*sees Moon* *remembers Outer Space* Nice

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They never look at me with the telescope

The summer night glowed; in the field, fireflies were glinting. And for those who understood such things, the stars were sending messages

Louise Glück, from "Midsummer" in Poems 1962-2012

Art Prints by Frank Moth

How the media depicts the Apollo 11 mission:

Actual quotes from the Apollo 11 mission:

from richard siken's "anyway"

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Buzz Aldrin carried this copy of the UN's "Outer Space Treaty" with him on Apollo 11's mission to the Moon.

“my battery is low and it’s getting dark” is so hauntingly human, so crushingly lonely. I can’t articulate the deep, profound ache that sentence evokes. It’s acceptance and defeat and terror and sadness all at once, all from one tiny machine we asked to explore the stars for us.

So you know those mutant strains of radiotrophic fungus they discovered in Chernobyl?  The ones that feed on gamma radiation?  Those fungi, the radiation-eating fungi?  From Chernobyl?  They brought some on board the International Space Station and took some measurements.  Here is the paper, titled:

A Self-Replicating Radiation-Shield for Human Deep-Space Exploration: Radiotrophic Fungi can Attenuate Ionizing Radiation aboard the International Space Station

Space is full of high-energy radiation, and radiation shielding is a big engineering challenge for Martian habitats and deep-space missions.  What they figured out is that an 8-inch thick layer of mutant Chernobyl radiation-eating fungus in the walls of the spacecraft or habitat would serve as a self-replicating, self-sustaining radiation shield for long-haul missions.

This sounds like such a good and normal idea!  Let’s do it!

Australia vs Pluto

via reddit