I just keep forgetting about the moon mission (too much awful US-related news, and also too much life stuff happening).

[hypostase@bsd.network]

@sundogplanets
Everything is messed up in the North, even the sun goes the wrong way across the sky, but it didn't occur to me that the crescent moon was different until I looked it up for a tattoo.

[tankgrrl@hachyderm.io]

@sundogplanets
SAME! Exactly this.

[jadp@mastodon.social]

@sundogplanets this picture has been making the rounds, taken by Artemis II Commander, astronaut Reid Wiseman

[sundogplanets@mastodon.social]

Pretty pictures here (thanks for the link, @merrdiff.bsky.social !)

NASA Image and Video Library

NASA Image and Video Library, serving up consolidated imagery and videos in one searchable location. Users can download content in multiple sizes and resolutions and see the metadata associated with images, including EXIF/camera data on many images.

NASA Image and Video Library (images.nasa.gov)

I have SUCH mixed feelings about the whole mission... and rockets... and I want to be excited but also fuck Starlink....

[sunguramy@flipping.rocks]

@sundogplanets I shared some photos. Maybe it helps to remember that unlike certain billionaire companies who use others then horde wealth and knowledge gained, NASA is almost community science. The photos taken you can use. The knowledge is shared to better lives everywhere. A Black man and a woman are now outside of Earth orbit.

It’s not perfect, but what is (“there is no ethical consumption in capitalism” and all that), and the good that ripples out is immense because it is shared rather than hoarded.

I shared some photos and thoughts from being there, all at the top of my page.

It. Was. Amazing. I legit cried. 🥹 It was like everything good about the world for a minute. I will forever hold it dear to my heart.

As someone who has not had an easy life, let me clue folk in to something: if you cannot find joy where it exists, enjoy goodness where it exists, start to work on that skill because it is what will save your spirit from withering to dust taking you along with it.

Because it is a skill. You can cultivate the ability to hold both despair and joy together. And without the joy, despair will win. Every time.

[lambic@social.linux.pizza]

@sundogplanets @merrdiff.bsky.social I love that people latched on to this as some good news in a sea of awful

[sunguramy@flipping.rocks]

@sundogplanets Yes. Friend had a vehicle pass because they spent many years of their life working on the SLS, making it safe to fly. Yknow. No explosions, because everyone did the work to make it GOOD which makes it so much safer. And yknow. More rocket-y and less super-expensive-fireworks-y

[woozle@toot.cat]

@sundogplanets

Does it help to remember that rockets generally do not burn fossil fuels? (I looked this up because it came up earlier -- the SRBs (first stage) are mainly aluminum powder, and the capsule engine is hydrogen + oxygen.)

[katzedecimal@kind.social]

@sundogplanets
I'm so glad that it's NASA doing this & not That Company.

[spiegelmama@infosec.exchange]

@jadp @sundogplanets I meant to send this to you, doc. Isn't it gorgeous and delicate and humbling?

[danimrich@mastodon.social]

@sundogplanets
I feel I'm not nearly as excited about Artemis II as I imagine people would have been about Apollo 8 back in 1968.

[sundogplanets@mastodon.social]

@woozle Doesn't really help because I just started talking a lot to atmospheric chemists and learning about how bad aluminum oxide is for the atmosphere... sorry.

[woozle@toot.cat]

@sundogplanets Important to know! Thanks for the info, even if it's not pleasant. :-S

[justin@mastodon.tacoma.community]

@sundogplanets
I kinda feel its been so heavily covered as a purposeful distraction from not only the Iran attack, but also the Epstein files.

[muddle@infosec.exchange]

@hypostase @sundogplanets That's a mad observation and something I'd never thought about before. It makes sense if you consider people at the poles both looking at the equator, then something that comes from the east will be coming from one person's left and the other person's right.
I wonder how people puzzle through this. Is it common to visualise things in 3d? I assume it is but since it's never something that's come up in conversation I have no way of knowing how other people think about it. Most interesting!

[helvick@mastodon.ie]

@sundogplanets

I really love that upside down moon thing in the Southern Hemisphere night sky.

As someone who grew up in a relatively dark sky area at 52°N , the night sky south of the equator is incredibly weird. Makes me feel that I’m on a completely different planet.