It's obviously fiction, but this is a recurring theme of For All Mankind. Accidents happen, people are injured or killed. This is the cost of exploring a new frontier.

the current timeline has NASA getting humans back to the moon slightly before China but that could change

Either way I don't think either space program sees the other as an adversary in any way, it's purely political games. China would happily collaborate with the US on space tech, however it is against US law for NASA to cooperate with China

I seem to recall reading that his craft impacted so hard it literally turned him into a puddle of paste. Absolutely horrifying.

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No one actually eats that stuff in space, though - too many crumbs! However, its one of their most famous and effective souvenirs and it’s inextricably tied to space by association…

Yea lol I saw the thumbnail without looking at the title or sub and my first thought was a flameblade from botw on the ground at night.

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Nope, it would disintegrate.

Really hard for me to do the pronunciation gymnastics to get to beetlegeuse from there. I believe you but the transformation is interesting.

>Has anyone every traveled to a launch

Yes, many tens of thousands of people have travelled to see launches.
But to make them the focus of the trip is to court disappointment.

Build a trip that has other goals alongside that - see KSC, travel to Key West, explore the coast.

All of these are (depending on where you're flying from) fair reasons to visit Florida - especially if you're currently enduring frigid temperatures.

<I saw an STS launch in the 90s - got a chance to hear Michael Foale, and had a whale of a time>

Its a deep rabbit hole and i dont know your gear. I assume your manually plate solving using known markers and using just a dslr and lens? Maybe look at skywatcher az gti. Eq mounts, polar alignment, star alignment and away you go. Plenty of videos on youtube, have fun and clear skies.

Is your oldest named Beetlegeuse for the biggest star in Orion?

Traveling to see a NASA launch is tough. They are notoriously scrubbed all of the time. I live in Florida and it took me 13 tries before I got to see a shuttle launch up close and personal.

SpaceX launches are much more reliable for going when they say they are.

Slingshooting blue whales out the back of the ship would get you 1 Kyle of force...

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I hope they cure Cloud from his poisoning in time.

They don't use high enriched Uranium FYI, it's HALEU, mandated for all space systems currently being designed.

That's a new term for me, thanks for the reading material

3d print a wrench

https://nasa3d.arc.nasa.gov/detail/wrench-mis

This was the first 3d print designed for astronaut use, and printed on the ISS.

It's a common misconception that space is "cold". This is due to the definition of "cold" -> the kinetic energy of particles in certain volume is low. But while on Earth is means you have lots of particles, each with low energy, in space it's very different - you have very few particles, often with very high energy.

In order to cool something down, you need to transfer the energy. On Earth particles with low energy will steal some of the energy of your hot thing, cooling it down. The more particles, the better. In space this effect doesn't exist, there are no particles to steal the energy. You need to radiate the heat as infra-red.

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You can see launches at Vandenberg Space Force Base near Santa Barbara. Try to catch a SpaceX launch when the booster will come back and land. Only thing about Vandenberg is lots of fog. If you want to see a potential piece of history in the making, SpaceX will soon attempt an orbital launch of Starship which is, IMO, the first real spaceship. There will be no firm schedule so you may end up sitting around South Padre Island for a week before it launches.

Where's Waldo but instead its Where's Planet

There's a website where you can use similar images to try and identify new objects. I think it's called Planet Nine or something. But the images in this post are much better resolution than the ones on that website. And I still can't tell how they could identify Pluto from these images.