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riseofamoonycake · 8 months

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SFW and NSFW hcs for the science crews?

Did you really want to gift me with a good time, eh, Anon? Especially with Marie and Alfred (mommy?? Daddy???) 😳😳

SO, LET'S START STUDY OUR BELOVED SUBJECTS...

Notes: Galileo and Einstein have only the SFW hcs because I think about them like funny and lovely grandpa and uncle, and not in a naughty way.

THE SCIENCE CREW: SFW AND NSFW HCS

🐞 → SFW HCS

🐝 → NSFW HCS

Galileo Galilei

🐞

He loves to spend the night watching the Moon: thanks to him we know a lot about our natural satellite, and his heart is always with it;

He adores children, to be near them makes him very happy! He has a lot of wonderful stories to tell, also he let them play with his long beard and garments as much as they want;

Always sleep deprived, he tends to pass out during the morning;

At least once he has come to hands with a member of the Inquisition;

He likes flowers a lot and taking long walks in gardens and countrysides, contemplating the nature around him;

He is very patient, but if he loses his temper and gets angry, he is as impetuous and appalling as the raging sea;

Give grandpa a kiss on the forehead and a hug and he cries in joy.

Albert Einstein

🐞

This man is always cheerful, a concentrate of joy, it is hard not to see him smile;

He is basically a child in adult size, always curious and ready to be amazed by nature;

But he gets angry if nobody listens to him while he is speaking;

He loves to travel and has seen a large part of the world;

He loves fishes and aquariums: the vision of all those beautiful creatures is mesmerizing for him, it makes him happy and relaxed;

Fireworks are another thing Albert loves with all his being: all those colours, those light plays, are too splendid not to be loved.

Thomas Edison

🐞

Thomas spoils you with the most luxurious things you have ever imagined: the most precious jewels, clothes, cars, palaces, paintings, everything you desire he offers it to you because, together with science, you are the only reality that matters to him;

Probably he speaks with the wall when he has none to talk with, and yes, sometimes he yells and argues with himself, especially in front of a mirror. It helps him to resolve his problems and clarify his ideas;

He never stop, works and speaks a lot, and then suddenly he shuts down, especially if you caress his arms or hug him;

He is into matching outfit with his S/0;

He doesn't admit it, but he loves plushies, because their softness and cuteness reminds him of you;

Thomas loves to watch the cities at night, from the top; he cries at the vision of all the lights that illuminate the roads, as if the stars had moved to Earth to live among men.

🐝

ALWAYS LOUD

He is very hard in PDA;

Always asks for your consent a million times;

Tug his curls during your intercourses, especially if you are masturbating him, and he starts to scream the triplet;

He is very into punishment or angry sex, rough kisses, hard scratching, fast pace and a lot of dirty talking;

Impact play is a big yes, especially on him. Ooooh yeah, he loves to be spanked by you, he takes an unbearable pleasure on being tied up and hit by your fingers or with a whip;

Choking and collars are other two things who really turn him on;

CAR SEX ALL THE WAY, but he also likes to take you in the water, especially in the sea;

He masturbates and penetrates you in front of the mirror to make you see how beautiful you are when you moan and cry in pleasure for him.

Isaac Newton

🐞

He likes to nap under the trees! Especially if you are with him!

Isaac has a hard time speaking in public: it always makes him a little nervous and he needs time to prepare for it, so he doesn't like impromptu speeches;

He doesn't like very much to be touched: he needs to get to know you for a long time before letting you poke, touch and caress him;

He is a skilled horse rider and he can teach you how to ride. Running through a flower field with you in his arms is the best thing he can feel;

He often enjoys staring at you, smiling and softly sighing. You are so wonderful to him;

Gift him with a hat and he will blush no matter what;

Newton has an entire wardrobe of shirts, all colorful and full of patterns; some of them are really embarrassing to see, but he doesn't care less about the others' opinion and proudly wears them anyway u_u

🐝

He doesn't have a lot of experience, so be careful and gentle for the first times, and teach him all you know; still, he learns very quickly;

Sex after some experiments is the best sex ever, but not in the lab, that must be left untouched by your fluids; however, if the experiment is you, the thing can change...

