u/Simon_Drake

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There are 10 people in space right now but no laundry service. They wear the same clothes for several days (Thankfully zero-g clogs your sinuses and kills your sense of smell) and get regular deliveries of new clothes with the old clothes sent to burn up in the atmosphere. That approach won't work for long term space missions away from supply deliveries for several years, they're going to need to invent some form of space laundry.

So who better to ask about laundry issues than r/laundry .

As I see it there's three problems:

1. No washing machines in space. Compared to the other issues this is pretty easy to solve. It's not exactly rocket science, rotating drums, electric motors, water pumps, valves etc. They could set aside a corner of the station for a washing machine. Drying the laundry could be harder, you can't hang the laundry outside. They might need to include washer-dryers or heated drying racks which would increase the energy cost but cut the space needed.
2. Water recycling. Space stations already recycle the water from the toilets, hygiene activities, cooking and condensation out of the air. Laundry facilities would add to the water use considerably but it should be similar steps recycling toilet water. There might be different chemicals in the greywater runoff but it shouldn't be too difficult to manage.
3. Detergent. This could be an issue. You can recycle water infinitely or at least for a very long time with small losses but you're going to run out of detergent after a few years in space. Which gives two options: Can you make detergent on the ship somehow? You could make hydrogen peroxide and sodium hypochlorite from a little electrochemistry which are good disinfectants but what about surfactants to get the oils and skin-grease off the clothes? Alternatively, could you do a wash without any detergents?

So then I started spiralling into different speculative ideas for weird ways to do laundry without surfactants. Could you sterilise the clothes with chemicals then wash in plain water at a high temperature? The sterilising part is relatively easy but would a hot rinse be good enough to clean the sweat off properly?

Or maybe there's a detergent option that is worth the effort to manufacture on the ship. A lot of artificial detergents are made in large chemical factories that might not scale down well to a benchtop facility or they use long hydrocarbon chains that would be difficult to replicate abiotically. You can't just use vegetable oils and potash like the Romans, not a lot of ashes on a spaceship.

So I don't know. Maybe the answer is to ration the soap supply carefully, do a high temperature wash the first 5x you clean each garment then a soap-wash to extend it's useful life a bit longer. You'd eventually have clothes too dirty to clean properly but maybe with clothes rationing it could last the length of the mission? Or is there some other approach?

What are your thoughts on space laundry?

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Does Shallan's first Shardblade, Testament, have the gemstone in the pommel?

There's a lot of Shardblades in Stormlight Archives and lots of long descriptions of long flowing blades with rippling edges that look like waves crashing on rocks etc. If you look very closely you'll spot the Shardblade Taln has when he first appears in Way Of Kings is different to the Shardblade the insane tramp has when he arrives at the warcamps, someone swapped the Honourblade for a generic Deadeye-Shardblade.

Shallan's first Shardblade is presented as a normal Deadeye-Shardblade. There's a couple of clues about this where she thinks it will take 10 Heartbeats but also thinks that it's an act and she doesn't need to wait 10 Heartbeats etc. The other characters think she's just from an old noble house and has inherited a Shardblade like dozens of other people, it's not until later we learn the truth.

But if her first Shardblade isn't one of that first generation of Deadeye-Shardblades from the Recreance, does that mean the pommel doesn't have the gemstone? IIRC the swords didn't start life with that gemstone but it was added in the intervening millennia to turn the sword into a sortof fabrial. We don't know the details of how this was done but I think ALL the 'normal' Shardblades have the gemstone added.

So wouldn't that be a big clue that something is different about Shallan's Shardblade? (Also Taln's Honourblade now I think of it) I wasn't paying close enough attention to the description of her shardblade to notice if the gemstone was mentioned or if it says the pommel is smooth metal or something. I wonder if Shallan found a way to add a gemstone to her pommel, either in the standard Fabrial way or by cognitively inducing Testament to manifest with a gemstone in the pommel as part of the disguise?

(A followup from this post 3 weeks ago)

https://preview.redd.it/ooqaymdvwjzg1.png?width=1171&format=png&auto=webp&s=2cabde4b9b8b85c44e385f878381358e10c9fda4

Based on the dates of certain key milestones and some statistical analysis of previous launches, I predict Flight 12 around 25th May. For example, Block 2 launches happened on average 73 days (+/- 8 days) after the Ship First Cryotest. The darkest line on the Gantt Chart is the average, the medium-darkness band shows the standard deviation, the lighter band is the maximum and minimum values.

However, this is based on some fairly major assumptions that might be wrong:

1. Average times of Block 2 on Pad A have any relevance to Block 3 and Pad B.
2. Last Booster Static Fire is today (2026/05/06)
3. Last Ship Static Fire is tomorrow (2026/05/06)
4. Stack and WDR milestones are ~2 Weeks after Last Ship Static Fire. This is the average time for Block 2 but we're stacking averages on top of predictions so these values are less reliable.

You will notice there is a serious mismatch between the timeline predicted for Booster First Static Fire and Booster Last Static Fire. Even discounting the 10-Engine Static Fires from March as a test of the pad infrastructure and not a fair milestone of Booster Static Fire, the gap between first and last Booster Static Fire hasn't been this big since 2023. This is part of the problem of trying to look at averages from only a handful of examples where every launch comes with special circumstances.

