#aerospace valley

[rynestonez]

as i keep playing sdv and going through harvey’s friendship events/dialogue i slowly become more sure of the fact that this man is by no means neurotypical. he’s autistic in my eyes idc “he just collects model planes it’s not that big a dea-“ LET ME DREAM

[nocternalrandomness]

G-111 touching down at Phoenix Deer Valley

[usafphantom2]

USAF Rockwell B-1B Lancer 85-0068 by Mark Allison Via Flickr: A fully swept B-1B running through on full afterburner at the Aerospace Valley Airshow 2022 at Edwards Air Force Base. -15/10/2022

[nasa]

A Tour of Cosmic Temperatures

We often think of space as “cold,” but its temperature can vary enormously depending on where you visit. If the difference between summer and winter on Earth feels extreme, imagine the range of temperatures between the coldest and hottest places in the universe — it’s trillions of degrees! So let’s take a tour of cosmic temperatures … from the coldest spots to the hottest temperatures yet achieved.

First, a little vocabulary: Astronomers use the Kelvin temperature scale, which is represented by the symbol K. Going up by 1 K is the same as going up 1°C, but the scale begins at 0 K, or -273°C, which is also called absolute zero. This is the temperature where the atoms in stuff stop moving. We’ll measure our temperatures in this tour in kelvins, but also convert them to make them more familiar!

We’ll start on the chilly end of the scale with our CAL (Cold Atom Lab) on the International Space Station, which can chill atoms to within one ten billionth of a degree above 0 K, just a fraction above absolute zero.

Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Scott Wiessinger

Just slightly warmer is the Resolve sensor inside XRISM, pronounced “crism,” short for the X-ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission. This is an international collaboration led by JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) with NASA and ESA (European Space Agency). Resolve operates at one twentieth of a degree above 0 K. Why? To measure the heat from individual X-rays striking its 36 pixels!

Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Scott Wiessinger

Resolve and CAL are both colder than the Boomerang Nebula, the coldest known region in the cosmos at just 1 K! This cloud of dust and gas left over from a Sun-like star is about 5,000 light-years from Earth. Scientists are studying why it’s colder than the natural background temperature of deep space.

Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Scott Wiessinger

Let’s talk about some temperatures closer to home. Icy gas giant Neptune is the coldest major planet. It has an average temperature of 72 K at the height in its atmosphere where the pressure is equivalent to sea level on Earth. Explore how that compares to other objects in our solar system!

Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Scott Wiessinger

How about Earth? According to NOAA, Death Valley set the world’s surface air temperature record on July 10, 1913. This record of 330 K has yet to be broken — but recent heat waves have come close. (If you’re curious about the coldest temperature measured on Earth, that’d be 183.95 K (-128.6°F or -89.2°C) at Vostok Station, Antarctica, on July 21, 1983.)

We monitor Earth's global average temperature to understand how our planet is changing due to human activities. Last year, 2023, was the warmest year on our record, which stretches back to 1880.

Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Scott Wiessinger

The inside of our planet is even hotter. Earth’s inner core is a solid sphere made of iron and nickel that’s about 759 miles (1,221 kilometers) in radius. It reaches temperatures up to 5,600 K.

Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Scott Wiessinger

We might assume stars would be much hotter than our planet, but the surface of Rigel is only about twice the temperature of Earth’s core at 11,000 K. Rigel is a young, blue star in the constellation Orion, and one of the brightest stars in our night sky.

Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Scott Wiessinger 

We study temperatures on large and small scales. The electrons in hydrogen, the most abundant element in the universe, can be stripped away from their atoms in a process called ionization at a temperature around 158,000 K. When these electrons join back up with ionized atoms, light is produced. Ionization is what makes some clouds of gas and dust, like the Orion Nebula, glow.

Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Scott Wiessinger

We already talked about the temperature on a star’s surface, but the material surrounding a star gets much, much hotter! Our Sun’s surface is about 5,800 K (10,000°F or 5,500°C), but the outermost layer of the solar atmosphere, called the corona, can reach millions of kelvins.

Our Parker Solar Probe became the first spacecraft to fly through the corona in 2021, helping us answer questions like why it is so much hotter than the Sun's surface. This is one of the mysteries of the Sun that solar scientists have been trying to figure out for years.

Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Scott Wiessinger

Looking for a hotter spot? Located about 240 million light-years away, the Perseus galaxy cluster contains thousands of galaxies. It’s surrounded by a vast cloud of gas heated up to tens of millions of kelvins that glows in X-ray light. Our telescopes found a giant wave rolling through this cluster’s hot gas, likely due to a smaller cluster grazing it billions of years ago.

Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Scott Wiessinger

Now things are really starting to heat up! When massive stars — ones with eight times the mass of our Sun or more — run out of fuel, they put on a show. On their way to becoming black holes or neutron stars, these stars will shed their outer layers in a supernova explosion. These layers can reach temperatures of 300 million K!

Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Jeremy Schnittman

We couldn’t explore cosmic temperatures without talking about black holes. When stuff gets too close to a black hole, it can become part of a hot, orbiting debris disk with a conical corona swirling above it. As the material churns, it heats up and emits light, making it glow. This hot environment, which can reach temperatures of a billion kelvins, helps us find and study black holes even though they don’t emit light themselves.

JAXA’s XRISM telescope, which we mentioned at the start of our tour, uses its supercool Resolve detector to explore the scorching conditions around these intriguing, extreme objects.

Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/CI Lab

Our universe’s origins are even hotter. Just one second after the big bang, our tiny, baby universe consisted of an extremely hot — around 10 billion K — ��soup” of light and particles. It had to cool for a few minutes before the first elements could form. The oldest light we can see, the cosmic microwave background, is from about 380,000 years after the big bang, and shows us the heat left over from these earlier moments.

Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Scott Wiessinger

We’ve ventured far in distance and time … but the final spot on our temperature adventure is back on Earth! Scientists use the Large Hadron Collider at CERN to smash teensy particles together at superspeeds to simulate the conditions of the early universe. In 2012, they generated a plasma that was over 5 trillion K, setting a world record for the highest human-made temperature.

Want this tour as a poster? You can download it here in a vertical or horizontal version!

Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Scott Wiessinger

Explore the wonderful and weird cosmos with NASA Universe on X, Facebook, and Instagram. And make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space!

[k0libra]

Welcome Captain Anderson and First Officer Connor!

About a week and a half ago I came up with dbh civil aviation au, as I absolutely love jetliners. So I decided to combine both of my interests! :D

More details about the setting are under the cut!

In the 2020s, a new aerospace corporation emerged - “Cyberair”. Originally starting from light jet construction, but later in the 30s they introduced narrow-body aircraft to the production line, as the result of rapid growth and market expansion. However, throughout the years their idea remained the same: “Reliable and comprehensive automation”. Cyberair jets are everything, beyond what a modern aircraft can offer, and is capable of. Truly a creation of the 21st century.

The latest Cyberair venture – state of the art autopilot. Identical to humans in its appearance, yet so different in behaviour. It’s efficient, reliable and doesn’t make mistakes (almost. At least human ones). But to tell the truth, this development is expected – ever since the late 20s Cyberair started to slowly announce machine cabin crew, even gifting a unique RK200 air traffic controller model to the Detroit Metropolitan Airport.

Delta Air Lines received their own one-of-a-kind autopilot, a RK800 (FAA approved!) model. How? Well, something about the Cyberair CEO liking their service. After a few papers signed and a few hands shaken, Connor embarks on his first real flight as a First Officer.

No plane flies without a captain though, so Connor has company. And a superior. Even if machines are better than people in piloting the plane in almost every way, human ego and fear, maybe, can’t let them be in absolute control. “Uncanny valley” or something.

Captain Anderson is a highly experienced senior pilot at Delta. Most of his career he has been flying Airbus aircraft, piloting A350-900 in the later years. Although because of Connor working with him now he has to pilot Cyberair regional or light jets from time to time. Oh, those signed papers be damned… He misses his dear A350.

Their relationship had a rough start, with the captain calling Connor “an attempt of capitalism at stealing my job”. But Hank couldn’t help but warm up to the FO the more flight hours passed. There was something so… alive about him? No, in aviation you only trust your instrument panel, and here all of the facts loudly state that Connor is simply a RK800. This is definitely some Eliza effect shit.

