With respect and patience and openness and love, this is what I mean about the need for the Grass Fandom. This is so specific to specific arid gardening regions, like regions of the United States of America and Australia 🤦♀️ I do appreciate and admire Sigrid, and I see what she’s trying to say here! But this is what I mean about Anti-Lawn-Culture on social media, and why we need to be responsible science communicators. Don’t…. don’t dig up your lawn if it’s healthy and established and it flourishes without much input in your area… in many temperate circumstances your lawn is a colony of beautiful and useful plants that absolutely do provide habitats for native insects AS WELL as doing the great and necessary things that grasses do in domestic settings!
This is why science communication is one of the most necessary things we can do in this day in age, and I am so glad we are doing it. So many good, important, brilliant people are reporting stuff like this in good faith, without going “who is my public? Is it possible that people outside my USDA gardening zone might read this? Is it possible that we are repeating social media talking points, and should we loop in some primary researchers to ensure we are being evidence-based?” And I am so glad that everyone is taking on the social responsibility of science communication, and I hope we will all get better together. In the meantime, remember that advice - particularly gardening advice - only applies to those whom it applies to. If it doesn’t apply to your personal situation, it isn’t for you. It is your responsibility (and nobody else’s) to choose which bits of advice are relevant to your situation (and gardening zone), but you must be aware that not everything will apply (all people are different and the planet is large and complex.)
One last thing? We don’t all have to join the Grass Fandom, but can we PLEASE stop saying “dig up your lawn?” That will make people dig up their lawns. It’s a terrible phrase. It will cause people to take shovels and dig up their lawns. They will then look around trustingly, get confused, and dispose of the turf, that complex network of native microbial organisms, root networks, insect populations, partially broken down organic matter, living vegetable matter and TOPSOIL. And then - knowing people - having exposed their subsoil, they will try to plant in it. This is a slow-motion ecological horror film. If you want people to replace their lawns, then instruct them to kill the lawn humanely - I’m serious - retaining the soil matrix, and recycle all of the green matter back into their property. You can do it by cardboard; layer flattened cardboard boxes over grass to starve it of light, and layer the desired plantings and growing medium directly over it. Or cut up the turf, turn it upside down grass-to-grass, and build your raised bed on top of that (don’t dig!) Or hand-rip grass nodules out, chop up the removed matter and dress it back onto the ground, and hand-plant transitional native ground cover into the gaps. Or plant above it; maybe you live in the right kind of place and you want an orchard of miniature fruit trees; simply dig up the sections where you add trees to the ground, and let the grass grow long underneath, creating a soft and cottagey orchard that naturally mulches the trees. Or lay down one of those mulch blankets full of wildflower seeds, let everything grow long and let them battle it out. Or simply stop caring for it; if it’s truly terraformed, or transplanted into a habitat where it cannot live without life support, then let the lawn complete its life cycle naturally, and continue with your garden plans while ignoring it. Or just leave it alone. Don’t water, don’t add chemicals, just see what happens. Let the poor grass grow long, and let it flower, and let the pollinators come, and let it seed, and let the mammals and birds and insects eat the seeds. Let the secret pathways develop. Grasses are food for a significant portion of the biome. If it can survive in your yard without help, living only on rainfall and getting its own food, then it is likely to be a perfectly acceptable food source and habitat for life around you. Maybe it’s already the native groundcover where you live. Why not look it up online and learn about it? Everything invasive is native somewhere, and vast tracts of the planet are beautiful native grasslands.
With respect, I am willing to risk a distant friendship to say this in public, and I’ll say it until everyone is even more sick of me. If you really want to replace lawns, kill them humanely and compost them down! They’re full of local life! and that’s where all your topsoil is! You can block me if you want, but I’ll still be right. Plantcraft is determined by the local situation! the grass fandom is a grassroots movement! We will not be mowed!
Plains, Trains and Barges: How We’re Moving Our Artemis 1 Rocket to the Launchpad
Our Space Launch System rocket is on the move this summer — literally. With the help of big and small businesses in all 50 states, various pieces of hardware are making their way to Louisiana for manufacturing, to Alabama for testing, and to Florida for final assembly. All of that work brings us closer to the launch of Artemis 1, SLS and Orion’s first mission to the Moon.
