#Flyby Five

[cheerfullycatholic]

The front yard has been taken over by cardinals

[wonders-of-the-cosmos]

On the night 177 years ago on Sept. 23-24, 1846, astronomers discovered Neptune, the eighth planet orbiting our Sun. The discovery was made based on mathematical calculations of its predicted position due to observed perturbations in the orbit of the planet Uranus. The discovery was made using a telescope since Neptune is too faint to be visible to the naked eye, and astronomers soon discovered a moon orbiting the planet. More than a century later, a second moon was discovered orbiting the planet. Our knowledge of distant Neptune greatly increased from the scientific observations made during Voyager 2’s flyby in 1989, including the discovery of five additional moons and confirmation of dark rings orbiting the planet.

This image of Neptune was taken by Voyager 2 less than five days before the probe's closest approach of the planet on Aug. 25, 1989, and shows the "Great Dark Spot" — a storm in Neptune's atmosphere — and the bright, light-blue smudge of clouds that accompanies the storm.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

[timberwind]

Diamantane Hills, Snohualmy (Rainier II)

Snohualmy is a terrestrial moon roughly the size of Mars, a Lowell-Birch type terraform, a world dominated by glassy soletta-carved handramit valleys and cold, dry haranda highlands(1). It was once a planet in its own right, billions of years before the first transhuman explorers walked its deserts. In its brief heyday, the megayears before the final migration of the system's gas giants to their wide present-day orbits threw the Tiandonias system's closely packed orrery of inner planets into disarray, it may even have hosted a deep global ocean(2). Snohualmy was spared the fate of many of its sister worlds - ejection from the system and a subsequent trillion-year circuit race across the disk of the Milky Way - by a chance encounter with the waterworld Rainier. That fateful close flyby bent the little world's trajectory just enough to capture it into an wide retrograde(3) orbit of the significantly more massive waterworld, in a manner not entirely dissimilar to the slingshot maneuvers that Dawn Age spacecraft used to gain and shed orbital velocity in their journeys across Old Earth's solar system. Many larger worlds have captured moons like this: famous examples from the Early Interstellar period are Triton, icy moon of Neptune (Solar System), and Arash, terrestrial moon of Eff (Tau Ceti).

Pictured is the city of Diamantane Hills, a huddle of hab complexes and marshaling yards sitting on the dry valley floor at the head of the Samarkand Vallis - a great outflow channel system carved in the distant past by one of the catastrophic floods that marked Snohualmy's equivalent of old Mars' Hesperian era. Although a little stunted compared to the bustling cities of the coasts and handramits, it forms an important hub for the maintenance of mining and terraforming automation atop the Tanaka Plateau, as well as the last stop on the western limb of the Trans-Snohualmy Trunkline road-rail-pipeline link before final ascent to the loading docks of the Tanaka Launch Loop.

(1) It's not entirely desert, mind: there's also one major sea roughly at the sub-Rainier point - the somewhat unimaginatively named Nearside Sea - which covers approximately 12% of the surface area of the moon. The anti-Rainier hemisphere's five major lakes account for a further 1%.

(2) Now mostly lost to processes driven by the brief post-capture period of extremely violent tidal heating as Snohualmy's newly planet-centric looping eccentric orbit rung down to a near-perfect circle, as well as subsequent attrition from escape and sequestration processes over the last 3 Gyr.

(3) Snohualmy orbits Rainier counterclockwise relative to the direction of spin of its parent planet. This is a fairly surefire indicator for a moon being captured in and of itself - moons that form in-situ tend to have formed from a common disk of material that spins in the same direction as the final planet does.

[mysticstronomy]

ARE THERE ANY OTHER DWARF PLANETS IN OUR SOLAR SYSTEM??"

Blog#404

Saturday, May 25th, 2024.

Welcome back,

Our Solar System is filled with diverse and wondrous worlds. From asteroids to gas giants, we’ve sent spacecraft to objects of all shapes and sizes, yet there is still much more to explore.

Among the menagerie of worlds orbiting our Sun are dwarf planets. According to the International Astronomical Union, a dwarf planet is round and circles the Sun like a planet, but has not “cleared the neighborhood” around its orbit. In other words, planets are much more massive than anything orbiting near them, while dwarf planets are not.

This definition, which famously removed planethood status from Pluto in 2006, disqualifies known objects in the main asteroid belt and the Kuiper Belt beyond Neptune from being named as planets.

The IAU currently recognizes five dwarf planets: Ceres, Pluto, Haumea, Makemake, and Eris. Ceres lies in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, while the rest are in the Kuiper Belt.

There are almost certainly more dwarf planets. Unfortunately, most are very far away, and we can’t definitively prove that they are round. Mike Brown, the Caltech astronomer who led teams of scientists that discovered Eris and other distant worlds, maintains a list of candidate dwarf planets ranked from “near certainty” to “probably not.”

Let’s visit the Solar System’s five official dwarf planets, starting from the one closest to the Sun and journeying outward.

Ceres

Ceres is the only IAU-recognized dwarf planet that resides in the main asteroid belt. With a width of about 952 kilometers (592 miles), it is the most diminutive dwarf planet — more than 13 times smaller than Earth. Yet it is by far the largest asteroid, accounting for roughly a third of the mass in the asteroid belt.

Ceres probably has a solid core and icy mantle, on top of which lies a rocky, dusty crust. It may be made of 25 percent ice by mass, making it an attractive water source for humans in science fiction.

The dwarf planet’s surface is speckled with bright salt deposits that may be remnants of briny water leaking to the surface. The source of that water, and how it ended up on the surface, is a topic of ongoing debate. Data from NASA’s Dawn spacecraft, which explored Ceres from 2015 to 2018, suggests a complex scenario where Ceres may contain deep water reservoirs connected to shallow, melted water pockets created by asteroid impacts.

One clue to Ceres’ watery origins is that it could be a protoplanet that formed elsewhere before migrating into the asteroid belt, where Jupiter’s gravity kept any large worlds from forming.

Ceres gets its name from the Roman goddess of agriculture. According to NASA, the word cereal has the same origin.

Pluto

Pluto was our ninth planet until 2006. It is virtually tied with Eris for the largest-sized dwarf planet, with a diameter of about 2,380 kilometers (1,400 miles) — roughly two-thirds the size of Earth’s Moon.

Discovered in 1930, Pluto went unexplored until NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft flew past the icy world in 2015, revealing surprisingly youthful mountains, a pale “heart” of frozen nitrogen, and red patches of complex molecules called tholins.

Pluto may have once had a subsurface ocean. Whether or not it still holds water beneath its surface is less clear, but there’s a chance such an ocean could be habitable, challenging our expectations on where to find life in our Solar System.

After New Horizons completed its Pluto flyby and crossed into the dwarf planet’s shadow, it captured a magnificent halo of blue haze. The haze may be created by atmospheric processes similar to those above Titan.

Pluto is named after the Roman god of the underworld. Its five moons Charon, Styx, Nix, Kerberos, and Hydra have underworld-themed names and circle the dwarf planet in neatly nested orbits. They were likely formed long ago when another object smashed into Pluto, creating debris that coalesced into moons.

Haumea

Haumea may be a dwarf planet, but it boasts rings and moons just like its beefier planetary counterparts. The rings were discovered in 2017 when astronomers watched Haumea pass in front of a star, revealing dips in starlight that could only be explained by the presence of a ring system. Among the telescopes watching were two funded by The Planetary Society’s Shoemaker NEO Grant program.

Haumea makes a full rotation in just four hours. Its high-speed spin distorts the dwarf planet’s shape, giving it an egg-like appearance. It measures roughly 2,322 kilometers (1,442 miles) across its longest axis. Another object may have slammed into Haumea in the past, giving it its fast rotation rate.

Haumea is named after the Hawaiian goddess of fertility. Its two moons, Namaka and Hi'iaka, are named after Haumea’s mythological daughters.

Originally published on www.planetary.org

COMING UP!!

(Wednesday, May 29th, 2024)

"ARE THERE ANY OTHER DWARF PLANETS IN OUR SOLAR SYSTEM?? PT.2"

[whirligig-girl]

Some of the history of Zwo-nmu System Exploration by Mellanoid Slime Worm Space Programs.

A reminder of the Zwo-nmu Planetary System. The Sun, also called The Zwo-nmu (literally The Day Light) is a G8V main sequence star with many giant planets. Mellanus, called Gymnome by some of its inhabitants, is the homeworld of the Mellanoid Slime Worms--Eaurp Guz's people. Mellanus is a coorbital of Omen in a horseshoe orbit. Every 15 or so earth years, Mellanus approaches Omen, which moves it into a higher or lower orbit around the Sun.

This graphic is in a rotating reference frame following Omen. green circle is Omen's orbit in a non-rotating reference frame. Yellow circle is Mellanus' inner/short/summer/hot orbit. Purple circle is Mellanus' outer/long/winter/cold orbit. Blue and gray circles are the orbits of Cold Ember and Rabbit. Times are given in Earth days and distances in Earth-Sun-distances (astronomical units)

Omen is named, of course, as it represents drastic climate change--orbital seasons affecting both hemispheres for many years at a time.

With that reminder out of the way...

Zwo-nmu (the star)

extensive telescopic study from low mellanus orbit. The first solar telescope to enter orbit discovered the corona but was not set up to observe it properly, so follow-up missions had to be undertaken.

studied by the Cold Ember probes and by at least one dedicated "sun-scraper"

Cold Ember (the hot super-earth/sub-neptunian)

Of the five probes sent to Cold Ember at various times, only two have made it.

The second one to make it is an orbiter. It relies on stationkeeping propellant so its elliptical orbit always keeps its apoapsis on the night side of the planet, such that it can spend time in the shadow to keep cool. Within a few days of it running out of stationkeeping fuel it will begin to overheat. There are proposals to send a Rescue Shuttle up to resupply and repair the probe, but the strict rules about use of alien spacecrafts in the mellanoid space program make that difficult.

