caputvulpinum | pigeon watch | brennig davies | sleeping at last | @fateology | sarah doyle.
𝙻𝙰𝙸𝙺𝙰 𝚃𝙾 𝙶𝚁𝙾𝚄𝙽𝙳 𝙲𝙾𝙽𝚃𝚁𝙾𝙻 — I miss you , Have I told you that yet?
In 2012, NASA moved the space shuttle Endeavour through the streets of Los Angeles to the California Science Center.
it’s what they would have wanted
happy moonwalk day
Things Michael Collins absolutely would have done given the chance.
Hey. Why isn’t the moon landing a national holiday in the US. Isn’t that fucked up? Does anyone else think that’s absurd?
It was a huge milestone of scientific and technological advancement. (Plus, at the time, politically significant). Humanity went to space! We set foot on a celestial body that was not earth for the first time in human history! That’s a big deal! I’ve never thought about it before but now that I have, it’s ridiculous to me that that’s not part of our everyday lives and the public consciousness anymore. Why don’t we have a public holiday and a family barbecue about it. Why have I never seen the original broadcast of the moon landing? It should be all over the news every year!
It’s July 20th. That’s the day of the moon landing. Next year is going to be the 54th anniversary. I’m ordering astronaut shaped cookie cutters on Etsy and I’m going to have a goddamn potluck. You’re all invited.
Hey. Hey. Tumblr. Ides of March ppl. We can do this
Hell yeah moon holiday
Don't forget to leave oatmeal out on the roof for Buzz tonight!
A cockatoo broke our rocket. :(
Gonna need a tiny bit more context here bud
Thankyou to everyone for the helpful replies and context - so turns out a cockatoo broke our rocket.
A ... spokesperson?
It is really important to me that all of you learn about Al Bean, astronaut on Apollo 12 and the fourth man to walk on the moon, who after 20 years in the US Navy and 18 years with NASA during which he spent 69 days in space and more than 10 hours doing EVAs on the moon , retired to become a painter.
He is my favorite astronaut for any number of reasons, but he’s also one of my favorite visual artists.
Like, look at this stuff????
It’s all so expressive and textured and colorful! He literally painted his own experience on the moon! And that's just really fucking cool to me!
Just look at this! This is one of my absolute favorite emotions of all time. Is Anyone Out There? is like the ultimate reaction image. Any time I have an existential crisis, this is how I picture myself.
And then there's this one:
The Fantasy
For all of the six Apollo missions to land on the moon, there was no spare time. Every second of their time on the surface was budgeted to perfection: sleeping, eating, putting on the suits, entering and exiting the LEM, rock collection, setting up longterm experiments to transmit data back to Earth, everything. These timetables usually got screwed over by something, but for the most part the astronauts stuck to them.
The crew of Apollo 12 (Pete Conrad, Al Bean, and Dick Gordon) had other plans. Conrad and Bean had snuck a small camera with a timer into the LEM to take a couple pictures together on the moon throughout the mission. They had hidden the key for the timer in one of the rock collection bags, with the idea being to grab the key soon after landing, take some fun photos here and there, and then sneak the camera back to Earth to develop them. They had practiced where they would hide the key and how to get it out from under the collected rocks back on Earth dozens of times.
But when they got to the moon, the key was nowhere to be found. Al Bean spent precious time digging through the collection bags before he called it off. The camera had been pushing their luck anyways, he couldn't afford to spend anymore time not on the mission objectives. Conrad and Bean continued the mission as per the NASA plan while Dick Gordon orbited overhead.
Fast forward to the very end of the mission. Bean and Conrad are doing last checks of the LEM before they enter for the last time and depart from the moon. As Bean is stowing one of the collection bags, the camera key falls out. The unofficially planned photo time has come and gone, and he tosses the key over his shoulder to rest forever on the surface of the moon.
This painting, The Fantasy, is that moment. There have never been three people on the moon at the same time, there was never an unofficial photo shoot on the moon, this picture could never have happened.
"The most experienced astronaut was designated commander, in charge of all aspects of the mission, including flying the lunar module. Prudent thinking suggested that the next-most-experienced crew member be assigned to take care of the command module, since it was our only way back home. Pete had flown two Gemini flights, the second with Dick as his crewmate. This left the least experienced - me - to accompany the commander on the lunar surface.
"I was the rookie. I had not flown at all; yet I got the prize assignment. But not once during the three years of training which preceded our mission did Dick say that it wasn't fair and that he wished he could walk on the moon, too. I do not have his unwavering discipline or strength of character.
"We often fantasized about Dick's joining us on the moon but we never found a way. In my paintings, though, I can have it my way. Now, at last, our best friend has come the last sixty miles." - Al Bean, about The Fantasy.
To be honest, this one
Almost made me cry right now.
I love it. Something about it feels so incredibly human. The emotion on display, even without a face to show it. This is magnificent. Truly magnificent. I feel it in my soul.
