always easy to spot the engineers at the star trek event because they're the ones taking selfies with the warp core.

brushing up on space station acoustics design is much more enjoyable with a catalina express spicy bloody mary in hand.

Super interesting paper cited here on the topic of space station cleanliness. It's not a matter of being "too dirty" or "too clean" - the variety and distribution of microbes on your station can have a huge impact on astronaut health. www.sciencenews.org/article/inte...

harvest your dinner from oil rig support beams. you can just do things.

Woke up at 5am on a Saturday to hang out with sea lions. Back home in time for lunch. You'll have to pry California from my cold dead hands.

I get a real kick out of diving with my Orca Edge which was the first commercially available dive computer released in 1983. Still works great even though it looks like an aluminum brick! Always have a modern backup though...

@michaelsheetz.bsky.social was not expecting that twist! congrats!

After fixing a mailing address snafu I finally received my Antarctic Service medal. It's one of the few DoD medals that civilians are eligible for. Pretty neat. Qualifying for the medal itself only requires 10 days of service on continent. The "Wintered Over" bar takes a little bit longer to get...

"Crucially, Vast just set the bar for how to be taken seriously as a space station company, with transparency around when it aims to complete milestones leading up to the first crewed mission reaching Haven-1. Every other company working on a space station take note" via @michaelsheetz.bsky.social

Realizing I haven't updated the blue place on my new gig: I started a few weeks ago in the Flight Safety & Mission Assurance group at Vast. We're vying to build the replacement to the International Space Station. It's really cool!

Building big space stations means building big doors. File under: "Things you don't appreciate until you're doing it"

Every Jan 1st at the South Pole the summer season crew unveils the new geographic pole marker which is designed and fabricated on-site by the previous winterover team. I had the privilege of machining the 2025 marker with my buddy Luke and I can finally show it off.

Beelining for Japan after a year in Antarctica was the pro-est move

13 months in Antarctica. Finally saw a penguin (in NZ).

Last footsteps in Antarctica after 13 long months.

In my hotel in Christchurch. Can't escape 😂

Attempts to leave South Pole are becoming more desperate by the day.

Moving to places where the default orientation of globes is *not* Antarctica-up is going to take some getting used to...

365 days at South Pole station, about a week left to go. We spent the day training the new winterover crew and posing for Radio Telescope Men Quarterly.

Be not afraid, the 600 foot-pound torque wrench is your friend.

One last photo with the whole 2024 South Pole science team before two of our crew flew out last week.

Sneak preview of the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station winterover crew photo alongside our first aircraft arrival of the season.

Continuing my attempts to wean off the other place. Up to this point I've found Bsky to be a bit more dead than mastodon though. Maybe the recent infusion will help?

After a long 7 months without seeing a single new face, flight operations have resumed at the South Pole with the arrivals of a pair of de Havilland Twin Otter aircraft.

Sun is finally up at South Pole!

Our roof-mounted TELMA space laser was looking pretty slick last week. TELMA is a DLR instrument that measures air temperature and density from ground level to 100km.

Moons up.

Still a month from sunset...

Somehow back on here after having my account locked out for months 🤷🏼‍♂️ Anyway, living at the South Pole has been pretty sweet so far.

A kiwi hagglund from Scott Base traversing the still-frozen McMurdo Sound. Mount Discovery in the background.

Soaking up green things one last time with the South Pole Telescope team. 🇳🇿

Long blacks in Christchurch and crossed fingers for successful C-17 maintenance today 🤞 Manifested for our ice flight tomorrow!

When in CO, gotta see the guy

Some personal news: After a much needed break from space work, I'm stoked to be joining the University of Chicago Astronomy & Astrophysics department supporting winter operations at the South Pole Telescope in Antarctica for the next year.

It's really astonishing how effectively Asia has lapped America in the snack game.

I still maintain that LA has the best food in America but the East African lunch spots outside SeaTac hit so damn hard.

Can confirm this Star Trek wine I bought five years ago is definitely not "good", but it is good enough.

This is much more straightforward than the last 3D printer I built. A lack of lasers really helps in that regard.

Good skies in New Hampshire this weekend

One of many unfortunate outcomes from the end of Virgin Orbit was that we didn't have the opportunity to celebrate the herculean team effort that went into the first space launch from the UK. I'm so glad to see a sliver of that come to light: https://youtu.be/7u5k76wUddw

Lunchables X Launchables

this is going to be so damn cool https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-07-06/space-shuttle-endeavour-preps-for-move-to-new-museum

never forget the og skeeter

Hello space friends! 🛰️ https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:wplbxzumk7coygyrbah4fy5x/feed/aaabqcuv75tfw

i'm serious, are people aware that we have a tweetdeck here already? I've been asking for a skeetdeck and no one has said anything

get in kids we're going to the titanic

Is it overkill to take your 40 year old dive computer into one of the largest hyperbaric chambers on the west coast to check its calibration? Asking for a friend who is me.

the science section of the little neighborhood library was looking a bit thin

new sosh meeds = new intro hi i'm kevin. i spend most of my time building things that go to space or do things in space. i also dive/code/cook/write/break things/fix them/etc. taking a break from the launch biz for a bit before starting a new *cool* chapter this fall. stay tuned...

uh, toot toot?