Rick N. Tumlinson

So my friends, I follow @GregWAutry and so do the folks: @elonmusk @blueorigin @AerospaceCorp @pmarca = Marc Andreessen, Netscape @PalmerLuckey = Oculus / Anduril CEO @lrocket = Tom Mueller (SpaceX emp #1) @Lori_Garver = NASA Deputy Admin @MaxAdaster = Matt Anderson, NASA Deputy nom @ScottAdamSays = Scott Adams (RIP) @SolarGirl2018 = NASA AA Science @Thoms Zurbuchen = fmr NASA AA Science @newtgingrich = fmr House Speaker @maxhoat = VAST CEO @Jason_lil_Kim = Firefly CEO @realhomerhickam = October Sky

Register now for EarthSpace 2026! earthlightfoundation.org/earthspace/

Check out my latest article: An Ode to the Irony of Humanity linkedin.com/pulse/ode-iron… via @LinkedIn

Is Space Our Last Hope? A Conversation with the Godfather of NewSpace, R... youtu.be/W1NPyAnhjd0?si… via @YouTube

Last night my book "Why Space? The Purpose of People" hit #1 in Astronomy of the Universe on Amazon. If you’ve been meaning to pick up a copy, today would be the perfect time — and if you already have, buying one or more for your friends and team, sharing it or leaving a review would help us keep the momentum going. Link will be below!

Little podcast I did, live tomorrow. Love this guy's artwork! youtube.com/watch?v=W1NPyA…

I love this plane. Kind of like me, it ain't fancy, and it's certainly not beautiful. But it outlasts its opponents, has fire power beyond its size, and when called into the fight, it gets the job done. Lol!

Nothing to do with anything but I love this!

Look at that view! Catch the recap of last night's Stairway to Seven. Congrats to all our Fireflies on Alpha Flight 7 mission success!

Voyager opens defense and space tech hub in Long Beach spacenews.com/voyager-opens-…

.@SenatorSlotkin on Iran & Russia: "There's press reports that the Russians are helping target U.S. ships and aircraft… If Russia is helping to kill U.S. forces, we have crossed a Rubicon…We have to take decisive action on that, and instead, we're giving them breaks on oil."

Frank White gave astronauts the language to explain what they could not put into words. He called it the Overview Effect. Now it's our turn to send him to space so he can experience it directly, and you can fly alongside him. moondao.com/overview

This is so beautiful! Ukrainian drones destroyed one of the largest oil hubs in southern Russia, the Tikhoretsk oil pumping station. The facility serves as a major oil depot and transshipment terminal located in Russia’s Krasnodar region, through which large volumes of oil are transported.

We have just proven that we can deflect asteroids. Ever since @NASA crashed the DART probe into this asteroid's little moon, we've been tracking the result. Now we know its 770-day orbit around the Sun changed by a fraction of a second. That's enough to defend our Earth. The dinosaurs wish they'd had a space program! details: jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-dar…

Solar accounted for 54% of all new electricity-generating capacity added to the US grid in 2025. Combined, solar and storage made up 79% of new capacity last year. China has significant growths in solar capacity and generation — the US must be doing the same.

Today, my meeting with the President of Romania, @NicusorDanRO, focused primarily on strengthening the energy and economic capacities of both our nations so that together we can do more for the national security of our states. We are working to expand cross-border energy cooperation – building two new power transmission lines with Romania. Equally important is our ability to pursue projects together in resource extraction on the Black Sea shelf. Today, we also discussed projects in the oil and gas sector that can support us now, including in light of the challenges related to the Middle East. We reviewed opportunities for transporting American LNG to Ukraine via Romania. We are also working to open new border crossing points – and this will be achieved already this summer. I thank Romania for its principled position throughout all these years of Russia’s full-scale war. Ukraine and Romania are natural strategic partners. The geography of our region, the security challenges we face, and the economic needs of our peoples all point to one conclusion: cooperation between us must only grow stronger.

BREAKING: Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest oil company, is negotiating to buy drone interceptors from Ukraine, the country Russia has been bombing for four years, to defend its oil fields from Iran, the country America has been bombing for two weeks. Read that sentence as many times as you need. It is the 21st century in a single transaction. The Wall Street Journal reports that a Saudi intermediary closely tied to Aramco is in advanced talks with Ukrainian manufacturers SkyFall and Wild Hornets for their P1-SUN and STING interceptor drones, plus Phantom Defense electronic warfare systems, in a multi-million-dollar batch purchase explicitly designed to destroy Iranian Shahed-type drones before they reach Saudi oil infrastructure. Ukraine learned to kill Shaheds by being hit with them. Russia has launched thousands of Iranian-made Shaheds at Ukrainian cities, power stations, and military positions since 2022. Ukrainian engineers did not study the Shahed in a laboratory. They studied it falling through their bedroom ceilings. They reverse-engineered the threat, built interceptors calibrated to its exact flight profile, radar signature, and thermal characteristics, and fielded them under fire. The interceptors work because the engineers who built them did so while the drones they were designed to kill were attacking their homes. Now Saudi Arabia wants to buy that knowledge. Not from Lockheed. Not from Raytheon. Not from the Patriot system that costs $3 million per missile and was designed to kill ballistic warheads, not $20,000 drones. From Ukrainian startups that built their products in basements and tested them on battlefields. The strategic implications cascade across every domain this war touches. For Ukraine, this is the moment the country transforms from victim to vendor. Zelensky’s government has spent four years asking the world for weapons. It is now selling them. Every interceptor drone that ships to Saudi Arabia funds Ukraine’s own defence, reduces Kyiv’s dependence on Western aid, and demonstrates that the country the world pitied has become the world’s most experienced counter-drone power. The “salesman of the year” meme circulating on X understates it. Ukraine is not selling products. It is selling survival expertise, and the market for survival expertise in a world of $20,000 drones is every country with infrastructure worth protecting. For Saudi Arabia, this is an admission that the most expensive Western air defence systems in the world cannot efficiently kill the cheapest weapons in the world. The Kingdom operates Patriot batteries, THAAD interceptors, and an integrated air defence architecture that costs tens of billions. Against ballistic missiles, these systems perform. Against saturation swarms of $20,000 Shaheds, they are economically irrational: a $3 million Patriot missile destroying a $20,000 drone is a 150-to-1 cost inversion that the attacker wins by firing. Ukraine’s interceptors cost a fraction of Western missiles and are purpose-built for exactly the threat Iran is deploying. Aramco is not buying Ukrainian because it is fashionable. It is buying Ukrainian because the math demands it. For Iran, this is the beginning of the end of the Shahed’s strategic advantage. The drone that closed Hormuz, burned Salalah, struck the SafeSea Vishnu, hit towers in Dubai, and terrorised Gulf capitals for two weeks is about to face a countermeasure designed by the people who have been fighting it longest. If Saudi fields are protected by Ukrainian interceptors calibrated to the Shahed’s exact signature, the IRGC’s cheapest and most effective weapon becomes progressively less effective with every unit deployed. For the world, this is the moment the drone age produces its own antibody. The same battlefield that created the threat created the cure. Ukraine is the immune system the Gulf is purchasing. open.substack.com/pub/shanakaans…