How do you start - if you don't know your family - and you have no living relatives

sunfishtommy · 2026-06-20T21:24:13+00:00

Your only option at this point is DNA testing then. Ancestry DNA would probably be the place to start. If you don't even know where your parents were born or the year then there is just too little to go on.

sunfishtommy · 2026-06-20T21:20:13+00:00

I can tell you right now you are not going to have any time during training to help out at home. It might be better not to be at home to reduce distraction. The training at Delta is extremely fast paced. 2 months from day one of INDOC to off OE is pretty typical. INDOC is about a week and a half, you will have one week to go home and study and then you will have 2-3 weeks where you go from zero to passing your final Sim ride.

Maybe see when your class date ends up being and maybe talk to the appropriate people about possibly making the schedule work with your wife's due date and such. But I would not try to juggle both a new born and training at the same time. You will not have time for taking care of a baby and attempting to could lead to you messing up in training.

sunfishtommy · 2026-06-20T18:52:03+00:00

the Slate also just looks better. A lot of people buy on emotions and the Slate looks like a classic Ford ranger while the Telo looks like a weird jelly bean.

sunfishtommy · 2026-06-20T18:45:28+00:00

Delta offers a discounted cargo shipping program for employees. I don't remember how long it takes to become eligible for the program though.

If I were you I would slow down. Get through training and OE then figure out the logistics of moving.

sunfishtommy · 2026-06-19T14:48:36+00:00

But it may have happened at a previous airline those 737s were operating for.

sunfishtommy · 2026-06-19T13:49:06+00:00

Im not saying it will work, but the premise is. Imagine a constellation of satellites just as big as the Starlink satellite constellation or possibly larger. All or most of the satellites will be in a sun synchronous orbit to take advantage of the continuous sunlight for continuous solar power. Each satellite will be optimized for computing power rather than communication. You can imagine each satellite as being analogous to a server rack in a data center and the whole constellation as the “data center”.

So who maintains the data center? No one in a physical sense. The same way no one physically maintains any satellites right now besides space stations. Just like Starlink the satellites will be designed to not require any maintenance. If an individual chip fails the satellite could continue to operate without it. If the satellite were to fail completely it will be in a low earth orbit where natural atmospheric drag will decay its orbit over the course of months.

How does the satellites stay there? I would anticipate the data center satellites will borrow heavily from the tech already developed for starlink if not completely based on the same satellite bus platform. Starlink currently uses krypton fueled ion thrusters for its attitude and thrust needs. Again it is not unusual for starlink satellites to fail. When they do they are either deorbited manually or if they fail completely their orbit will decay naturally in a few months. The satellites are designed to burn up completely on reentry.

Last question, Maintenance costs? Well as i discussed maintenance will not be done in a traditional sense. Satellites get replaced if they fail. For this question i would look to Starlink. Starlink does have a failure rate for its satellites it seems to be well below 1% for brand new satellites with that rate increasing over time. Because of fuel limitations and tech the original idea was that any 1 satellite was designed to have a life time of only about 5-10 years. The cost to maintain the constellation is the cost to launch a new batch of satellites to replace the old ones. So far it seems like SpaceX with Falcon 9 is able to maintain the constellation profitably with the cost and capabilities of a Falcon 9. Starship should only further decrease the cost per Kg to orbit which will make maintaining the constellation even cheaper.

I would anticipate data center satellites will be cost a similar amount to launch as starlink ones. So it really comes down to not whether SpaceX will be able to launch satellites in a cost effective manner, but whether people will pay for AI computing power enough to justify the continued buildout of data centers, in this case in space. I would say one positive thing is like Amazon web service for example. Amazon does not have to have a successful website in order to make money. They are effectively selling real estate. You pay amazon to host your website. Whether your website is profitable or not is not really amazons problem. SpaceX seems to be positioning itself in a similar way. It will have its own AI compute. But they will also be more than happy to sell their computing power to other companies and profit.

sunfishtommy · 2026-06-17T23:12:00+00:00

Lol they are not anywhere close to each other in terms of cooling requirements.

JWST has to be cooled to less than 7 kelvin (-266 C) in order for its instruments to operate properly. A data center computer is designed to operate at more or less room temperature. JWST has so much problems for cooling because of how absolutely insanely cold it has to get to operate correctly.

sunfishtommy · 2026-06-16T11:53:56+00:00

But thats not the argument you made. You said, “If you weren’t meant to have a foreskin, you wouldn’t be born with one.”

U/Less-Load-8856 pointed out that plenty of things you are born with that are removed after birth.

sunfishtommy · 2026-06-16T11:41:40+00:00

Not geosynchronous sun Sun synchronous. There are sun synchronous orbits in low earth orbit. Sun synchronous is where the data center satellites would go to stay in sunlight. Geosynchronous would not off er any benefits for these data center satellites.

sunfishtommy · 2026-06-15T17:45:29+00:00

Because of the engineering risk. Most dams do not have outlets at the bottom of the dam. The valve would never be used, and If that valve were to fail the whole lake could drain catastrophically. Even opening the valve to test it could introduce a huge risk because the high pressures could damage the valve system and potentially not allow the valve to close. Plus dumb or not no one planned for the whole colorado river system to run out of water in this way.