Rabbit

Visited by 2 robotic probes--a flyby and a short-lived orbiter. A lander/rover is planned, but doesn't have the same priority as the Omen Development Program and the Ice Giants Exploration Program.

Mellanus Orbit

At its peak, Mellanus had thousands of satellites and dozens of space stations, but a near-miss with ablation cascade (see: the movie Gravity (2013)) that was only averted thanks to the recently installed phaser network has lead to many restrictions being put in place on the number and function of satellites. Early in the history of mellanoid space exploration, there was not much automation available. Satellites had to be crewed, and so there were many space stations, and when automation happened, those space stations grew into constellations of satellites. Telecommunications constellations were the real culprit, with several competing agencies, companies, and nations setting up their own independent constellations ranging from 10s to 1000s of satellites each. But now, subspace technology has rendered low-orbit communications satellites obsolete, and there are just a few dozen geosynchronous communications satellites, a GPS network, and the number of Mellanus observation satellites has been coralled.

One of the United Mellanus Space Program's current duties is the cleanup of low orbit, which is operated both by phaser blasts in an emergency and by crewed spacecrafts. Most of the space stations in mellanus orbit are specifically infrastructure intended to refuel these spacecrafts, since they need to be able to access a wide range of inclinations, and inclination changes are difficult to accomplish.

Other space stations include the constellation of orbital drydocks, which are all orbiting about a hundred kilometers apart from one another, and the Starbase, a very large rotating artificial gravity space station which was built between the 2340s and the 2360s, and serves as the space end of the interstellar spaceport.

Mellanus natural satellites

Mellanus has one permanent satellite, Ubbi, a 340 meter wide rubble pile which is thought to have once been another asteroid's moon, millions of years ago. It is just barely bright enough to be seen by a mellanoid who has expanded their eye to the greatest practical width, but it wasn't noticed to be a moving star until after the invention of the astronomical telescope and the popularization of sun-centrism. It was thought at first to be an asteroid, since it was discovered while Mellanus was passing through Omen's trojan cloud, but careful observations determined that it was a satellite in a stable circular orbit, and a careful observation of photographic plates and star charts indicate it's been orbiting Mellanus for at least hundreds of years. It's named after its discoverer.

Many early mellanoid space activities have used Ubbi as a target. There are dozens of probes. Sadly Ubbi is very resource poor, being poor in both volatiles that could be used for propellant and metals that could make it valuable. It's not even a useful science target, since one of the earliest missions to visit it was an impactor which essentially exploded Ubbi. It reformed again, but completely resurfaced, burying clues to its origin as a satellite. Ubbi is currently orbited by one derelict spacecraft and

There have been three temporary natural satellites of Mellanus to be visited by spacecrafts. All but one have entered Mellanus orbit only for a few months and were only visited by robotic probes. The largest one, Temma was three kilometers across and in an eccentric orbit that remained stable all the way up until two Omen conjunctions later, so it lasted for about 30-35 years. However, as a carbonaceous asteroid, it was rich in volatiles, and it was explored and settled extensively by all major space programs. The first crewed international interplanetary trips to Omen used fuel refined from Temma and brought down to low orbit.

The Omen Coorbitals (Trojans, Greeks, and Other Horseshoes)

Outside of Ubbi and Temma, the Coorbitals are the next step out into space. Mellanus occasionally has close encounters with coorbitals. Over time Mellanus and Omen together have corralled the coorbitals into very specific lanes. There are far fewer coorbitals around Omen than Glerbuh, or, say, Jupiter, because coorbital or not, Mellanus is still a planet. Most of the coorbitals are trojans, with the apsides neatly tucked in between the outer edge of Mellanus' sphere of influence in the low orbit, and the inner edge of Mellanus' sphere of influence in the high orbit. The Greeks--the trojans on the leading edge of Omen's orbit--are especially depleted. It's thought that Mellanus was once the only large object in the greek camp, but was perturbed onto its current horseshoe orbit billions of years ago. As a result, the greek camp is a hodge-podge of scattered objects from elsewhere in the system, whereas the trojan camp is comprised of more objects original to this part of the circumstellar disk. Each camp can answer different questions about the evolution of the Zwo-nmu system, and Mellanus' relation to it in particular. Ironically, even though the greek camp is Mellanus' original home, it's the trojan camp that is more relevant to studying Mellanus itself.

It is possible on any given year to send a spacecraft to visit Omen, Trojans, Greeks, or any other coorbital. However, the trajectories which take a minimum of fuel are only accessible 1-6 months or so before the closest approach with either object, and for crewed missions, less efficient but faster trajectories lasting only a month right around the close approach are preferred.

Outside of the Omen apparitions, the most active times for interplanetary spaceflight have historically been around the passing through the trojan clouds, which happens about 6 years before and after each Omen apparition. Starting from the low summer orbit, Mellanus passes the Trojan Camp. 6 years later, it reaches Omen and moves to the high winter orbit. 6 years after that, it passes the Trojan camp again. Then 15 years later, it passes the Greek Camp. 6 more years later, Omen appears large and Mellanus shifts to the summer orbit. 6 years later, it passes the Greek camp again. 15 years pass, and then we restart the cycle.

other horseshoe-coorbitals can be encountered at any time of year, but there's only a few of these known to exist.

Crewed missions to the other coorbitals have served as test flights for Omen missions, while also contributing meaningfully to planetary science as a whole. While asteroid exploration may not be exciting or glamorous, the use of trojan missions as testbeds has allowed a lot of groundbreaking work that otherwise might not have had any support to be performed.

Humans currently, in the real world 2020s, posses the propulsion technology and even, in principle, the industrial capacity to send humans to Mars. What we lack is a good idea of how to support humans on interplanetary spaceflight for many months or years at a time. A typical stay on the International Space Station is not even comparable to a Mars mission. That research is still underway. But we can go to the Moon. What's crucial is the relatively short turnaround time. A Moon mission may take only a week or two. The Artemis lunar missions will last longer, but not as long as a Mars mission would have to.

Absent a permanent moon of any substance, the Mellanoids are able to get their relatively short turnaround missions done thanks to the coorbitals. If Mellanus were still a trojan, it'd have emptied out the Greek Camp. Omen would never get particularly close, and it'd take over a year to make a round trip to it. It'd be just as hard to reach as Mars or the Main Asteroid Belt. But since Mellanus is in a horseshoe orbit, for about a year at a time every 6-15 years it is within spitting distance of some celestial body or another. Every 18-19 years that celestial body is the magnificent planet Omen with its own system of moons. When it's not Omen, it's the coorbital asteroids.

Propulsion wise it is not that much easier to reach the Omen coorbitals than it is for humans to go to Mars. You still have to escape Mellanus and keep accelerating on top of that.

But instead of bringing all of the comforts and necessities involved in the long-term habitation of space with you to a distant planet, you can get away with using capsules that are not much more advanced than what we were using in the Apollo era. The long term habitation problem is solved, leaving the only major problem left that of propulsion, of vehicle design. And since Mellanus is relatively small and they aren't shy about using nuclear rockets, the propulsion problem isn't that big of a deal. in a way, Omen and the coorbitals are a crutch. By the 2340s Mellanoid space programs still had not undertaken crewed interplanetary missions beyond the coorbitals. But, at least in Star Trek, human spaceflights to Europa & Jupiter were being undertaken in the 2020s. These missions would have had to take years! that said, there is a reason Omen has been such a focus--and it's not just because it is so culturally important.

The Omen System

Since the dawn of the Mellanoid space age, there have been six Omen apparitions.

Years given are Earth Years

1) 2300: Two nations launched robotic flyby attempts this year. One succeeded, but it was little more than a spinning photopolarimeter which could take a grainy image of Omen and a magnetometer which produced useful magnetic field readings. 2) 2315: Two failed atmosphere probes for Oldsky, one successful robotic lander on Rival, one successful robotic lander on Spark, and successful orbit insertion of a robotic Omen orbiter which continued to send back photos of Omen and its moons right through to the next conjunction. During the lifetime of this orbiter, Oldsky was conclusively shown to have complex life. 3) 2329: First crewed missions. There is a crewed landing on Rival, a crewed orbiter mission for Oldsky. It had originally intended to operate out of a small space station placed into Oldsky orbit a year in advance, but this station was covertly destroyed by Zaldans, and the orbiter mission was repurposed as a mere flyby, which fails, leading to first contact with Zaldans. 4) 2344: The most important year yet--the beginning of space archaeology. It's also the year asteroid Temma departs Mellanus and makes its own flyby of Omen. 5) 2358: International grand tour involving orbiters and landers on every planet including Oldsky. Leads to formation of United Mellanus Space Program. 6) 2373: Fission-impulse rockets have made regular interplanetary travel between Mellanus and Omen possible on any year. 7) 2387: Oldsky is now a colony of Mellanus.

Mellanus is on the border of the Zaldan sphere of influence, and with the increasing expansionism of the Cardassians and the tragedy of what they had begun to do to the Bajorans, the Zaldans desired military bases on the stars near their industrial colonies and their homeworld. These bases had to provide deuterium, so they needed to be located in a system with a gas giant, and also function as repair stations. The stars surrounding Mellanus were poor candidates--there are no M-class habitable planets around the nearby stars, and the only other gas giants were hot Jupiters or brown dwarfs which would make deuterium extraction difficult.

