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au: Iceman lives but he's still doing chemio, Mav and Slider have a kind of hate/hate/love relationship but when it comes to their mutual friend they pair up faster than you could ever believed. Oh, and Hondo is fuckin' smart, he follows Mav from job to job because he likes to go around and meet new people and have new challenges everytime, before he gets bored.

Warning for homophobic assholes, angst, slurs and not enough punching.

Sunny outside doesn't mean Maverick is happy. This fucking new place where they moved the base is always sunny and he would appreciate it if heat could give them a little breath because it's just the end of march and they already have to switch on the air conditioner and that made Tom get cold again. It's never a good day when his husband gets sick because of stupid stuff it could be avoided. Better yet, it is never going to be a good day until a cold won't degenerate into fever and long nights fighting sleep and nightmares.

He fucking misses Miramar, their favourite spot on the beach and the gentle old lady who used to spend the afternoon with Ice playing cards, watching stupid telenovelas and keeping him company when Maverick had to be elsewhere.

The new class isn't helping his mood either. The best of the best and a new brand of fucking assholes who doesn't listen to him, makes him want to punch everybody in the face and likes Cyclone a little too much for his, and Hondo's, taste. Hondo not liking an entire class says much, especially after three years of teaching at TOPGUN and the number of years the man himself spend working with many different kinds of people in every program the brass moved him to.

If on a normal and sunny day Maverick would have just let it slide and got back to them making the exercise just a little more difficult to complete, today he just can't, not again and not after what he heard while walking in his classroom. Skylab is the first voice he hears but Viking is the one who answers and the deafening silence from the others doesn't help. It hurts a bit when not even Empress, the only decent person and a very good pilot, says something.

The brass let a faggot like Kazansky win this stupid fucking price and then made him Admiral. Who knows how many favours he had to do just to enter the Navy.

Probably not as many he had to do all these years to save Captain Mavsshole. Probably he has AIDS and not even cancer but they are just too ashamed, to tell the truth, or everyone would ask too many questions.

Pete has to count until ten and then until a hundred and then another time until a hundred before taking another step. He knows all his seeing, and hearing, is just blind rage and it could make it worst, probably ending up in prison or in the hospital and then Ice should get up to fetch him and he isn't in the state to do anything, he shouldn't do anything if not get better. He counts from one hundred to zero a third time, takes a deep breath and thinks he can handle this without resulting in homicide and a dishonourable discharge from the Navy and leaving so much mess to clean to Carlos and David. He likes them and he likes having lunch with them. So no to punch because then his husband should come for him and he can't, no to kill or he's going to lose two friends but he can't act as if nothing happened. So he'll have to think about what to do and they're going to regret even letting their own brain think about something like that.

The punishment arrives in town under the shape of one Ron Slider Kerner who decided to come around to see his best friend and spent time making Maverick's week a complete hell. Or maybe not.

When he comes back home that same night Slider is already around, sitting on the couch, talking with Ice about something and someone who got married down in Cali and people Mav doesn't know. Tom looks a little better and just that makes the day a little less heavy, when they kiss hello he can feel his husband's hands around his face and their grip is stronger every day and that would have made his knees give up and cry a little because it was such a close call this time he almost can't still believe this man, four starts admiral Tom Iceman Kazansky, is still alive and fighting and kissing him when he comes back home. Then Slider cough and oh, oh man now he knows what to do and how to make that bunch of assholes pay. They're going to hell without moving a step and they're blissful unaware of what it's waiting for them.

He has to wait after dinner after Ice is in bed and Slider is tidying around because he lived with Ice too and took some of his husband freakish habit when it comes to have a spotless kitchen in a spotless house. So Slider, I have a favour to ask he announces once he's back in front of him and Slider's smirk is a very knowing one. And so the game begins.

Wednesday morning is a little cooler than Tuesday and Ice's cold seems a less intense. He takes Slider with him because he must see the new state of art place where he's working he says to Ice and his husband laughs and looks like he's sayin' I know something is going on, be careful babe. 

The class is already sitting in their usual spots, a pilot and their RIO every row, and they look at them walking in with the most confused expression ever. Oh, you don't have the slightest idea of what is going to happen now. 

