Blue Origin made two mistakes that I think cost them the race.

Interestingly, so does ULA’s upcoming Vulcan rocket, due to replace Atlas V. (Assuming Blue Origin can actually deliver the engines they sold them, but that’s a separate issue.)

Actually, the solid rocket boosters that Atlas V typically requires to launch heavier payloads, are significantly worse than kerolox in terms of air pollution. The main liquid motor is not too bad, basically like a big jet engine in terms of emissions, exhaust is most CO2 and H2O, but the solid rockets add some nasty…

Has there been any info on which storylines are likely to be adapted? Magic’s been running for nearly three decades now, it’s not likely they’ll try to adapt the entire narrative (since not even the game really cares about the entire narrative). It’s going to be more like the Marvel film adaptations, taking the best…

Human-safety-critical systems are usually designed for redundancy. Obviously you don’t launch if only one of them is still working, but I would be curious to know whether the system would technically function, if these valves had failed mid-flight rather than pre-flight, or if they recklessly launched anyways. Are…

“SpaceX partners with”? For a fucking cubesat?

Gizmodo seems really hesitant to trust people. I’ve been fine on Kotaku and Jalopnik for years, made plenty of posts on Gizmodo that got approved but have never been able to get permanently ungrayed here.

Burning methane produces water and carbon dioxide (CH4 + 2 O2 => CO2 + 2 H2O). Methane is a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide (by like 100x iirc), so it is better to burn it than to simply emit it, which is why natural gas extractors try to burn off anything they can’t capture, and get in trouble when…

There is never a need for an emergency crew launch, at least not since Shuttle stopped flying. The capsule carrying astronauts to the ISS remains docked until they depart - there are always enough lifeboats to get everyone home. If someone needs to get back to Earth in a hurry, they can undock and return I believe…

Yes, but NASA wants the backup option. When there’s an accident, they want to be able to ground the vehicle as long as necessary, without worrying about keeping the ISS crewed. Having two suppliers is worth it - especially when you can buy most of your flights on the cheaper one, and only buy enough of the second to…

I’ve never seen OBS do that. Check the hotkey settings, maybe you set something to start recording and you’ve been triggering it accidentally.

In this case, there is no reason to attribute to malice what can only be explained by incompetence.

Ooh, Bottled Cloister. I used to run a playset of them in casual Modern, to counter 8-rack. Good way to dodge sorc-speed discard. Too slow for competitive play but just fine for kitchen table Magic, and few of my decks need to play things off-turn.

Magic has tons of tokens, but the rules very specifically allow tokens only on the battlefield. If a token dies, the card doesn’t stay in the graveyard; if it gets bounced back to your hand or shuffled into your library, it disappears.

Some games have visual artifacts that are minimized at higher resolutions. Without motion blur, fast-moving objects (or static objects with a fast-moving camera) can seem to “jump” between positions, if they move by multiple pixels per frame. I don’t find it to be that big a deal, and most games have motion blur these…

1) What Russia says has only the occasional resemblance to reality. I always thought their talk of pulling out was a negotiation tactic - either a way to milk more cash out of the US, or as a way to worm their way into the Chinese space station program. Now that China’s launched theirs, into an orbit that can’t easily…

Unfortunately, catching a spaceship with a truck is not likely to succeed. The capsule was drifting in the wind - even the people tracking it were three minutes away by ground, any operation large enough to actually catch it would have to be too large to remain unnoticed. Consider how little success SpaceX has had,…

That’s only for rockets going to orbit. They usually go eastward to get a small kick from the Earth’s rotation, but to be in orbit you need to gain a lot of horizontal velocity.

Yeah, SpaceX is definitely the one to watch, because honestly they’re beating everyone right now. They’re ahead of everyone, in terms of tech, price, and sheer volume, and by a lot.

This rocket is small.