The Zaldans respected the non-interference directive, but not if it meant a gaping hole in their security. They would set up a military base on Omen's M-class moon Oldsky. There was an orbiting space station and a surface base, connected by cargo transporters and shuttlecrafts, staffed by military officers and a few civilian personnel, not unlike Deep Space Nine, but considerably more of a frontier for all involved. There was also a space station built in very low orbit of Omen, designed to scrape the atmosphere for deuterium to fuel freighters. These ships would be undetectable to the mellanoids as long as ships entering the system avoided activity during close encounters and all ships entering and leaving the system hid their photon wakes behind the Sun, resulting in fairly complex routing.

During the 2329 Omen apparition, a spacecraft that had been intended to fly by Omen had a severe failure, akin to Apollo 13. Still over a month from home, with no prospect but a horrible death, they were famously rescued by Commander Halen's ship, EZM-407, marking official first contact with the Zaldans. They were returned to Mellanus and the Zaldans finally landed, showing the world that not only were Mellanoids not alone in the universe, they weren't even alone in their own solar system.

Several ships visited Mellanus over the next few years on primarily diplomatic missions, but the Zaldans still kept hands-off, sharing only a minimum of information with the Mellanoids. Not many Zaldans had Halen's affinity for the slimes, and they saw mellanoids as lowly uncivilized savages--and their flowery polite diplomatic language only confirmed this to them. It wasn't before someone really stood up to them--a space program engineer who had gotten tired of standing in the sidelines while his people were being insulted--that the Zaldans finally found a glimmer of respect for the mellanoids.

There had been plans to fly a Mellanoid astronaut to Oldsky in exchange for allowing Zaldan researchers to visit Mellanus, and even early talks of embassies and sharing of the Omen infrastructure, when the Zaldans just… disappeared. Completely cut contact.

If sharing their solar system with rude bullies (who, yes, could have wiped them out a dozen times over yet decided not to so at least there's that) wasn't scary enough, those rude bullies disappearing without a trace was even scarier. On a scale greater than even the Apollo program, nations rushed to assemble their missions to visit Omen and Oldsky to figure out what happened to the Zaldan Military Base. Their robotic probes launched on off-years didn't return any answers--crewed exploration and actually landing mellanoids on Oldsky would be the only answer.

There was also the fact that recovering technology from Oldsky could potentially be transformative--the right technology in the wrong hands could destroy the world. This is spaceflight at its most competitive. This was no longer a game--recovering the alien technology was potentially life or death.

After the first contact with the Federation and the series of revolutions and reforms that lead to the current political situation, one of the main unifying rallying cries for mellanoids was the notion that they deserved the right to sovereign exploration of their own solar system. Outsiders--whether Zaldan, or Federation, or Dominion--would not develop any part of the system!

Ok, the Federation can provide some baseline infrastructure to protect Mellanus from invasion, but space exploration is OUR COMMON HERITAGE!

The current age of Mellanoid Space Exploration is characterized by extensive permanent infrastructure development. Since the 2360s, Mellanoids have been building research stations on Oldsky, Lake, and Rival. Setting up an industrial capability on another planet from scratch is hard to do, but Oldsky has a stable climate year-round and a breathable atmosphere. Much of Oldsky is a desert, and even the "humid" regions are quite dry, but it's still more habitable than literally any other planet in the solar system except for Mellanus, which makes it practical to build using traditional methods.

As of 2380, more people are living and working on Oldsky at any given moment than are doing so in Low Mellanus Orbit. Oldsky station visitors includes geologists, biologists, space archaeologists still studying what remains of Zaldan activity on Oldsky, civil engineers, aerospace engineers, construction workers, miners, marine biologists, submarine helmcrew, aircraft pilots, spacecraft pilots, rover drivers, doctors, astronomers, and even a few tourists selected by raffle.

Propellant infrastructure has been established to keep the fast interplanetary rockets zipping along. At this point, it is possible to stay on Oldsky permanently, but so far, all visitors to Oldsky are temporary, and on years when Omen is inaccessible even with nuclear-fission-impulse rockets (i.e, when the Sun is between it and Mellanus), only a skeleton crew remains to maintain the stations.

Oldsky will probably not have its own self sufficient industry and capacity for its own space program any time soon, but it does have a spaceport serviced by reusable launch vehicles.

Phaser-thermal rockets are used for heavy lift launches from Mellanus these days, but conventional chemical rockets are still used on Oldsky, fueled by hydrogen and oxygen split by electrolysis. There is an oil refinery on Oldsky, so kerosene/oxygen rockets are possible too. things remain somewhat low-tech on Oldsky. Imported vehicles can be powered by batteries, but there aren't let any lithium mines on Oldsky--good deposits have yet to be discovered--so internal combustion engines powered by oil are sadly being used. The Oldsky Planetary Protection Office on Mellanus intends to phase out fossil fuel engines as soon as the planet is capable of producing its own high-energy-density batteries… whenever that is… also, between you and me, they really ought to get more aquatics flying on these missions. what an aquatic astronaut could find on Oldsky might be quite shocking.

Anyway outside of the Omen system and Oldsky Glerbuh has had its fair share of robotic exploration and crewed expeditions. Two of the four ice giants have also been visited by robotic flyby probes, and Glarpi (the innermost ice giant) has had a robotic orbiter. The big crewed grand tour expedition to explore all four ice giants and there moons was one of the major science goals of the 2380s outside of exploring and developing Oldsky. However, it had to be modified to turn into a rescue mission for a mellanoid starfleet officer who was stranded on a planet orbiting a nearby star called TE-92. It's a whole thing. If they manage to rescue them maybe they'll write a novel about it.

[usafphantom2]

Check Out This Incredible Air-to-Air Footage Of The B-2 Spirit Stealth Bomber

July 20, 2024 Military Aviation

B-2 Spirit as seen from the cockpit of a T-38C Talon during Wings over Whiteman 2024 airshow (Image credit: screenshot from the video below)

From certain angles, the B-2 still looks like an alien spaceship.

As reported in detail in the story with the exclusive interview with the newly appointed 393rd Bomb Squadron Commander Lt. Colonel Joseph “Zorro” Manglitz, after a five-year hiatus, Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri made a grand return with its airshow on July 13 and 14, 2024.

In fact, the event featured a stunning lineup, highlighted by unique aircraft formations, which made the 2024 Wings Over Whiteman Airshow an unforgettable spectacle.

Hints of something special emerged during a conversation with Colonel Keith Butler, commander of the 509th Bomb Wing, who teased surprises in store for the audience. The B-2 Spirit bomber, exclusive to Whiteman AFB, stole the show by flying in formation with the historic B-29 Superfortress “Doc” and two T-38 Talon jet trainers.

Special Flyby of 2 T-38A’s from Whiteman AFB and B-2 “Spirit of New York”. (Image credit: Howard German)

B-2 pilots at Whiteman Air Force Base are required to be dual-qualified in both the B-2 and T-38 aircraft. As explained us by “Zorro”, the T-38 serves as a companion trainer, which is crucial for maintaining their flying skills. Pilots must fly twice a month, with instructors often flying more frequently.

The T-38, being very different from the B-2, offers significant value by allowing pilots to perform aerobatics, test various instrument approaches, and practice close formation flying. This contrast helps keep their stick and rudder skills sharp, ensuring they remain proficient in diverse flying conditions.

Taxi back of a Whiteman AFB, T-38A in special livery depicting a World War I, Spad S.XIII, from the 13th Aero Squadron known as the “Devils Own Grim Reapers” (Image credit: Howard German)

Therefore, the T-38 aerobatic jet trainer plays a vital role in maintaining pilot proficiency within bomb squadrons: they help the 393d Bomb Squadron Tigers maintain foundational airmanship, allowing them to concentrate on advanced tactics and missions when flying the B-2.

Interestingly, one of the T-38 pilots had a Go-Pro camera in the cockpit and shot some really interesting footage of the B-2 flying its flypasts with the two Talons in Vic formation.

The clip, shot from an echelon left position shows the B-2 flying a low level visual pattern around Whiteman with the T-38s.

The video includes various aerial perspectives, capturing the aircraft against the backdrop of clear skies and the ground below: from certain angles, the Spirit still resembles an alien spaceship 36 years after its roll-out (on Nov. 22, 1988) and 35 since its first flight (on Jul. 17, 1989).

The T-38 Talon

The T-38 Talon is a twin-engine, high-altitude, supersonic jet trainer renowned for its versatile design, cost-effectiveness, ease of maintenance, high performance, and outstanding safety record. Primarily used by Air Education and Training Command for joint specialized undergraduate pilot training, it is also utilized by Air Combat Command, Air Force Materiel Command, and NASA for various roles.

The T-38 boasts swept wings, a streamlined fuselage, and tricycle landing gear with a steerable nose wheel. It has two hydraulic systems powering flight controls, with critical components easily accessible at waist height. The T-38C features a “glass cockpit” with advanced avionics displays and a head-up display, while the AT-38B includes a gun sight and practice bomb dispenser.

Special Flyby of 2 T-38’s from Whiteman AFB and B-2 “Spirit of Texas”. (Image credit: Howard German)

About David Cenciotti

David Cenciotti is a journalist based in Rome, Italy. He is the Founder and Editor of “The Aviationist”, one of the world’s most famous and read military aviation blogs. Since 1996, he has written for major worldwide magazines, including Air Forces Monthly, Combat Aircraft, and many others, covering aviation, defense, war, industry, intelligence, crime and cyberwar. He has reported from the U.S., Europe, Australia and Syria, and flown several combat planes with different air forces. He is a former 2nd Lt. of the Italian Air Force, a private pilot and a graduate in Computer Engineering. He has written five books and contributed to many more ones.

@TheAviationist.com

[spacetimewithstuartgary]

New SpaceTime out Monday

SpaceTime 20240826 Series 27 Episode 103

Starliner crew to return on Dragon

NASA has decided to return the stranded Starliner crew to Earth aboard rival SpaceX’ Dragon capsule because of ongoing concerns about the reliability of their Boeing spacecraft. 

