The specific station module with the leaks, Zvezda, is one of the oldest modules. It actually started construction in the 1980s as a Mir flight spare and then was repurposed as the core module of the never-built Mir 2 space station. It can’t be replaced even if there was time before the 2030 ISS retirement date to design and build one. If Zvezda fails earlier than that, we could see that retirement date come sooner.

Funny how we haven’t heard the phrase “two and a half wars” from the US establishment much in the last few decades.

When I was an accounting student I took a lot of shared classes with students in other business programs. Economics classes basically amounted to the non-accounting students smiling and nodding at the blatantly-ideological lesson examples unquestioningly, and the accounting students having furrowed brows and trying to figure out the tortured chain of logic in those examples.

If any orgs are looking for contacts “on the inside” as it were, reach out to the bookkeepers. Non-CPA bookkeepers are easy to radicalize, we see who all the money comes from and goes to, and we’re angry about the unfairness because we’re paid crap. CPAs are more hit-and-miss though, be wary of them.

If this plan is accurate, it doesn’t even matter how effective it would be, the marine insurance industry would end up being very exciting.

in a remote location where labor is hard to find.

Everything comes down to labour in the end.

“Apocalypse Bunker Fails as Wealthy Residents Turn on Each Other”. I can’t read the paywall’d WSJ article but this seems a good summary.

The second will be Mengzhou-1, which will carry cargo to the Tiangong Space station in September.

This is the launch I’m most excited about this year. For those unfamiliar, until now China has been flying crew on a Soyuz-derivative called Shenzhou. Mengzhou is its from-scratch replacement. It will be the first operational flight of a clean sheet design crewed spacecraft outside the US or USSR/Russia. All the test flights so far have gone as planned.

I’m very curious about CNSA’s progress on lunar surface suits. I think that’s going to be the real sticking point in modern lunar missions beyond a boots-and-flags Apollo-type mission. The Apollo program’s A7L suits took way more damage from that wretched lunar dust than the mission planners expected. They would never have been safe for long-term use at a base.

I can only speak for myself but I always default to “none of us are free until all of us are free”.

Fuck’s sake. Why is the venn diagram of “not an imperialist puppet” and “okay with queer people” just two almost entirely separate circles with maybe a sliver labeled “Cuba” between them?