Why is he so interested in the A380 then? Doesn’t he have all of the aeroplane data neatly stored in his head? What surprises Hank more is something akin to confusion on Connor’s face every time he gets overly excited about the giant of the skies. Maybe he’s surprised by his new-found interest, too. At least there’s something Hank can tell him about from the old days (ah, proud A380 pilot) during long transatlantic flights.

Fucking Eliza effect bullshit.

P.S. if you want to leave an ask about this au, please do! I get asks so rarely so I’m excited hahah. But you can ask literally anything else, too lol

[timberwind]

Yarragardee Basin, Mangala, 7995 A.D.

------------------------

Accompanying music: You’re On Fire by They Might Be Giants. Summer road trip music of all time, in my opinion.

Here’s a little expository write-up on the history and geography of the worlds shown here. Someday I’ll have more to show of the personal story of these two critters and their travels; until then, a more macro-level description.

------------------------

(most of this info has become outdated as modeling invalidated some original assumptions and I changed my mind on what I wanted here; future art of Mangala will reflect this)

Mangala and its sister world Kahira (visible in the background) are binary planets, orbiting one another in a manner not entirely unlike that of Pluto and Charon in the Solar System. Mangala is a relatively small world - just about twenty percent the mass of the Earth, something like if you took two copies of Mars and smushed them together; without the internal heat to drive a carbonate cycle long term, it had long been a frozen, dusty, and arid place when transhumanity first established a permanent presence in the Tahoka system almost a thousand years ago. Since those early days, terraforming using a Birchian soletta system (a huge but foil-thin Fresnel lens of mirrors, with a secondary focal lens for burning atmospheric gasses out of the regolith) has rendered it shirtsleeve habitable to baseline humans across much of the surface, although the global water inventory remains low* and the air in the “continental” uplands is stratospheric, with only the hardiest lichens establishing a foothold. Most of Mangala’s major metropolitan areas are located in the deep rift valleys and basins, where air pressure is highest.

Kahira on the other hand, a rock almost a fifth the mass of its sister world (a little under the mass of old Mercury), remains only slightly terraformed - surface conditions are persistently cold, with a thin barely-Martian atmosphere. Some of its larger rift valleys and craters have been tented over, aerated, and planted with tall low-gravity forest and grassland, a style of habitat construction dating back to the first Mars colonists almost six thousand years ago. Industrial complexes and buried cities sprawl out across the bare surface of the moon, with huge low-gravity lava tubes seeing extensive urban development.

The Yarragardee Basin, pictured above, is a graben basin in Mangala’s northern hemisphere, notable for the historic industrial city of Tirupati - here we see two road-trippers between cities on the basin’s great plain, taking a break in the long late afternoon of a sunset-day***. Having stopped for a night at a motel near Tirupati’s aerospace complex, they’re now continuing their journey to the city of Redmond-Tonasket, located in the Woronora Valles trench system about two thousand kilometers to the southwest.

* While plenty of water could have been imported from Tahoka’s cometary halo, it was decided not to do so in order to avoid inundating pre-existing cities in the valleys and deep basins. The extremely humid hothouse conditions that come after slamming dismantled ice moons through the stratosphere at over six kilometers a second were also broadly considered unacceptable.

** Smaller worlds have been terraformed in transhuman space, both by worldhouse and more open-air methods, but it’s largely the kind of thing that much more energy-rich systems do as a vanity project. Kahira may someday see blue skies, but likely not for a thousand years at least. (edit, one year later: I actually changed up some of this while simulating this system for stability. I’ll be posting more about this soon.)

*** Mangala and Kahira, being tidally locked to each other such that they always show one another the same face as they orbit their common center of mass, both have days exactly as long as their orbital periods - 403 kiloseconds, or roughly 112 hours. This is for convenience divided into month-weeks comprising four “circadian days” of 100 kiloseconds (~26 hours), with the remaining three kiloseconds added on to the last day of a month-week to keep synchronization.

[jayveesim]

Hi Keon.. let's introduce you hunny bug.

5 facts about a random sim

Who is Keon?

1. He was raised until age 6 in Del Sol Valley until he moved to Windenburg after his father got a new job. He missed and still misses Del Sol.