Class this is Captain Ron Kerner, callsign Slider, he was Admiral Kazansky's RIO for most of their years in the air and he's going to teach you a couple of things this week. He worked around a little bit, after he stop flying, went to DC, decided to put his ass on a chair and then went back in combat with some very tough dudes who taught him a thing or two. He's here for a visit and, over dinner, I was thinking it would have been so nice to have him over to teach you something new. He was so happy to accept. 

Slider is subtle in what he does and how he does his work, he learned it following Ice around during his first years in his Admiral carrier and perfect the rest working on his own projects at the Pentagon and around DC. He takes the all class up in the sky at five am, makes them run miles every time their manoeuvres aren't exactly by the book, gives homework and books to read, checks their rooms and confiscated their alcohol and cigarettes, and takes them to the veteran home and forgets them there for a whole day because he has to take Ice to try the new ice cream place, then comes back at eight in the evening, makes them run again, questions them about politics and tactics and makes them running a little more. But the worst is the inactivity: after spending days moving around like the world is going to end the second next to this one, he makes them sit in class st five-thirty in the morning and makes them wait. For an hour, then two and then three. It's eight-thirty and Slider is strolling in the classroom looking like someone who had the best sleep and coffee in his life while every single student is dying to sleep, drink something other than water and, generally, their poor brains are begging do something. Good morning class, today we have a nine-hour lecture, so get ready to have your world shake and you're going to learn stuff you're never going to forget.

Almost ten hours later, a break of thirty minutes around midmorning and Slider smiles and announces, candied as the day his parents baptized him, that everything has a reason in this life and a day of lectures on the culture of queer people, slurs, AIDS and flying is the bare minimum they deserve and he's going to make sure no one's name is going to end of the plaque because they don't deserves such an honour, or any honor, when they can't give the basic respect to a human, let alone to one of their superiors. And yes, every single one of them is going to get back in flight school, even if it will cost Slider and Maverick all the favours they have to ask, and not isn't just because of the comment on Admiral Kazansky, that was only the last straw and yes Viking you can call the President of the United States for all I care.

It's Wednesday again, it's raining outside, Maverick is making pancakes for three people, he doesn't have to go to work because he doesn't have a new class for at least another month and a half, Slider is looking around as if he was the king of the world and Ice is trying really hard not to ask what his husband and best friend did. He's going to read a report, a couple of days later, very detailed about everything that happened but by then Slider will be back in DC and Maverick will be fussing about taking a walk and looking to adopt a cat and starting a new hobby that will get them out of the house every time they can.

For now, Tom enjoys the pace and some delicious pancake, while Mav and Slider finish forging a strange new alliance, signed over the promise of mutual help and no question asked when needed.

So I've been doing an art project, and I made space themed shoes. Their pretty cool, it has the skylab (on the left). If anyone doesn't know about skylab go look up skylab 4 strike its pretty dope. Skylab the best tin can to ever be a tin can. And on the right its a space shuttle, through history we've have multiple missions with shuttles but our most notable are the two that went wrong, the challenger and the Columbia incidents. Their is also a sputnik below skylab (the first satellite to go to space, it was russian) i know this is a long text but whatever its history and ill do what I want.

I want a spacesuit replica so bad

Can you provide an unnumbered list of links to all of the space and astronomy futurism pictures you have on your blog that were created by Rick Guidice, whom - if I'm not mistaken - was a NASA concept artist during the Apollo program and into the Skylab program years?

Please correct me if I got the artist's bio wrong too, thanks.

Yeah, you should be able to find them all with this link! Or this one. There are a lot of repeats and I'm sure there are plenty of Guidice works that I haven't included.

He's a nice guy, we swapped a few emails when I was putting my art book together. There's a fun free 23-minute documentary about him on Youtube, if you haven't seen it.

Do you have a favorite NASA spacecraft computer?

Not really, no.

There are some cool computers used by NASA for spacecraft, and I'll take any opportunity to post pictures of ones I've seen.

Like the Honeywell Alert 1C out of the X-15

There's also the Apollo Guidance Computer. Always a classic.

Can't forget the Launch Vehicle Digital Computer from the Saturn V Instrument Unit

There are so many other ones that I don't have photos of (I looked). Like the Gemini OBC, Apollo PGNCS, Apollo AGS, the Titan's ASC-15, the IBM System/4 Pi used on Skylab, MOL, and the shuttle...

