Category: Space

Human Behavior Under Isolation: Lessons from the SPHINX Experiment | May 10 2026, 18:01

In the book Project Hail Mary, Stratt tells Grace that in the USSR there was supposedly an experiment where people were locked up for several months to see what would happen, and that the people almost killed each other, leading to the experiment being halted. That wasn’t the case, but I googled and found there was another experiment – SPHINX in 1999.

There were several groups. In the first, there were four Russians and during the New Year celebrations with alcohol, they beat each other up (10 minutes, blood, they had to be pulled apart). Another group had three guys and a girl (Judith Lapier) and the mission ended because during the New Year’s celebrations, driven by excitement, Judith was attempted to be kissed twice, leading to the mission being terminated.

As VICE reports, the dialogue was “We should try kissing, I haven’t smoked for six months. Then we can kiss after the mission and compare. Let’s experiment now.”

The team included doctors with degrees (Lukyanuk, Karashkin, Murashov) and Haider Hobikhozhin, who essentially was a randomly included technician with secondary education, taking the place of the Japanese man to the right in the photo and who was first in the second photo. Who beat up or kissed whom is now somewhat forgotten.

Vadim Gushchin, a coordinator from IMBP, after the scandal stated that the fight was “friendly,” and that Lapier “ruined the mission, the atmosphere, by refusing to be kissed.”

At the Canadian Space Agency, Lapier was told that such behavior is normal for Russians and that public complaints would be considered taboo in the culture of the host country.

Disappointed by Project Hail Mary: A Missed Opportunity for Smart Sci-Fi | May 04 2026, 16:40

We went to see Project Hail Mary yesterday. Honestly, neither Nada nor I liked it at all. Maybe we’ve just grown out of the age group that likes such movies. Comic book style. The alien, in my opinion, appeared on a budget. It feels like it’s at the level of the early 2000s – when you could have made exactly the same thing. Remember the movie Arrival, where they tried to come up with something unusual? Really, was this stone monstrosity worth 200M? The whole plot is full of cliches and banalities. In one minute, they made it so that the human and the alien began to understand each other perfectly via some program that a science teacher created in a day. As if the astronaut and a piece of rock just start chatting like buddies… 5 kilometers of iron chain the thickness of an index finger is about 10 tons of metal… did they have that much on the ship?

The directors became successful in the realm of Lego movies and Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, along with a couple of comedy series and 21 Jump Street. I was expecting a movie in the spirit of Interstellar or The Martian, smart adult sci-fi that is not afraid of scientific details, and instead I got a children’s fairy tale with an ugly alien.

I googled it, and it turns out that a ton of people are thrilled with it and it’s making a lot of money.. Probably, people are nostalgic for such amidst post-irony, satires, various narratives, Lanthimos, and “Battle after Battle”. As children, everyone watched “Flight of the Navigator” and “Short Circuit”, so adults are nostalgizing over simple goodness. Perhaps it’s just a family movie for watching with the kids. Then it might be okay.

okay, going back to watching the second season of Succession. It’s considerably better.

Space Exploration: From Pioneering Days to the ISS as a Playground | April 06 2026, 19:59

essentially, a person in space is about these days and about the days 50 years ago. The International Space Station is already kindergarten: in terms of the Earth, it is only slightly higher than airplanes fly.

Precision in the Sky: Aerial Refueling of HH-60 Pave Hawks by a KC-130 Hercules | April 05 2026, 12:59

An interesting photo from Iran. An American Lockheed Martin KC-130 Hercules tanker and Sikorsky HH-60 Pave Hawk helicopters connected to it. If you think about it, it’s incredibly complex. Look, the plane has to fly at a super low speed for it – close to the stalling speed – while the helicopters, in contrast, must push to their limits to keep up. To avoid entering into a spin, the plane is forced to rapidly lose altitude, consequently, the helicopters must also purposely drop altitude. The helicopters are positioned lower than the plane, so if the pilot slows down even more (though how much more can he slow down?), and the helicopters don’t slow down, the hose could hit the rotor blades and that’s it. The helicopters also gain several tons during refueling, which adds to the complexity. Why refuel two at once? It’s more complicated. Actually, it’s both more complicated and simpler, because the load on the wings is distributed symmetrically, making it easier for the plane to maintain a stable course. It’s also interesting how the issue of static electricity is handled in the dry air.

A good addition from the comments (Sergey Snegirev):

1. It is noted that the Hercules stalls at 100-110 knots (depending on the air temperature and altitude, which is important in Iran), and the photo shows the flaps deployed, allowing it to stay up to even 90 knots. Meanwhile, the Pave Hawk can accelerate up to 190 knots (but obviously, nobody performs AAR at max speed), with a cruising speed of 150 knots, so there’s quite a sizable overlap. It’s assumed that AAR takes place around 120 knots on the video.

3. It is noted that AAR happens at exactly the same altitude, so there’s no need to lose altitude

4. It is noted that the tanker – like any other aircraft – can dissipate static electricity using an electrostatic discharger. The refueling hose has a contact that equalizes the potentials of the two aircraft before fuel delivery.