2. Chaim and Keon met his first year of elementary and they have been best friends ever since. They've had maybe one fight that could've ended their friendship.

3. He ran track in high school and college, he could've gone to the Olympics, until unfortunately he injured his knee.

4. Keon had every intention on becoming a Aerospace Engineer but quickly learned it wasn't for him and was introduced to Real Estate by Chaim. He is best at selling than at development unlike Chaim.

5. He is married, but in the process of getting a divorce. He does have one son from this marriage.

*we'll talk about how he got his scar later

[spacetimewithstuartgary]

Research abounds at the International Space Station

At the International Space station, researchers are making strides in everything from Earth science to chemical properties. Here's what they're up to and why it matters.

Recently, researchers have found that eddies, or swirling wind patterns, increased moisture evaporation in an alfalfa field. A better understanding of the complex exchange of water and heat between the ground and atmosphere could improve remote sensing products and their use in agricultural water management.

The station's ECOSTRESS instrument takes high-resolution thermal infrared measurements of Earth's surface that provide data on changes in water availability, vegetation water stress, and agricultural water use. Researchers use observations from the USGS Landsat 8 and 9 satellites and ECOSTRESS to validate climate models and update data on Earth's surface energy (the amount of energy absorbed from the sun and radiated back into the atmosphere).

Properties of flow boiling

Researchers have identified various properties for flow boiling using n-perfleurohexane, a fluid used to cool electronics. A better understanding of this process can improve models for designing thermal cooling systems used in the electronics, energy, aerospace, and other industries.

Flow boiling, a method of thermal management, uses the heat generated by a device to boil a liquid, generating vapor bubbles that lift the heat from the surface. The Flow Boiling and Condensation Experiment (FBCE) tested a flow boiling method in microgravity, where the process is less efficient; in the absence of buoyancy, bubbles grow larger and remain near the surface.

A new radiation-resistant polymer

Researchers successfully manufactured a polymer of rare metals and other elements that showed high radiation resistance and has a suitable size and weight for use in space. This result provides knowledge that can support development of improved shielding for future spacecraft and extraterrestrial habitats.

The Roscosmos investigation Shielding Composite tested the absorbed radiation dose of two polymers during 225 days on the space station using monthly monitoring by the Pille-ISS investigation. The data showed that the material has high and stable radiation shielding characteristics. Protecting crew members and equipment from radiation is an important requirement for future long-duration space missions.

TOP IMAGE: The ECOSTRESS instrument on the International Space Station. Credit: NASA

CENTRE IMAGE: ECOSTRESS data shows evaporative stress in agricultural fields in California’s San Joaquin Valley. Credit: NASA

LOWER IMAGE: NASA astronauts Mark Vande Hei and Kayla Barron set up for the Flow Boiling and Condensation Experiment. Credit: NASA

[ofstormsandfire]

your dad is an icon

he's wild, you don't know the half of it. this man:

worked on the space shuttle program. maintains that he is an engineer who worked in aerospace, not an aerospace engineer

has not one but two ex-wives (my mom is the second)

is a black belt in not one, not two, but THREE martial arts. actively does/teaches two of them. has actively been doing the main one, aikido, for like fifty years iirc?

one of his favorite t-shirts is one reading "your first mistake was assuming I was just an old man"

his response to his second ex-wife trying to make him pay her more than the pre-divorce house was worth was to basically go "alright then I've always wanted to have a farm." he now lives on a farm. he's basically playing stardew valley in real life and honestly, icon shit.

did not use to like queer people. then his daughter turned out to be queer people and he decided that he liked queer people now actually. growth!

he just randomly has a wholeass katana sitting on a stand in the house. he occasionally uses it to clear out undergrowth when he's out in the swamp.

routinely claims that he is not a cat person. he has done this on multiple occasions while my cat is on his lap and purring extensively, and while he is petting her.

makes his own knives sometimes. I have several progress shots for the one in the other post he just finished this one on christmas which I thought was hilarious.

the extent of his acknowledgment of christmas is 1) an opportunity to cook something fancier than normal and 2) an opportunity to drag the scrunkliest, scraggliest christmas tree possible from out somewhere in the swamp. the last two years' were great but this one really takes the cake

is also a writer! there's a sci-fi book under his pen name avail somewhere on amazon where a bunch of space tourists get stranded on an uninhabited planet and get terrorized by the wildlife; the pen name I intend to use shares a surname with his.