So many good computers!

Adult Huey, Dewey and Louie Duck as astronauts as Apolo 11 Crew (Neil Armstrong, Edwin Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins) - Space Race - Ducktales 2017 - Ducktales in Space

Since I drew Donald Duck as Yuri Gagarin and Della Duck as Valentina Tereshkova as the first men in space, then the parallel of the first men on the moon could have something to do with Huey, Dewey and Louie from Ducktales 2017. And I drew the three of them as Apollo 11 astronauts who were the first to walk on the moon (allegedly), but here they are no longer children, but adults. I don't usually draw adult Huey, Dewey and Louie, so this is my first time doing it and I did it with the Ducktales 2017 version, but in my own style. Yes, I redraw the poses of astronauts Neil Armstrong, Edwin Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins who led the Apollo 11 crew in the Saturn V rocket from July 16 to July 24, 1969, with July 20 and 21 being Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon and were the first people to walk on the moon and brought great pride to the USA and to all mankind.

And this is where Huey, Dewey and Louie grew up, playing the role of the Apollo 11 crew and who will be the first ducks to walk on the moon. Yes, although they are different, they all together have their tasks in space. Huey as an explorer of new unknown frontiers and a scientist, Dewey as a pilot and coordinator and Louie as a businessman who finances it all, but they are all astronauts together. Like like their mother and like their uncle. And they are in spacesuits (Apollo/Skylab spacesuit) which are mostly white, but I colored some parts according to them.

"Look to the stars my darling baby boys Life is strange and vast Filled with wonders and joys Face each new sun with eyes clear and true Unafraid of the unknown Because I'll face it all with you" - a lullaby from their mother Della Duck.

Also this song about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1qQuSuQaHY

I hope you like this drawing and this idea. Also this is my gift to @ducksinspaceadventure , who asked for this. Also happy belated birthday to Huey, Dewey and Louie and may the guiding stars guide them to endless adventure and their destination! It's a small step for ducklings, but a big one for humanity, that is, for ducks. Feel like and reblog this!

Started having this discussion on discord and I am bringing it to tumblr. Most space stations do not have showers for obvious reasons, but Wolf 359 references the Hephaestus's showers several times. How do they work? For the purpose of this poll, I am not accepting the answers 'the writers didn't think about it' or 'that part of the station has gravity somehow'. Play in this 0 gravity space with me.

Sims 2: Apollo A7L Suits

Here's something that probably only I would want, but I'm uploading it anyway... a recolor of the basegame astronaut outfit to match all the NASA Apollo-era A7L and A7LB spacesuits. Since this is just a recolor, the ports aren't in the correct locations and there's no backpack, but whatever.

So here's what you get: 48 suits, 3 for each Apollo and Skylab mission, with insignia and crewmember names (in Latin alphabet because there was no way I was doing both English and Simlish). They're flagged as everyday and outerwear, for both male and female adults. Most of them are tooltipped though I think the A7LBs aren't for some reason.

Anyway: the preview shows, from left to right, a non-EVA A7LB, an A7L, and a commander's A7LB. The A7LBs for non-EVA positions (Skylab, ASTP, and the Apollo 15-17 CMPs) look identical to the A7Ls. As for the other A7LBs, the commanders have the red stripe on the arm and the LMP doesn't, otherwise they're identical to the one on the right save for insignia and names. The files are labeled for each mission and position as opposed to names, although the Apollo 1 suits use the convention of CMD/CMP/LMP since I'm not sure what they would've been had it flown.

I don't think these have any morphs, since they're the regular EA mesh, but you wouldn't be able to tell if a sim was fat anyway due to the bulk of the suit, and if you're pregnant you probably shouldn't be going on a trip to the moon anyway, at least in Apollo-era hardware.

Okay, now that you've read my rambling, here's the download:

DOWNLOAD: SimFileShare

The pop-sci takeaway from the Apollo program is always "if we'd only kept building more Saturn Vs we'd be on Mars by now!", which is of course very tempting to believe - it's an iconic rocket, undeniably very cool. Unfortunately the truth is, imo, more along the lines of Saturn V being a historic mistake from the start; the post-Apollo stagnation was assured more or less the moment we agreed on taking the fastest route - a big booster lofting the whole mission at once.

