Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

It’s pointless to bring up problems that can only be solved with a time machine.

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

All hail the time of the bunny!

Dear media: perhaps we ought to let Donald Trump speak for himself!

It’s all just conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership.

Wait, what?

People really shouldn’t expect the government to help after they watched the GOP drown it in a bathtub.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

If America since Jan 2025 hasn’t broken your heart, you haven’t loved her enough.

Republicans: “Abortion is murder but you can take a bus to get one.” Easy peasy.

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

Humiliatingly small and eclipsed by the derision of millions.

Everything is totally normal and fine!!!

Republicans: The threats are dire, but my tickets are non-refundable!

Well, whatever it is, it’s better than being a Republican.

“Until such time as the world ends, we will act as though it intends to spin on.”

Relentless negativity is not a sign that you are more realistic.

Fight for a just cause, love your fellow man, live a good life.

A norm that restrains only one side really is not a norm – it is a trap.

“Perhaps I should have considered other options.” (head-desk)

Following reporting rules is only for the little people, apparently.

I would gladly pay you tuesday for a hamburger today.

Republicans do not trust women.

Finding joy where we can, and muddling through where we can’t.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Late Night Open Thread: Space Walking

Late Night Open Thread: Space Walking

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Late Night Open Thread: Space Walking

(Joel Pett via GoComics.com)

On the one hand, very cool view! On the other… I got motion sick on the 60th floor of the Hancock Tower skyscraper on particularly windy days, so: *never* a good candidate, me.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — A tech billionaire popped out from a SpaceX capsule hundreds of miles above Earth and performed the first private spacewalk Thursday, a high-risk endeavor once reserved for professional astronauts.

Tech entrepreneur Jared Isaacman teamed up with SpaceX to test the company’s brand new spacesuits on his chartered flight. The daring feat also saw SpaceX engineer Sarah Gillis going out once Isaacman was safely back inside.

This spacewalk was simple and quick — the hatch was open barely a half hour — compared with the drawn-out affairs conducted by NASA. Astronauts at the International Space Station often need to move across the sprawling complex for repairs, always traveling in pairs and lugging gear. Station spacewalks can last seven to eight hours; this one clocked in at less than two hours…

The commercial spacewalk was the main focus of the five-day flight financed by Isaacman and Elon Musk’s company, and the culmination of years of development geared toward settling Mars and other planets.

All four on board donned the new spacewalking suits to protect themselves from the harsh vacuum. They launched on Tuesday from Florida, rocketing farther from Earth than anyone since NASA’s moonwalkers. The orbit was reduced by half — to 460 miles (740 kilometers) — for the spacewalk.

This first spacewalking test involved more stretching than walking. Isaacman kept a hand or foot attached to the capsule the whole time as he flexed his arms and legs to see how the spacesuit held up. The hatch sported a walker-like structure for extra support.

After roughly 10 minutes outside, Isaacman was replaced by Gillis to go through the same motions. The SpaceX engineer bobbed up and down in weightlessness, no higher than her knees out of the capsule, as she twisted her arms and sent reports back to Mission Control.

Each had 12-foot (3.6-meter) tethers but did not unfurl them or dangle at the end unlike what happens at the space station, where astronauts routinely float out at a much lower orbit.

More and more wealthy passengers are plunking down huge sums for rides aboard private rockets to experience a few minutes of weightlessness. Others have spent tens of millions to stay in space for days or even weeks. Space experts and risk analysts say it’s inevitable that some will seek the thrill of spacewalking, deemed one of the most dangerous parts of spaceflight after launch and reentry but also the most soul-stirring…

Until Thursday, only 263 people had conducted a spacewalk, representing 12 countries. The Soviet Union’s Alexei Leonov kicked it off in 1965, followed a few months later by NASA’s Ed White.

If the oligarchs get their way, spacewalking becomes the new ‘climbing Mt. Everest’, and eventually we’ll be conducting Planetes missions to clean up the corpses.

Reader Interactions

132Comments

  2. 2.

    Chet Murthy

    @eclare: i’m glad the fuckhead billionaire went first instead of the SpaceX engineer.  She was just there to earn a paycheck.  If a space suit’s going to blow up I would hope it would happen with some paying shithead.

  5. 5.

    ColoradoGuy

    Remember, there’s no toilet or separate compartment in there. At all. So either the suits have long-duration diapers or maybe there’s a bucket in there. It’s not as glamorous as it looks.

    It is a good test run for SpaceX space suits, which is a very complex and difficult technology, and needs to be perfected before any kind of serious EVA or Moon landing. If anything went wrong with the outside of the capsule, they would not be able to do a real EVA with the suits they have … there’s no internal air supply or suit cooling. They can stand up and take a peek, but that’s it. SpaceX is not at the level of mid-Sixties Gemini suit technology just yet, and nowhere close to Apollo-level full autonomy.

  6. 6.

    David 🐝KHive🐝 Koch

    In this photo of Dump you can see the significant scaring he has from scalp reduction surgery. One scar begins at his ear and in a semi-circle leads to this temple. Another goes straight down the part in his hair. (link)

  9. 9.