Tracking down the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs

A new study claims the asteroid which triggered the extinction of 75 percent of all life on Earth including all the non-avian dinosaurs 66 million years ago originated beyond the orbit of Jupiter during the early development of the solar system.

JUICE completes the first joint Lunar-Earth gravity assist flyby

The European Space Agency’s JUICE -- Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer – spacecraft has successfully completed the first ever joint Lunar-Earth gravity assist fly by flinging itself just as planned towards Venus.

Three more Australian satellites sent into orbit

The latest trio flew up aboard SpaceX’s transporter 11 mission on a Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 4E at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.  Transporter 11 is carrying 116 payloads, including CubeSats, microsats, and an orbital transfer vehicle carrying eight payloads.

The Science Report

Babies born to fathers of an older age more likely to have health complications at birth.

The bacteria that can produce rigid, heat stable plastics.

Tiny volcanic glass shards found in Tasmania came from a super-eruption in New Zealand.

Skeptics guide to body language

SpaceTime covers the latest news in astronomy & space sciences.

The show is available every Monday, Wednesday and Friday through Apple Podcasts (itunes), Stitcher, Google Podcast, Pocketcasts, SoundCloud, Bitez.com, YouTube, your favourite podcast download provider, and from www.spacetimewithstuartgary.com

SpaceTime is also broadcast through the National Science Foundation on Science Zone Radio and on both i-heart Radio and Tune-In Radio.

SpaceTime daily news blog: http://spacetimewithstuartgary.tumblr.com/

SpaceTime facebook: www.facebook.com/spacetimewithstuartgary

SpaceTime Instagram @spacetimewithstuartgary

SpaceTime twitter feed @stuartgary

SpaceTime YouTube: @SpaceTimewithStuartGary

SpaceTime -- A brief history

SpaceTime is Australia’s most popular and respected astronomy and space science news program – averaging over two million downloads every year. We’re also number five in the United States.  The show reports on the latest stories and discoveries making news in astronomy, space flight, and science.  SpaceTime features weekly interviews with leading Australian scientists about their research.  The show began life in 1995 as ‘StarStuff’ on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s (ABC) NewsRadio network.  Award winning investigative reporter Stuart Gary created the program during more than fifteen years as NewsRadio’s evening anchor and Science Editor.  Gary’s always loved science. He studied astronomy at university and was invited to undertake a PHD in astrophysics, but instead focused on his career in journalism and radio broadcasting. Gary’s radio career stretches back some 34 years including 26 at the ABC. He worked as an announcer and music DJ in commercial radio, before becoming a journalist and eventually joining ABC News and Current Affairs. He was part of the team that set up ABC NewsRadio and became one of its first on air presenters. When asked to put his science background to use, Gary developed StarStuff which he wrote, produced and hosted, consistently achieving 9 per cent of the national Australian radio audience based on the ABC’s Nielsen ratings survey figures for the five major Australian metro markets: Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, and Perth.  The StarStuff podcast was published on line by ABC Science -- achieving over 1.3 million downloads annually.  However, after some 20 years, the show finally wrapped up in December 2015 following ABC funding cuts, and a redirection of available finances to increase sports and horse racing coverage.  Rather than continue with the ABC, Gary resigned so that he could keep the show going independently.  StarStuff was rebranded as “SpaceTime”, with the first episode being broadcast in February 2016.  Over the years, SpaceTime has grown, more than doubling its former ABC audience numbers and expanding to include new segments such as the Science Report -- which provides a wrap of general science news, weekly skeptical science features, special reports looking at the latest computer and technology news, and Skywatch – which provides a monthly guide to the night skies. The show is published three times weekly (every Monday, Wednesday and Friday) and available from the United States National Science Foundation on Science Zone Radio, and through both i-heart Radio and Tune-In Radio.

[not-a-space-alien]

Savage Sunset Chapter 27S

Story masterpost

Complementary chapter

Warnings for this chapter: None

In this chapter: Ari Does It Again

Author's note: This chapter originally had a "Is it because I'm black?"/microaggression joke in it from Jerome. The reason why I put it in there is because I've heard my black friends make this joke and thought it would be a funny addition. However, when I was going back and revising this story, upon revisiting it I decided it was actually kind of in bad taste. The chapter has been revised to remove it and I apologize to anyone who read the original version and found it inappropriate.

***

Ari rolled the map out onto the table, all four of them leaning over it.

“Okay,” she said, planting a finger on the map.  “I got this from Patrick and he said it’s using the most up-to-date flyby data of vampire territory, and the Kithrara estate is here.  This is the main estate, where the head of the family is.  Valen mentioned that his husband is the oldest son of the current head, which means that estate would be over… here.”  Her finger slid along the border.

“It’s so far in,” Lex said, dismayed.

“Not as far in as most of the noble houses, apparently,” Ari said.  “Apparently this is considered close to the border as far as vampire estates go.”

Lex leaned over, hemming and hawing.  “If we set out around midnight, we’ll get there as the sun rises.”

“This is crazy,” Bailey said.  “This is suicide.  We all know that, right?”

All four of them looked at each other.

“I’m going to help Valen,” Ari said.  The same simple-minded, utterly stubborn Ari who’d simply driven over to get Lex in vampire territory all those years ago, as though it really were just that simple.  “It’s my fault he got put through hell and back, and I’m going to make sure it never happens to him again.  Anyone who wants to bail…  I won’t think less of you.”

The overhead lights buzzed in the silence.

“Right.”  Ari took a deep breath.  “The most crucial advantage we’re going to have is that we can be out and active during the day.  It’s key that we hunker down at night and don’t get spotted.  As long as we can manage that while getting Valen’s attention, all five of us can get out of there alive.”

“We need to get a message to Valen that the others won’t notice or won’t understand,” Jerome said.  “Something that will mean something only to him.”

Ari smirked.  “Lex, go rifle through your plushies.  We have a very important cat to bring with us.”

***

They loaded the van up with supplies. Hunting gear, food, water, sleeping bags.  Toilet paper.  Bottles to piss in.

This was going to be a long road trip.

They drove towards the border while it was still night, to give them as much time as possible in vampire territory while the sun was up.  Sunrise happened right about as they passed over the border, streaking past the skull-laden sign that demarcated the two territories.

Ari saw the back of the sign in the rearview mirror, the side declaring HUMAN TERRITORY, VAMPIRES WILL BE KILLED ON SIGHT.  “Here we go.”

They went over bumpy, unpaved roads for a while.  Ari bitched nonstop about the effect on the car’s suspension.

It only stopped when they got back onto a paved road, at which point all four of them waited in tense silence with bated breath, as though afraid making too much noise would summon a hoard of vampires immediately.

“Okay,” Ari said.  “We’re in vampire territory, and nothing bad has happened yet.”

“Okay,” Bailey said.

“Okay,” Jerome agreed.

“Yeah,” Lex said.  “We’re doing it.”

They passed by a house, the first vampire-made architecture of the trip.  It had no windows.  Everyone’s skin crawled.

It looked like a farm of some sort.  There was a barn, again without windows.  There were horses and cows standing in the field.  All four of the humans had no idea what to say.

“I didn’t know they farmed,” Jerome said.  “The fuck they need to farm for?”

“To feed human captives?” Lex suggested.

“Maybe they just like horses,” Bailey suggested.  “A horse girl can be a vampire, I guess.”

They realized the breathtaking scale of the farm as they drove past it, way, way larger than a human farm.  Made sense, for a species that could heft a horse with their bare hands and run the entirety of the farm in under a minute.

It was almost easy to forget, here in the rural part of the territory during the day.  There were birds and animals out and about.  There were plants and roads and water towers and powerlines.  There were buildings, always without windows, in case any of them were close to forgetting.

Lex got out the map and started navigating.  The buildings started getting closer together.  The sun climbed higher in the sky.

Ari turned down a road that had a row of houses.  All four of them buzzed with anxiety, knowing the only thing keeping them safe from a hoard of bloodthirsty vampires was the time of day.

The panic faded as they went along and it just looked…normal.  There was a stray cat on someone’s lawn.  Someone had a gnome by their mailbox.  There was a corner shop–the first building they’d seen that had a window, which was shuttered with a heavy metal sheet and bars.  There were absolutely no people around, the streets utterly empty, everything standing abandoned in the light of day.  It was ominous.

A blur suddenly ran past in front of them, a ways up the road.  All four of them let out startled yelps.

“No way,” Jerome said.  “Is someone out and about during the day?”

The blur slowed down and resolved into the shape of a person, swathed in a thick suit that looked like a hazmat suit, complete with darkened lenses, every inch of their skin covered.  It was emblazoned with what appeared to be the logo of a company of some kind, and they were pulling a cart behind them full of packages.

It was hard to tell what the vampire was looking at, but it was definitely facing their van.  Ari rolled to a stop.  They waited there, hands creeping towards their weapons.

The vampire tilted its head at them, as though it wasn’t sure what it was seeing.  Then, it raised a hand and pointed.

It took a second to figure out towards what.  But then they realized.

Towards the border.

“Oh,” Ari said.  “Ah.  No.  No, we’re-”  She pointed down the road, where they’d been heading.  “We’re going that way.  That way.”

The vampire lowered its hand slowly, then gave a shrug.  Your funeral.  It ran off, becoming a blur of motion to take its cart off to who knows where.

“They have a special service that comes deliver shit to you during the day,” Bailey said.  “What the hell.  I wouldn’t have guessed.”

“Probably costs an arm and a leg,” Ari muttered.  “It’s fine as long as they don't come back, I guess.”

It was about half an hour more of navigation until they came up a long driveway towards an iron gate squatting in the middle of a huge stone wall.  The gate had a decorative letter K on it.

“Okay,” Ari said.  “Nobody get out of the car yet.”