5. It is noted that the fuel used to refuel external aircraft is stored in tanks in the aircraft’s cargo section, separate from the tanker’s own fuel system. Even if the pumping were from the tanker’s own fuel tanks, it would come from the central tank, which is set up to transfer fuel from the side tanks.

It is noted that on the underside of the plane’s wings, several metal “antennas” are installed on the flaperons to discharge static electricity into the air. It is noted that when the hose is connected, a wire passes through and the potentials on the bodies are equalized.

When the Night Lit Up: Unraveling the Mystery of a Superbolt Storm | March 21 2026, 12:55

We had a thunderstorm last night. The whole county is buzzing because everyone thinks that something exploded just before midnight. Several posts in a row on social media. In short, it was thunder. But a bit more rare than usual. Caused by a 401 kA lightning, dubbed the Wild House Shaker. A typical lightning strike is 30 kA. If the numbers are to be believed, 401 kA is really damn a lot. They will likely say we haven’t had such lightning here for decades.

Attaching an interesting map.

The points on the map show superbolts — lightning strikes with an energy of no less than 1M J. Red points — particularly powerful superbolts with an energy of more than 2M J. That is, superbolts mostly occur in the northeastern part of the Atlantic and in the Mediterranean Sea, and less frequently — in the Andes, off the coast of Japan, and near South Africa.

this is what the page from which I took the map says (translation):

“New work shows that superbolts most often occur over the Mediterranean Sea, the northeastern Atlantic, and over the Andes, as well as in smaller amounts to the east of Japan, in tropical oceans, and near the southern tip of Africa. Unlike regular lightning, superbolts often strike over water.

“Ninety percent of lightning occurs over land,” said Holzworth (that’s the main guy on lightning at the University of Washington).

“But superbolts mostly arise over water, right up to the coastline. For example, in the northeastern Atlantic, the distribution maps of superbolts clearly show the outlines of the coasts of Spain and England.”

“The average energy of a discharge over water is higher than over land—that we knew,” he said. “But we did not expect such a stark difference.”

The season for superbolts also does not match the usual patterns of lightning. Regular lightning most often occurs in the summer—the three main so-called “lightning chimneys” coincide with summer thunderstorms over America, Africa south of the Sahara, and Southeast Asia. However, superbolts, which are more common in the Northern Hemisphere, occur in both hemispheres from November to February.

The reason for such a distribution remains a mystery. In some years, there are significantly more superbolts than in others: the end of 2013 was record-breaking, and the end of 2014 was the second largest, while in other years such events were much less frequent.

“We speculate that this may be related to sunspots or cosmic rays, but we will leave that for future research,” said Holzworth.

“For now, we are just demonstrating that there is a previously unknown pattern.”

Gravitational Mastery: Semikhatov’s Cinematic Triumph | March 09 2026, 14:56

Semikhatov’s movie about gravity turned out to be really cool. Of course, it’s quite popular, but understandably so – they didn’t want to scare off the audience. It’s very cool and professionally made.

I have Semikhatov’s book on my shelf (“Everything That Moves”). It’s also popular, but it’s a bit more serious in its presentation, at times with formulas and loaded with illustrations. Later, my opinion of him slightly soured due to his specific way of conducting podcasts, constantly interrupting guests and answering his own questions in a way that outshines the guest demonstratively. But in the movie, he looks absolutely great. I recommend it.

The link is in the first comment.

Why Don’t We Have Self-Sustaining Solar-Powered Drones Yet? | July 16 2025, 01:33

I wonder why we still don’t see autonomous drones that could lead an “eternal” life: landing on roofs, deploying solar panels, charging from the sun, and taking off once a day for whatever their mission might be? When you consider the energy aspects, it seems like a feasible scheme. For instance, a heavy drone weighing about 8 kg could carry foldable solar panels with an area of 1.5 m² and a battery with a capacity of 2 kWh. In one sunny day, such panels could collect about 1.2 kWh of energy — enough for it to fly for 20 minutes at a speed of 40–50 km/h, take photos, and transmit them via the mobile network. And there would still be a reserve of energy for several cloudy days.

Even a light drone weighing 2 kg with small panels (0.5 m²) could rise into the air for 10–15 minutes every day if it managed to find good weather and a sunny roof. The power required for hovering for such devices is about 150–200 W, and solar panels with 20% efficiency at mid-latitudes can produce up to 350–400 Wh per day. The balance comfortably adds up, especially if not chasing speed and if there’s no rush on the roof.

Such a “solar nomad” could live for weeks and months, flying from roof to roof and charging in anticipation of missions. At first glance, the technology of batteries and panels already allows this to be done. Or am I missing something?

Galactic Etymology: Tracing the Milky Origins in the Night Sky | June 29 2025, 12:57

I am looking at photos and reading material about the Milky Way and noticed that the word galaxy (any) essentially means “milky” from Greek. Κύκλος Γαλαξίας. Essentially, lac from lactose, and gala from galaxy essentially come from the same Proto-Indo-European ģlákts. Unexpected.