    Gloria DryGarden

    @eclare: I was thinking of this. Maybe don old can take a trip. Out-as-ight!

    what if, oh what if the safety standards were misrepresented and glossed over w bravado, like he does himself….

    hmm

  10. 10.

    Bobbo1

    he flexed his arms and legs to see how the spacesuit held up.

    And what happens if it doesn’t hold up so good?

  12. 12.

    Tony Jay

    Last night we went to see a show with the British astronaut Tim Peake all about, well, about astronauts. A big chunk of it was devoted to the intense competition of the Space Race and how it drove NASA and its Soviet counterpart in a frenzied pursuit of 1sts without, let’s say, what hindsight would be comfortable terming sufficient forethought.

    Spacewalks were one of the benchmarks both were chasing. NASA desperately wanted to be first because it was something they had to tick off before their moonshot could proceed, but as so often happened they woke up one morning to find the Soviets had pipped them. What they – didn’t – know was the Cosmonaut who did it almost died because no one had thought that a space suit in actual Space conditions would expand because of the internal pressure, leaving him a little bit concerned when the gloves and boots popped off his hands and feet, leaving him floating there inside a too-big playsuit. He had to – against all regulations – depressurise his suit to getting-the-bends levels and scrunch it up before he was able to get his hands back in the gloves and pull himself back in. Lost 12 pounds of his body weight in sweat doing it, but he survived.

    Also, that iconic shot of the first astronaut doing an untethered spacewalk with a sort of jet pack chair/backpack thing? Looks in one sense great. Peaceful. Alone in the vastness of the cosmos. In truth he was freezing cold – you have to move in your spacesuit to generate heat – and was being bombarded with constant radio requests for status updates. Couldn’t wait to get back in. And I have to admit, after hearing about the immense isolation of Space, and with the knowledge that was the very first time that kit had been put into use in those conditions, I felt my bits contracting in sympathy as I watched that guy drifting away from the only safe harbour in hundreds of miles without so much as a bungee cord attaching him to it. 91 metres! Bloody hell.

    A few amusing facts. They didn’t crack the peeing in Space problem properly until they had to design a solution women could use. Before that it was basically a condom-tube arrangement that usually failed because, well, boasting + shrinkage = oops.

    That iconic CCCP logo across the helmet of Yuri Gagarin? Complete spur of the moment. He was on his was to the rocket when the Soviets realised he had nothing on his spacesuit showing he was doing it for the Motherland and a junior technician just grabbed a paintbrush and aced the spontaneous art and design course he was suddenly enrolled on.

    Fascinating stuff. The huge, swinging ovaries on those guys and gals. Wow.

  14. 14.

    opiejeanne

    @Tony Jay: My husband took me to hear an astronaut give a lecture, without telling me that it was Sally Ride. Most of us had not heard of her, she wasn’t a household name yet, and was so unknown to the general public that it was held in a smallish room that held about 70.

    It was a fascinating evening, much more interesting than I expected, and the issue of solving the toilet issues for women astronauts was discussed at some length

    There have been so many astronauts that the general public only recognizes a handful of their names.

  15. 15.

    Tony Jay

    @opiejeanne:

    True, dat. Tim Peake is a huge Sally Ride fan. I think the main thrust of his current show is to remind people of these names and of how incredibly dangerous what they did was. We’ve all probably heard the ‘joke’ about realising you sitting in a tin can strapped to the top of a bomb designed by people who don’t sleep and built by the lowest bidder – but it was pretty much true.

    And I think I’d like to learn more about the Cosmonauts who did the job for the Soviets. NASA may have cut corners in its race to the Moon, but at least its astronauts pretty much knew the risks. Not so much the case for the cosmonauts who were getting thrown out there by a Soviet Union that didn’t really care what they thought and wasn’t taking no for an answer.

    Did you know that the manual controls for Soviet re-entry vehicles were code-locked to prevent defections? In case of an emergency they were supposed to radio ground control and ask where the envelope with the code inside it was hidden in the cockpit. Then find it, read it and enter it into the computer before they would be able to take over their landing controls, by which time they’d probably be dead.

    Madness. Which is probably why no fewer than three people risked the gulag to whisper the code into Yuri Gagarin’s ear before he entered his pod, and why that practice continued throughout the Soviet Space era. Their leaders were paranoid fucks, but the people risking their necks were still people, and people find ways around the rules.

    How times have changed. Not.

  19. 19.

    Tony Jay

    @Betty Cracker:

    I know! Toxic nationalism can go swim up a Tory’s urethra and out the other exit. People are people and they’ll do what they can to look out for each other whatever the uppityfucks think.

    Also, NASA astronaut Mike Massimino is totally Teddy from Bob’s Burgers.

  21. 21.

    lowtechcyclist

    @MattF: ​
     

    Via jwz, Mars will never be colonized.

    Yeppers. Space is a great place for robots, but incredibly inhospitable for any form of life that exists on Earth, most definitely including us humans.

    Even after a global thermonuclear war, Earth would still be more hospitable to human life than Mars is, so the whole notion of building a sustainable colony on Mars in case we blow ourselves up down here is just bullshit.

  24. 24.