They drove slowly around the perimeter of the estate.  When they could see over the wall or through hedges, they caught glimpses of an immaculate, manicured lawn, rose bushes, flowers, fountains.  Ari slammed on the brakes at the shock of seeing the huge stone water fountain running with blood, before they realized it was just water lit by red lighting to look like blood.

Their scouting revealed an area on a hill nearby where they could park the van and stay out of sight, but be able to see into the estate over the fence.

That just left the thing they had to get out of the van for.  Ari pulled back up to the front gate.  “Okay, we need to leave the cat somewhere either Valen will see it, or someone will see it and bring it to him.  Maybe on that patio.  Jerome, get out and leave it there.”

“What!  Why do I have to do it?”

"You have the longest legs.  I bet you could get over the fence the easiest."

"So I have to die to vampires because I have long legs?"

"Two of the people in this van are fat fucks, and you're the fastest runner and have better upper body strength than Lex.  Get the cat and give it to him.”

Lex rifled around in her backpack and pulled out the stuffed cat that had been in the coffin, the one that had helped Valen sleep.

“I’ve seen this movie,” Jerome said, taking the stuffed animal.  “If I die first, I’m coming back to haunt your asses.”

He opened the side door, the first time the door had been opened in hours.  They all cautiously peered out.  Jerome hopped out and approached the fence.  He gave a mighty leap, but there weren’t any handholds on the gate.  He slid down the slick metal and plonked back on the ground.  “It’s no good, boss, I need some help.”

Bailey got out and knelt down, hefting Jerome onto his shoulders and tossing him over the gate.  Jerome landed with reasonable grace and took off, running the cat up to the patio.  Bailey peered through the bars, watching him with worry.

Jerome appeared back at the gate.  “Got it.  Uhh.”  He eyed the gate.  “Little help again?”

Bailey tried to give him a boost through the bars, but it didn’t really work.  “Just a second,” Bailey said.  “Lex, toss me some rope.”  Under less dire circumstances, he might have made a joke about leaving Jerome behind, but they were all swamped with so much anxiety about being in the open on the estate of the family responsible for thousands of kidnappings and murders it was all they could do to stay functional.

Lex complied, digging out some rope.  Bailey unfurled it and tossed it over, then pulled.  Jerome used it to rappel up and over the gate, landing in Jerome’s arms on the other side.

After a moment, Jerome playfully sunk deeper into Bailey’s arms, feigning bashfulness.  “Well hey, handsome, how you-”

“Later,” Ari interrupted.  “Get the fuck in.”

Bailey carted Jerome back into the van, and Ari floored it to get away from the gate and back to the hiding spot they’d identified earlier.

She killed the engine.  All four of them got out and pulled branches and leaves and bushes over to camouflage the van a bit more.  They then got back in and locked the doors.

“Okay,” Ari said.  “Now… we wait.”

They took turns sleeping.  The ones who were awake were bored as fuck, but they’d brought some books to read.  When the sun started to set, they took turns watching the patio through binoculars.

“We got movement,” Lex said, when some of the doors in the estate began opening.  The sun was completely down now.  The vampires were starting to wake up and be active.

They were in vampire territory after sundown, in the dark.  Whatever laughing and joking there had been stopped immediately.  Nobody could focus on reading.  The minutes crawled by so, so slowly.  They jostled to watch through the binoculars.

“Someone’s picking it up!” Ari said, tugging Lex’s sleeve.  Someone who appeared to be a groundskeeper had been in the middle of doing something with the hedges when he saw the stuffed animal and walked over to the patio.  He scratched his head, picked it up, and walked back into the house.  He came back outside a minute later, empty-handed.

Ari let out a tense breath.  “All right.  Valen will recognize it and hopefully make the connection that we’re here, so hopefully it’s been put somewhere he can see it.”

“What’s the next step, boss?” Bailey said.

Ari ground her teeth.  “I’m not sure.  Valen is a smart guy, so I was hoping he’d figure out some way to just come out to us.”

Bailey wrung his hands.  “We should figure out something else in case he-”

“Yeah, yeah I know, I know.”

They passed the time tossing ideas to each other and hoping no vampires stumbled across them.  They were behind the estate, with no reason for anybody to be coming by, so they should be in the clear.  But-

“Hey, hey, hey, hey, someone’s coming this way,” Jerome said, rapidly tapping Bailey on the arm.

More pairs of binoculars were lifted up to check.  The someone was dressed in a maid outfit, and she was taking a sort of meandering approach up the hill behind the estate.

“Why the fuck you coming over here, girly?” Ari muttered.  “Get back.”

“Wait, maybe it’s-” Lex started, and they all froze as the vampire started running through the vegetation on the path leading up to where they were parked, disappearing from sight.

“Shit, shit shit shit shit.”

“Fuck.”

“Shit and fuck.”

Weapons were drawn, guns were loaded, stakes were readied.

The sound of light footsteps rapidly pattering nearby ramped up very, very quickly before there was a huge THUD and the van shook.  There was also a surprised oof and the sound of someone tumbling to the ground.

All four of them waited with hearts hammering, not opening the doors just yet.

The vampire’s face popped up in the windshield, her hands on the hood of the car, bouncing excitedly.  “I found you!”

The doors flew open and all four of them came out with weapons drawn.

“Ah!” the maid cried, stumbling backwards.  “No, no, it’s okay!  It’s okay!  Don’t!”

They slowed down, cautiously lowering their weapons.

“Mistress Kithrara sent me out to find you!”

“Mistress-” Ari said.  “Valen?”

“Yes!  Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone you’re out here!”  She sounded delighted to be in on a secret.

They all looked at each other. 

“Okay,” Ari said.  “Great.  What did…  Uh, Valen, send you out here for?”

“She was worried about you sitting out here all alone!  It’s dangerous for you to be here!”

“Yeah, we know,” Bailey muttered.

This was incredible.  This vampire was just…a normal person.  The only vampires they’d ever interacted with were the ones who came over the border, which they usually only did for one reason, and Valen.  It was weird to be reminded that most vampires were just kind of…normal.

Ari turned to the van.  “What the hell!  You put a huge dent in the side of my car!”

“I’m sorry!” she said.  “I didn’t see it!  I could smell it was around, but you covered it up!”

Ari sighed, rubbing her scalp.  “All right, no use crying over spilled milk.”

“No use…?” the vampire said.

“Don’t worry about it.  Hey, do you think you could pass a note to Valen without anyone else seeing?”

***

They wrote a note that told Valen to bundle himself up and walk out of the house at sunrise.  If he could do that, maybe it really could be that simple.  The vampire took it and ran off.

So they waited, hoping she was being genuine about not alerting anyone else.

Luckily, the only incident for the rest of the night was Bailey farting in the van, and everyone else being too scared to roll the windows down for fear of being heard.

The sun rose once again, and they all breathed a little easier watching the figures at the estate down below scramble to get back inside, shuttering doors behind them.

Once the sun was fully out, Ari pulled the van up again, nosing it towards the front gate.

They waited.

The front door was hidden by the angle of the stone wall, but soon a ghostly figure clad in white, wrapped up head to toe, appeared cautiously crossing the lawn.  There was a second person behind them, following along obediently.  A human under persuasion.

That raised an eyebrow, but nobody said anything.

Valen picked up his pace when he caught sight of them.

“Come on, baby,” Ari said under her breath.  “Give me my boy.”

Valen opened the gate by pressing some unseen button behind the wall.  Bailey and Jerome opened the side door wide, hanging out and urging Valen to come in.  The vampire did so, crying as he stepped up.

“We got you,” Bailey said.

“No need to worry now,” Jerome added.

Ari and Lex turned around to see him.  He was a mess, crying limply in Jerome and Bailey’s arms.  The human behind him stepped up to follow–she was holding a cat carrier.

Well, whatever.  They came to rescue a vampire, they could rescue a vampire, a human, and a cat.  Bailey shut the side door as soon as everyone was in.

“Let’s blow this popsicle stand,” Ari said, slamming the gas.

***

Tag list <3

@aceouttatime

@annablogsposts

@cc1010foxy

@darlingwhump

@dismemberment-on-a-tuesday-night

@dokidokisadness

@emcscared-whumps

@melancholy-in-the-morning

@nicolepascaline

@oddsconvert

@pigeonwhumps

@pumpkin-spice-whump

@some-thrilling-heroics

@soursagas

@thecyrulik

@the-scrapegoat

@whuarri

@whump-cravings

@whump-for-all-and-all-for-whump

@whumpycries

@whumpsday

@writereleaserepeat

[pathfinderunlocked]

Angel of Stolen Hotdogs - CR1 Angel

Then I saw another angel flying in midair, and he had the entire Five Guys menu to proclaim to those who live on the earth—to every nation, tribe, language and people.

Artwork by Ultra Infinite Pit on Tumblr.

This is the angel of stolen hotdogs. Non-kosher hotdogs are dropped into the sea rather than eaten.

Angel of Stolen Hotdogs - CR 1

The creature has six pairs of wings and is covered with eyes all around, even under its wings.

XP 400 CG Tiny outsider (angel, extraplanar, good) Init +1 Senses darkvision 60 ft., detect animals or plants, low-light vision; Perception +5 Aura lesser protective aura

DEFENSE

AC 13, touch 13, flat-footed 12 (+1 Dex, +2 size) (+2 deflection vs. evil) hp 13 (2d10+2) Fort +4, Ref +4, Will +1; +4 vs. poison; +2 resistance vs. evil Defensive Abilities lesser protective aura DR 2/evil Immune acid, cold, petrification Resist electricity 2, fire 2

OFFENSE

Speed fly 40 ft. (clumsy) Melee bite +1 (1d3-3) Special Attacks flyby steal

Spell-Like Abilities (CL 2nd; concentration +2)     Constant—detect animals or plants     At will—breeze, gentle breeze     1/day—ear-piercing scream (DC 11), gust of wind (DC 12)

STATISTICS

Str 5, Dex 12, Con 12, Int 5, Wis 12, Cha 10 Base Atk +2; CMB +1 (+5 steal); CMD 8 (can’t be tripped) Feats Agile ManeuversB, Improved Steal Skills Fly +2, Perception +6, Stealth +14 Languages Celestial, Draconic, Infernal; truespeech

SPECIAL ABILITIES

Flyby Steal (Ex) When flying, an angel of stolen hotdogs can take a move action to move and use a standard action to perform a steal combat maneuver at any point during the move. The angel of stolen hotdogs cannot take a second move action during a round when it makes a flyby attack.