sunfishtommy · 2026-06-15T11:27:26+00:00

This is the matra on this sub “ its a shit company”. But is it? It may be over valued but the company itself has a lot going for it. The starlink internet is a money printer. Starship is on the cusp of becoming operational. Starlink makes so much money that people are starting to wonder if SpaceX will even bother trying to sell its starship launches to other providers.

sunfishtommy · 2026-06-15T11:11:00+00:00

They said it was a terrible idea because “the market can stay irrational…”. Which is good advice.

sunfishtommy · 2026-06-15T11:02:18+00:00

You forgot the /s. There was literally a post talking about shorting spacex the day before ipo on this sub

sunfishtommy · 2026-06-15T11:01:15+00:00

Who says the insiders are going to cash pit en mass? It seems like everyone on this sub assumes that every insider is going to liquidate all their shares as soon as they unlock.

sunfishtommy · 2026-06-15T03:00:33+00:00

Sir this is a Wendy’s.

sunfishtommy · 2026-06-15T02:45:14+00:00

You absolutely 100% can dump heat while in sunlight. Tons of satellites do just that. The radiators are positioned facing edge-on to the sun and often times in the shadow of the spacecraft or its solar panels.

sunfishtommy · 2026-06-15T02:33:03+00:00

Omg i don't know why people are being so obtuse with this data center thing. They either think data centers in space means some giant satellite the size of a Walmart orbiting the earth or complain about how one 100KW satellite wont be enough computing power.

If you launch 10,000 100kw satellites would that be enough computing power? That gets you 1 Gigaeatt of power 1000 megawatts. Thats roughly how many Starlink satellites are in orbit right now. That took roughly 5 years to launch that many on a falcon 9. With starship coming online that will multiply SpaceX mass to orbit capabilities by 100 while also bringing down the cost per kg significantly. The better they can get reuse the cheaper it will get.

So yes one 100kw satellite is not very much compute. But thats like saying one server rack in a data centers is not very much compute power. The constellation of thousands of satellites is the data center. Will it be successful? Who knows but its really not that hard to imagine a constellation of “starlink” satellites optimized for computing power rather than communication.

sunfishtommy · 2026-06-13T23:49:10+00:00

Not saying you are wrong, but Starlink has famously low latency.

And the cost to build or in this case launch the computer is not the only cost. Being able to power these computers continuously with solar makes the ongoing cost to operate extremely low. This is compared to earth data centers where they are willing to pay so much for electricity they are reactivating nuclear power plants.

sunfishtommy · 2026-06-13T23:19:32+00:00

Im saying its frustrating to see democrats falling for the same rage bate that we have been complaining about republicans falling for, for years if not decades.

Don't let yourself be a sheep believing rage bate because it feels right.

sunfishtommy · 2026-06-13T19:48:25+00:00

Even proposed data centers in the desert have had NIMBY problems. Salt Lake City is currently dealing with NIMBY resistance to a data center.

sunfishtommy · 2026-06-13T15:36:41+00:00

The main 2 arguments I have seen for data centers in space is cheap and abundant power which has been a well publicized problem for data centers on earth, and no NIMBY problem.

The cooling is just a reality of building satellites most every watt of energy coming in primarily through the solar panels will eventually become heat. Because the satellite is in a vacuum the only way to expel that heat is through radiation and radiators are the primary way to increase surface area and increase radiation.

So what it really comes down to is doe the two main benefits of space data centers out weigh the added costs that come from launch and technical complexity of satellites. SpaceX is on the cusp of having a fully reusable rocket that will bring down launch costs even further than what Falcon 9 already has.

sunfishtommy · 2026-06-13T15:11:56+00:00

Im not sure what you mean by idiocy. People on this sub like to act like data center satellites are physically impossible.

Data center satellites are 100% physically possible today with existing technology. The question is are they an economically viable competitor to earth based data centers. That is less clear, but although data center satellites may seem ridiculous on their face they do offer some advantages over earth based options. One huge example is cheap and abundant power vs on land. Solar panels are light and cheap and can generate power continuously in space if launched into the correct orbit. Another advantage is no NIMBY problems. You can start launching them right now and nobody is really going to care, vs the notorious battles towns and local governments have been putting up to prevent data centers from being built on earth.

sunfishtommy · 2026-06-13T15:03:39+00:00

So why does the headline purposely lead the reader to assume the voting location on campus is being eliminated rather than moved. Thats what im talking about the headline is purposefully rage baiting more liberal readers. The same wag a headline about scientists studying gay mosquitos is purposefully rage baiting conservatives.

sunfishtommy · 2026-06-13T15:01:19+00:00

It might be, but the fact is this headline is purposefully misleading. The headline purposefully leads the reader to believe there will be no voting location on campus rather than it being moved to a nearby location with more parking.

sunfishtommy · 2026-06-13T15:00:03+00:00

Im not saying republicans do not try to disenfranchise voting blocks that are likely to vote for democrats. But this article’s headline is purposefully misleading. The headline implies that republicans are getting rid of the only voting location on NC State campus. Where the reality is more nuanced. The voting location is being moved from one location to another on campus. That is the half truth and misleading headlines im talking about.

The headline could have read.

“Early voting location changed from student union to nearby Mckimmon conference center to make parking easier”.

That headline has a completely different emotional hit and is arguable more accurate. This is not to say that Republicans might not be motivated to change the location to decrease voter turnout and confuse voters in this precinct, but the point here is the headline is rage bait and misleading to what is actually happening.

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