> Where did it glow yellow? What time in the video?
This is a better view than the sibling comment linked. It's a greater close-up and you can clearly see the yellow glow behind the engine bells. This view is from Cosmic Perspective, a partner of Everyday Astronaut, whose video is linked:
In case you get confused due to lack of context, the booster shot is a replay. When Tim goes to split-screen view, the right-side image is a live view of the second stage ("Starship") as it re-enters from orbital speed. It is not a different angle on the booster that is shown on the left.
Later commentary explains that the heating behind the engine bells is due to atmospheric compression and SpaceX specifically orients the drop of the booster to focus heating in this spot.
A forum thread about an obscure Atari 800 shareware game and the search for the registered version that was presumed lost. The developer appears and gives a lesson on 6502 game engine programming techniques - and the harsh realities of the shareware market in 1985.
Indirectly related: before visiting Thailand I heard that 7-Elevens were everywhere (they were) and a core part of daily life for locals and tourists alike. I expected them to be more like the Japanese model, but was surprised that they all had a very limited number of salty snacks, energy drinks, and toiletries - similar to the US.
Other than a nice selection of tourist-friendly pre-paid mobile plans, I couldn't really understand (or validate) the "important" role they played.
Maybe it’s the fact they’re air conditioned, and an easy respite from 100 degree/100% humidity summer heat? At least that’s what it was for me as a tourist.
7-Eleven’s will vary. Some are closer to the Japanese model, but in my experience the ones in the typical PTT/Amazon coffee/KFC clusters are more like their US counterparts than not.
Edit: should add except for an absence of overall sketchiness
Interesting that they chose an 8 meter diameter, probably assuming a launch on the 9-meter Starship as Blue Origin's New Glenn is only 7m diameter. It would be interesting to see a weight projection for a completed module to see how well it fits within Starship's planned capacity of between 100 to 200 tons to orbit.
A 50cm (max) gap between the module's outer edge and Starship's inner edge does not seem like much room for support or deployment infrastructure in the launch vehicle, and would also require bay doors that fully open - and maybe a robot arm to safely deploy.
I haven't seen any reference to explicit collaboration between Gravitics and SpaceX. Maybe it's still too early, but I would hope the two have open lines of communication to avoid expensive redesigns later on.
Yeah, that makes sense and they are likely communicating. The dimension is often used approximately to know what class of launch vehicle it is fitting in. For the standard existing rockets we will say things like "this spacecraft fits in a 5m fairing", but the actual static payload envelope is 4.82m or something. So don't take it as a precise measurement.
China is developing a 10m diameter rocket that looks heavily inspired by Starship; methalox engines, stainless steel construction, possibly partly/fully reusable
But yeah I can't imagine this going on any other rocket. At some point in the future there will be a market for habitable volume. Right now habitable volume is built like an RV, a mostly self-contained singular unit, but in the future modular construction might look like big rigid bubbles of air with windows, and every couple of units you have a "mechanical" area for hvac, power, water etc, similar to how high-rise buildings are designed.
If you actually listen to how Zuck defines the metaverse, it's not Horizons or even a VR headset. That's what pundits say, most of whom love pointing out big failures more than they like thinking deeply.
He sees the metaverse as the entire shared online space that evolves into a more multi-user collaborative model with more human-centric input/output devices than a computer and phone. It includes co-presence, mixed reality, social sites like Instagram and Facebook as well as online gaming, real-world augments, multiuser communities like Roblox, and "world apps" like VRChat or Horizons.
Access methods may be via a VR headset, or smart glasses, or just sensors that alert you to nearby augmented sites that you can then access on your phone - think Pokemon Go with gyms located at historical real-world sites.
That's what $50B has been spent on, and it's definitely a work in progress. But it sure doesn't seem dead based on the fact that more Quest headsets have been sold than this gen's Xboxes; Apple released Vision Pro; Rayban Smart Glasses are selling pretty well; new devices are planned from Google, Valve, and others; and remote work is an unkillable force.
The online and "real" worlds are only getting more connected, and it seems like a smart bet to try to drive what the next generation looks like. I wouldn't say the $50B was spent efficiently, but I understand that forging a new path means making lots of missteps. You still get somewhere new though, and if it's a worthwhile destination then many people will be following right behind you.
It’s really obvious the actual “metaverse” goal wasn’t a vrchat/second life style product. It was another layer on top of the real world where physical space could be monetized, augmented and eventually advertised upon.
AR glasses in a spectacles form factor was the goal, it’s just to get there a VR headset includes solving a lot of the problems you need to solve for the glasses to work at all.
Nor could I. And I can't imagine sitting next to my wife watching a football game together on my phone. But I could while waiting in line by myself.
Similarly, I could imagine sitting next to my daughter, who is 2,500 miles away at college, watching the name together on a virtual screen we both share. And then playing mini-golf or table tennis together.
Different tools are appropriate for different use cases. Don't dismiss a hammer because it's not good at driving screws.
It's interesting how an analysis like this becomes a crucible for one's own preconceptions and biases.
Anti-porn? It's because of the porn
Anti-LGBTQ? It's because it's hard to have sex "when you're not even sure of the gender" of your partner (an actual comment on the Substack)
Parent? It's because less available childcare and more helicopter parenting expectations lead to less alone time
Young adult? It's nihilism about the future and crushing workloads with no way to afford your own home/apartment
Old? It's because people had more sex when "men were men and women were women"
An incel? It's because of women
Feminist? It's because of men
Anti-tech? It's social media
Environmentalist? It's environmental factors
I could go on. But almost anyone could argue for almost any reason, and it seems to be more enlightening about the person making the argument than about the problem.
> There's a reason they gave a hard pass to a Google partnership.
AIUI, Google required Meta to basically cede control of a partnered OS to them:
"After years of not focusing on VR or doing anything to support our work in the space, Google has been pitching AndroidXR to partners and suggesting, incredibly, that WE are the ones threatening to fragment the ecosystem when they are the ones who plan to do exactly that.
"We would love to partner with them. They could bring their apps to Quest today! They could bring the Play store (with its current economics for 2d apps) and add value to all their developers immediately, which is exactly the kind of open app ecosystem we want to see. We would be thrilled to have them. It would be a win for their developers and all consumers and we’ll keep pushing for it.
"Instead, they want us to agree to restrictive terms that require us to give up our freedom to innovate and build better experiences for people and developers—we’ve seen this play out before and we think we can do better this time around."
This is a better view than the sibling comment linked. It's a greater close-up and you can clearly see the yellow glow behind the engine bells. This view is from Cosmic Perspective, a partner of Everyday Astronaut, whose video is linked:
https://www.youtube.com/live/pIKI7y3DTXk?si=LI4-xQ7UhnvITTiG...
In case you get confused due to lack of context, the booster shot is a replay. When Tim goes to split-screen view, the right-side image is a live view of the second stage ("Starship") as it re-enters from orbital speed. It is not a different angle on the booster that is shown on the left.
Later commentary explains that the heating behind the engine bells is due to atmospheric compression and SpaceX specifically orients the drop of the booster to focus heating in this spot.