An angel of stolen hotdogs gains a +2 bonus on steal maneuvers performed in this way (this bonus is already included in its statistics above).

Lesser Protective Aura (Su) An angel of stolen hotdogs has a lesser form of the protective aura possessed by more powerful angels. This protective aura grants the angel of stolen hotdogs a +2 deflection bonus to its AC against evil foes, and a +2 resistance bonus on all saving throws made against evil effects or spells cast by evil creatures. This aura extends to a radius of 5 feet, but can only benefit one additional creature other than the angel of stolen hotdogs at any one time.

The protective aura of an angel of stolen hotdogs is fragile, and as soon as an evil creature successfully strikes the angel of stolen hotdogs, or as soon as the angel of stolen hotdogs fails a saving throw against an evil source, its protective aura fades away and is no longer applicable. The angel of stolen hotdogs can reactivate its protective aura by spending 1 minute concentrating upon the task.

[mollymauk-teafleak]

love that doesn't have a place to rest

I believe a few posts ago, I promised a fic of Mav and Ice's first 'I love you' so here's that! Huge thanks as always to my lovely gf @nb-fearne for just. Literally everything?

Please reblog and leave a comment over on Ao3 if you liked this!

-----

California was too fucking hot, Maverick had decided.

The air was dry and the sun beamed down from dawn till dusk like it hated him personally, like it knew he wanted to wear his leather jacket and was punishing him for such hubris. And even when it sank beneath the horizon, the few degrees worth of difference wasn’t enough to save his New England raised ass from hours of lying in the blood warm darkness, windows thrown wide to what little sea breeze there was, blanket shoved down around his hips, drenched in sweat and wondering if going out and dunking his head in the ocean would help.

It was too hot. But at least it gave him an excuse to be lying awake at night. 

An excuse that wasn’t Tom Kazansky. 

Because Maverick wasn’t allowed to be lying awake and thinking about his wingman. The rules were clear on that. So as he fidgeted under sheets that clung to his skin and thoughts that stuck to his brain, cursing the heat because that was small and safe and okay to be angry about. He ran the chain of his dog tags between his fingers, wishing it was another set of fingers doing it and wishing he didn’t want that. 

Mav knew he needed to get some sleep, he found being an instructor hard enough without also being exhausted on top of that. But the more he told himself to just shut his eyes, to stop thinking about all those things he shouldn’t be thinking about, to just quit it and fall asleep, the more impossible it seemed. Sighing, Maverick rolled over to the side of the bed that was a few degrees cooler than his overwarm body and squeezed his eyes shut tighter, like a little kid. 

He was going to stay exactly where he was, as little as he liked it. Because if he let his mind wander he was going to go back to that other night, the one he was supposed to be forgetting.

The one where the bed had been smaller, one of those standard bunks that all started feeling the same after a while in a way that was weirdly comforting. It had felt smaller still with all six feet of Lieutenant Kazansky folded into it alongside him. They clutched each other, in part to keep from spilling out of the bed onto the cold metal floor, but they’d have done it anyway.

They’d just have done it because they were alive, because despite everything they’d made it back to the ground in one piece, still breathing and that was hard to believe without digging fingers into arms and pressing close to heartbeats. Five MiGs hadn’t been able to take Ice from him but Maverick had needed those strong arms around him to really believe it. So they’d lingered in his bunk, even though they knew Ice would need to wake up and go back to his own before much longer, even though Slider, Wood and Wolf were probably wherever the celebrations were happening, diverting awkward questions about where the two heroes of the hour had disappeared to. Even though they knew they were taking as big of a risk being here in this bed as they had in the air with those MiGs.

Maverick hadn’t slept that night either. He’d had enough reason to, the adrenaline had drained out of him, he’d come twice within one hour and had been drifting in that strange, vague space beyond exhaustion, so little left that he’d felt hollow. Perhaps he’d clung so tight to Iceman so he didn’t float away or cave in on himself. 

But he hadn’t slept and heat had nothing to do with it, the Enterprise had been as dank and cold as any carrier Maverick had ever slept on, Ice was the only warm thing within reach. He’d lain awake, thinking about things he wasn’t supposed to be thinking about. Thinking about Ice’s grin as he’d heard Maverick request his flyby and be denied, the wide sort of grin he did where his nose scrunched up. Thinking about how he’d turned and cruised in to buzz the tower, glancing over and seeing Ice right by him, head thrown back in laughter, for once not worried about flying it perfectly. Thinking about Ice just flying because he loved it, following Maverick because it was what he wanted to do, because deep down, they were the same. 

Thinking about how he might be a little bit in love with Tom Kazansky. 

Maverick forced his mind back to Miramar, back to his stuffy, uncomfortable present moment. He needed that thought to be a hot stove, something he flinched back from and kept his distance from on instinct. But, as he’d known about himself for a good long while, his instincts were wired up wrong and he kept gravitating towards that dangerous thought, wanting to reach out and grasp it hard, even though he knew it would hurt. 

But he couldn’t. Because hurting himself was fine but clinging to that thought would hurt Ice too. And that was something Maverick couldn’t do. 

He turned onto his back and stared up into the darkness, trying to tune in the sound of the waves outside, willing their steady crash and roll to drown it all out, like the fact he was in love with Ice was something that could be washed away like a stain on his hands. When the realisation had hit him, back on the Enterprise, it had felt like a statement of fact, like something you could read about in those textbooks he’d suffered through at USNA, a fact of life like aerodynamics or thrust to weight ratio. It had felt indelible, the way Goose and Carole would look at each other. That was how he felt about Ice, he didn’t need to have felt it before to recognise it.

It had felt like that because he’d been high on relief and adrenaline. But after Ice had woken up from his doze and slowly unwound their embrace, apologising softly and saying he needed to get back to his own bunk before anyone saw, leaving Maverick curled into the blanket, chasing his lingering body heat and smelling his cologne on the pillow, he’d remembered where and when they were. 

They couldn’t love the way Goose and Carole had. For them, it was a choice between the Navy or each other. 

And Maverick knew that Ice would always choose the Navy. 

So he’d made the choice for him. He’d requested the transfer to Top Gun and took the next helicopter off of the Enterprise. He’d run away before the realisation could fully settle in and start showing on his face. Ice had always been able to read Maverick like a goddamn book so he had to get gone fast. Better to throw the throttle back and get the fuck out of the air rather than get hurt. 

So it had been California. Familiar classrooms and hallways and locker rooms, too many places that reminded him of Ice and reminded him of Goose for Mav to ever really settle. But the flying was good, he liked teasing the kids, seeing them go from cocky and overconfident to admiring and ready to learn, the same way he should have done when he sat in their place. He liked kicking their asses when they were up in the air but he liked it all the more when they slowly but surely started to match him. 

But every time Maverick walked past that trophy, he’d stop and read the name pressed into the newest, shiniest gold. Lt. Tom Kazansky. And he’d start to think of things he wasn’t supposed to be thinking about. 

It didn’t help that the stubborn ass kept calling him. 

The first time Maverick had assumed it was Carole calling, the way she did sometimes when facing another night seemed like too much to handle. Stepping away from the stove (just canned soup, feeding himself without Goose was going poorly) and picking up the phone to hear Ice’s smooth accent, the way he popped the last syllable of his callsign, it rooted him in place with relief and then, quick on it’s heels, guilt. 

But Ice wasn’t mad, he didn't even bring up Maverick getting out of Dodge with no warning. He just said that his squadron had settled at a base and the phone had been free and…well, actually he didn’t really know why he’d called. He’d just wanted to talk. 

So that's what they’d done. And that's what they did, nearly every night, whenever Maverick was done with work and Ice wasn’t busy, spending hours talking about absolutely nothing. Even when his legs grew tired of standing or leaning against the wall, Mav would just sit on his kitchen floor and keep talking, telling Ice about Top Gun, about how these two kids in it had the exact same weird tension they used to have, about Carole and Bradley and how they were coping and how worried he was about them. Mav did the talking and Ice did the listening, asking the right questions and making the right noises so Mav knew he wasn’t faking. 

And the more they talked, the more the weight of loneliness on Maverick’s chest shifted. But the guilt got heavier. 

The first time Ice called him ‘baby’ over the phone, Maverick had dropped the mug of tea he was holding to shatter on the floor. 

Ice was full of apologies a second later, anxiety making him talk too fast and too tight. One of his squadron pilots had been walking past, he’d been about to say Maverick’s name and he’d panicked to cover it up, he was really sorry. As he danced around, trying not to pull the phone cord too much while catching all the bits of broken pottery, Maverick reassured him it was fine. It wasn’t as if the other guys could know he spent an hour on the phone every night with Pete Mitchell. He understood. 

So after that he was baby, sweetheart, darling. Apparently the guys on base were hanging Ice out to dry over it, clamouring for details about the girl who’d finally melted him. It made Maverick laugh because if he didn’t, he’d be crying. 

He felt like doing it now, lying there in the prickling heat, the way Ice had said darling as they’d hung up last time was playing over and over in his brain like the scratch in his mother’s old Otis Redding record. The one he’d always known was coming, he’d always braced himself but it had still made him jump every time. 

