The First West Coast SpaceX Launch Captured By Photographer Dylan Schwartz.

Painting by Pamela Lee ‘Astronaut with MMU Above Solar Panels’ from the book In The Steam of the Stars- The Soviet-American Space Art Book (1990)

Blue Moon really should go first. It's a more practical, less ambitious design, with better inherent safety. We shouldn't splash out on the towering ambitious megarocket just because we can. That stuff should come later, once we've gained confidence and experience. That should be obvious.

NASA does not need a lander with a dry mass of 100+ tonnes to put 2–8 astronauts on the Moon. The lander's excessive size and mass actually make several problems, such as the hatch being 30 m above the ground and there needing to be a crew elevator system with no current plan for a backup if it fails.

Big spaceship does not equal good spaceship. Don't be fooled by spectacle and awe. Starship HLS is ill-suited to taking humans to the surface of the Moon. The best case for it is as a heavy cargo vehicle, perhaps in service of a Moonbase. Again, that comes later. Skylab after Mercury-Redstone, not before.

It's genuinely possible that Starship HLS might not be ready before Blue Moon MK 2 is.

Down the ladder, Apollo 12, 19 November 1969.

The first all-woman spacewalk

Today the first ever spacewalk consisting of entirely women occured!

Here are the two women who were a part of this EVA.

Christina Koch

Age 40

Two Bachelor of Science degrees, Master of Science degree in Electrical Engineering

Jessica Meir

Age 42

PhD in Marine Biology, Master of Space Studies

It is standard procedure for spacewalks to consist of more than one person. That way if something bad happens to one astronaut, the other can be there to help immediately.

Previous spacewalks were either a single male in the early days, multiple males, or a mix of men and women. Today the first ever all-woman spacewalk took place with two women going outside the International Space Station.

NASA has stated "The all-woman spacewalk wasn't something we purposefully planned, though. It was bound to happen eventually because of the increasing number of female astronauts. Koch's and Meir's 2013 class of astronaut candidates was 50 percent women.

"Spacewalk assignments are always made on the basis of which astronauts are best prepared to accomplish the tasks at hand under the conditions at the time. Spacewalks are not easy; astronauts typically describe them as the most physically challenging thing they do."

The mission lasted about 6 hours and was to replace a battery on the exterior of the station that failed to activate after prior testing (most spacewalks have objectives this boring).

Tracy Caldwell Dyson, another female NASA astronaut, remarked "Hopefully this will now be considered normal"

This is a good day for women I think :>

Holding out for the first all non-binary spacewalk

Planet Uranus, observed by Voyager 2 on January 25, 1986. 

1989: ‘Shuttle Evolution “Block II”’

(sorry for low resolution, I cannot find a higher-res version anywhere)

1989: A concept drawing for a never-realised next-generation Space Shuttle, capable of carrying 8 astronauts and possibly over 30 tonnes to low-Earth orbit. The most noteworthy feature is the detachable cockpit with engines which could serve as a launch escape-system or a lifeboat during an incident in-orbit. It was to use its lifting body, wings, and body flap to glide to a runway and presumably land on skids. The escape system would enable a crew's escape at any point during launch or orbital flight.

Comments and observations

The inclusion of this escape-system in the orbiter would necessitate a gap in the heatshield at the nose, one of the hottest parts of the vehicle during re-entry. That's obviously a big problem. Further, a pad-abort would seem to be very impractical. 3 seconds at 8 Gs would only send the capsule about 2 km high, probably not high enough to glide towards the nearest runway, especially with those stubby wings. Perhaps an emergency parachute system and a splashdown of the capsule would have been more sensible?

Other changes to the orbiter seem to be in the interest of improving gliding performance, such as two wing-tip vertical stabilisers instead of one tail-mounted one (to eliminate wing-tip vortices), shrinkage of the orbital manœuvring system pods by relocation of the OMS's propellant-tanks into the wings, and the addition of canards which would probably yield greater pitch-authority during landing.

The system also proposes replacement of the solid rocket boosters with liquid-hydrogen–fuelled boosters. These could provide a greater payload capacity, as well as greater control of thrust during ascent, and the possibility of an emergency engine shutdown, improving the crew's safety. The biggest and most obvious downside would be increased cost. The drawing doesn't specify whether the LFBs are intended to recover themselves by deploying parachutes, but what's certain is that saltwater generally damages delicate chemical rocket engines, so they probably couldn't just plop into the ocean like the real Shuttle's SRBs did.

I spotted something out the window

Detroit Free Press, Michigan, August 31, 1934