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Cake day: June 30th, 2023

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  • Idk, i think SpaceX is catching a lot of heat just because they have musk “at the helm”. He doesnt even do anything there, he isnt an aerospace engineer. They just let him sit in mission control so he can feel special. The actual work spacex is doing is revolutionary. Reuseable rockets are a seriously groundbreaking development. Almost everything you do these days relies on a sattelite connection, so doing that cheaper, more reliably, and less wastefully is massive.

    Starlink is a different matter tho, its just another ISP but with a fancy connection method.



  • AFAIK helium is only used to prepare the fuel and oxidizer lines for burns and to backfill propellant tanks. Liquid propellant has to be kept extremely far below zero and if the lines aren’t 1, down to apropriate temperatures and 2, clear of anything that isnt rocket fuel it can cause some serious damage so helium is a purging gas. Also as the propellant is used they have to keep the fuel tanks pressurized with helium to maintain a higher pressure upstream of the engine. You dont want an engine to burn backwards.

    That being said, this mission wasnt slated to take extremely long or be particularly complex (im aware oribital mechanics are by default complex but its just a mission to and from the ISS, no midflight reconfigurations like the saturn missions).

    Mission control is full of engineers who know this rocket better than anyone else ever will. If they had reason to believe a small complication isnt worth worrying about we have no choice but to believe them. There are so many systems in place for a rocket launch, there has to be some wiggle room in terms of non critical systems and issues. Its kind of a morbid fact that if we dont launch until it’s 100% perfect nothing would leave florida.




  • This is something that steve jobs talked about in an interview that I cannot find at the moment. Its ironic coming from him, but he was talking about when a company truly begins to die. His theory was that when a company is founded, the people that made and designed the product/service are in positions of power. But as a company grows and lives on they get replaced with marketing people. They dont know how to make anything, but they do have that “line go up” mentality. Instead of making something better, the marketing and sales people find ways to sell worse things. Again, hilarious coming from him but i think he had a point.







  • Call me naive but i think even if he goes to push the button either someone else will stop him or the guy who actually launches the missile wont do it. AFAIK he doesnt have a launch button, but a “ok to launch” button, and theres a surprising history of people refusing to do so even when ordered.

    Not to downplay the severity or anything, putin is a madman the world is better off without. Im worried he’ll continue his warpath, but not worried he’ll destroy the world if that makes sense.