But he didn’t have time to cry. Maverick knew he really had to get some sleep. Every time he cracked an eyelid, the winking display on his alarm clock jumped forward more than he’d like. As much fun as it was to lie here and torture himself, as little as he was allowed to be awake and thinking about Tom Kazansky, he liked the idea of tomorrow getting here even less. 

Because he knew what he had to do tomorrow. Something beyond standing in front of a class full of pilots he struggled to feel any authority over because they were too much like him. Tomorrow when Ice called, if Ice called (though they’d never gone three days without talking) he’d have to tell him it was the last. He knew it was the right thing to do, it was following the rules, but Maverick had never enjoyed doing that. 

So if tomorrow wanted to take its time, that would be fine by him. Maverick could lie here and sweat a little longer, just to put more distance between himself and that conversation. 

Stop it. Stop thinking about that, don’t go there. Think about the waves, listen to them. Think about the heat. Think about planes. Don’t think about how those arms made you realise something was missing, something you weren’t aware of before. Think about the way the sheets stick to you. Don’t think about listening to his teeth snap on the other end of the line as he chews gum. Think about the waves. Don’t think about how you stayed in his room longer than you should have because you wanted to watch his chest rise and fall. Don’t think about the way you took deep breaths so your heartbeats would match up. Don’t think about his smile and his steady voice and the way he calls you sweetheart so naturally, like it’s what he calls you in his head, even when no one else can hear. Don’t think.

Somewhere below Maverick, beyond his fracturing, frustrated thoughts, there was a knock on his door. 

Finally, his brain stalled and fell silent, even if it was only in surprise. Why the hell was anyone knocking at his door this early in the morning? Mav waited, breath held, half certain he’d made a mistake, that maybe he’d slipped into a dream without realising and he’d answer the door to some awful nightmare. But there it was again, a sharp, steady rapping. 

Maverick staggered to his feet, still very confused but feeling like he should do something about it. He had to cast around for some shorts, hopping into them as he went down the stairs, his footsteps echoing through the dark, empty house. Mav always felt a little like he’d broken into this place they’d given him, like he wasn’t supposed to be here, and the fact that it was the blue black of night wasn’t helping. 

Another knock, someone was impatient. Worry started to mix uncomfortably with the confusion. 

“Alright, alright, I’m coming,” Maverick called, voice cracking with disuse, snatching his keys off the hook and shoving it in the lock, dropping his voice to a mutter, “I mean, fuck, it’s two in the goddamn morning, impatient bastard…”

But then he opened the door and things stopped making sense. Because standing there was the most patient bastard he knew. Who was supposed to be on the other side of the country. 

“Ice?” Maverick breathed, like he was afraid if he spoke too loud the illusion would shatter. 

Tom Kazansky stood awkwardly on the porch, dressed in rumpled civilian clothes or at least as civilian as he ever got, hair sticking up haphazardly and eyes too bright, like he’d gotten either not enough or too much sleep in an uncomfortable aeroplane chair. It was strange to think that he’d had sex with the guy but this was the most vulnerable, the most nakedly open Maverick had ever seen him. With no warning, at two in the morning, here in Miramar where he had no right to be. 

“Hey, Maverick,” Ice shifted from one foot to the other, like he couldn’t settle or balance, “Um…sorry for not calling you yesterday.”

All Maverick could do was laugh at the absurdity of it, “What? Did you fly all the way out here to tell me that, Lieutenant Kazansky?”

“Lieutenant Commander, actually,” Ice corrected, a blush rising on his cheeks, “And no, I…I didn’t but I couldn’t think of anything else to say. Sorry. That was dumb. Can I start over?”

“Hey,” Maverick gentled his voice to try and combat the panic he saw in Ice’s eyes, leaning in the doorway, “Congratulations. Look, why don’t you just tell me why you are here, Ice?”

Ice swallowed hard, hand coming up to rub at the back of his neck, “Um, because I asked for a reassignment. To Top Gun. With you.”

Maverick had the odd sensation of everything in his body suddenly holding still. Every nerve, every cell, every muscle, pausing to see which way things were going to go here. 

Ice clearly saw the change on his face and panicked, his jaw tightening like he was steering into a hard turn, “If that’s what you want, of course, I’m not…I wouldn’t…”

Maverick wanted to reach out to him so desperately but he felt certain he’d bolt. So he stayed where he was, holding back for once in his goddamn life, doing exactly what he should have done on that hop where everything fell apart. He drew back and gave Ice space. 

“I…” Ice sniffed, his jaw working like the words were physically fighting to escape, “I need to say something to you. And when I’m done, you can do whatever the hell you want with it, Mav, but if I don’t say it now and say it all, I’ll lose my nerve.”

Maverick was stunned but he nodded Ice on encouragingly. 

Another sniff, another pass of his hand over his hair, another anxious shift of his weight. Then suddenly, with no warning, Ice opened his mouth and spoke. 

“Look. I understand why you left, I really do. You made the call, you did what was best and…and I know that by doing this I’m probably ruining it. I’m putting us in danger. After everything you did to get into the academy and get your wings, I’m asking you to put it all on the line but god damn it, Maverick, I’m gonna need you to hold on to some of that recklessness…I know it should have ended after the Enterprise but I just can’t do it. That’s why I called you, I was being a fucking coward and couldn’t admit that whatever we had…whatever the hell that was, it was over and I couldn’t stand it. I was miserable from the second I woke up without you and…and I think I’d been miserable for a lot longer than that.”

Ice‘s hand slipped down from his hair to grip his dog tags, “I used to think the Navy was all I was ever going to have so I denied so much of myself, pretended I wasn’t fucking miserable, just so I could hang onto it. But for a moment, I had something else. I had you. And god, Mav, you were so much better than all of it. You actually make me happy. So…so I put in for a transfer. To be a Top Gun instructor just like you so maybe, um, if you wanted, we could just say fuck it and do this thing for real? Or as real as we can?”

Maverick’s vision was swimming, “Tom…”

Ice didn’t seem to have heard him past his own heartbeat, “I’m sick of not putting a name on this. I love you, Pete Mitchell. And honestly, that scares me to death but I don’t care. I love you and I want to try this. I want to be happy and I want you to be happy too. So…what do you say?”

For once Maverick didn’t have a smart answer. He didn’t have any answer, he couldn’t have spoken if his life depended on it, his chest was tight and his throat was full. 

So he did the only thing that made sense. He threw himself at Ice and kissed him as hard as he could, hard enough to nearly send them flying backwards. But they held steady, Ice catching him and lifting him into his arms, strong and sure as ever. 

They could have this one. It was only them and the waves. 

“I love you too, Tom,” Maverick gasped, only being able to say those words convincing him to pull away, his grin a mile wide, “God, when you decide to break the rules, you don’t go small, do you?”

“Guess it’s been a long time coming,” Ice’s voice was rough but he was smiling, “Um…mind if I crash here? I’m not meant to report in until nine so…”

Maverick laughed, kissing the bridge of his nose, knowing it would make him scrunch up his face in that adorable way, “I can make room.” 

Pulling away was difficult, especially knowing it was probably one of the last times they’d be able to kiss in the open air. But Maverick didn’t need the whole world to know he loved Tom Kazansky. He knew it and that was enough. 

As he drew him inside, Mav smiled. 

California was deifnitley too fucking hot. But hopefully he’d be staying a while. 

[santoschristos]

On the night 177 years ago on Sept. 23-24, 1846, astronomers discovered Neptune, the eighth planet orbiting our Sun. The discovery was made based on mathematical calculations of its predicted position due to observed perturbations in the orbit of the planet Uranus. The discovery was made using a telescope since Neptune is too faint to be visible to the naked eye, and astronomers soon discovered a moon orbiting the planet. More than a century later, a second moon was discovered orbiting the planet. Our knowledge of distant Neptune greatly increased from the scientific observations made during Voyager 2’s flyby in 1989, including the discovery of five additional moons and confirmation of dark rings orbiting the planet.

This image of Neptune was taken by Voyager 2 less than five days before the probe’s closest approach of the planet on Aug. 25, 1989, and shows the “Great Dark Spot” — a storm in Neptune’s atmosphere — and the bright, light-blue smudge of clouds that accompanies the storm.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

[starryeyes2000]

Volte-Face: Chapter 33

Read on AO3 or FFN

Pairings: Christopher Pike x OFC (Aalin)

Rating: Teen

Word Count: 1.8k

Summary: On her first mission as a member of Starfleet, interpreter Aalin Matthews is stranded on a war-torn world ten days’ journey from a haven. Safe passage for Federation personnel has been revoked. Hostile forces are hunting the orphans she is protecting. As she and the children make the dangerous trek, the crews of both Enterprise and Shenzhou work behind the scenes to aid them.

Banned from intervening, from returning to the planet, from scanning for Aalin’s location, Captain PIke must decide whether to ignore the prohibitions or risk intensifying the conflict, a choice complicated by his personal feelings for Aalin. And Spock must come to terms with his decision allowing her to remain behind; should the worst occur, it will be the first time the young lieutenant has lost someone under his command. Both Pike and Spock undertake a dangerous mission among the brutal people who invaded their neighbors in order to protect Aalin and the children and end the war.

Excerpt: Five Months Ago, Varian Presidential Palace

When she emerged from the bedroom the next morning clothed in yesterday’s dinner dress, Aalin lingered at the doorway on hearing Chris speak rapidly into his communicator. He flashed a smile and beckoned her forward by curling fingers into his palm.

“... if there’s another flyby, go to tactical yellow alert. I’d wager they’re testing boundaries and won’t get too close. Don’t hesitate to skedaddle if you need room to maneuver. We can see to ourselves until you pick us up on the back side,” he ordered before muting the communication link. To Aalin who was now standing by his side Chris asked in a soft voice, “Need anything from the ship?”