He loves to receive than to give, and still he hasn't never enough of lick you from head to toe, to taste how delicious you are;

The more you make noises and scream and moan, the more he has to keep on feast on your flesh: he is a torturer and you like it;

He loves to see you pressed under him, trapped between the mattress and his body, without any way to escape;

Every kink involving food is a Newton kink;

He secretly has a somnophilia kink, but he is too shy to tell you about it. At the beginning, at least.

Alfred Nobel

🐞

Husband material all along ♥️ Alfred is the one who cooks, who cleans the house, who checks on to see if you are eating, drinking, sleeping well...

He tends to burn the kitchen down because sometimes he forgets the oven on, but he tries his best!

His smile is UNESCO Heritage;

He is always ready to visit museums and exhibitions with you, to bring you wherever you want;

This sweet man likes to dance with you, especially on a table. Sometimes it breaks so you two fall on the ground, but neither of you get hurt. Especially you, who always find yourself on his broad, toned chest 😳;

He snores adorably, and his sleep is even better if you give him a cloth of yours to hug, because your scent relaxes him very much;

Expect from him to adopt an entire colony of cats and dogs and to name them after you;

Fuck I love this man too much daddy where are you WHERE

🐝

Make him zip and unzip your clothes and he is the happiest man alive, and let him leave a trail of kisses on your naked skin before and after;

He kisses, and kisses, and kisses again;

Alfred loves to use restraints on you. He is very kind, but wants to have the hands free to roam on your body and to fuel your pleasure until you nearly pass out;

He loves especially your buttocks and thighs: he caresses, squeezes and bites them until you lose your mind (and voice) because his mouth works wonderfully on you. Your softness is praised no stop;

Oh yes, he eats you out without any mercy, he has a lot of skills with which bend you; but try to reciprocate the favor and he will melt like snow, a cute blushing mess who cannot stop meowing and panting at the slightest lick;

He is afraid to hurt you with his massive member, so, when it comes to penetrate you, he keeps asking if everything is okay. The thought of you feeling any pain is a nightmare for him;

If you wear a cat attire (with little bells too), Nobel loses it completely. Conquered. Destroyed. Congrats, now you have a new love slave.

Marie Curie

🐞

She loves it when someone brushes her hair or cleans her: having someone who takes care of her, who cuddles and caresses her, making her relax after hours and hours of work, is very important for her;

She loves art, especially the Avant-gardes because they are the peak of originality;

When nervous, she starts to speak very rapidly and to mix words in French and Polish, without anyone understanding anything anymore;

This lady loves to visit ancient castles and probably lives in one of them, immersed in the nature of a wide park;

Marie and Alfred are best friends for sure, they love to spend time together talking about their studies and experiments, and work very well in team;

Like Nobel, Marie loves to sleep enwrapped in your clothes. And she is a sleepyhead too.

🐝

The queen is a little shy, but once she opens to you, you become her slave to play with. She has a lot of dirty dreams to realize with you, so be ready for her!

Marie has a thing for biting the neck like a cute vampire and watching the marks she leaves on the skin, giggling to herself;

She becomes a total mess if you kiss her nape and back, she melts and starts to babble, her voice reduced only to a squeak and the entire body trembling in arousement;

Marie has a sadic side and if she finds out where you are sensitive the most, you are dead: she will caress, kiss, bite and even tickle you here to see how much you can take, smiling adorably while keeping tormenting you;

To touch in passing and at inopportune moments? Totally yes;

Whatever body you have, Marie makes you wear a corset and pulls the strings until you beg, enjoying the sight of your chest trapped between ribbons and fabric. She takes care of untying the strings personally, but only after a long, long time;

She is into roleplay A LOT;

Probably she and Alfred shared a S/O at least one time.