routinely reacts to shit that I am pretty sure is Not Neurotypical Things with "what do you mean that's an adhd/autism/etc thing, everyone does that?" (hate to break it to you, dad, They Do Not)

probably other things I'm forgetting about

scrunkly tree under the cut, for those curious:

[feybeasts]

Ex-RCAF former Hemet Valley Flying Service fire tanker C-119 :3

Ooh, got the civilian modification with the turbine up top, nice! We have one down here at Pima Aerospace, but it’s in far worse shape, alas!

[tobbesdiscordkitten]

Every fandom has its bad side and worse side. I am not ok with trolls going around saying Vince sacrificed Skylar for fame either

the real people to blame for this is boeing and rocketdyne. They were the ones releasing radiation and dumping chemicals near the neighborhood where Vince and sharise lived at getting people sick and giving them cancer and unfortunately Skylar was a victim who did not survive

Also let it be known that a lot of these manufacture and chemical companies are still dumping toxic waste close to residents today!

Hello, anon! Thank you for your wise words and bringing awareness to the situation. It is very unfortunate how this whole thing occurred.

For anybody who wants to know more I will provide a short excerpt from an article I found. I will also paste the link for those who want to read the article in its entirety.

The lead singer for Mötley Crüe has sued Boeing North American Inc., claiming that his daughter's death by cancer in 1995 was caused by radioactive material dumped in the soil and ground water near his former home near the Santa Susana Field Laboratory.

Vince Neil and his ex-wife, Sharise, bought a home in Chatsworth in 1991, a few miles east of Boeing's Rocketdyne Division. Boeing acquired the property in 1996 when it bought Rockwell International's aerospace and defense businesses.

The suit claims that Boeing, Rockwell, and Rocketdyne knowingly dumped hazardous materials, such as plutonium and uranium, near the Neils' Summit Ridge Circle residence southeast of Simi Valley.

Their 4-year-old daughter, Skylar, was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer in April 1995 and died four months later. The suit claims that her death came "as a direct result of the activities conducted by defendants."

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1999-aug-18-me-1368-story.html

It’s disgusting how these companies are still getting away with this!

[khanhannahlewis]

HELPED for the Glimpses of the Past ask game

(@is-the-battlemech-cool-or-not)

Niles, 3073.

MechWarrior Hannah stalks her Rifleman along a low ridge, in rear of the rest of Fire Star. The Trinary she belongs to had dropped onto Niles the previous day to raid Clan Hell's Horses enclaves for materials. Battle Star was behind, moving along the creekbed running down the middle of the valley, Striker Star was ahead, running down the valley to locate enemy positions. At least a reinforced Trinary is operating in the area, with significant infantry and CV support, but the MechWarriors of Clan Blood Spirit are superior,

          Hannah sweeps her torso off to the right, where the ridge flattens out, then climbs up to a heavily wooded slope. While her duty was to watch the valley and skies, covering Battle Star from both enemy Mechs and aerospace assets, the woods off to her right worry her.

          “MechWarrior Hannah! Leave the woods to the Elementals, watch your radar.”

           “Aff Star Commander.” As Hannah swings her torso around, she checks her radar. “Incoming, bearing 163, high.” It takes a moment for the bandit to enter the range of Hannah’s targeting computer and view screens. A Hell’s Horses Sabutai, A configuration. Massive autocannons open up on the Fire Star, sending up dirt and pieces of armor. Hannah opens fire, Pulse lasers rapidly thrumming, targeting simulations drawing lines of blue light over the paths of the invisible beams. One beam strikes the small dark Bible on the top of the Aerospace Fighter and it goes down, crashing behind Hannah in a fireball, unable to pull out of its strafe run without a pilot. The Star in front of Hannah is ravaged, chunks of armor missing and systems smoking. One Mech stands still, smoke billowing out of its cockpit. Suddenly, a Summoner bursts from a hidden position in the woods. Hannah swings her torso around, backing away as long ranged missiles impact across her torso, followed by the blast of  a particle cannon. 