    Tony Jay

    @lowtechcyclist:

      The whole notion of building a sustainable colony on Mars in case we blow ourselves up down here is just bullshit

    But just spiffy for side-stepping through the cracks in the language of the “The souls of all living things on the planet called Earth in return for immortality” deal the Club of Super Rich Bastards signed with the Elder Empires of Dread back in 2003.

    Lawyers. Expensive, but sometimes useful.

  26. 26.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Mousebumples:

    @lowtechcyclist: still, I’d be happy to let Elon go himself and give it a try. I could do with less of his toxic masculinity on this planet…

    Hell yeah! If Elon wants to be the First Man On Mars, and wants to spend his own money getting himself there, AFAIAC he is more than welcome to make that one-way trip and tell us all about it before he dies there.  Maybe he can take some of his fellow billionaire techbros along for the ride.

  29. 29.

    Mousebumples

    @Baud: coming soon… Baud/Zoozve 2028!

    But seriously, I love the serendipity sorts of science stories. Glad you enjoyed.

  30. 30.

    Shalimar

    @lowtechcyclist: Why stop at “some of”?  Isn’t Mars the perfect place for a Paypal Mafia 30-year anniversary party?  We would get rid of Thiel and a bunch of other true scumbags in addition to Elon and his brother.

  32. 32.

    Tony Jay

    While aliens landing and saying some variation on “Take us to your President” had been around since the early ‘50s, the “Take me to your leader” formulation actually came from John Glenn’s 1962 manned space-flight.

    He was, pretty understandably, worried that his primitive guidance system could drop him back to Earth in the middle of nowhere, and since NASA could only promise to find and pick him up within 72 hours, he asked them to consider how Amazonian hunters from a tribe that had no contact with the outer world might react to a Von Dänikenish figure emerging from a steaming metal egg wearing a silver suit and an eyeless helmet.

    They came up with a cheat-sheet in seven languages that contained the “take me to your leader” line, it entered popular culture, and that’s why it’s always used.

    Still not sure on how it would have helped Glenn if he had landed next to a tribe who didn’t speak one of those seven languages, though. That said, chances are they’d have worshipped him as a God for a bit. For at least 72 hours, anyway.

  33. 33.

    Ken

    @Tony Jay: was being bombarded with constant radio requests

    Fascinating how you sometimes get an insight into the way your mind works. In this case, my inner predictive algorithm began complaining “radio? Not radiation?”

  36. 36.

    Geminid

    “As Issacman was about to reenter the capsule, a distant “clunk!” interrupted the silence. It was an alien spacecraft locking its doors as it passed Earth.”

  37. 37.

    BellyCat

    While I despise Musk, the achievements of SpaceX, done by real humans working hard whom are not named Musk, are fairly impressive.

  39. 39.

    Tony G

    These type of rich-guy-hobbyist stunts do not impress me.  The implicit assumption (or maybe the explicit contract provision) is that, if something goes wrong, some of the hired help will have to risk their lives to rescue his ass.  Just so the guy can brag at his next gathering of rich guys.  In any event, this stunt is an anachronism.  The first space walk was done by a Soviet cosmonaut more than 59 years ago, and it’s been done for practical reasons hundreds of times since then.  There is no point to doing it now other than to massage this guy’s ego.

  40. 40.

    TBone

    @Ken: I’m not so sure about that, mebbe Philly is the best location to see it this time (?) but previous sightings are from all over the planet.

    …a new star will appear in the night sky over Philly and the rest of the world — about as bright as the North Star — the result of a cosmic explosion in a distant constellation millennia ago.

    The nova — not to be confused with a self-destructing supernova — was last observed in February 1946, and before that, in May 1866. A German priest, Abbott Burchard of Upsberg, sighted it all the way back in 1217, according to astrophysicist Brady Bradley, an emeritus professor at Louisiana State University. The priest described it as “a faint star that for a time shone with great light.”
    Sion said that mentions of the nova appear in the Middle Ages writings of Chinese and Korean observers. Of course, they didn’t have to contend with light pollution, but they also didn’t have the unprecedented observing power that astronomers have these days.

  41. 41.

    Ken

    @TBone: I was joke-complaining about the headline writer’s focus on Philadelphia skies. It will be visible everywhere on the planet except Antarctica, since the star’s at about 25N latitude.

    Well, everywhere except Antarctica and wherever I am, since invariably when these cool once-in-a-lifetime astronomical events happen, it’s cloudy.

  42. 42.

    Matt McIrvin

    @MattF: I always think of what Bruce Sterling said many years ago, that he’ll think Mars colonization is viable when he sees Gobi Desert colonization. Nobody wants to live there, but the Gobi Desert is way more hospitable than Mars and far easier to get to.

    We might have long-term habitation going on there eventually but if so, it’ll be more like the research stations in Antarctica–there’s always someone there, because there are lots of scientific reasons to be there, but it’s nobody’s permanent residence.

  43. 43.

    TBone

    I’m actually more excited about the new P2025 Schoolhouse Rock than I am about any space goings on.  I must need more coffee and a wider lens for my goggles.  Hubby went to Dunkin’ for me because I went to bed at 4pm yesterday and only just got out of bed at 6am. I had an immediate aversion to my usual cuppa (tasted like it had been brewed in the garbage can) and think I am fighting yet another mystery infection. Gah!