By land and by sea and everywhere in between, here’s why our powerful SLS rocket is truly America’s rocket:
Rollin’ on the River
The SLS rocket will feature the largest core stage we have ever built before. It’s so large, in fact, that we had to modify and refurbish our barge Pegasus to accommodate the massive load. Pegasus was originally designed to transport the giant external tanks of the space shuttles on the 900-mile journey from our rocket factory, Michoud Assembly Facility, in New Orleans to Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Now, our barge ferries test articles from Michoud along the river to Huntsville, Alabama, for testing at Marshall Space Flight Center. Just a week ago, the last of four structural test articles — the liquid oxygen tank — was loaded onto Pegasus to be delivered at Marshall for testing. Once testing is completed and the flight hardware is cleared for launch, Pegasus will again go to work — this time transporting the flight hardware along the Gulf Coast from New Orleans to Cape Canaveral.
Chuggin’ along
The massive, five-segment solid rocket boosters each weigh 1.6 million pounds. That’s the size of four blue whales! The only way to move the components for the powerful boosters on SLS from Promontory, Utah, to the Booster Fabrication Facility and Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy is by railway. That’s why you’ll find railway tracks leading from these assembly buildings and facilities to and from the launch pad, too. Altogether, we have about 38-mile industrial short track on Kennedy alone. Using a small fleet of specialized cars and hoppers and existing railways across the US, we can move the large, bulky equipment from the Southwest to Florida’s Space Coast. With all the motor segments complete in January, the last booster motor segment (pictured above) was moved to storage in Utah. Soon, trains will deliver all 10 segments to Kennedy to be stacked with the booster forward and aft skirts and prepared for flight.
It’s a bird, it’s a plane, no, it’s super Guppy!
A regular passenger airplane doesn’t have the capacity to carry the specialized hardware for SLS and our Orion spacecraft. Equipped with a unique hinged nose that can open more than 200 degrees, our Super Guppy airplane is specially designed to carry the hulking hardware, like the Orion stage adapter, to the Cape. That hinged nose means cargo is actually loaded from the front, not the back, of the airplane. The Orion stage adapter, delivered to Kennedy in 2018, joins to the rocket’s interim cryogenic propulsion stage, which will give our spacecraft the push it needs to go to the Moon on Artemis 1. It fit perfectly inside the Guppy’s cargo compartment, which is 25 feet tall and 25 feet wide and 111 feet long.
All roads lead to Kennedy
In the end, all roads lead to Kennedy, and the star of the transportation show is really the “crawler.” Rolling along at a delicate 1 MPH when it’s loaded with the mobile launcher, our two crawler-transporters are vital in bringing the fully assembled rocket to the launchpad for each Artemis mission. Each the size of a baseball field and powered by locomotive and large power generator engines, one crawler-transporter is able to carry 18 million pounds on the nine-mile journey to the launchpad. As of June 27, 2019, the mobile launcher atop crawler-transporter 2 made a successful final test roll to the launchpad, clearing the transporter and mobile launcher ready to carry SLS and Orion to the launchpad for Artemis 1.
Dream Team
It takes a lot of team work to launch Artemis 1. We are partnering with Boeing, Northrop Grumman and Aerojet Rocketdyne to produce the complex structures of the rocket. Every one of our centers and more than 1,200 companies across the United States support the development of the rocket that will launch Artemis 1 to the Moon and, ultimately, to Mars. From supplying key tools to accelerate the development of the core stage to aiding the transportation of the rocket closer to the launchpad, companies like Futuramic in Michigan and Major Tool & Machine in Indiana, are playing a vital role in returning American astronauts to the Moon. This time, to stay. To stay up to date with the latest SLS progress, click here.
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This blog is mostly so I can vent my feelings and share my interests. Other than that, I am nothing special.
If you don't like Left Wing political thought and philosophy, all things related to horror, the supernatural, the grotesque, guns or the strange, then get the fuck out. I just warned you.
