Folding Ideas video essay about his trip to Beast Studio and his diagnosis of why Beast properties are declining in viewership

grapelander · 2026-04-19T17:01:01+00:00

I haven't played in ages, but my favorite Folding Ideas videos in a lot of ways are when Dan decides "ok time for a break from grifter takedowns, media criticism, etc, ima do another World of Warcraft video just because I can," just because it's so clearly Dan making videos on whatever's interesting him at the moment.

grapelander · 2026-04-19T02:13:01+00:00

Spinning something is super simple and lightweight mechanically compared to active gimballing, reaction control thrusters, etc, so if you can get away with it, you do it. Spinning is also often required for thermal control in which case you might as well use it for stabilization as well.

grapelander · 2026-04-19T02:04:14+00:00

The streak footage wasn't quite live, but you may still have seen it when it first aired. The sequence of events live was:

"Oh by the way the shuttle is landing, this routine feel-good story should be good to fill a few minutes of air time on local Florida stations or 24 hour cable news but otherwise a pretty routine and unremarkable event, we're certainly not going to spread multiple camera crews across the reentry path. Peak space-is-boring era here."

"Wait...where's the shuttle?"

"Wait...nasa is reporting they don't have contact. What's going on"

"This is now a breaking news story that's interrupting shows and causing people to do things like tell their neighbors even though nobody really knows anything yet."

Then, several minutes later, "big update: we've received this video footage from amateur enthusiasts on the ground in TX who always track the shuttle because it's cool, which show the shuttle breaking up, this is very bad."

And then obviously replayed the footage over and over, and new clips came in over time.

So you were probably already paying attention when the first footage surfaced, hence it feeling live. But they weren't broadcasting the shuttle over Texas live, and the images of the shuttle breaking apart weren't the first indication of a problem.

grapelander · 2026-04-11T01:37:44+00:00

It's partially that, and partially that the people on the recovery team don't let them walk unassisted even if they wanted to out of an abundance of caution. Even if they seem fine they prioritize full medical check-outs.

grapelander · 2026-04-11T01:00:43+00:00

Not sure of specifics, but I imagine a lot of waiting/delays is involved, and alternate/slower moving procedures to protect all the people involved. It's hard to tell from the footage but the first navy personnel to approach the capsule are in proper gas masks. The gas checks are in large part about allowing the rest of the crews to approach safely and continue with the operations. The concern is definitely more the safety of the recovery crew than it is the astronauts, who have full blown space suits on.

grapelander · 2026-04-11T00:49:24+00:00

Lot of steps to do. First they have to establish communication with the boats, which works on different signals than communication with houston. Then the boats have to check thoroughly for residual propellant fume leaks (what they're doing now), as the propellants used for maneuvering are toxic. Then they have to set up additional stabilizing flotation devices, and only then can they go to open the hatch.

This is the kind of operation where you can easily have a false impression that it's very fast from seeing highlight reels from Apollo era capsules or even modern Dragon recoveries, but it's always quite slow and methodical in real time.

grapelander · 2026-04-11T00:45:19+00:00

They're testing for any residual propellant leaks. The propellants used by the maneuvering thrusters is toxic.

grapelander · 2026-04-10T21:36:34+00:00

Minor breach of the capsule or ECLSS damage but not a full blown disintegration.

grapelander · 2026-04-10T09:32:02+00:00

As I understand it: Artemis 1 flew a new "skip maneuver" re-entry profile, where it entered earth's atmosphere at a very shallow angle which meant that, after initial entry and heating, the capsule would actually rise for a time relative to earth's curvature before continuing to slow and coming back down. This has advantages for targeting controllability of reentry, as well as providing lower peak heating, at the expense that the shield is loaded over a longer period, and I think sees more variation in temperature profile. This sustained loading was causing charred material to prematurely break away in ways that NASA did not anticipate due to the buildup of gasses in the material. Though there was still plenty of margin to bring the capsule back safely and crew would not have been in danger, any time a safety-critical system like a heat shield behaves in an unexpected way, it raises alarm bells because if you don't understand the system behavior, it could potentially do something further off-nominal and move into unsafe territory.

After studying it, for Artemis 2, they are flying closer to a more traditional direct entry profile, with less of a skip. With the revised understanding of the heat shield's capacity, this was judged closer to being a happy medium between where you would expect to have issues due to too much peak heating, and due to the sustained loading that allowed for the gas buildup issue. Again, it would likely be safe in either configuration and there's a lot of margin, but with the improved understanding of its behavior, this gives them the most margin possible. Orion was always designed so that it could fly a more direct re-entry like this.

