Varda's drug-cooking Winnebago will be remembered as a space pioneer
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
> Perfect crystals. Also, the proof-of-concept drug was ritonavir, and it's nearly impossible to consistently grow large crystals of it on Earth. All of the labs that work with ritonavir are contaminated by a more stable form ("polymorph") that rapidly converts any ritonavir crystals into a less-useful form.
In short: yes, you're correct, but I am just parroting somebody else; personally, I posses no actual knowledge of chemistry involved.
(This sounds like such wizardry.)
Reality though: "This was the first in a series of missions Varda plans to build and launch. Varda calls this design the Winnebago series, designed to bring pharmaceutical research specimens back to Earth for laboratory analysis and eventual commercial exploitation. This satellite launched on June 12 on a SpaceX rideshare mission, and less than three weeks later, it completed a pioneering drug manufacturing experiment."
...and meanwhile Richard Branson didn't abort a launch when there was a malfunction that caused his craft to massively miss the re-entry flight plan, thus endangering commercial and private aviation. The FAA took less than a month to investigate Virgin's fuckup and said "whatevs, it's cool, just change a few things": https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/29/faa-clears-virgin-galactic-f...
It goes to show how the emperor has no clothing when it comes to romanticising space exploration as being this matter of science, knowledge, wonder, etc. Space isn't about any of that as far as the government is concerned. It's about military applications and letting rich people do what they want.
It is actually quite expensive to get to the sun.
However, this also means that to hit the Sun, you need to remove more or less all of the energy that Earth starts you with. This is the key insight - if you do a bit too much or a bit too little, it slingshots around the Sun (getting close to it but not going into it) and stays in orbit rather than landing in the Sun.
This might be an interesting read. Can highly recommend this article
If, for example, the larger ritonavir crystals they can produce in space produce a dramatically more effective treatment, somebody's going to be interested in paying a premium for that.