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fruityyamenrunner · 3 months

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space ice is strange

The Near-Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (NIMS) on NASA's Galileo spacecraft spectroscopically mapped the surface ice of the Jovian satellites Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. The temperatures of these moons range from 90 to 160 K,[37] warm enough that amorphous ice is expected to crystallize on relatively short timescales. However, it was found that Europa has primarily amorphous ice, Ganymede has both amorphous and crystalline ice, and Callisto is primarily crystalline.[38] This is thought to be the result of competing forces: the thermal crystallization of amorphous ice versus the conversion of crystalline to amorphous ice by the flux of charged particles from Jupiter.

The possibility of the presence of amorphous water ice in comets and the release of energy during the phase transition to a crystalline state was first proposed as a mechanism for comet outbursts.[28] Evidence of amorphous ice in comets is found in the high levels of activity observed in long-period, Centaur, and Jupiter Family comets at heliocentric distances beyond ~6 AU.[29]

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drstonetrivia · 5 months

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Chapter 216 Trivia

This is my favorite panel from this chapter, sorry Whyman…

"The world's top two rocket scientists" — only because they didn't head over to one of the NASA headquarters in Los Angeles (~550 km south by boat) for more people to help them out…

Chrome's quote here is generally attributed to the Greek philosopher Aristotle, from the book "Metaphysics". (Aristotle never says these exact words, it's only implied in the writing.)

Why was Chrome holding the flag? Was the flag-planting action to show the KoS passing new frontiers into space, or will it be a parallel for him planting the flag on the moon if he's one of the chosen ones?

Either way, that's not the original KoS flag, it's a copy with outlines.

The rocket's launchpad may be located on the opposite side of the bay to the large tree that grows out of the Soyuz capsule. At the very least, the side with Wavebreak Cliff and the Sapphire Cave doesn't seem to have large bays.

Xeno's scars disappeared so that we can fully appreciate his forehead wrinkles :)

The rocket that successfully makes it to space is attempt number 7, which is pretty impressive given that there's only 2 known rocket scientists working on the project.

This reconnaissance satellite is probably based off the first weather satellite, TIROS-1. It was built by NASA to see if satellites could be useful for studying Earth, especially in the case of natural disasters such as hurricanes.

You'll notice the unusual cylindrical shape, and the wiggle lines — this likely means that it's spinning like a top, which helps keeps it stable in orbit. Similarly designed satellites are the Meteosat 1st and 2nd generations, Hiten, Japan's first lunar probe, and Himawari-5.

At 25,000 km up, it's in a medium Earth orbit. The closest satellites to this radius are the GPS constellation (20,000) and Galileo constellation (23,222), both used for global positioning.

The KoS's satellite uses radio waves to send down the data, but early recon satellite programs such as CORONA simply dropped film canisters down to Earth in a reentry capsule (and then caught mid-air by a passing airplane).

We don't know what kind of apparatus Whyman uses to know what's happening on Earth, so we can't know for sure if they can intercept the satellite signal or not. If it /is/ possible, Whyman may not have the tools to decode the signal anyways.

Yellowstone may never have a super-eruption ever again, but smaller volcanic activity is still possible. The Gallatin mountain range is part of the Rockies, northwest of Yellowstone Lake. Due to tectonic shift, the Yellowstone hotspot is moving northeast, towards Gallatin.

If Yellowstone were to have another super-eruption, the ash cloud would cover most of the US, but the lava would only stay in a small radius of around 64 km. Since the population density is very low in the national park, there may only be a few unrecoverable statues.

China has a lot of wetlands, which since ~256 BC gotten drained to make the land "more useful", such as for housing. Cities like Wuhan are trying to make artificial wetlands to prevent flooding, since the rainwater now has fewer places to get absorbed.

Without people to keep up the irrigation channels, China's wetlands seem to have returned.

The Great Barrier Reef is off the northeastern coast of Australia, and after several thousand years has recovered and grown larger. In fact, it's the world's largest single structure made by living organisms, and is currently visible from space.

