rhiannonstone

SpaceX's successful launch of the Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station is by far the coolest and most exciting thing I've read in weeks. The next handful of major advances in space travel are surely going to be made by privately-owned ventures like SpaceX, and it's easy to see a path--a long path, and probably an expensive and chaotic one, but a viable path all the same--from this morning's launch to private commercial space travel within my lifetime. That is so cool.

Updates in realtime at the Mission Status Center.

More cool stuff:

• Cycling anatomy: muscles used while pedaling and the myth of the upstroke
  
  
• This image of a "young sea nomad" holding on to a shark's tail is exactly how I imagine Saturday, the marid from catvalente's The Girl who Circumnavigated Fairyland in A Ship of Her Own Making
  
  
• A fascinatingly meditative video (well, meditative except for those few tense moments where you're just sure it's going to break) of someone turning a giant jawbreaker into a shot glass with a lathe
  
  
• Overthinking Ghostbusters (he's really not kidding)