Artemis is in an interesting place right now. It’s a bit of a mess. But it has a lot of cool and interesting parts.

Artemis 2 might launch in 2026 with 4 astronauts for a loop around the moon. Artemis 3 might launch this decade for a lunar landing with 2 astronauts aboard a SpaceX Starship lander. A lot needs to happen for that to work, like massive progress on the Starship program and Axiom space suits, and continued progress on Lockheed’s Orion capsule.

Artemis 2 and 3 aren’t givens anymore in the DOGE era, but they might still happen. A4+ rely on a new SLS stage from Boeing (EUS) and a new launch tower from Bechtel that are both running way over cost. Also in the mix is Lunar Gateway, a space station around the moon that isn’t really needed to get to the surface, but includes some different parts from international partners. So, who knows. We’ll see what happens.

SpaceX’s Starship contracts with NASA are fixed price and milestone based. So, if they blow it up, that cost is on them. Just like Boeing has had to shell out a lot of money from continuing to fail on Starliner.

and achieved a navigation fix

I set low expectations when I saw the headline, but that means they saw at least 4 GNSS sats at once, which is pretty big step forward.

Maarva got it, too

Agreed, I’ve had some success using it essentially as a replacement for how I used to use Stackexchange, which is to remind me of a syntax or make a little function when I have to do some scripting once every few months, but I don’t trust it for anything more than the basics.

I’m confused, because doesn’t Duckduckgo Maps already use Apple Maps?

I switched to AntennaPod for podcasts because of this. It’s also just a better experience - it auto downloads new episodes and deletes them after playing.

Does your TV have a USB port? You might literally be able to just download files to an external drive and go plug that into your TV.

but the womails and chimails, too

Yup, low earth orbit (LEO) still has some thin atmosphere that slows things down a tiny bit and makes them deorbit over time. That’s why, for example, the ISS has to reboost to stay up and can chuck garbage bags overboard and not really worry about them. The deorbit time depends on a lot of factors including the mass and surface area. Starlink sats are supposed to passively deorbit in about 5 years.

Seriously, the Starlink and Falcon 9 production is unlike anything else. Amazon and China will try to copy it, but it’ll take them way more time and money.

I think the reddit streams pages (RIP /r/nbastreams, /r/soccerstreams, etc) were the peak of stream accessibility and quality for me. I have some go-to sites now, but those subreddits were so convenient and easy.