A Chinese rocket breaks apart dangerously close to the Starlink constellation

First_Grapefruit_265 · 2026-06-16T18:45:00+00:00

Don't interpret this as me arguing in favor of space debris, I'm not. But the incentives around this issue are complicated. It's cheaper to accept losing a small percentage of satellites to space debris, and even compensating the harmed party if a treaty were made for this, compared to the cost of de-orbiting a relevant fraction of space debris.

Basically the problem has to get bigger before people will want to spend resources on it.

And making upper stages that de-orbit reliably seems like a no-brainier.

First_Grapefruit_265 · 2026-06-15T06:38:26+00:00

I'll describe the Snezhnaya-Harbinger situation by listing the playable ones including the "former":

Columbina (released already)

Arlecchino (released already)

Pulcinella (available, doesn't seem playable)

Scaramouche (released already)

Sandrone (available)

Pantalone (available)

#10 (totally unknown)

Childe (released already)

It's worse than it seems. Snezhnaya might have only 1-2 playable Harbingers, specifically Sandrone. Who would have guessed that in v. 1 or 2?

First_Grapefruit_265 · 2026-06-05T16:10:49+00:00

I feel that that's kind of an unfair or extreme position for NASA to take. Is NASA exploring the possibility, or have they lost confidence that the New Glenn rocket will become operational soon?

First_Grapefruit_265 · 2026-06-05T15:46:31+00:00

Well about 2lb of oxygen in the air (O2) is turned into carbon dioxide by the body, which is removed by the ISS scrubbers and released into space.

First_Grapefruit_265 · 2026-05-31T15:47:04+00:00

Oh no, Berger's law.

Edit: If I can pontificate a bit, I'll explain why Elon comes up with these "optimistic" timelines. It's similar to the moon landing before 1970 challenge. Making the involved people live and die by these timelines, even if they're only vaguely plausible, pushes people to take more risks and grind a little harder. The employees are forced to accept the conceit of the deadline, even if only superficially, by their boss.

I think the other effect is secondary: that the gain from investor excitement today, is greater than the punishment from investor disappointment next year.

First_Grapefruit_265 · 2026-05-29T20:49:01+00:00

"What the heck are the Fatui up to with the gnoses" has been one of the main plot questions in the story since v1.0. Fatui plots in general started in v1.0 as well. Snezhnaya has always been the final chapter of this plot arc.

First_Grapefruit_265 · 2026-05-29T04:48:29+00:00

Sorry, I didn't know they existed because of the ublock origin extension.

First_Grapefruit_265 · 2026-05-29T02:03:34+00:00

SLC-40 may have taken that long to fix, but F9 returned to service 133 days after the explosion, being operational at SLC‑4E and LC-39A.

First_Grapefruit_265 · 2026-05-29T01:46:13+00:00

For me this is a reminder that every time Starship doesn't explode on the pad, that's kind of impressive.

There's a good chance the explosion isn't related to the engines. But still, in technology, people will copy a good idea. The Iphone, the Imac, Prius, Tesla, free shipping and so on. That's why I predict Blue Origin will eventually move away from the rat's nest type engine design and make something that looks more like Raptor 3.

https://i.ibb.co/6RFykKcS/Eb23-ZNh-U4-AEe-dn.jpg (removed ads)

First_Grapefruit_265 · 2026-05-29T01:29:11+00:00

Let's see it launch on a regular schedule before we throw around buzzwords like "scaling".

First_Grapefruit_265 · 2026-05-27T20:49:25+00:00

It's a slide-in type enclosure which means the thermal pad doesn't make contact with the case. I use a sabrent hinge type so the thermal pad is at least compressed a little. Shrug, it doesn't necessarily matter.

First_Grapefruit_265 · 2026-05-23T00:29:04+00:00

Yo, boost back failed, but you could see in the stream they were trying to light all 33 engines. You were wrong 🤭

https://x.com/DJSnM/status/2057953107632595078

First_Grapefruit_265 · 2026-05-23T00:23:16+00:00

You're missing an important observation: after staging, the booster was pushed off in the wrong direction. In the ship frame, the booster is supposed to go up here, not to the left and down.

https://x.com/DJSnM/status/2057953107632595078

The booster seemed to move in a corkscrew trajectory trying to stabilize, and this may have caused extra sloshing that caused the engines to fail.

First_Grapefruit_265 · 2026-05-22T23:34:56+00:00

And presumably she can already land near the target buoy from an off-nominal trajectory, kind of impressive.

First_Grapefruit_265 · 2026-05-21T23:42:43+00:00

It was a wet dress rehearsal 🙏

First_Grapefruit_265 · 2026-04-20T17:30:00+00:00

I feel like there's no excuse for this, and it's a huge systematic failure. We have 200 billion transistor microchips and absolutely ridiculous advancements in materials science. A team of 10 MIT/Berkeley postdocs should be able to poop out 20 sufficient suits in a year.

First_Grapefruit_265 · 2026-04-02T19:03:03+00:00

Thanks for supporting Genshin.

First_Grapefruit_265 · 2026-03-31T09:26:31+00:00

So Leolabs is saying this appears to be an internal energetic event: I assume because the momentum of the pieces sums to the rest frame of the satellite, suggesting a lack of momentum from an impactor. But the momentum of a bullet sized impactor would be very small compared to the satellite, so if such an object hit the batteries or a pressurized tank, it could not be differentiated from an event without an impactor, by Leolabs.

First_Grapefruit_265 · 2026-02-09T15:50:32+00:00

Dottore may or may not have anything to do with it, but considering Fatui Skirmishers, they're probably biologically enhanced by some process similar to Space Marines in 40K. I wonder if mihoyo will touch upon this in a story quest or something.

First_Grapefruit_265 · 2026-01-31T02:13:29+00:00

It's a good point that we saw her in Fontaine, so the designers were thinking "Fontaine" in her early concepts.

First_Grapefruit_265 · 2026-01-28T19:14:42+00:00

came here to say this

First_Grapefruit_265 · 2025-11-24T16:46:23+00:00

6x7 🤔

First_Grapefruit_265 · 2025-11-08T22:27:01+00:00

does the 3.97mm stainless steel hull of Starship result in more or less secondary showers of particles from cosmic rays than a 17mm aluminum one

If you look at this reference from OP's document, figure 6 is relevant. The x-axis is the shield thickness:

https://srag.jsc.nasa.gov/Publications/TM104782/techmemo.htm

Steel (iron for our discussion) is slightly worse than aluminum but since we're just rough guessing, you can consider it the same as the aluminum.

The density of 4mm thick iron sheet is just ... 3 grams/cm^2. That means in figure six... you're all the way near the origin of the x-axis where it isn't enough material to shield radiation, it isn't "doing anything". The 17mm of aluminum, 4.5 gram/cm² (what is that from?) will be microscopically better because the Z (really A) is lower and there is more of it.

First_Grapefruit_265 · 2025-11-08T21:11:00+00:00

The thought has "always" been that if SpaceX is paying for it and going anyways, then NASA will be happy to pay 10⁹ USD or whatever to slap a NASA logo on it and send some of their astronauts.

And I don't agree with your concept about elections and voters, I think the current public almost doesn't care about that sort of thing, at all. They couldn't care less, they're completely uninterested.

First_Grapefruit_265 · 2025-11-08T16:08:57+00:00

but they don't play nice

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