For the same reason that the desert in South America spread north, the Sahara got wetter. The wobbling tilt of the Earth gives the Sahara phases of more rain every several thousand years, turning it into a forest. Unfortunately, humans may have upset this balance at present.

The Perseus fleet grows stronger! (The) Medusa doesn't stand a chance.

Did they expect Kohaku to jump out the window like this? Because that's a lot of excess cable to be freely trailing her without going taut.

This isn't confirmed as this is a very pixelated photo, but the location on the moon here may be around the Eddington and Seleucus craters. The surrounding craters seem to have been enlarged and crowded together somewhat for the manga's image, but the positions are similar.

Interestingly, the Luna 13 spacecraft landed in a similar area to where the black spot is. Luna 13 was the third craft to land on the moon, and was carrying science equipment for studying the moon's surface.

Communication was lost December 28th 1966 after its batteries died.

#trivia #dr stone #chapters #216

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lonestarflight · 1 year

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Cancelled Shuttle Mission: STS-61-F

The mission would have flown on Space Shuttle Challenger and launched on May 15, 1986. It would have been crewed by John M. Lounge, Roy D. Bridges Jr., Frederick H. Hauck, and David C. Hilmers and would have deploy the Ulysses solar probe, which would travel to Jupiter and use it as a gravitational slingshot in order to be placed into polar orbit around the Sun.

It would have marked the first use of the Centaur-G liquid-fueled payload booster.

The centaur had been chosen to facilitate launching deep space probes from the shuttle. The stage used volatile propellants, Liquid hydrogen / Liquid oxygen (LOX) and both Challenger and Atlantis were modified to carry the stage. These modifications entailed a venting system for the periodically venting Iof hydrogen, which needs to be stored below −253 °C (−423 °F) to keep it from boiling.

These missions were already considered highly risky before the loss of Challenger and only experienced astronauts were allowed to be on them. This is due the stage needing to be launched as soon as the shuttle reaches orbit. This does not give any first time astronauts enough time to adjust the weightlessness and possibly developing space adaptation syndrome (or space sickness). Which "occurs when the environment and the person appear visually to be in motion relative to one another even though there is no corresponding sensation of bodily movement originating from the vestibular system.

Two such missions were planned, STS-61-F and STS-61-G, launching the Ulysses satellite and the Galileo satellite respectively. In the wake of the Challenger Disaster, NASA reevaluated the risks of the shuttle-centaur missions and were cancelled.

They were later launched using the much less powerful solid-fueled Inertial Upper Stage (IUS), and multiple gravitational assists around Venus and Jupiter to arrive at their destinations.

Ulysses was launched on October 6, 1990, from Space Shuttle Discovery during STS-41.

After reaching its intended solar orbit, the probe ran for 18 years, 8 months and 24 days.

The probe's many discoveries deserve their own post.

Thank you for reading my post if you made it this far.

Information from Wikipedia: source, source, source, source, source, source, source, source, source, source

#STS-61-F #STS-61F #Space Shuttle #Space Shuttle Challenger #Challenger #OV-099 #Orbiter #NASA #Space Shuttle Program #Shuttle-Centaur #Cancelled #Cancelled Mission #May #1986 #my post

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paryana · 1 month

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Aip Manufacturers india

#GNSS Systems #GPS satellite receiver #GLONASS satellite receiver #Galileo satellite receiver #BeiDou satellite receiver #Meinberg Software #Meinberg Germany #Distributor of Meinberg Germany #Solutions of Meinberg Germany #network time servers india #meinberg software maharashtra #meinberg germany india #meinberg germany mumbai #meinberg germany maharashtra #distributor of meinberg germany india #distributor of meinberg germany mumbai #distributor of meinberg germany maharashtra #ntp time server india

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tvindek · 7 months

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Galileo produced this set of six watercolors of the Moon in its various phases “from life,” as he observed the Earth’s satellite through a telescope in the autumn of 1609. They represent the first realistic depiction of the Moon in history.