  44. 44.

    RevRick

    @MattF: Exactly! The colossal stupidity and arrogance of Musk and his minions is astounding.
    They ignore all the happenstances which occurred that makes it possible for us to comment on this top 10,000 political blog.
    We live on the Goldilocks planet, in a Goldilocks part of the galaxy, but the greatest happenstance of all may have been when some bacteria invaded another cell, and instead of destroying its host, became the partner we now label as a mitochondria. Not to mention that timely asteroid smacking into our planet 65 million years ago.

    We brag about the fact that we are intelligent, but sometimes it seems we’re hellbent on using that intelligence to destroy ourselves.

  45. 45.

    TBone

    @Ken: sorry, see my comment about being “off” my rocket rocker today (sheepishly guzzling more coffee now).

    We, too, are frequently disappointed by cloudy skies when sky stuff happens!

  48. 48.

    TBone

    @RevRick: always your comments are so valuable, thank you for the mitochondria & asteroids reminder.  Perspective is a good thing and you always advance our parameters.

    My Word of the Day is now:

    Serendipity!

  49. 49.

    kalakal

    Gagarin got the best feed line ever.

    He parachuted out of the capsule from about 7 miles up and landed in a potato field wearing his spacesuit. A startled farmer and his granddaughter approached him

    “Have you come from outer space?”

    I can only imagine that fantastic megawatt smile.

  50. 50.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Tony Jay: Yuri Gagarin had already had a version of that experience, but in a rural area of southern Russia. The Vostok sphere was designed to land hard enough that the cosmonaut had to eject and come down separately with his own parachute. Then Gagarin had to just walk to the nearest settlement in his spacesuit and ask to use somebody’s phone. I recall he said something like “I am a Soviet citizen like you, I’ve come from space and I need to call Moscow!”

  53. 53.

    TBone

    @NotMax: 💜 I would spell that with a “u” if I were in the Middle English style of spelling things however I  want (which I frequently do anyhow 😆):

    Expurgefactor!

  55. 55.

    Steve LaBonne

    @Mousebumples: I highly recommend NK Jemisin’s novella “Emergency Skin”, about a future in which the billionaires have actually fucked off to another planet. You can get it as a cheap ebook from (ironically) Bezos’s racket.

  57. 57.

    TBone

    Holy guacamole I just looked at allochezia as well and now I feel some sorta way! 😆 That’ll teach me to stray!

  59. 59.

    TBone

    @MagdaInBlack: it’s like a central nervous system thing, completely involuntary and sometimes embarrassing 😆

    Sometimes, when startled/angry, I manage to stop and correct course like VP Harris did.  Not often enough!

    What the…

  64. 64.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @Matt McIrvin: “Here is roll of 10-kopek coins, Comrade Cosmonaut. Find pay phone and use them to call us. Make sure you return any you do not use.”

    The Soviet Union had the “advantage” that they didn’t always worry all that much about such details like safety. While in the US the concept of a space station was slowly crawling through the bid and development process, the Soviets threw up Mir and put people on it for extended periods. My understanding is that Mir was not a very desirable place to be.

  65. 65.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    Supposedly more Bernie Moreno scandals are coming, so we in Ohio are waiting for that :)

    They may have started this whole Springfield panic just to protect Bernie Moreno. It’s definitely a possibility.

  67. 67.

    Scout211

    @Kay: Similar to the the Yahoo News/YouGov poll I posted yesterday:

    (Yahoo)   Harris (50%) surging to a five-point lead over Trump (45%) among registered voters in a head-to-head matchup. She leads by a similar margin when third-party candidates are included (48% to 44%) and when only likely voters are surveyed (49% to 45%).

  70. 70.

    Kay

    @Scout211:

    Yup. I like when there’s fewer undecideds.

    This too:

    NEW Iowa Poll Donald Trump: 47% Kamala Harris: 43% Kennedy:6%

    It’s that Stelzer poll media all love. Now, she isn’t going to win Iowa but Trump should be doing much better there. He was up 12 in the same poll in June.

  71. 71.

    artem1s

    If the oligarchs get their way, spacewalking becomes the new ‘climbing Mt. Everest’ going down in the equivalent of a Mountain Dew bottle can to see the Titanic up close​

      FTFY

  72. 72.

    Kay

    @Scout211:

    Think how much fun it will be when JD Vance has to slink back to Ohio with his tail between his legs having attacked an Ohio city for Donald Trump. And then losing anyway.

  75. 75.

    TBone

    It being Sunday and all, I’m reviving this cult classic.  That he named his dog “bitchez” is just *chef’s kiss (heard at the very beginning of this Xtian hymn).  Plus the bicycle and other props.  🎶

    youtu.be/8QxIIz1yEsA

  76. 76.

    kalakal

    Locally I really, really want to see Whitney Fox defeat the execrable  Paulina Luna.

    Fox is a good candidate and Luna is a MAGA grifter who rivals George Santos in fabricated backstories. She is the highest scoring GOP rep on the Heritage Foundations ranking system, outdoing Empty Greene, as to their ideal of a GOPer which tells you all you need to know.

