Richard Easther
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rjme.bsky.social
Richard Easther
@rjme.bsky.social
3.3K followers 350 following 2.8K posts
Father, husband, scientist, Kiwi diaspora returnee, prof @aucklanduni.bsky.social‬ - opinions mine. He/Him

Science: https://cosmology.auckland.ac.nz
Blog: https://excursionset.com
Newsletter: https://buttondown.com/excursionset
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rjme.bsky.social
Back home after almost three weeks in 日本
Sunset over a sandy beach
November 27, 2025 at 7:44 AM
rjme.bsky.social
Amazing place. Walked through the cemetery and found a wee playground set up among the graves.
November 26, 2025 at 5:50 AM
rjme.bsky.social
Gordon feeling a little inadequate right now
November 26, 2025 at 2:58 AM
rjme.bsky.social
Feel like I am hanging out on the set of "Thomas and Friends Go To The Very Big City"
November 26, 2025 at 2:56 AM
rjme.bsky.social
Parking minimums. In this essay I will..
November 24, 2025 at 6:26 AM
rjme.bsky.social
Another win
Cyclists heading into bike park Bike park signage
November 24, 2025 at 5:31 AM
rjme.bsky.social
When you win at SimCity
A view of countless Tokyo buildings, shot from 350m above ground level.
November 24, 2025 at 4:17 AM
rjme.bsky.social
Absolute scenes at Kyoto eki. The Nozomi is running five minutes late to Tokyo.
A signboard showing the departure of 6 Shinkansen to Tokyo in the space of 20 minutes, but <shocked face> five minutes behind schedule.
November 22, 2025 at 2:13 AM
rjme.bsky.social
Bonus shots, including a couple of shrine cats - we chatted with the old couple that keep them fed and glossy
November 21, 2025 at 10:28 AM
rjme.bsky.social
Last night I had a fancy dinner in Pontocho in Kyoto. Tonight I had "stamina ramen" at a place where you order off a screen (and otherwise full of students doing homework) after a day walking round Nara, and it tasted just as good.
A grown man, holding a toy baby deer and sitting in front of a HUGE bowl of ramen and gyoza A toy deer with a screen for ordering dinner in the background.
November 21, 2025 at 10:20 AM
rjme.bsky.social
First flat white in Japan
A flat white with latte art
November 21, 2025 at 8:35 AM
rjme.bsky.social
Four legged wallet inspectors, Nara.
Sacred deer in a Nara park.
November 21, 2025 at 3:59 AM
rjme.bsky.social
I wrote this a decade ago, but I'm back in Kyoto and Ginkakuji is still a magical place excursionset.com/blog/2014/02...
November 21, 2025 at 3:22 AM
rjme.bsky.social
I provided a pull-quote but there are a lot of Kiwi voices in this roundup of perspectives on @methanesat.bsky.social from Canadian green business site Corporate Knights corporateknights.com/category-cli...
November 20, 2025 at 9:22 AM
rjme.bsky.social
Amazing - a giant bell rung by a log suspended in front of it, battering ram-style. It sounds across the mountain like a dragon's heartbeat.
November 20, 2025 at 4:03 AM
rjme.bsky.social
Autumn colors, above Lake Biwa
November 20, 2025 at 2:49 AM
rjme.bsky.social
Definitely top notch today.
November 19, 2025 at 8:29 AM
rjme.bsky.social
In my happy place.
November 19, 2025 at 6:25 AM
rjme.bsky.social
Number 2
November 17, 2025 at 3:32 AM
rjme.bsky.social
452 Views of Mt Fuji - number 1
A shot of Fuji-san from the Nozomi
November 17, 2025 at 3:15 AM
rjme.bsky.social
American soft power, in Tokyo
November 16, 2025 at 8:39 AM
rjme.bsky.social
11/11 is Pocky Day in Japan (for reasons that are actually pretty obvious when you think about it)
November 11, 2025 at 11:01 AM
rjme.bsky.social
Or why did MethaeSAT spokespeople repeatedly make misleading statements about the health of the mission -- and more importantly (to the New Zealand taxpayer), why did MBIE let them?
There was no shortage of bad news, but transparency was an ongoing challenge for the EDF. To give just one example, after MethaneSAT's failure there were repeated claims by project participants that it had returned a "year's worth" of data. See this Harvard Gazette piece, this Tweet and this New York Times article, for example. Exactly how much is a "year's worth"? In its sales pitch, MethaneSAT aimed to image up to 20 "scenes" each day - so, many thousands of snapshots a year. However, the project website speaks of "hundreds" of unprocessed observations, which looks more like maybe one month's worth of data gathered over the course of a year. As one colleague put it, "You can't polish a turd, but you can roll it in glitter." Less colourfully, carefully constructed talking points are the polar opposite of "open and honest" However, the most serious issue was an October 2024 email to Radio New Zealand's Eloise Gibson, asserting: We have been collecting images since May and have been in nominal operations since June when commissioning completed and we turned it over to New Zealand to operate Within the space community, "nominal" is shorthand for everything operating as expected. The terminology comes straight from the crew-cut and pocket protector era of the 1960s and offers no scope for dissembling or ambiguity. Its misuse by a professional - claiming that something was working well when it very much wasn't - would be close to blasphemy. But it seems that MethaneSAT was "off-nominal" for almost all of its life.
November 7, 2025 at 7:49 PM
rjme.bsky.social
A lot of questions go unanswered e.g. why did the @methanesat.bsky.social team fly a spacecraft that, by their own admission, was not designed to deal with the entirely predictable radiation environment you find in space. That doesn't make sense.
QUOTE ... the onboard fault detection software places the spacecraft into safe mode for the ground operators to assess and reset the required electronics. These ... events continued throughout the life of MethaneSAT as the high solar activity continued. MethaneSAT was not designed with the costly radiation-hardened components found, for example, on military spacecraft. — MethaneSAT spokesperson This is not so much an excuse but a confession, to the extent that colleagues of mine literally laughed out loud when they saw it. Yes, solar activity (which produces charged particles that are mostly blocked by the atmosphere but cause problems for spacecraft) was at the peak of its 11 year cycle in 2024. But it is a well-known feature of the space environment. It makes no sense that any satellite, military or otherwise, would not be built to withstand the expected conditions.
November 7, 2025 at 7:49 PM
rjme.bsky.social
Getting there...
November 7, 2025 at 7:47 AM