#live space

[decispark]

LiveSpace shutting down May 1

So sad to see LiveSpace shutting down. This comes less than a month after VStream shut down, and seeing others including Lunr, Altair, Brime, and Glimesh come and go.

[ai-dream]

[refugeed-kim]

YES YES I NEED THIS SIGN IN EVERY SINGLE PARK PLEASE

This is my daily struggle, I had so many arguments with people with off-leash dogs (in a mandatory leash area!!!). Thanks to this behavior I'm struggling with Kim being anxious/aggressive with other females as she often gets involved in unpleased interactions with free females while on leash. And every single time that I ask for the dog to be at least recalled, I'm being called names and insulted of course.

Also 9 out of 10 their dog isn't really that friendly at all.

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

best thing about batman is that he's a superficially grimdark character, gothic & brooding & angst ridden etc..........but then it turns out he has a million hobbies, regularly goes on adventures with his besties, and has a dozen adopted kids he's raising with his devoted foster dad. good for him

[1five1two]

[deep-space-netwerk]

So Venus is my favorite planet in the solar system - everything about it is just so weird.

It has this extraordinarily dense atmosphere that by all accounts shouldn't exist - Venus is close enough to the sun (and therefore hot enough) that the atmosphere should have literally evaporated away, just like Mercury's. We think Earth manages to keep its atmosphere by virtue of our magnetic field, but Venus doesn't even have that going for it. While Venus is probably volcanically active, it definitely doesn't have an internal magnetic dynamo, so whatever form of volcanism it has going on is very different from ours. And, it spins backwards! For some reason!!

But, for as many mysteries as Venus has, the United States really hasn't spent much time investigating it. The Soviet Union, on the other hand, sent no less than 16 probes to Venus between 1961 and 1984 as part of the Venera program - most of them looked like this!

The Soviet Union had a very different approach to space than the United States. NASA missions are typically extremely risk averse, and the spacecraft we launch are generally very expensive one-offs that have only one chance to succeed or fail.

It's lead to some really amazing science, but to put it into perspective, the Mars Opportunity rover only had to survive on Mars for 90 days for the mission to be declared a complete success. That thing lasted 15 years. I love the Opportunity rover as much as any self-respecting NASA engineer, but how much extra time and money did we spend that we didn't technically "need" to for it to last 60x longer than required?

Anyway, all to say, the Soviet Union took a more incremental approach, where failures were far less devastating. The Venera 9 through 14 probes were designed to land on the surface of Venus, and survive long enough to take a picture with two cameras - not an easy task, but a fairly straightforward goal compared to NASA standards. They had…mixed results.

Venera 9 managed to take a picture with one camera, but the other one's lens cap didn't deploy.

Venera 10 also managed to take a picture with one camera, but again the other lens cap didn't deploy.

Venera 11 took no pictures - neither lens cap deployed this time.

Venera 12 also took no pictures - because again, neither lens cap deployed.

Lotta problems with lens caps.

For Venera 13 and 14, in addition to the cameras they sent a device to sample the Venusian "soil". Upon landing, the arm was supposed to swing down and analyze the surface it touched - it was a simple mechanism that couldn't be re-deployed or adjusted after the first go.

This time, both lens caps FINALLY ejected perfectly, and we were treated to these marvelous, eerie pictures of the Venus landscape:

However, when the Venera 14 soil sampler arm deployed, instead of sampling the Venus surface, it managed to swing down and land perfectly on….an ejected lens cap.

[savanir]

DP x DC prompt [15]

Danny accepts that because of his half dead status he won't be able to become an astronaut and he has to find a different way to feed his space obsession.

He decides to get really into astromancy (yes, the magic. He already knows everything about astronomy). He gets himself the more spiritual star charts, old surprisingly authentic tomes about the art and divination cards to go with it all and gets to learning.

Tbh he kind of went into this not expecting much but it turns out he had homo magus heritage from his Nightingale roots and he actually manages to call upon the power of the stars.

He figures he can blame the vaporized wall on ghosts.

Meanwhile, a foreboding feeling like cold shivers run down the spines of several magic users that they can only describe as "a child having figured out they need to switch off the safety on their mini nuke launcher in order to fire it"

The JLD is scrambling to locate the source of the surge in magic power before someone with bad intentions can get there.

[autumn-may]

Mostly spoiler free summary of my viewing experience

[akanemnon]

Just a regular day

[xinyuehui]

Ah, the night's just getting started. Don't let me catch you so easily next time. ⸺ QIN CHE // SYLUS ִֶָ☾.

[pickled-flowers]

Sex positivity is also about not calling Ace people prude and using virgin as an insult 👍 hope that helps

[pixelpolls]

Vamps vs Werewolfs like its 2010!

[ai-dream]

[mossycobblestonewrites]

DC X DP PROMPT #4

Danny was one of the people hired to design/build the Watchtower. He got attached to it during this time and the space station is now considered as a part of his haunt.

This is the JLD's first time on the Watchtower, they IMMEDIATLY know what's up.

LJD: did you take a supernatural entities property or something?

LD: what? No! The lights are just like that :)

Danny, still employed on the Watchtower: Space go brrr

[spider-shoes]

on the inevitable and loving despite, despite // a revisitation of this

various wikipedia pages / carl sagan / why the sun chases the moon / war of the foxes - richard siken / drunk drivers, killer whales - car seat headrest / saturn - sleeping at last / pale blue dot, photo from voyager / lighthousekeeping - jeanette winterson / ann druyan / new york times / neil degrasse tyson / david jones

[juney-blues]

For the last time, the Diamond Authority in Steven Universe isn't a stand-in for actual fascism, it's a vehicle for the queer power fantasy of getting your transphobic grandma to understand.