  77. 77.

    Scout211

    Because Trump has overused the threat of lawsuits as a power play, I just don’t think Loomer’s threat has much bite these days.

    Laura Loomer is threatening to lawyer up after Bill Maher joked about a possible affair between the far-right troll and Donald Trump.

    Amid growing scrutiny into Trump and Loomer’s personal and professional relationship, Maher joined some social media users — and the Drudge Report — in suggesting that Loomer and Trump were involved in a tryst.

  78. 78.

    TBone

    @kalakal: my neighbors’ son worked for Lunie for a while 🤮 before going to where he is now (in a congess cracker’s office from Georgia).  That boy just ain’t right.  An 18 y.o. “press/comms” person who is functionally illiterate, I guess he fit right in.

  81. 81.

    artem1s

    @MattF: ​ 
    Best paragraph I’ve read so far…

    the mega-rich clod and dullard famous for buying things for more than they’re worth and then making them worse, who tweeted over the weekend some silly shit about his Martian colony, ah—what even is the word here? Plan? Vision? Intention?

    Concept of a Plan?

  82. 82.

    Matt McIrvin

    @TBone: If/when this actually happens, you’ll be able to see it anywhere you can see the constellation Corona Borealis, which is most of the world. But you’ll want either a decently dark sky or binoculars or both.

    But it seems to already be a bit overdue, based on the rough predictions I heard earlier in the year.

  84. 84.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Baud: I would love to see better results from the *state* polling, though. I’m currently wondering if the Electoral College lean is so big now that we can beat Trump by 5-10 points and still lose, because we couldn’t hold PA, AZ and GA.

  85. 85.

    TBone

    @Matt McIrvin: I used to have to argue with certain of my friends brought along for weekend trips to my mountain cabin.  Back in 1995 when purchased, we had NO light pollution and the night skies were simply astounding.  We’d spend night times laying flat on our backs, only sitting up to drink from our Solo cups.  I’d point out the Milky Way and a few would say “that’s just a cloud.” I’d have to point out that same “cloud” over and over on different trips because their recall was clouded by what we put in our Solo cups!

  86. 86.

    Geminid

    Some Saturday night news out of the Big Apple: Lisa Zornberg, chief legal counsel for the New York City, resigned after 14 months on the job. Internet NYC news site Pix11.com said Zornberg is “a former senior federal prosecutor” who was in private practice before joining Mayor Eric Adams’ administration. Also:

       Her announcement comes a week after the FBI raided the homes of multiple top aides to Mayor Adams.

  88. 88.

    Kay

    @Geminid:

    Moving at their usual snail’s pace, I see.

    You should see how fast federal prosecutors move against ordinary people. I had a guy who (allegedly!) cheated on a car warranty. It’s a low level fairly common criminal scam which I won’t go into here. I thought they were going to send FBI agents in to remove him from behind the counter at Subway, where he worked. Mayor Adams has turned the largest police force in the country into his personal corrupt army and they move like molasses.

  91. 91.

    artem1s

    @Baud: ​ 
    Not gonna happen but if Marcy Kaptur, Sherrod Brown, Elizabeth Sykes and some other key people can keep their seats and gain a couple of Ohio’s diminishing House seats, that would be a huge victory.
    Best case scenario is we can keep the MSM from memory holing the whole mess. Cause DeWine term limits out in 2026 (if he avoids jail time over the First Energy bribery scandal). Don’t believe for a minute that Ohio GOP can’t come up with someone worse. After W I know they can always find someone worse. I’ve seen enough of JV to know he’s too stupid to understand what cushy job Senator is. So you can count on him throwing Theil’s money into that race. Assume the first thing he’ll if he wins the governor’s seat is to find a way to repeal state abortion protections and undoing the gerrymandering initiative if it passes this November.

  92. 92.

    CliosFanBoy

    One detail I like is how some of the very early Astronauts/Cosmonauts met and became friends, including Gagarin who enjoyed a cookout with Glenn at the latter’s suburban home in Arlington.

  93. 93.

    Kay

    Split Ticket Senate battleground poll aggregator (Sept. 15): (± Sept. 14)

    NV: D+10 AZ: D+7.2 PA: D+6.7 WI: D+6.2 MI: D+5.5 OH: D+3.3 MT: R+2.2 FL: R+3.9 TX: R+5.0

    I think Elissa Slotkin in MI is one to watch. She’s really good. She has a quasi-normal R opponent too.

  94. 94.

    What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?

    @RevRick: One completely weird thing that seems to strongly indicate that Musk has lost the plot is that he founded Tesla to help save THIS planet but is now aligned with the “drill baby drill” party and focused on colonizing Mars. Just for the good of Tesla, the company he purportedly runs, if nothing else, one would think he’d be able to see the self interest in distancing himself from the party that’s a wholly owned subsidiary of the fossil fuel industry. It’s like he can’t put this obvious chain of logic together.

  95. 95.

    Baud

    @Matt McIrvin:

    State level polling is harder and lags behind national polls.

    Almost impossible to win by 5-10 points and lose all those states. The national polls don’t ignore swing states.