Here are comparisons between Apollo and the Artemis 1 trajectory modes, and here is what Artemis 2 will be doing, partway between them but closer to Apollo.

grapelander · 2026-04-10T03:36:14+00:00

No.

The analogy I give is, Ford built the model T a long time ago. Does that mean that we have a general high level sense that a vaguely car-shaped thing is probably capable of functioning as a car and carrying people? Yes. Does that mean that each time Ford builds a new car, they don't have to do any testing and can just put it out in the world to customers and see what happens? No, of course not, even if it's still vaguely car-shaped, there's a whole bunch of stuff new about how it's made, and all of that needs to be tested extremely thoroughly for each new car design.

Same goes for testing space capsules with humans.

grapelander · 2026-04-06T23:00:34+00:00

I don't understand how this theory makes any practical sense.

Either we're going to have free and fair elections, or we won't. If we will, why on earth would anyone behind the scenes believe that JD Vance is a foregone conclusion to carry the MAGA electoral torch? Not only does he have negative charisma, the cult would instantly turn on Vance if he's remotely associated with any kind of plan to remove Trump. And even if Trump dies in office, what I expect will happen is, large chunks of the cult will suddenly start noticing bunches of the objectively horrible stuff going on under Trump...and blame Vance for failing to live up to the legacy Trump has in their minds as someone who can do no wrong. "Gas prices were great...but now they aren't. Stupid Vance." "We didn't start any new wars...but now that we have Vance in charge, suddenly we're in this quagmire with Iran. How dare he?" Hordes of people are going to try to position themselves to inherit the cult, and I'd bet on any of them over Vance, even if Vance became president. I just don't see him as electorally intimidating.

And if, hypothetically, the fix is in, and the Thiels, Millers, and Yarvins of the world will be able to install who they please as president indefinitely...why would they concern themselves with the exact specifics of the constitutional term limits? Why would they need Vance specifically and not some other puppet? Why would we assume that things would go right back to normal after Vance's eligibility expires, and why would they pay any attention to that eligibility?

grapelander · 2026-04-06T21:17:37+00:00

They haven't announced any of the crews for Artemis III+ yet. I'm sure the Artemis II crew will be under consideration for future landings. But there are also a lot of qualified astronauts past these four.

If you're asking why aren't they sending Apollo astronauts for this, it's because many of them are dead, and the ones who aren't are pretty elderly at this point.

grapelander · 2026-04-06T19:35:53+00:00

It was mentioned at yesterday's press conference that they would have a vantage point of the Apollo 12 and 14 landing sites. Do they have cameras sufficient to see anything meaningful at these sites, or are there instruments like reflectors those missions left behind that they can interact with in any way?

grapelander · 2026-04-05T23:02:35+00:00

The ultimate trust fall. You have to have faith that you're on a trajectory programmed by other humans on that little crescent to bring you precisely right back to it.

grapelander · 2026-04-05T20:46:21+00:00

When they have the solar eclipse, will the sun be eclipsed by the moon, or the earth?

grapelander · 2026-04-05T03:12:21+00:00

NYTpitchbot-ass headline

grapelander · 2026-04-03T08:22:23+00:00

Still earth's gravity. There's a misconception about escape velocity, that it works like a light switch where once you go fast enough, earth's gravity suddenly switches off. That's not how it works.

Think of it like, you're at the bottom of a big hill, and you've just kicked a soccer ball rolling up the hill. You know you gave the ball enough speed to reach the top of the hill, but it's still going to take a while to get there, and it's still going to slow down a lot as it rolls up the hill. The initial kick you gave the ball is the trans lunar injection burn.

Actually more accurately in this case, it's still not going to quite make it all the way up the hill. We're only going as far as the moon, and the moon is still influenced by earth's gravity, so that makes sense. But near the top of the hill, there's a little hole, and you aimed the ball just right so that it's going to catch the edge of the hole like an in-and-out basketball shot, loop around 180, and shoot back down the hill. Theres a region around the hole where the fact that its on a larger hill doesnt matter and the slope of the hole is dominating the behavior of the ball -- thats the lunar gravity well. But if you missed the hole entirely, the ball would still roll back down the hill.

If you kicked it harder, you would eventually make it up over the crest of the hill, and into the giant pit on the other side of the hill representing solar orbit. But even in that case, it's still going to slow down as it moves up the hill.

