Space

An interesting article on the time line of the universe.

The Universe passed through many epochs, from free quarks and gluons to stable protons and neutrons to neutral atoms to stars, galaxies, planets, and more. The precise time at which these various epochs occurred, including the (current) dark energy-dominated era, can be pinpointed with precision. Here’s how we know.

• Boeing's Starliner spacecraft was favored to win a contract worth billions to develop a crew capsule over SpaceX.
• Boeing received $4.2 billion to develop a "commercial crew" transportation system, but ultimately lost the commercial crew space race.
• Boeing struggled to adjust to a fixed-price environment and faced financial pressure and technical challenges in developing Starliner.

Really important step towards expanding our research on the moon, is creating highly detailed maps of the entire surface.

China is doing some great work on building out infrastructure and studies of the moon. They're the only country that's brought back any moon rocks in decades.

Space Race 3.0 is on, and we'll see how different approaches to the research and manned missions will move forward.

The US is currently building out an extremely upfront cost heavy project, but with a lot of long term benefits.

China is building a more straightforward moon project, but with higher ongoing costs, as much of the infrastructure is disposable (more like Apollo).

I’m working on an indie game that deals with Space Sciences. I’m nearby a well-known university for aerospace and space sciences and could use some guidance from people that know the subject well. The university’s faculty directory helped me find potential contacts but I’m not too sure on the proper etiquette for contacting them.

Do I just contact a few of them individually to their uni emails? Do I contact their provided phone numbers? Do I reach out to the Department Head and ask for their guidance? Is payment usually expected for an initial conversation like this?

The amount of detail in these pictures is amazing. You can really see the texture in the nebula, and the features are so crisp, it kind of looks 3d.

Pretty interesting topic, would be interesting if it could be used to move satellites to a "parking orbit" once they run out of fuel. It's unclear just how much movement in an orbit that can be done, as it says it needs to be in the same energy level.

Source press release: https://www.surrey.ac.uk/news/new-technique-uses-knot-theory-create-tube-map-around-planets-and-moons

Source journal article: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s42064-024-0201-0