  96. 96.

    Geminid

    @Geminid: In other City news, s

    State Senator Jessica Ramos launched her campaign for Mayor yesterday at an event in her Queens district. Ramos sounds like she intends to be Happy Warrior, telling the crowd that her campaign would be a “love letter” to the City of New York.

    I expect Ramos will have to throw some elbows too. Sometimes NYC Democrats make the Hatfields and McCoys look like a bunch of Quakers.

    This will be the second Mayoral election using Ranked-choice voting, so the anti-Adams candidates and their supporters will advocate for various ranking strategies to Democratic clubs and independent groups. U.S. Representatives will probably advocate their own. It’s complicated!

    Westchester liberal Tom Watson is urging progressive clubs to get behind Ramos. Watson will be a good follow on this race, but right now he’s directing most of his fire at MAGA Mike Lawler. Rep. Lawler’s the hack defending his Hudson Valley seat from former Rep. Mondaire Jones.

  97. 97.

    TBone

    Comment from elsewhere:

    Why won’t Trump debate Harris again?

    She beat his ass so hard last time that if she did it again he’d have to pay her hush money…

  98. 98.

    Kay

    @Matt McIrvin:

    That’s too pessimistic. I understand 2016 trauma but we’re going on ten years now. It’s time to let it go.

    They’ve adjusted models since then and no actual election between 2016 and 2024 indicates a swing toward Trump. MAGA has underperformed every single cycle between 2016 and 2024.  It’s irrational to think he’ll overperform at this point. He won once. That’s the MAGA track record, bottom line.

  99. 99.

    Scout211

    Ohio GOP Senator JD Vance  on Sunday told NBC News’ “Meet the Press” that, “I don’t like those comments,” when asked about far-right activist Laura Loomer’s remarks about Vice President Kamala Harris earlier this week.

    Loomer drew widespread condemnation earlier this week from Republicans and Democrats alike for tweeting that the White House “will smell like curry & White House speeches will be facilitated via a call center” if Harris wins the presidential election.

    “What Laura said about Kamala Harris is not what we should be focused on. We should be focused on the policy and on the issues,” Vance, former president Donald Trump’s running mate, told moderator Kristen Welker.

    After fielding questions from Welker about whether the comments offended Vance and his wife, who is Indian-American, Vance said that he doesn’t “look at the internet for every single thing to get offended by.”

    The GOP vice presidential nominee added, “I make a mean chicken curry, [but] I don’t think that it’s insulting for anybody to talk about their dietary preferences or what they want to do in the White House.”

    Way to take a stand JD. I’m sure Usha feels totally supported now.  🙄

  101. 101.

    Geminid

    @Kay: I think the feds really want to nail Adams, like they wanted to nail Menendez. Adams may have been more careful than Menendez though, so I don’t look for an Adams indictment this year. But I think it’s coming.

  102. 102.

    Kay

    Like with Melania, I don’t think Vance’s wife had ever given any indication she has different beliefs than Vance. I assume she supports and promotes his racism and bigotry. She’s a very fancy lawyer. An elite advocate. If she doesn’t agree with him presumably she could speak for herself. She’s on board with his supporters terrorizing Haitian immigrants.

  104. 104.

    Another Scott

    @ColoradoGuy: Thanks for the details.  It sounds more like a “space kneel” than a real “walk”.  It would be nice if the press people would be called out for their over-hyped language.

    Presumably they tested the suits in a big swimming pool and something like the NASA Space Simulation Vacuum Chamber before putting people in them for a real test, but with Melon one never knows… :-/

    Still, incremental progress is good. And billionaires spending their money on things like this is better than them bidding up prices of dinosaur bones and Van Goghs, I guess…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  105. 105.

    Kay

    @Geminid:

    I hope so. The NY FBI office is corrupt. That’s a fact. As far as I know they haven’t even tackled the corruption in their own ranks. They’re hacks in that office, and when they get Adams they’re going to have to go thru a lot of NYC police leadership to get there. We’ll see if they do that – turn on their own far Right law enforcement allies. I have my doubts.

  106. 106.

    Anyway

    Is it within Fed jurisdiction to look into the origin of the bomb threats sent to schools//public spaces in Springfield? WIll they wait 2 years to investigate?

  108. 108.

    eclare

    @Scout211:

    Didn’t TCFG sue Maher years ago for calling him a chimpanzee?  He tried to sue some comedian.

    As a fan of great apes, I find the comparison insulting.

  110. 110.

    Kay

    ASHVILLE, Ohio — Colton Henson, a Republican strategist and councilman for the Village of Ashville, who also serves as a top aide to U.S. Senate Candidate Bernie Moreno, was involved in a dramatic traffic stop this month that escalated into a significant confrontation. Henson’s girlfriend, Abby Wright, also a prominent political strategist for Moreno, was arrested during the incident

    I posted this yesterday but have since found out more about it. Okay so this occurred Sep 1st and Ashville police stalled and wouldn’t release the body cam footage until yesterday. AND the Moreno aid who was driving drunk and refused a breathalizer had her charges reduced to reckless op which is fucking unheard of.

