Astro Dad

Lifelong space enthusiast from UK, interested in social and practical aspects of spaceflight and exploration. Dad to an aspiring astronaut!
We need to thrive in space, not just go there.
Main account @davoloid

2025-11-01

Trailer for a documentary on Constance Adams, visionary architect who worked on the space programme, a brilliant body of work cut short by her untimely death in 2018.

She recognised that the problems that needed to be solved when designing for space habitats had applications for sustainable living on earth. youtu.be/lwVGWjGatps

Screenings in Vancouver and Toronto in coming weeks, and Mumbai and Chicago next year. Hopefully more widely.
spacearchitect.org/the-space-a

2025-11-01

Didn't keep up with this but winning designs are brilliant.

youngarchitectscompetitions.co

2025-11-01

Boosting this in the context of the recent SpaceX renders.

Astro Dad boosted:
2025-11-01

Catching up on the TU Wien lectures on "Emerging fields in Architecture". These are presented by leading #SpaceArchitect Dr Sandra Häuplik-Meusburger.

Here, Theodore W. Hall discusses what impacts gravity has on architectural design constraints, and specifically what this means for #SpaceHabitats.

youtube.com/live/2KK-Mq8FL7w?f

2025-11-01

#SpaceX have produced a new set of renders of the HLS version of Starship, for the Artemis programme. And I gotta say, it's underwhelming again. The sort of thing that looks flashy, but has no grounding in practicality.

There's a whole field of research that takes into account what it's like to live and work in space, and none of that is present here. See spacearchitect.org/ for examples.

Any #SpaceArchitect types in the Fediverse care to comment?

Astro Dad boosted:
PedestrianError :vbus: :nblvt:PedestrianError@towns.gay
2025-09-13

I'm not saying that Pete Buttigieg is *a misogynist* but he shows a lack of empathy for women by casually throwing around loaded terms like those that have long been used to belittle women's participation in public discourse and minimize the actual content of what they're saying. No one worries more about how patriarchy harms men than feminists, but the himpathy that accuses them of alienating men by defending their own interests is constantly repeated as dogma.

2025-08-07

New #NASA administrator demonstrating already that he has no real interest in the preservation of the #Shuttle. It's a typical showy announcement with no grounding in the practical realities. arstechnica.com/space/2025/08/

They could have had Isaacman but they went with the reality TV dolt.

2025-08-06

We don't often hear about the cultural aspects of Space exploration, the tension between political ambitions and human needs. This sounds excellent.
theguardian.com/music/2025/aug

2025-06-25

Queen of the Skies Peggy Whitson heads back to space for the Axiom 4 mission to the ISS.

She's one of the most accomplished astronauts ever, having flown to space 5 times, spent over 675 days in space, and 60 hours performing EVAs.

Also hold two patents stemming from her research career in Biochemistry.

youtube.com/watch?v=Kk3SEFcp1m

Astro Dad boosted:
2025-06-17
2025-05-28

Back then (spacey.space/@astrodad/1138368) I mentioned Cyclical development, which is the advantage SpaceX had - being able to fly paying missions, push the envelope of the hardware, improve reliability and process efficiency. I kinda meant iterative as well, but:

One of the problems with SLS is that the flights are so few and far between, the support teams and engineers can't learn from each mission to improve the next. Hopefully Blue Origin can find a happy medium between those two approaches.

2025-05-28

*Le sigh*. Once again SpaceX showing that "move fast and break things" and "iterative development" is not always the best approach when it comes to large scale complex vehicles. When you've mucked up a couple of times and caused massive impact to other people, you need to rethink your assumptions and testing regimes.

The (comparitive) success of New Glenn in January should have been a wakeup call.

Astro Dad boosted:
CJ Paloma Likes Longer Dayscjpaloma@mas.to
2025-04-17

All my life, I've held that folks who go into justice work should be held to much higher standards of conduct than anyone else. I did my best to hold myself to it.

I developed this belief as a kid. Like maybe when I was 11, 12 or 13.

It's such a no brainer, and the fact that -children- can see *systemic failings* produced by bigoted authoritarian minded "adults" ...should have given everyone pause, way before now.

JFC people are brainwashed to become such hubristic POS.

Astro Dad boosted:
Radical GraffitiRadicalGraffiti@todon.eu
2025-04-17

"Yes we can"
Mangione sticker spotted in Berne, Switzerland

2025-04-15

I haven't seen any comments from women in Spaceflight yet, but Marina Hyde definitely captures my feelings.
theguardian.com/commentisfree/

"I always thought space travel was futuristic, but this was the first time it came off as travelling back in time, in this case using their little capsule to take us back to the most ludicrous inanities of 2010s girlboss feminism."

Hoping for this to be part of a deeper analysis from Ethno-ISS and other space #anthropology researchers (there are several).

2025-04-15

@spaceflight
Some great folks at UCL if you're looking for a new home, @planet4589 ;)

ucl.ac.uk/research/domains/spa

Astro Dad boosted:
Spaceflight 🚀spaceflight@spacey.space
2025-04-15

@planet4589 : "When I was a kid 🧒, it was #LEO. Now, the frontier is out near the #asteroid belt, and the #Moon and #Mars are becoming part of where humanity just hangs out, maybe not yet as people, but with #robots. Meanwhile, #LEO is so normalized that it doesn’t take a #SpaceAgency to deal with it. You just call #SpaceX. Thousand years from now, perhaps more people live off Earth 🌌 than on it" cearkadia.edu.pl/jonathan-mcdo

#SpaceExploration #SpaceHistory

2025-04-15

As with all the New Shephard launches, I think yesterday's spectacle was negative rather than positive for the aims of human spaceflight. It gives detractors a chance to whine about the waste of money and pollution, and misogynists more fuel. There *was* still a risk to the passengers, they have had to overcome personal fears, true. But it's all distraction from real work that's actually being undertaken by women astronauts and the many on earth who build spacecraft and support missions.

2025-04-06

Was sent this advert for a space related summer school run by Kings College London. The cost is probably worth it, but that still excludes a huge number of kids. Most egregious though, is that it's within term time, so only available to kids from private schools. As the feedback comments show. More needs to be done on #wideningparticipation

Screenshot from ISSET and KCL summer school. Price is reduced to £599. Date is 7th to 11th July which puts it out of reach to state schools.
2025-04-04

Ok it's note real space stuff (yet), but this is awesome: Blender artist renders Interstellar docking scene in Lego. youtube.com/watch?v=HqSPkZ-jny

Client Info

Server: https://mastodon.social
Version: 2025.07
Repository: https://github.com/cyevgeniy/lmst