           The computer sounds off “Warning, Left torso armor depleted.” Hannah for her part let's off with her Pulse lasers as the Summoner jumps forward, opening up with its LBX and PPC simultaneously. An explosion rocks Hannah and a weight seems to fall off her mech, becoming unballanced. “Warning, left torso destroyed.”

          The Summoner stalks forward now, almost gloating. The other members of Hannah's Star slowly approach, already heavily damaged. Another LBX hit knocks Hannah back, tossing her around the cockpit of her Rifleman. A PPC hit sends her falling back. Her mech hits the ground with a heavy thud, and she slams her head into the headrest. The Summoner fills her cockpit view screen, doubled by her swimming vision. The LBX autocannon fills her view, and she can see down the barrel as a shell slides into the breech. Suddenly, an Elemental climbs up on the Summoner, then another. The cockpit is torn open, a laser fired in, and the Summoner stops. One of the Elementals lands on the front of the Rifleman. Hannah opens her hatch and crawls out, standing next to the Elemental. 

          “Thank you for the save. I am MechWarrior Hannah.”

          The Elemental’s stubby, neckless helmet slides open, revealing a scarred face. “Point Commander Ashes. Should I signal a transport to pick you up? I must return to battle.” By now Fire Star is moving away.

          “Aff. Thank you.” Ashes turns and moves away. 

          “Seek me out afterwards if you want to couple.”

           “Alright.” Hannah crosses her arms and leans against her wrecked Rifleman as the Elemental point moves away.

 ( @a-krogan-skald-and-bearsark you asked the same)

[nocternalrandomness]

A low pass by NASA's C-20A at the Aerospace Valley Open House Airshow 2022, Edwards AFB, Ca

[usafphantom2]

USAF Thunderbirds at the Aerospace Valley Airshow 2022 by Mark Allison Via Flickr: Thunderbirds 5 and 6 during the Calypso Pass. -16/10/2022

[astronicht]

I'm laughing that lan zhan still doesn't know wei ying is yanlis brother 😂😂😂

is wei ying into space and the stars in this AU, he was very specific about Mars and the other planets ✨️

lan zhan, my beloved, I'm glad he has someone to send pictures of the sunset to now 💖

Thank you!! Honestly I enjoy that running joke so much. Why did I even feel the need to put it in? Unclear. But it has given me, personally, much joy in the mileage. It's not a big reveal waiting to happen or anything, it's just another "oh the world is big and deeply strange and sometimes uniquely kind" thing.

Yeah so, Wei Ying's job was originally going to get more mileage, but he's working the shifts of an aerospace test engineer (texting at 5:45AM, free at 3PM, every other Friday off). I angled away from it partly because it didn't fit in anywhere, partly because we're running out of aerospace contractors based in Silicon Valley that are not overtly evil, and the point of Pines is not necessarily getting into a dissection of the industry. ANYWAY he liked NASA and planes and space a lot growing up, and likes all of those things right now. All versions of Wei Ying love a bit of trivia, also.

I'm terrified to reread that ending because this chapter didn't HAVE an ending this morning, and I just jazz hands-ed my way through adding onto a floating few paragraphs of a Watching Sports scene, trying to make an ending that worked out. I'm glad you liked it!

[litcityblues]

For All Mankind Seasons 3 & 4: Some Men Would Rather Steal An Asteroid Than Go To Therapy

It's been a minute since I saw this show, but to recap: at the end of Season 2, Cold War tensions between the Soviets and Americans boil over. There's a firefight on the moon. Tracy and Gordo manage to keep Jamestown's reactor from melting down but die in the process. Danielle docks with Soyuz and astronauts and cosmonauts finally greeting each other does a lot to defuse tensions. In the final shot of the season, we see a human walking on Mars.

When Season 3 starts, it's 1992. Ed (Joel Kinnaman) and Karen (Shantel VanSanten) are divorced and Karen is in the Space Hotel business after a disaster at Danny Stevens' (Casey W. Johnson) wedding nearly takes out the hotel and takes out her new husband Sam (Jeff Hephner), Karen decides to sell to Dev Ayesa (Edi Gathegi), found of Helios Aerospace who wants to use it for his own commercial mission to Mars.