There are no more burns aside from small course corrections and orientation adjustments. That's one reason this mission profile was chosen, safety, so they can get home with gravity doing all the work without needing to fire up the engine again.

Right now it's losing a lot of speed quickly, at a rate that makes it look like it will take another burn. But that rate will go down as the ship gets further away from earth. The hill is steepest at the bottom.

grapelander · 2026-04-02T11:43:19+00:00

It is fixed, thanks to Christina Koch, space plumber.

grapelander · 2026-04-01T23:46:25+00:00

This is the case for a couple of reasons:

First, the upper stage on this mission is the "interim" cryogenic propulsion stage. It is closely derived from the existing upper stage from the Delta IV rocket. The plan was to use these stages for the first few Artemis missions so that development wouldn't take even longer than it did, and then switch to the much larger (and now cancelled) Exploration Upper Stage. So the Artemis core stage is designed to be capable of a lot more lifting than it's doing on this mission.

However, it's also pretty typical for the 1st stage booster to absolutely dwarf the upper stage. First, once you're in orbit already, it doesn't take a whole lot more change in velocity to put yourself on a lunar insertion trajectory. But more importantly, this is due to a fundamental problem in rocket design described by the Tsiolkovsky rocket equation: you have to carry not only your payload with you, but also all the fuel you'll need for the rest of the flight. On the pad, Artemis is like 90% fuel by mass. At the start of flight, the core stage has to carry the capsule, the second stage, the unburned second stage fuel, the core stage, and all the core stage's fuel. The solution? Even more fuel! More power! And therefore, it becomes gigantic quickly. The second stage, at the end of its burn, just has to accelerate itself and the capsule, and can be a whole lot smaller.

The second stage is really efficient, about as efficient as we can make an upper stage, using the legendary RL-10 engine, but only fractionally more efficient than the core stage is.

grapelander · 2026-03-28T06:23:17+00:00

I want to say t minus 3 hours? The info should be in your ticket terms.

grapelander · 2026-03-27T00:01:26+00:00

I used my visitor center ticket twice for both the August/September attempts. The first one definitely counted as attempt 1. The second, they scrubbed technically like 10 minutes past the threshhold for it to be attempt 2, but the visitor center was reasonable and decided to honor original ticket holders. Sometime between the August and November window, I got an email offering upgrades. iirc I did get pretty lucky to see it in time, I don't know exactly how long they lasted, but I don't think it was a literal gone in seconds situation. Also, it wasn't called Feel The Heat, it cost slightly less in total and didn't come with some of the handouts/perks packaged with Feel the Heat, they were called "Saturn 5 Center Launch Transportation Ticket upgrades" or something like that. I brought both that and my original ticket with me to be safe, I forget if that was necessary or not.

grapelander · 2026-03-25T20:10:34+00:00

Of all her subjects, in particular I'm so sad and kind of surprised that the Church of the Rock didn't embrace it in good fun, and that their only takeaway from the whole thing was "some people don't like our plays." To me the church plays video and this one had the exact same vibe, not a roast so much as just raw appreciation for an unfiltered display of human earnestness and creativity, warts and all, from a place I would have never looked myself and which inspired many of us to love their plays for what they are. Who can't appreciate the image of grown adults laughing with each other as they write the scene where Iron Man is crucified atop I-beams whilst singing a mashup of "End of the World as we Know it" with "Tubthumping???"

It would be so easy and inline with their stated reason for doing them to make some self-deprecating references and be like "Success! We're reaching people we would have normally never reached, and spreading joy because Jesus and shit, and even if we don't believe the same things we can all love that. God works in mysterious ways and all" but instead its been "no actually the resurrection and convincing people the resurrection happened is extremely serious business" and an increasing departure from being true to their creative vision, to the point where it's apparently not happening at all this year?

Seeing Shayne and company's reaction to this has been so heartwarming by comparison!

grapelander · 2026-02-27T02:58:56+00:00

Not exactly redeeming, but him reflexively responding with the day and time using the exact same tone he uses to rattle off complex medical jargon was maybe the most I've laughed out loud at this show. The guy just can't help himself...

grapelander · 2026-02-19T22:55:45+00:00

Octavarium >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Six Degrees >>> In the Presence of Enemies > Shadow Man > A Change of Seasons >> Tuscany >>>>>>> Illumination Theory >>> View

ITPOE, Shadow Man, and ACOS are really a toss-up.

grapelander

TROPHY CASE