Of course this could all be meaningless if they DON'T do another Booster Static Fire today. Perhaps they'll roll S39 to the launch site for Full Stack, making April 14th the last Ship Static Fire. WDR on Friday and moving the launch to around May 12~15th.

https://preview.redd.it/mpc5t0w9xjzg1.png?width=1171&format=png&auto=webp&s=37e38f6d33aa2553bc46416b6524045b2283fcf5

But realistically I think the former timeline is more likely. Another Booster static fire today and the launch towards the end of May.

What I mean is, the slightly niche series that might not be known by new or 'surface level fans of the medium but when someone gets deeper into the discourse people will tell you "Man, you NEED to watch Babylon 5". Not necessarily a hidden gem that only die-hard fans have heard of but maybe something a bit older or underrated that was highly regarded critically and/or became an important inspiration for later works.

Honestly, I'm a bit of an anime noob. I've been watching it for decades but mostly just the big names, Dragonball, Bleach, both FMA and FMAB, One Punch Man, Attack On Titan, Demon Slayer, Sword Art Online etc. Also all the Studio Ghibli movies and the big names like Akira. Now I'm not just skimming, I've watched every episode sometimes twice, but I'm not familiar with the less famous titles.

I've gone a bit off the mainstream a few times and found some truly amazing gems but also found a few that are more of a tonal mismatch, too much focus on romance or teenage awkwardness etc. I'm a bit too old for My Hero Academia and I'm not strictly opposed to watching Naruto but I think I'd prefer something non-Shonen. I liked the premise behind Jujutsu Kaisen but it's a bit too much Coming-of-age-story for my tastes.

I've gone back to fill in some gaps from the past like Death Note that I probably should have watched sooner. I'd heard it was good but didn't really just how good. The same with Neon Genesis Evangelion, Cowboy Bebop. And I'm looking for other anime that would be conspicious by their absence, what anime would another anime fan say "Wait, you've never seen X? Dude you need to watch X!"

There's a reason I compared it to Babylon 5 and OG Battlestar Galactica. Those shows lived in the shadow of their more famous rivals, Star Trek and Star Wars. And if you watch them now they're obviously older and the visual quality has aged but that also gives it a certain sense of charm. You often hear modern scifi fans say they've heard of Babylon 5 but never got around to watching it, then older fans well tell them it's definitely worth watching. So what's the equivalent for anime?

Maybe something scifi? Maybe something older, 70s? 80s? Maybe something a bit grimdark or pitched at older audiences than what I've seen before? I don't know, I'm kinda open to suggestions.

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In the very first scene of Game Of Thrones, we see a gross spiral symbol made out of blood and human body parts scattered in the snow. The White Walkers who made this symbol go on to kill the Night's Watch recruits and we don't see much more of the symbol for a long time.

Much later we learn about this spiral symbol being used by The Children Of The Forest. They drew it in Dragonstone in the Dragonglass mines, they carved it into the magical eWeirwood Trees and they built a giant version of the spiral symbol out of Standing Stones in a forest clearing. We know the Children are nature sprites who made trees and plants grow across Westeros and were generally more in tune with nature than the First Men. I theorise this spiral symbol is part of their Nature Magic that made plants grow and made springtime energy flourish across the continent.

However, we also see the Children performing a blood magic ritual in their spiral of standing stones. In what seemed to be an attempt to drive out the First Men they created a mankiller, the first White Walker. This being of ice is the direct inversion of their Nature Magic.

When Samwell Tarley is researching the White Walkers he finds a mystery from an ancient Maester. They noticed the White Walkers always come in periods of intense cold, especially long and cold winters, cold snaps within a winter, attacking in blizzards and the weather clearing after the battle. Sam asks "Does the cold bring the White Walkers or do the White Walkers bring the cold?" He doesn't find an answer.

I theorise that the White Walkers bring the cold. The White Walkers use human bodyparts to make the spiral symbol which is a bloodmagic ritual, a twisted corruption of its original naturemagic origins. Instead of bringing growth and warmth it brings the cold. The symbol brings the winter.

Westeros winters are intermittent. They can have no winter for three years then a winter that lasts five years. Because the winters are magic in origin, not tied to planetary orbits. When the White Walkers thrive, kill a whole bunch of wildlings/nightswatch/northerners then they make a bunch of these blood magic symbols and summon a terrible long lasting winter. The winter ends when the White Walkers are pushed back, a human resistance kills them, or the White Walkers run out of humans to kill and turn into blood magic symbols.

This adds new meaning to the very first scene of the series. There is a blood magic ritual happening that will bring about the winter that underscores the entire story. Winter Is Coming.

I heard someone predicting Lerasium would return in Mistborn Era 3 because the series is called Mistborn not Mistings. Logically you can't have another Mistborn book without any Mistborn in it, so someone must get their hands on some Lerasium or find a different way to become a Mistborn again. Like maybe Wax has another kid after The Lost Metal and their descendants are a new generation of natural born Mistborn.

They make a good point. Also what about the books set on Roshar numbered 6~10, are they still going to be called Stormlight Archives or will they be the Warlight Archives since there's no such thing as Stormlight anymore?