    They got special treatment by police and prosecutors. Because they’re Right wingers. Team Republican.

  114. 114.

    Another Scott

    @Kay: +1

    If Turnp were some great and powerful political figure, he wouldn’t have lost to Biden in the first place.  Not with all the advantages of incumbency.

    We’ve got the wind at our backs, but we still need to do all we can to run up the score.

    Forward!!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  116. 116.

    Kay

    @eclare:

    I just don’t think she can have it both ways. She’s an elite lawyer and she campaigns for her husband and Vance. She’s capable of speech. If she doesn’t agree with her husband’s shitty cheap shot at new immigrants she should say so. Until she does we may assume she backs it 100%.

    They punch down. Always. She lacks character and strong morals. Obviously.

  117. 117.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Another Scott: The Gemini program did some “stand-up” EVAs like this back in the 60s–the interior of the Gemini capsule was so cramped that it must have been something of a relief just to essentially put the top up and just hang out there, standing in your seat while the big Earth rolls by.

  118. 118.

    Kay

    @CliosFanBoy:

    They always call them for bombs. We had a credible bomb threat at our middle school about 5 years ago and they brought ATF (with dogs) in from Toledo.

  119. 119.

    Geminid

    @Kay: The U.S. Attorney for the Southern District will drive this investigation, it seems to me. Maybe the FBI can stymie it, but I don’t know anything about the present composition of that office.

    The latest searches were preceded by some in 2023. I think Adams’ phone was seized then, but I might be mistaken. That particular investigation had to do with expediting permitting for Turkiye’s new Consulate.

    The current investigation seems broader. There will be more reporting on this, I think, now that Zornberg has retired. Saturday night is an unusual time to announce something like this, and it would be a story even if it had been on a weekday

  120. 120.

    Another Scott

    @Anyway: Made me look… LAAttorney.com:

    Who Is Responsible for Investigating a Bomb Threat?

    Most bomb threats made are a hoax. Nevertheless, depending on the threat’s credibility or the entity threatened, a number of government agencies may be called in to investigate. These include:

    The Federal Bureau of Investigation (F.B.I.)
    The Department of Homeland Security
    The Secret Service
    The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (A.T.F.)

    Given the immense resources implemented to tackle a bomb threat, an individual faces serious consequences regardless of whether it was a hoax.

    The Consequences of Making a Bomb Threat
    Federal law

    Under federal law, 18 U.S.C. § 1038 specifies that anyone intentionally making a false bomb threat that “may reasonably be believed” may be fined or imprisoned for up to five years. If a serious bodily injury occurs while making a false bomb threat, the sentence can rise to up to 20 years. If death occurs, the individual can be fined or imprisoned for any number of years up to life, or both.

    A separate law governs genuine bomb threats, 18 U.S.C. § 844, which states that anyone willfully making a threat or maliciously conveying false information in an attempt to injure, kill, or destroy property using explosives can be fined or imprisoned for up to 10 years, or both. Teaching or demonstrating how to make explosive equipment can increase the potential prison sentence to up to 20 years.

    State law

    Every state has a specific law to deal with bomb threats. Under Californian law, a false bomb threat can lead to up to a year in county jail and a fine of up to $1,000; the statute dictates that the false report must be made to specific individuals, such as a peace officer, airport employee, newspaper reporter, and the person making the threat must know it is false.

    According to California Penal Code 148.1, false reports of a bomb are considered a misdemeanor. However, the threat must be:

    Non-specific

    The recipient could not have reasonably feared for their safety
    The recipient’s fear was fleeting or momentary or wasn’t actually fear
    Your gesture was threatening and was not conveyed verbally or in writing.
    If a person is found guilty of making a false bomb threat, it will lead to a permanent scar on their record. It can cause difficulties in finding employment, owning firearms, and retaining loans.

    It’s kinda sad that a high-powered LA attorney sees the value in having a web page on bomb threats. :-/

    Of course, the trouble these days is that some troll farm in some far away place can just as easily call in a bunch of bomb threats as some upset local school kid. I this case I suspect it is some twisted white guy(s) who reads 4chan/8chan and the like. :-(

    Grr…,
    Scott.

  121. 121.

    Geminid

    @Geminid: Eric Adams’ reelection prospects don’t look good. An Emerson College poll of New Yorkers released May 30 found that only 30% of NYC residents had a favorable opinion of Mayor Adams, while 60% had an unfavorable opinion.

  122. 122.

    counterfactual

    @MattF: When that article came up in my newsfeed, it had the first sentence: Mars has no magnetosphere!!!!eleven. I thought, “that’s why any long-term base will be buried under a meter of soil, and there are NASA studies for magnetic shields for bases, and crazy schemes for orbiting a ring of superconducting cable in orbit around the planet.” I didn’t feel the need to hate-read the article. People have been thinking about this stuff for sixty years.

    I’m curious, did the author trot out, “NASA estimates that it will take 1.4 trillion dollars just to send a flags-and-footprints mission”? In that NASA estimate, the majority of the price tag is launch costs on something like a Delta IV. When Starship is operational, it will cost one one hundredth of the cost of Delta IV (maybe less). So if we do an internet-comment analysis, a flags-and-footprints mission might cost 14 billion dollars, well within the reach of a slightly-mad billionaire.