So it's like, launch cost is almost entirely dominated by the fixed cost of infrastructure - this is why Shuttle became such a white elephant by the way, the original hopeful cost figures were predicated on a twenty-to-fifty a year flight rate. We achieved, at best, nine (and then more or less immediately after the Challenger happened, but this is a whole other tangent). Saturn V had two real payloads - the Apollo missions, and Skylab. In the absence of sustained 1969 mission cadence and all the enormous funding commitments that entailed, the huge fixed infrastructure of Saturn V would have rusted on the Cape Canaveral coast most of the year waiting for a single mission, even if they hadn't closed the production lines before the first piloted Apollo mission even launched.

How could this have been different? Plausibly we could have gone with an EOR (Earth Orbit Rendezvous) or even split LOR (Lunar Orbit Rendezvous) plan, much like the original plans proposed by Von Braun at the pre-NASA Army Balistic Missile Agency - flotillas of smaller Saturn 1B (~20t to LEO) or Saturn C3 (~50t to LEO) launches carrying the crew module, the Trans-Lunar-Injection stage, the lunar lander, and propellant for all of the above to staging points in Low Earth Orbit, where they'd be put together like god's own lego set and sent on their way. This, notably, would have allowed two things - one is amortization of the launch infrastructure over more flights, which also allows for learning-curve cost reduction as tooling gets better at handling successive launchers. The other is amortization of the enormous fixed cost of a space launch complex and it's concomitant "standing army" of technicians and their support staff over a great many launches. Notably, unlike the massively oversize Saturn V, those launchers would also have had the ability to cost-effectively launch other payloads during 'off season' - commsats, military birds, weather satellites, space probes, whatever - more cost effectively, driving down the effective cost of a single launch yet further.

This would all be water under the bridge, of course, if it hadn't convinced everyone since that we simply can't do missions to the Moon without a hundred tons of throw weight to LEO - after all, that's what the sole example looked like! One study carried out by the 2000s Augustine Commission (a government advisory group founded in the wake of the Ares Program's failure to produce a big new rocket), found that even then we could have achieved lunar missions with only slightly upgraded versions of the existing EELV (Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle) fleet and some orbital aggregation. This was unfortunately discarded in favor of yet another big rocket though. I guess that's just the way things go, but it is unfortunate imo!

10 songs tag game

I was tagged by @flamemittens ! Here's 10 songs from my recently played spotify playlist

under the cut cause it's long

"In 1973, Skylab, America's first space station, was launched aboard a two-stage Saturn V vehicle. Saturn IB rockets were used to launch three different three-man crews to the Skylab space station."

Date: May 1, 1973

NASA ID: 7038484

I really enjoy the Skylab mission patch I think it’s lovely

The Skylab Medical Experiment Altitude Test (lovingly known as SMEAT) however is probably the worst patch I have ever seen

The FUCK did you do to snoopy

Happy 22nd* Birthday, Jack Lousma!

*88th

So far the only astronaut to be born on Leap Day, Jack R. Lousma was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan on February 29, 1936. He was selected as an astronaut at age 7 (30), worked in Mission Control during the Apollo 13 crisis at age 8 (34), made his first spaceflight to the Skylab space station at age 9 (37), and piloted the space shuttle at age 11 (47)!

In 2016, aged 20 (80), he shared 29 facts about his life and career with the Detroit Free Press.

"It’s quite a good deal," Lousma told the Free Press, "Usually — three out of four years — I celebrate on March 1. It goes by in a split second at midnight."

Tal día como hoy 8 de febrero ...

2001: Se consigue secuenciar el genoma completo un animal extinto, el mamut lanudo.

1974: Regresa a la tierra la última expedición de la estación estadounidense Skylab.

1969: Cae un meteorito de gran valor científico en Pueblito de Allende (México) al ser la condrita carbonácea de mayor tamaño recuperada hasta la fecha.

1952: En Reino Unido Isabel II es proclamada reina.

1937: En el marco de la guerra civil Española ocurre la masacre de la carretera Málaga - Almería, hecho conocido como "La Desbandá".

