On the DEWLine 2.0: Dwight Williams

Noting this for ongoing discussion...and Musk is clearly enmeshed in this particular mess, by our settler-nations' encouragement.

https://apt613.ca/space-is-part-of-the-land-indigenous-knowledges-and-colonization-by-light-and-satellite-pollution/

Noting comments from krpalmer and muchado about today's spaceflight milestone...

I admit to being distracted myself by multiple factors:

- solving the printing-from-open-applications issue plaguing me for the last two days, successfully.
- the meeting of my Mac User Group earlier this afternoon via Zoom.
- trying to work up a custom-designed greeting card for a neighbour's imminent birthday, preferably by using new-to-me graphic design software.
- worries about the tornado watch AND warning late this afternoon in my region.
- shopping errands.
- general research and exploration of the internet.
- other stuff to be added later, maybe.

The fact is that this was an important milestone of sorts today. The revival of American spaceflight technologies used from Mercury to Gemini to Apollo with upgraded components, with some success. It's a capability rebuilt to some degree, and yet as someone who enjoyed much of the Shuttle era, I cannot help but see it as backsliding somewhat. Physics and economics and human biology and psychology will certainly have their ways to varying degrees here, and have done so these past weeks.

I do await further developments with great interest and some hope. I want to see human adventure expand its horizons, and not to see this turned into a mere escape hatch for the richest of us.

Night of contrasts: as white supremacists are trying to frame honest protestors across the USA for looting and vandalism, we also had the Crew Dragon launch today and the 2020 Nebula Awards are being handed out via streaming video. Surreal. Hope, fear and anger all at once in my heart and mind right now.

"So now we must demonstrate what we are really made of. Are we really worthy of the glory of Gagarin?"

They can be worthy. But I worry that Putinism will be an obstacle to that here.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/03/with-dragon-russian-critic-says-roscosmos-acting-left-behind/

...james_davis_nicoll has uploaded an endorsement to Tor's weblog that you might be interested in.

Go have a look!

https://www.tor.com/2019/05/31/better-science-fiction-through-actual-science/

...and speaking of essays on Tor.com from friendlisters inspiring unexpected finds: mcwetboy just wrote a thing on how fantasy maps might or might not fit into the worlds of the stories they're made to serve:

https://www.tor.com/2019/05/28/fantasy-maps-dont-belong-in-the-hands-of-fantasy-characters/

In the process, he pointed out a thing that I didn't know existed in any nation: Map Reading Week. If anyone knows of a Canadian counterpart, that might get my attention too!

...noting the Eutelsat/ABS launch by SpaceX this morning. 

Wanted to embed this one, but apparently NASATelevision has an issue with that.

Anyway, here's the video.

I was listening to Q on Radio One this morning. Jian Ghomeshi was speaking in reaction to an opinion piece put forth by The Economist this week on the end of the US space shuttle operation after thirty years.

Allegedly, this marks the end of the Space Age as well. At least by their lights. (And it seems they're of a mind to say "Good riddance!" by the looks of it.)

Mine, as you might expect from a hardcore TV and comic-book space opera fan? Not so much. I'm one of those people whom The Economist would rather have you consider as having non-existent, irrelevant and ignorable opinions on this subject.

So you won't be at all surprised to see me call - pardon my using the best word for it, please? - bullshit on them for that.

Also, not interested in seeing an end to exploring Big Ideas. Too many left to chase down, you know?

I have no doubt that pursuing space exploration and its spin-offs won't solve all or even most of our problems. I don't expect that. More importantly, I shouldn't have to expect it either. The questions that space exploration poses are interesting enough to pursue as they are.

We're not done with this. NASA may indeed be done with the shuttles, but humanity's nowhere near done with space. Nor it with us.

More as time goes by...

Apparently so.

Details here:

http://spaceref.ca/missions-and-programs/canadian-space-agency/moon-rover/canadian-space-agency-issues-rfp-for-a-moon-rover.html

Background on some of the reasons here:

http://spaceref.ca/event/leag2010/exploring-the-moons-south-pole-a-canadian-objective.html