#science #space

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berryscaryskies · 5 months

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Havent gotten very far in Jupiter gen yet really, but wanted to write stuff down before I forgot it lol

"Your whole life you’ve dreamed of having a big family, and well you’re a bit of a bleeding heart always having your doors open for whoever needs you. Your kids would say you’re a tad too protective and you also maybe ran into this whole parenthood thing faster than you should’ve but there’s no better way to learn than first-hand experience!"

-Iker was actually closer friends with Gaelle initially, and despite the two being kind of distant Gaelle often feels a wolfy sense of protection for her twin sister. So the two generally run in the same circle of friends. Iker and Stormi really hit it off and with only a mild suggestion from Gaelle led to the two sort of niavely getting into a romantic relationship. I imagine a lot of their early relationship was a lot more platonic than either intended. They acted more like besties than anything, but slowly the two really did fall for one another. Stormi still sometimes get caught up having a crush on Iker despite currently being married to him.

-Fun thing I was Not aware of until the two moved into their own household is that Iker actually comes from a family of spellcasters?? Like he's of an ancient bloodline and everything. Which paired with Stormi's dormant wolf is honestly so fascinating. Like from a Sims lore perspective that sim werewolves were once considered a branch spellcasters themselves before corrupting into what they are now. Also the fact that I like to imagine neither was actually aware of their family's history and were happy with the totally normal human life together away from their supernatural heritage.

-Stormi's always envisioned a life with a big family full of extended relatives and children, and it's something her and Iker can both agree on. Stormi always felt somewhat isolated growing up, she loved her mother and sister and didn't exactly desire to go through the hardships of being a werewolf the way they had to, but nonetheless felt distant from them. And considering the isolated cottage on the outskirts of town with only her mother and sister around really it's no wonder she grew up feeling rather Lonely and misunderstood. Shayne joining the family I think helped a lot, he's a bit of a weirdo tbh but he was kind and human and that allowed him to be a good parental figure for Stormi to latch onto. Regardless the goal for Stormi is to have 5 kids(at least one of them being adopted)

-Stormi and Iker's first son is named Galileo (after the satellite) I imagine they often call him Gali for short which will annoy him when's older since "leo" is obviously the cooler nickname option though no one goes with it. He's actually a werewolf too!! I hadn't really expected it and then the lil newborn baby started Howling to get their attention it was crazy. I like to imagine he'll grow up to be like an overprotective oldest brother type, lil guard dog of the family haha

-Stormi worked as a primary school teacher(i like to imagine she eventually winds up a high school teacher) actually and because of that connection she wound up with an emergency foster certification that allowed for Juno to come into their home. Juno's only a toddler, and she's a bit shy but Stormi, Iker, and Galileo all absolutely adore her so it's no wonder the filed for adoption. Stormi is also currently pregnant with baby number three who will probs be the Saturn generation.

i just use like a normal blonde in game but canonically I imagine her as more of a strawberry blonde

#planetary challenge #stormi solare

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spacetimewithstuartgary · 23 hours

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Eruption of mega-magnetic star lights up nearby galaxy

While ESA’s satellite INTEGRAL was observing the sky, it spotted a burst of gamma-rays - high-energy photons - coming from the nearby galaxy M82. Only a few hours later, ESA’s XMM-Newton X-ray space telescope searched for an afterglow from the explosion but found none. An international team, including researchers from the University of Geneva (UNIGE), realised that the burst must have been an extra-galactic flare from a magnetar, a young neutron star with an exceptionally strong magnetic field. The discovery is published in the journal Nature.

On 15 November 2023, ESA’s satellite INTEGRAL spotted a sudden explosion from a rare object. For only a tenth of a second, a short burst of energetic gamma-rays appeared in the sky. “The satellite data were received in the INTEGRAL Science Data Centre (ISDC), based on the Ecogia site of the UNIGE Astronomy Department, from where a gamma-ray burst alert was sent out to astronomers worldwide, only 13 seconds after its detection,” explains Carlo Ferrigno, senior research associate in the Astronomy Department at UNIGE Faculty of Science, PI of the ISDC and co-author of the publication.

