It’s away!

My people have a saying:

Clearly you use an Auger shell, for...reasons.

lets do some basic math. Assumptions: Energy star washing machines use a max of 14 gallons per load. Shower head flow is roughly 2.5 GPM. A load is the equivalent of roughly 8 pairs of jeans

The main issue is hauling heavy, launching frequently, and above all: COST.

True, but those 450 Tons took 13 years of work.

I think by know everyone realizes when Starship, when ready anyways (soon), will be able to haul nearly 250 Tons to LEO, pretty much one launch can throw an entire ISS in one go....

When organisms fossilize, they fossilize all the way down to a molecular level.

Should have led with Nahnatchka Khan directing, she rules!

The U.S. still has a huge disinformation problem as well.  Part of the problem is the lack of legal structure in which to address major disinformation sources. 

The one good thing that will come out of the GOP primary will be deSantis getting thoroughly embarrassed by a man he has tried to curry favor with at every opportunity.

Meanwhile, fools like DeSantis are actively telling people not to get the latest booster. He should be prosecuted for public endangerment or worse.

Meanwhile in Hungary... government politicians and other public figures are falling over one another to congratulate Karikó and claim her as their own. The same people who, only a couple of years ago, loudly denounced her work and spread disinformation about the mRNA vaccine being far less effective than the clearly…

Cue the inevitable freakout from the Anti-Vaxxers. I expect they’ll be calling them mass murderers, because they believe idiots like Alex Jones who just keep squealing lies like “The poison shot has killed more people than Covid!”. We seem to be trapped in one of the worst worlds in the multiverse. 

Good, something is still right with the world.

How do you procede with launching an expensive/critical thing like this without having pre-approval for getting it back?

Well . . . it depends on how you define “explode”. By technical definitions of the term, no, it actually did not. (Well, the Orbiter didn’t. The SRBs did, when their range safety devices were triggered. More on that in a moment.)

One detail I wanted was how deep down was it found.

Okay, going to split hairs here, but the shuttle itself did not explode. The rocket booster attached to it did, which caused the Challenger to break apart. The crew cabin remained intact but the resulting fall to earth was fatal.

I remember I was in grade school. We were watching to launch live because there was a teacher in the crew.  It was very awkward when it exploded.