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Cake day: June 25th, 2023

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  • Yes, but Gemini and Apollo were 50+ years ago. Airlocks are likely safer for everyone since ISS and shuttle spacewalks all used them. I think the ISS one also allows prebreathing in the hours before spacewalks to minimize chances of the bends.

    And good point about hardening the electronics and equipment. That has to be a requirement regardless I guess since a depressurization could happen on any flight. But depressurizing then repressurizing them during flight increases the risk of something happening compared to not doing it.


  • So who on the crew will perform the spacewalk?

    “We’d say all four of us are doing it — there’s no airlock and it’s being vented down to vacuum” inside the spacecraft, Isaacman said.

    Interesting choice. Some sort of airlock module attached to the hatch seems like a better idea, but maybe that isn’t possible. Hope those EVA suits work well since there’s a 4x chance for failure with all 4 of them facing the harshness of space. Same goes for the internal capsule controls/modules/computers.














  • It improves the waste issue, doesn’t really solve it. A dirty, little-discussed secret about fusion power.

    If we had a bunch of fusion plants go live, we’d soon have tons and tons of radioactive containment wall material to bury/store somewhere. Including all the special handling requirements that you need with fuel rod waste. I think fusion plants would actually create more waste than a comparable fission plant, at least as far as tons of radioactive material.

    The benefit is that waste would be lighter isotopes and degrade faster. So you have more physical material to worry about but only need to worry about it for ~100 years, not thousands.