    Yes, it’s more complicated than that, and I’m ninja’d on a dead thread, but it will do till the morning coffee kicks in

  123. 123.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Kay: MAGA overperformed September polling in 2020, especially in the state aggregates. Biden, just like Hillary Clinton, was further ahead in state polling than Harris is now. It’s true that the turnout models weren’t way off, having been adjusted after 2016.

    I’m hoping the shift in turnout patterns goes the other way this time. It’s a thing our side has some control over and is pushing hard to alter. But I don’t like relying on that kind of idea; seems too much like “unskewing the polls”.

  124. 124.

    Matt McIrvin

    @counterfactual: Part of this is the distinction between “permanent Mars base for scientific exploration” (which is probably feasible, just very expensive and difficult) and “humanity settles Mars and builds nations there”, which is the thing I have trouble believing in because there would have to be a more compelling reason than settling the Gobi Desert or Antarctica or the bottom of the sea.

    In the 1960s and ’70s, it was fashionable to imagine that the population would continue to explode such that sheer population pressure would compel all of these things to happen, but that doesn’t look likely.

  125. 125.

    Liminal Owl

    @Tony Jay: That sounds like a terrific show. Wish we could see it.

    An item this morning (which now I can’t find, of course, but this is a brief version) opined that the recent space-walkers were breaking international law.  Or is that already mentioned downthread?

  126. 126.

    SomeRandomGuy

    @Tony Jay: He had to – against all regulations – depressurise his suit to getting-the-bends levels

    Not trying to call *you* out, but, the reason for the bends is the *high* pressure from underwater SCUBA work, whereas a space suit doesn’t even need a full 16lb/in^2.

    Unless I’m wrong about the bends, someone was trying to express extreme depressurization using words they didn’t quite understand.

    That said: 16lbs/square inch means bending your arm at the elbow is *exceedingly* difficult. Until you’ve worked with different pressures, the idea that 16 pounds per square inch is *a lot* doesn’t register, but 10 square inches – just a bit over 3 inches square – is 160lbs. I don’t know how that works in tubes – how strong do you have to be to bend your arm? – but, constant volume joints were an absolute necessity for space suits.

    Constant volume means you’re not constantly pushing against that pressure. But the joints need to do all the pressure changes needed to keep volume constant, so you’re not trying to compress surprisingly hard-to-squash air.

  127. 127.

    Matt McIrvin

    @SomeRandomGuy: Astronauts do have to worry about the bends, though I don’t know if it was an issue for Leonov.

    It comes from a too-sudden *drop* in ambient pressure, after breathing a higher-pressure atmosphere including nitrogen. The problem is nitrogen dissolving in the bloodstream at the higher pressure, then bubbling out when the pressure drops to a lower value.

    The Apollo missions used an all-oxygen atmosphere at the partial pressure of oxygen (about 20% of an atmosphere), to avoid any such trouble once the mission was underway. Before launch they were pre-breathing O2 at full atmospheric pressure to get the dissolved nitrogen out of their bloodstream (you can do this for several hours before it becomes toxic).

    One of the choices that caused the Apollo 1 fire was that they were using that pure oxygen at full atmospheric pressure, on the launch pad, in the capsule interior too (not just in the spacesuits), which made it a firetrap. After that they went to a nitrogen-oxygen mixture in the capsule and then dialed it back to O2 at partial pressure after launch. But the astronauts were still pre-breathing pure oxygen in their suits to avoid the bends when the pressure went down.

    On the Shuttle, they used a nitrogen-oxygen mixture in the cabin and pure oxygen at partial pressure in the spacesuits, which I think is common modern practice. But that meant the astronauts need to do some pure-oxygen pre-breathing before an EVA.

  128. 128.

    Ruckus

    @Tony Jay:

    We’ve all probably heard the ‘joke’ about realising you sitting in a tin can strapped to the top of a bomb designed by people who don’t sleep and built by the lowest bidder – but it was pretty much true.

    Aww, space exploration.

    Often when humans take on something that’s never been done before there will be, at the very least – issues. I salute those that went, even wanted to be one of them for a while. It sounds amazing and actually it is that it was done and survived. It’s like diving to the bottom of the Marianas Trench, it can be done but it is extremely dangerous, and other than saying we’ve been there – what’s the actual point going in person?

  129. 129.

    Ruckus

    @K-Mo:

    Once you are a billionaire what’s the point?

    Richer than some nations, more powerful than the guy down the street, willing to be known as a rich bastard, can only be friends with people with lots of money but never anyone who has more than you, has to get a haircut once a week so it never looks like you can’t afford whatever the hell you want, have 270 bank accounts, only have wealthy friends who are always telling you they are catching up with you or have surpassed your value, can’t walk into a grocery store or actually most anywhere else because people with less will be there, the shear terror of being only wealthy – not extremely wealthy, oh the horrors go on and on….

  131. 131.

    Ruckus

    @Kay:

    He seems like such a sweetheart……

    Makes me so glad I no longer live in OH. Doesn’t solve the problem, just gets me farther away from it.

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