Ed and Danielle (Krys Marshall) are in the running to be commander of NASA's Mars Mission with Molly Cobb (Sonya Wagner) (now blind, because of her solar storm adventure in Season 2) clashing with Margo (Wrenn Schmidt) over who to choose. Molly picks Ed, but Margo fires her and picks Danielle instead. Ed switches teams, leaving NASA to join Helios as the commander for their Mars mission, which sets up a three-way race to Mars.

(Margo is under increasing pressure-- as her 'gentle back channel' to the Soviets in the form of her friend Sergei is rapidly becoming the KGB insisting that she sell secrets to them.)

With everyone on the way to Mars, Danny's new wife and baby are hanging out with his brother Jimmy (David Chandler) who- like Danny- is struggling with the legacy of his parents, Tracy and Gordo. Unlike Danny, who seems to have doubled down to follow in their footsteps, Jimmy wants nothing to do with NASA and is increasingly friendly with anti-NASA radicals.

On the way to Mars, NASA deploys solar sails to race ahead of the Helios crew, but an accident on the Soviet ship, which sees Ed attempt to go to their rescue, as Helios is closer, gets overruled by Dev and ultimately, it's NASA who has to go rescue the cosmonauts. They do so and while Helios arrives at Mars first, Ed's landing attempt is aborted due to bad weather and ultimately, it's NASA and Russia who land first, with Danielle and the Soviet commander wrestling their way onto Mars... together.

The Soviets and Americans are sharing Happy Valley, while Helios has its own base. Danny is spiralling hard and after he gets injured, develops a Vicodin addiction. Kelly (Cynthy Wu) has a romantic liaison with one of the cosmonauts. One of the astronauts, Will Tyler (Robert Bailey Jr), reveals that he's gay- which gives former Astronaut and Current President Ellen Wilson (Jodi Balfour) an opening to take down 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell.'

(Ellen's plotline is probably the more underrated of Season 3: still married to Larry (Nate Corddry), they're both still gay, they have one kid and she runs for President as a Republican, defeating Bill Clinton in 1992 to win election. The twist is that it's Larry who gets caught in a lie about an extramarital affair to Congress, which you think is going to be the start of Ellen's 'Lewinsky Scandal' that takes her down but instead, after going to see Pam, Ellen makes the one move that I think no one expects her to make: she comes out of the closet.

IRL, I honestly think that scenario would play out exactly the way Ellen intended. It would have changed the story in a massive, massive way- especially in the mid-90s media landscape, IMO)

Danny's spiral leads to a drilling accident that results in an accident that leads to more deaths and Ed and Danny being trapped in Hab 1, buried and running out of air.

The noose is tightening around Margo, as the Soviets continue to pressure her and Aleida realizes that it was she who gave NASA's engine design to the Soviets and Jimmy's radical friends help him steal the statue of his parents. Things in Season 3 come to a head with Kelly- who is pregnant and suffering from pre-eclampsia, having to be evacuated back to Earth. The North Korean rocket that damaged the space hotel way at the start of the season? Turns out it was a Mars mission and the Americans/Russians find the sole survivor and the *actual* first man on Mars: a North Korean. Back on Earth, Jimmy's friends blow up the Johnson Space Center killing Karen and Molly Cobb in the process and Margo is presumed to be amongst the dead, but is in fact, alive, well, and living in the Soviet Union.

Season 4 opens with the Mars base having grown considerably. Ed is commanding a mission to bring an asteroid into Mars orbit so they can mine it and unemployed oil rig worker Miles (Toby Kebbell) (because they've discovered something called helium-3 that's become the main fuel source, devastating the oil and gas industries) was headed to the moon, but chooses instead to go to Mars for more pay and a long stint. After the accident with Ed's mission, NASA sends out Danielle to replace him for the remainder of America's term commanding the base while Ed, as it turns out is experiencing hand tremors.

Margo is finding that the Soviet Union isn't all it cracked up to be. She's out of the space game, but after a coup removes Gorbachev and brings in new management she finds herself working for the Soviet space program again (after a fairly brutal interrogation.)

On Mars, Miles finds that Helios doesn't pay that well but gets into the black market game to supplement his income and does so quite successfully.

