simonrowland

@space_stations Those are the bad ideas — I left out: 0. Spacesuit welding of I-beams.

@simonrowland Are those the good ones or the bad ones?

This is what i mean when I say we need to right-size our dreams. We can do MUCH more than we are currently doing. But engaging in currently unbuiltable science fiction is an absolute waste of time. Everything I do is buildable and affordable, today.

@space_stations Obviously he'd be better off with a monolithic inflatable than XXL monolithic rigid, but that's not the answer either. What should I do with some better ideas, other than just publish them, btw? Who do you think might commercialise it if I threw the design over the wall to them?

@simonrowland Well anywhere from a little bit less to about three times as much. I think it's possible to do but I'm just see all kinds of problems from the prospect of packing it in a way that doesn't damage it and actually be making it in a way that it holds up with no weak spots

@space_stations Honestly the well-known designs are not optimal. 1. Prefab metal cans with shuttle docking rings 2. Prefab semi-inflatables with shuttle docking rings 3. Self-assembling with magnets (sorry) 4. Panels assembled with lag bolts (better than welding) I have 3 new ones to write up.

@simonrowland I think that Nasa should be funding every theoretically possible idea on some level and and let reality decide

@space_stations He also needs a wiring harness including power distribution, solar, heatpipes, regular plumbing, appliances, chairs, etc. If the 'stuff' inside weighs more than your structural design, you're doing quite well. I also don't know what he's doing for cte-matched windows.

@simonrowland It is like carbon fiber Starship. We know how to do it, but it's extremely hard, slow and expensive, which made the difference between something that looked good on paper and something that works.

@signulll I've already switched to just using a MD editor basically.

lol what is the underlying value of suites of software like this if they’re augmented by ai actually creating / editing / understanding the content? go see my post on office 365 which got me some hate dm’s. the underlying canvas for almost everything augmented by ai is going to ~zero primarily because they’re being attacked by dual forces. it’s this (claude) from the top, & infinite competitors from the bottom (cuz ai makes creating niche competitors as easy as apple pie). you have to be short almost every legacy productivity suite at this point.

@astrogrant grok.com/share/c2hhcmQt…

Fun fact there are people seriously working on X-ray communication for hypersonics (missiles) and reentering vehicles in comm blackout due to the plasma sheath. X-ray passes right through it. Still a very sci fi concept at the moment.

@space_stations All the 'astronauts welding in spacesuits' stuff is a good start, but the best ways to make space habitats are going to be molten foam extrusion, CTE-matched Ni-Fe rebar with molten basalt using surface tension — continuous process stuff like that.

@simonrowland Is it 250,000m3? ;)

@space_stations No, but over 1M sq feet with < 20 launches, all but one being docking flights for commodities. I have to make a more detailed model but have been optimising the bejesus out of it.

@astrogrant It's all Chinese research, probably for hypersonic re-entry vehicles to threaten to kill westerners with, but happy that it's published.

@astrogrant grok.com/share/c2hhcmQt… Can be 95% transmission. That's super cool, probably easier than using magnets to open a hole in the plasma sheath.

@astrogrant Starlink requires a hole in the plasma ball you're in — that's super cool. I was trying to figure out how to get the data out of a disposable plasma magnet test article.

@_ZachFoster Are you just admitting that Hezbollah is simply an extension of Iran then?

The verdict is in. Israel has made the decision for the United States that there will be no end to the war.

@JeffGreason @S2SmeX All Long-EZs are cool (their fuel economy partly inspired me to do the PPL training), but that is definitely a cool one in particular.

Show me your best hardware project. Software people please don't respond ;)

@ToughSf @TheBrianMcManus Also, do optical interferometry by linking telescopes around the crater rim with mirrors.

On the dark side of the moon, a radio telescope could be suspended over a 5km diameter crater. it'd bypass the ionosphere and be shielded from Earth's electromagnetic noise, achieving substantially greater sensitivity. Real Engineering (@TheBrianMcManus): youtu.be/qdJ_gJ_kPEI

@e_volkmann @ggalletti_ Awesome.

Introducing gyaradax 🐉: A JAX solver for local flux-tube gyrokinetics with custom CUDA kernels for acceleration. This entire code was vibecoded by @ggalletti_ and me in a month. Validated against GKW (CPU-only Fortran code) with 10x speedups. Details and code in the replies.

@pulkit_mittal_ How would a simple COPY FROM not work fine? Export schema, drop index, copy, create index (from saved schema). I guess people don't know SQL anymore?

Google Interviewer: You’re given a single CSV file with 100M rows. You need to reliably persist all of it into a PostgreSQL table by tonight or you’re dead. How would you approach the problem.

@JeffGreason @jgeyser @ToughSf @slothtotheflame @dotkrueger @AsteroidEnergy @McGill_AdAstra A basic plasma magnet accessory for Starship outbound, including Moon. Simple drag from magnetopause onward. Magnetobraking to reduce heat-tile inspection costs. RMF; no electron ring. Fixing Starship heatshield's maintenance headache is worth a lot. Suggest it! @JeffGreason

@jgeyser @ToughSf @slothtotheflame @dotkrueger @AsteroidEnergy @McGill_AdAstra You have misunderstood the economics of SpaceX, I fear. Reusable rockets need *traffic volume*. Until there's a massive interplanetary transport business, reducing payload for Starship is an argument against interest. Now a SpaceX *competitor*, on the other hand...

We're not going to travel beyond the solar system, according to Leonard Susskind. And neither are aliens, coming to visit us. We may not be alone, but we are stuck here for, essentially forever. 1. The nearest star is 4.24 light years away. The fastest spacecraft ever built would require 6,600 years to get there. 2. Surely we can just build faster spacecraft. The problem is to get to anywhere close to the speed of light, we need exponentially more energy. 3. Chemical rockets will just not work. Even fusion rockets won't work. Even 10% of the speed of light is not achievable. The Tsiolkovsky Rocket Equation prevents it. 4. Interstellar dust becomes hand grenades when traveling anywhere close to the speed of light. Ships break. 5. Space radiation will kill us over the time need to travel interstellar distances. Impossible to protect without massive shields, which require massive energy to accelerate and de-accelerate.