1910: En Estados Unidos, William D. Boyce funda los Boys Scouts.

1815: Se celebra el Congreso de Viena, donde los países aistentes acuerdan abolir el comercio de esclavos.

1692: En Salem (Massachusetts), se inicia el detonante de lo que sería conocido como juicios de las brujas de Salem, tras la acusación de un médico del pueblo a dos chicas del pueblo de que podrían ser brujas.

1587: María Estuardo es ejecutada en Inglaterra bajo la sospecha de haber estado implicada en el complot de Babington, para matar a su prima Isabel I de Inglaterra.

1586: En Madrid, se funda la institución Hospital General.

you mention the apollo guidance computer in your bio.

do you have any nerdy fun facts about it?

Thanks for the ask!

It's difficult to convey everything the AGC was, concisely, but here's some highlists:

In terms of size and power, it's comparable to the Apple II, but predates it by 11 years. There are some obvious differences in the constraints placed on the two designs, but still, that's pretty ahead of it's time.

The bare-bones OS written for the AGC was one of the first to ever implement co-operative multi-tasking and process priority management. This would lead problems on Apollo 11, when an erroneously deployed landing radar overloaded the task scheduler on Eagle during the Lunar landing (the infamous 1201/1202 program alarms). Fortunately, it didn't end up affecting the mission, and the procedures were subsequently revised/better followed to avoid the situation ever reoccurring.

Relatedly, it was also designed to immediately re-boot, cull low-priority tasks, and resume operations following a crash -- a property essential to ensuring the spacecraft could be piloted safely and reliably in all circumstances. Many of the reliability-promoting techniques used by Apollo programmers (led by Margaret Hamilton, go women in STEM) went on to become foundational principles of software engineering.

Following the end of the Apollo, Skylab, and Apollo-Soyuz missions, a modified AGC would be re-purposed into the worlds first digital fly-by-wire system. (Earlier fly-by-wire used analogue computers, which are their own strange beasts.) This is, IMO, one of the easiest things to point to when anyone asks "What does NASA even do for us anyway?" Modern aircraft autopilots owe so, so much to the AGC -- and passengers owe so much to those modern autopilots. While there are some pretty well-known incidents involving fly-by-wire (lookin' at you, MCAS), it speaks to the incredible amount of safety such systems normally afford that said incidents are so rare. Pilot error killed so many people before computers hit the cockpit.

AGC programs were stored in a early form of read only memory, called "core rope memory", where bits were literally woven into an array of copper wire and magnets. As a Harvard-architecture machine (programs and variables stored and treated separately), it therefore could not be re-programmed in flight. This would be problem on Apollo 14, when an intermittent short in the LM's abort switch nearly cancelled the landing -- if it occurred during decent, the computer would immediately discard the descent engine and return to orbit. A second, consecutive failure (after Apollo 13) would have almost certainly ended in the cancellation of the program, and the loss of the invaluable findings of Apollo 15, 16, and 17. (These were the missions with the lunar roving vehicles, allowing treks far from the LM.) Fortunately, the MIT engineers who built the AGC found a solution -- convince the computer it had, in fact, already aborted, allowing the landing to occur as normal -- with a bit of manual babysitting from LMP Edgar Mitchell.

Finally, it wasn't actually the only computer used on Apollo! The two AGCs (one in the command module, the other in the Lunar Module, a redundancy that allowed Apollo 13 to power off the CM and survive their accident) were complemented by the Launch Vehicle Digital Computer (LVDC) designed by IBM and located in S-IVB (Saturn V's third stage, Saturn-I/IB's second stage), and the Abort Guidance System (AGS) located in the LM. The AGS was extremely simple, and intended to serve as a backup should the AGC have ever failed and been unable to return the LM to orbit-- something it was fortunately never needed for. The LVDC, on the other hand, was tasked with flying the Saturn rocket to Earth orbit, which it did every time. This was very important during Apollo 12, when their Saturn V was struck by lightning shortly after launch, completely scrambling the CM's electrical system and sending their gimbal stacks a-spinning. Unaffected by the strike, the LVDC flew true and put the crew into a nominal low Earth orbit -- where diagnostics began, the AGC was re-set, and the mission continued as normal.