The IBAS (Integral Burst Alert System) software gave an automatic localisation coinciding with the galaxy M82, 12 million light-years away. This alert system was developed and is operated by scientists and engineers from the UNIGE in collaboration with international colleagues.

A curious signal from a nearby galaxy 

“We immediately realised that this was a special alert. Gamma-ray bursts come from far-away and anywhere in the sky, but this burst came from a bright nearby galaxy,” explains Sandro Mereghetti of the National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF–IASF) in Milan, Italy, lead author of the publication and contributor of IBAS. The team immediately requested ESA’s XMM-Newton space telescope to perform a follow-up observation of the burst’s location as soon as possible. If this had been a short gamma-ray burst, caused by two colliding neutron stars, the collision would have created gravitational waves and have an afterglow in X-rays and visible light.

However, XMM-Newton’s observations only showed the hot gas and stars in the galaxy. Using ground-based optical telescopes, including the Italian Telescopio Nazionale Galileo and the French Observatoire de Haute-Provence, they also looked for a signal in visible light, starting only a few hours after the explosion, but again did not find anything. With no signal in X-rays and visible light, and no gravitational waves measured by detectors on Earth (LIGO/VIRGO/KAGRA), the most certain explanation is that the signal came from a magnetar.

Magnetars: mega-magnetic stars, recently dead

“When stars more massive than eight times the Sun die, they explode in a supernova that leaves a black hole or neutron star behind. Neutron stars are very compact stellar remnants with more than the mass of the Sun packed into a sphere with the size of the Canton of Geneva. They rotate quickly and have strong magnetic fields.” explains Volodymyr Savchenko, senior research associate in the Astronomy Department at UNIGE Faculty of Science, and co-author of the publication. Some young neutron stars have extra strong magnetic fields, more than 10 000 times that of typical neutron stars. These are called magnetars. They emit energy away in flares, and occasionally these flares are gigantic.

However, in the past 50 years of gamma-ray observations, only three giant flares have been identified as coming from magnetars in our galaxy. These outbursts are very strong: one that was detected in December 2004, came from 30 000 light-years from us but was still powerful enough to affect the upper layers of Earth’s atmosphere, like the Solar flares, coming from much closer to us, do.

The flare detected by INTEGRAL is the first firm confirmation of a magnetar flare outside of the Milky Way. M82 is a bright galaxy where star formation takes place. In these regions, massive stars are born, live short turbulent lives and leave behind a neutron star. “The discovery of a magnetar in this region confirms that magnetars are likely young neutron stars,” adds Volodymyr Savchenko. The search for more magnetars will continue in other extra-galactic star-forming regions, to understand these extraordinary astronomical objects. If astronomers can find many more, they can start to understand how often these flares happen and how neutron stars lose energy in the process.

INTEGRAL, a key instrument in a race against time

Outbursts of such short duration can only be captured serendipitously when an observatory is already pointing in the right direction. This makes INTEGRAL with its large field of view, more than 3000 times greater than the sky area covered by the Moon, so important for these detections.

Carlo Ferrigno explains: “Our automatic data processing system is highly reliable and enables us to alert the community immediately.” When unexpected observations like this are picked up, INTEGRAL and XMM-Newton can be flexible in their schedules, which is essential in time-crucial discoveries. In this case, had the observations been performed even just a day later, there would not have been such strong proof that this was indeed a magnetar and not a gamma-ray burst.

