The tech behind this is way bigger than justbrockets. That they can make rockets with it is going to be both cool but also potentially a wickedly effective bit of marketing for the tech.

People have mortgages, grocery costs, bills to pay in general. A 'pause in operations' furlough realistically means a bunch of them are jumping ship so it's hard to imagine them recovering from this. Anything is possible, of course, but best case scenario is probably that they lose their top workers who can bring their ability and expertise to another company that can make payroll.

Whatever little chunks survive re-entering at those speeds (which will be very little, it will be mostly powder and little bits of confetti-like pieces of metal falling out of the sky) will hit the water and sink because the kinds of things that would float will probably burn up.

Just to make sure we're on the same page here, that it's understood there isn't a space station touching down.

Seeing as how they'll be dropping it into Point Nemo, that would be a tricky thing to determine.

Tell that to Sparkie and Ralphie from the inaugural launch.

Yes, but it was a space station. If you read the full conversation you’ll see the user doesn’t believe anything flown yet qualifies as a space station.

I’m not gonna tell you what to think, just letting you know that your own personal definition of what constitutes a space station is not matched by anyone in the industry. Well, to be specific, your definition here that Skylab, the Salyut stations including Mir, ISS, and the current Chinese station are not space stations. That opinion is not shared by people in the industry, but you are absolutely welcome to your own fan theory/head canon. 

> Well I hate to break it to you but I and many other people like me don't consider Skylab to have been a space station

At NASA we considered it a space station, but it's exciting to see folks out in the community with their own takes because even if their conclusions don't match that of the nations flying stuff to space, they're still engaged.

> Skylab had absolutely nothing to do with the space station that it was envisioned by von Braun Warner von Braun

Nobody here said it was, and up above you didn't say that either, you just said 'space station'. Words have meaning, and your opinion on what is and isn't a space station is something to which you're entitled. In the meantime, I think most of the world will probably go with definitions by the people who actually go to space. Russians, Americans, and Chinese currently all have space station hardware on orbit but no doubt there's possibly a contingent of folks who will take an anonymous redditor's definition over theirs. I can't quantify how big of an audience that is because I don't know what kind of relationship you have with your parents and other folks who want to encourage you, but it's totally possible it exists.

It sounds as if you have your own definition of space station that differs from NASA’s and that’s fine. When I was a NASA contractor I didn’t get to interact with folks like you but everyone I knew who did had their own stories.

> Skylab wasn't really an orbiting space station

It was literally an orbiting space station, just not as sexy a station as you would have perhaps liked. If you wanted to say 'didn't build a rotating Clarke wheel' or something, then say that, but you said space station and that's what that other poster was responding to I think.

Citizen, check your oxygen mix!

> Please tell me when and where I said Skylab didn't exist.

They're probably referring to when you wrote this:

> of course there were some other things they didn't do as well including a orbiting space station

I think it was a team, is there a specific designer you'd like to see recognized like maybe the engineer John Federspiel?

Love the art style, looking forward to seeing more!

This is cute! From a humor perspective, it might be better without the bottom row. Funnier, at least, but humor is subjective so I might be in the minority.

Are we criticizing the diet of a fictional rabbit in a comic now as if it were someone's actual living pet?

That's... almost correct? NASA has limited decision-making power over what research gets funded. Congress makes those decisions and outside of some small projects that can be funded through programs that give them flexibility, NASA does not really typically choose-choose what to research.

They're a great government agency and they enable cool things, but... their decision powers are pretty tightly regulated and controled.

Sadly that second stage didn’t stay In The Air Tonight.

The folks who took him back offered to drop off a sample of beef for us this week. After a moment, he clarified "not bull" in case we thought Junior was going to get the ultimate penalty for interrupting their Christmas.

Sweet christmas

He emerged through a hole in our fence I guess, I'm not sure exactly how he got through but the farmers next door who collected him ended up pulling down part of the fence then re-assembling it and putting some temporary lumber across it to make it less inviting.

I've been out into that yard once since they got the bull back and he did indeed leave some bull exhaust. My biggest concern now is whether or not the dogs will do something gross like roll in it because man, dogs are seriously gross sometimes, even supposedly sophisticated ones like Corgs. They are not sophisticated, they are very much dogs.

Our corgis went nuts and bolted out to the back back yard and when I looked at what had them so excited, they were circling maybe a half a ton (guessing livestock weight is not my specialty, bad code is) of irritated bull.

They wanted to herd him soooo badly, but we didn’t want them to herd him into our house or get yeeted into the next county so we called them in and set up a few barricades to keep him in this part of the yard (while trying not to think about how he pushed his way through a fence already).

We tracked down the farm owners next door and they came over to collect him, pulling apart some of the fence to entice him back with alfalfa (there were some exciting moments when he was running around our yard patch and charging at me then feinting, that was neat and by neat I mean kinda scary but I hardly screamed at all.

They reassembled the fence and will put up a hot wire a few feet over but it was an exciting Christmas.