I remain pretty convinced that Apollo program Hasselblad photography remains a civilizational high water mark re: vibes / accidental art. And the lesser known ones are in some ways greater.


or mostly it's just Walter Cunningham being effortlessly badass when looking out the window.

Some thoughts about @NASA I think remain true:

-Yes it's become a kludgeocracy, along w/ all of the Govt. This is ~25% NASA's fault & ~75% not its fault.

-A major reason why NASA is not fully @ fault is that it's really expensive to not be allowed to blow up taxpayer assets. @NASA -Losing a satellite payload is a problem, losing a human being is a catastrophe. Flag-draped coffins will forever alter an organization's relationship to risk. This has, thank god, not yet happened for commercial space. It happened three times for NASA.

I want to share the famous OMB memo on the future of NASA funding from '71 but let me preface it first: NASA and NSF are in grave danger. Big science in the US may be totally screwed. Lots of vaporware, death spirals, evaporating teams and talent.

We face the looming age of austerity as the debt soars toward $50T, and servicing that debt now eclipses Defense spending...

News for #AAS243 and beyond:

To protect our beloved, overworked meetings team, and because we only have ~2% active participation in a virtual component that costs >$200,000, we need to make major changes to how we do Hybrid. (1/n)

https://t.co/7h2rYbpS5Aaas.org/posts/news/202…
In consultation with our friends on @AAS_WGAD and our Future of Meetings Task Force, we're asking for your thoughts on how we can more effectively incorporate virtual participants in our future meetings. We have many more details in this blog post:

https://t.co/RD635aHmAaaas.org/posts/news/202…

We will build and fly a new constellation of Great Observatories, beginning with the Habitable Worlds Observatory. It will pursue life beyond earth, and with the power of a fleet including X-ray and FIR Great Observatories, we will tell the story of life in the Universe.

https://twitter.com/hbhammel/status/1603917892604825600

We can’t do this without a grassroots community coalition to advocate for the fleet at all fractal levels, from chats with a student to advocacy amongst stakeholders and policy makers. Join us here greatobservatories.org

Your AAS registration fee is very high. It's a huge barrier to participation. We're (quite literally) not allowed to bankrupt the society, but we can start a dialog about fees.

Hosting #AAS241 will cost us at least $1,612,249. We'll lose money or *barely* break even (1/n)

https://twitter.com/AAS_Office/status/1592220547584516097

The largest expense by far is our collection of (excellent! professional!) A/V vendors, to whom we'll pay $424,000. Making the meeting hybrid effectively doubles their quote, i.e. adds about $200,000 to the total meeting cost. There is almost zero price competition in this space.

.@chandraxray's *real* First Light vs. the "public" First Light. The former is so much more epochal and emotional. But it's hard to explain to the public why it looks cruddy. JWST going through this right now, but the People Who've Seen It are absolutely overjoyed. @chandraxray I've only ever seen two true First Lights: MUSE and SPHERE on @ESO's Very Large Telescope. There were lots of tears and hugs. A technical achievement that becomes a human moment *real* fast. I can't imagine what it must've been like to be in the MOC earlier this week.

Apparently we’re minting NFTs to exoplanets now. Looks like a “buy a star” grift to me, but you do you.

https://twitter.com/astrojrich/status/1456777168084561923

Fun note from Eric Smith just now: The SAME driver who drove all of the JWST mirrors across the country drove the truck with fully assembled JWST onto the boat. Been with project a long time!

Salute to you, Driver. A critical part of the JWST team. I mean, arguably one of the most critical. 🤷‍♂️

Paul Hertz: I don't know when #Astro2020 is coming out. Maybe the committee can combine all of our rumors.

This is the plot of APD division scientists' guesses as to the release date. Only two potential winners remain! "We intend to come back to the community 8-10 weeks after the survey to tell you our plans”.

Q from Chick: So this is unlikely to happen at AAS?

Paul: I don’t think we’re going to get it in time for AAS now. It has to be vetted through agency. If we had it by Oct 1, maybe.

Paul Hertz' prepared statement on JWST renaming, at APAC right now "The Administrator made the decision". Brian Odom, Acting Chief Historian, will give more detail into the process right now

My favorite ground-based observatory is the Carruthers Observatory. The LMC. From the surface of the moon.