IMAGE....Artist's impression of a magnetar. Magnetars are the cosmic objects with the strongest magnetic fields ever measured in the Universe. Credit © ESA

#science #space #astronomy #physics #news #astrophysics

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namesetc · 2 years

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names based on space crafts

apo - apollo - apolla - apolline - apollina

atla - atlantis - atlanta

astro - astra - astrae / astray - astral

an / ann - ancil - ancila - ancillary

bhask - bhaska - bhaskar - bhaskara

chal / chall - challenge - challenger

chan - chand - chandler - chandra - chandry - chandray - chandraya / chandrayaa - chandrayaan - chandrika

cart

col / coll - cole - cola - colu - colum / column / columb - columbi / columbie - columbia

cas / cass - cassi / cassie - cassini

disco - discover - discovery

d - del - delta

end / ende - endev / endeav - endeavor / endeavour

emi / emie / emy (emisat)

eos

en - ent - enter - enterpri - enterprise

finder

fly - flyby

fi / fy - fight - fighter

fal - falcon

gal / gall - gali / galy / galie - gale / gail - galila - galilay / galilae - galilao / galileo

globe

hy - hysis

iris / irs

irnest - irnes / irness (irnss)

kara

kal - kalpana

lite / light

land - lander

mars

micro

mage - magel / magell / magelle - magellan

moon

orb - orbit - orbiter

ocean

ori - oria - orio / oreo - orion

path - pathfinder

rover

ross (SROSS)

rock - rocket - rocker - rocketier / rocketeer

shuttle

sput - sputnik

sate - satel / satelle - satellite

star / starr - starry - starfighter - starship

survey / survay - surveyer / surveyor

ship

sat - saturn

ufo

voy - voya - voyage - voyager

ves / vess - vessel

#space crafts #spaceships #spacecrafts #names of spacecrafts #name lists #name suggestions #read dni #name ideas #name blog #read my dni #name request #name inspiration #baby names #gender neutral names #space names #space theme #space #fleur speaks

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whumpster-fire · 2 years

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Railway Series Headcanon:

We know trains are sentient, of course, as are many other land vehicles, watercraft, and aircraft. But what about spacecraft?

Satellites with simple jobs are very rarely sentient, and mercifully neither are most launch vehicles. And having minds of their own is undesirable to spacecraft designers despite the potential benefits of autonomy for a vehicle with no crew that operates under long communication delays.

All the same, the mechanical explorers sent into the cosmos are nearly always alive. How could they not be, with the love and care that’s put into the construction of each one? But their minds are so alien to humans and to other machines that they are hard to understand. They only awaken once they are free of their launcher, speak only in raw data, and most have no concept of socialization and a concept of mortality that is more like an octopus’s than a human’s. Their only drive is to explore, observe, and learn.

There are exceptions. Hubble thinks fondly of the visitors from the blinding blue light below, though they don’t understand that the astronauts were different from the shuttles. Several Mars orbiters have worked as communication relays with probes on the surface, and have discovered that they are not alone. The rovers and orbiters enjoy swapping photos and other information with each other, and the orbiters love sending pictures of the rovers down to them. I don’t think any rover has managed to return the favor yet, though they’ve tried.

Mars Express, Odyssey, Spirit, and Opportunity were the first permanently-in-space vehicles to experience grief, in November of 2006. (Previous probes, such as the Viking orbiters, Cassini, and Galileo, didn’t have much emotional attachment to their partner probes, though they felt disappointment when the brief time they got to hear reports from somewhere that was completely out of their reach ended). Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter joined their ranks in 2010, and Maven, Mangalyaan, and the Exomars Trace Gas Orbiter in 2018 (I don’t think the latter two were supposed to communicate with Opportunity, but the older orbiters didn’t give a fuck and hailed the new arrivals until they responded.

The entire Mars Orbiter Gang has spent the last sixteen months bracing themselves for the sol when Percy (the six-wheeled, plutonium-powered one) sends the last picture of Ginny.

The Shuttles, along with Buran and X-37B are the only travelers from ground to orbit to have become sentient so far. But there’s a betting pool going on how long it will take before a Starship insults Elon Musk to his arrogant face.

#Railway Series fandom #spacecraft #space

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