She shook her head.

Activating the microphone he said, “Okay, that’s all. Next check-in is in eight hours.” He flipped the communicator shut then turned to her. “Hey.”

“Hey.”

Continue Reading on AO3 or FFN

Story Masterlist | Series Masterlist

OC Masterlist | Author Masterlist

Taglist: @arrthurpendragon @ocappreciation @ocappreciationtag @bardic-tales @themaradaniels

[sciencespies]

NASA’s flagship Artemis I mission has flown past the moon

https://sciencespies.com/space/nasas-flagship-artemis-i-mission-has-flown-past-the-moon/

NASA’s flagship Artemis I mission has flown past the moon

After blasting off on the enormous Space Launch System rocket, NASA’s Orion capsule has flown within 130 kilometres of the lunar surface as it prepares to enter orbit

Space 21 November 2022

By Leah Crane

NASA’s Artemis I mission has made a close approach to the moon, flying within 130 kilometres above the farside of the lunar surface on 21 November.

The Orion capsule blasted off on top of the enormous Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, the most powerful ever launched, on 16 November. After years of delays and several missed launch opportunities this year thwarted by hydrogen leaks, technical issues and, most recently, a hurricane that SLS weathered on the launchpad at Cape Canaveral in Florida, the lift-off went astonishingly smoothly.

“It was surprising to me that it went without a hitch,” says space analyst Laura Forczyk. “I mean, there were small hitches, but it didn’t explode!” The biggest of those hitches was a set of loose bolts that a team was sent out to the launchpad shortly before launch to tighten – it is extraordinarily rare to see anyone working on rocket hardware so close to lift-off.

Advertisement

Orion is expected to enter orbit around the moon on 25 November. Then, after six days in orbit, it has got to come back – a part of the mission that is just as crucial as the launch itself. It is expected to return to Earth on 11 December.

“Bringing Orion back is going to be as big a challenge as getting off the Earth,” NASA associate administrator Thomas Zurbuchen told New Scientist. “The risks just add up… The mission is only over once Orion is down safely here.” Only then can it be considered safe enough to put humans aboard, which is the goal of the Artemis II mission, currently planned for 2024.

For that mission, NASA will have to be even more careful. “Humans are needy creatures,” says Emily Judd at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Virginia. “We have to have the oxygen to breathe, we need food, all of the life-support systems that are required – part of Artemis I is testing out those systems, making sure that everything is ready for the crew when they go up on Artemis II.”

While Artemis I’s main purpose is to test the SLS and Orion spacecraft ahead of Artemis II, which will see a crewed Orion perform a lunar flyby, there are some other scientific goals as well. SLS carried 10 cubesats, which are small satellites weighing only about 11 kilograms each, and released them into space hours after the launch.

Four of the cubesats are designed to study the moon, including a Japanese experiment called Omotenashi, which is intended to perform a soft landing on the moon’s surface. This would make Japan only the fourth nation to do so, and with the smallest lunar lander ever. However, Omotenashi appears to be tumbling in space, which might prevent it from landing.

Artemis I approaching the moon

NASA

Three of the cubesats are intended to study radiation in space. Another, called NEA Scout, will fly via solar sail to a nearby asteroid, while the remaining two are technology demonstrations for improved methods of deep-space propulsion. According to a NASA press conference on 18 November, five of the 10 cubesats are currently functioning as expected, while the other five are experiencing either technical issues or are unable to communicate with their operators on Earth.

Artemis I is building to the Artemis III mission, which is intended to take astronauts to the moon’s surface for the first time since Apollo 17 in 1972 – and inform future scientific study. “We have barely touched the surface of what we can learn – yes, about the moon, but also about Earth and about how we can survive on Mars,” says Forczyk. “The moon is the stepping stone to the solar system.”

Sign up to our free Launchpad newsletter for a voyage across the galaxy and beyond, every Friday

More on these topics:

#Space

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 8.28 (after 1920)

1921 – Russian Civil War: The Red Army dissolved the Makhnovshchina, after driving the Revolutionary Insurgent Army out of Ukraine. 1924 – The Georgian opposition stages the August Uprising against the Soviet Union. 1936 – Nazi Germany begins its mass arrests of Jehovah's Witnesses, who are interned in concentration camps. 1937 – Toyota Motors becomes an independent company. 1943 – Denmark in World War II: German authorities demand that Danish authorities crack down on acts of resistance. The next day, martial law is imposed on Denmark. 1944 – World War II: Marseille and Toulon are liberated. 1946 – The Workers’ Party of North Korea, predecessor of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea, is founded at a congress held in Pyongyang, North Korea. 1955 – Black teenager Emmett Till is lynched in Mississippi for whistling at a white woman, galvanizing the nascent civil rights movement. 1957 – U.S. Senator Strom Thurmond begins a filibuster to prevent the United States Senate from voting on the Civil Rights Act of 1957; he stopped speaking 24 hours and 18 minutes later, the longest filibuster ever conducted by a single Senator. 1963 – March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom: Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gives his I Have a Dream speech. 1964 – The Philadelphia race riot begins. 1968 – Police and protesters clash during 1968 Democratic National Convention protests as protesters chant "The whole world is watching". 1973 – Norrmalmstorg robbery: Stockholm police secure the surrenders of hostage-takers Jan-Erik Olsson and Clark Olofsson, defusing the Norrmalmstorg hostage crisis. The behaviours of the hostages later give rise to the term Stockholm syndrome. 1988 – Ramstein air show disaster: Three aircraft of the Frecce Tricolori demonstration team collide and the wreckage falls into the crowd. Seventy-five are killed and 346 seriously injured. 1990 – Gulf War: Iraq declares Kuwait to be its newest province. 1990 – An F5 tornado strikes the Illinois cities of Plainfield and Joliet, killing 29 people. 1993 – NASA's Galileo probe performs a flyby of the asteroid 243 Ida. Astronomers later discover a moon, the first known asteroid moon, in pictures from the flyby and name it Dactyl. 1993 – Singaporean presidential election: Former Deputy Prime Minister Ong Teng Cheong is elected President of Singapore. Although it is the first presidential election to be determined by popular vote, the allowed candidates consist only of Ong and a reluctant whom the government had asked to run to confer upon the election the semblance of an opposition. 1993 – The autonomous Croatian Community of Herzeg-Bosnia in Bosnia and Herzegovina is transformed into the Croatian Republic of Herzeg-Bosnia. 1993 – A Tajikistan Airlines Yakovlev Yak-40 crashes during takeoff from Khorog Airport in Tajikistan, killing 82. 1996 – Chicago Seven defendant David Dellinger, antiwar activist Bradford Lyttle, Civil Rights Movement historian Randy Kryn, and eight others are arrested by the Federal Protective Service while protesting in a demonstration at the Kluczynski Federal Building in downtown Chicago during that year's Democratic National Convention. 1998 – Pakistan's National Assembly passes a constitutional amendment to make the "Qur'an and Sunnah" the "supreme law" but the bill is defeated in the Senate. 1998 – Second Congo War: Loyalist troops backed by Angolan and Zimbabwean forces repulse the RCD and Rwandan offensive on Kinshasa. 1999 – The Russian space mission Soyuz TM-29 reaches completion, ending nearly 10 years of continuous occupation on the space station Mir as it approaches the end of its life. 2003 – In "one of the most complicated and bizarre crimes in the annals of the FBI", Brian Wells dies after becoming involved in a complex plot involving a bank robbery, a scavenger hunt, and a homemade explosive device. 2009 – NASA's Space Shuttle Discovery launches on STS-128.

[michaelgabrill]

Mariner 7 Goes to Mars

55 years ago, on March 27, 1969, an Atlas-Centaur rocket launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, sending Mariner 7 on its way to study Mars. Mariner 7 was the second Mars probe; Mariner 6 launched Feb. 24, 1969, to investigate Mars’ equator. Mariner 7 made a close flyby of Mars just five days […] from NASA https://ift.tt/YUScT4v

[cybermoonmoon]

Winter 2018. Sharp winds early dusks quiet nights.

Act One Triage.

If an injury is possible it's here.

A prisoner chained to a gurney opposite me. A patrolman at his side. Grunts of the urban wars. Being soldiers they have much in common.

So they spoke not of rage, but cars sports family, and the Army.

Iraq vets both.

Act Two Observation.

A pod of ten beds with flat screens floating above them. Pain. They limit meds. The Opioid Crisis. I watched hours of "The Walking Dead" to cheer myself up.

New Years Eve.

Our ward doctor played the ukulele and sang for us.

Angels everywhere.

Finally serious Morphine. I entered 2019 in a most pleasant state.

Act Three Treatment.

The 'real' hospital begins. Here they keep all the knives, and saws. I'm pried injected drained poked x-rayed MRI, and Sonogram. Btw I'm still not pregnant.

Assorted real-time truths presented. Stuff needs to be chopped off. It's just a question of how much. ??!!! After more MRI shake, and baking they settle on a menu.

Act Four The Operating Theatre.

No popcorn...or cartoons. Walls ceilings flyby. Muted voices. Then so bright so cold so quick. Did I mention at some point my veins stopped working, and they had to go digging into my arteries for blood. That was the only fun part.

Act Five Post-Op.

A blur. Sleep. Deep sleep.

I think I remember nurses doctors speaking to me or maybe I dreamed them. Same thing. Eventually I'm Medevac'd to my digs.

Act Six.

Home.

"There, and Back Again"

Loves that phrase from "Lord of the Rings". It's just so handy.

Lots of fruit soup, and dream of fried foods. In a constant waking dream state...which is how I'm writing this.

Love.

So much from my family They, and my extended B'cast, and online family. I don't remotely deserve it...but I'll happily take it anyway.

I loves you all too!

Stay tuned.