Aleida is suffering from panic attacks after the bombing, Kelly is getting screwed by NASA so they take her robotic explorer program (whose goal is to search for life) on the road, looking for private funding and eventually, they get some from Dev.

Political tensions are rising on Mars with the Soviet crew forming factions over their power struggle, the North Koreans are keeping to themselves, and the Americans are kind of caught in the middle if we just fast forward through to the end of this, eventually, Ed, Dev, and company hijack a shiny new asteroid and park it in Mars orbit where it will be mined. (Margo is also revealed to be alive, comes back to America for awkward moments at NASA, and has the brief, tiniest possibility of running away to Brazil with Sergei dangled in front of her before someone- presumably the KGB shoots him dead.)

All right, so let's unpack this a bit.

From what I'm reading on the interwebs, this show is still waiting for an official renewal for Season 5. I don't know what kind of metrics Apple uses to make those decisions for its streaming platform, but at this point, if the creators/writers, etc, want 7 seasons, I think Apple should just do it at this point- but, that being said, having gotten through all of Season 4, I could also see why they wouldn't do that as well. I think Season 4 feels like the show was either laying the groundwork for a heavy 'reboot' season in Season 5 (because how old can Ed get, really?) or was designed in such a way that it could serve as a series finale without too much trouble either.

And I go back and forth about that. I think the show is at a weird transition point in its story because we're moving out of the alternate history aspect of all of this and more into the science fiction aspect of all of this and I think that might be a trickier balancing act to pull off than we realize. There were aspects of Season 4 that I liked. The introduction of Miles was a brilliant choice because it created kind of this Upstairs/Downstairs aspect to the show where you get to see the people who are doing the grunt work to keep Happy Valley going as a pose to our HEROES who are upstairs doing astronaut things. The black market/secret bar aspect all worked for me- you'd expect to find that in a situation like that as well as the labor tension that eventually leads to a strike amongst the workers. No problem with any of that.

The problem I did have was Ed and Danielle. I think the show should have just gone there. They kind of do, but it's more implicit than explicit and they've danced around this before in prior seasons-- but I think Ed could have seen some interesting character growth had Danielle explicitly called him on his sexist/racist bullshit-- especially given Kelly is a woman of color. There was an opportunity here for self-analysis and reflection for a character who badly needs it and you could have more of an arc between Danielle and Ed trying to repair their relationship throughout the season. They kind of do that, but I think had they doubled down on it a bit, it would have given both characters a better arc throughout the 4th season.

(Also, Ed, man... go home and deal with your fucking feelings, already! "Men would rather stay on Mars and figure out how to hijack an asteroid than go to therapy." Though, to be fair to Ed, when Kelly finally pins him down on why he is the way he is, his explanation seems genuine enough. I just don't understand why it didn't come earlier in the season and why a guy who has had two children of his own is so gosh darned awkward around his Grandson- though admittedly, that too gets better by the end of Season 4.)

We also have to go to talk about Danny Stevens: why the fuck didn't they just send his ass home? I can understand exiling him at the end of Season 3 when they were still trying to get fuel made to get everyone back home, I get that. But now workers are being shipped into the base, surely there's a shuttle he can go home on? Instead, he just sort of sits in the North Korean capsule until he cracks and is found dead and that's just sort of the end of it. (Personally, I think a better ending for Danny would have been them finding the capsule straight up empty. With no tracks or nothing.)

Margo not getting a happy ending seems inevitable, though I would have liked it far better had she gone to Brazil, even without Sergei-- but I do appreciate the fact that she takes accountability for her plan, if not her actions by season's end which I think is a good first step for her character who has been avoiding accountability for her choices for quite some time.

Eli Hobson as the new NASA administrator had me checking IMDB constantly because I was so convinced it was Bruce Boxleitner I got very excited at first, but it was Daniel Stern who was equally as awesome.

Overall: I do love this show. Season 3 was top notch and Season 4 felt like it lost a step or two but was still good. (I'm hoping Season 4 is setting up stuff for Season 5 we have yet to discover!) For All Mankind is a great show that everyone should be watching. Apple is really impressing me with the quality of the shows they've got on there and this one is a 'must watch' that should be getting way more hype than it seems to be out in the world. My Grade: Season 3 **** out of ****, Season 4 *** out of ****