Dr. Spaceman! DR. SPAAAAACEMAAAAAAAN!!!

I know these things seem routine, but they are not. Today is a great day during which inshallah three souls (who - yes! - are old hands at this kind of mission) will approach the International Space Station in a Soyuz capsule around 1500 [ed. corrected from "1600," brain fart] Beale/Vandenberg. Pray to your god(s) to hold them safe, keep your fingers crossed, whatever. The future of the species is intimately tied to what the men and women of NASA and the space program are doing...

I'm very into various space programs and corporations, and have devoted virtually all of my twitter feed to it: twitter.com/williamrway - be sure to check me out!

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So my thoughts on colonizing Mars: really, using Phobos and Deimos as raw materials for orbiting habitats (in situ resource usage/utilization; @ Planetary Resources) makes much more sense, and that's where the greatest population of people would be... Sure enough, the Mars regolith is far too toxic to use as a growth medium or to sustain life -- terraforming with carefully aimed fragments Kuiper Belt objects or icy asteroid belt bodies is an idea, but really... Still, the heavy metals in the regolith are still useful, and people will need to be on the surface to extract and refine them, and to use them for sciency, interstellary stuff....

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https://t.co/V4YqfD9oHV