alan birtles

@Stuck4ger We regularly fly way more than a few hundred feet above terrain, in high mountainous regions it might only be 1000 ft but over flat lands it can be 6000 ft or even higher. We are only limited by cloudbase

Although hang gliders & paragliders often fly thousands of feet above the valley floor, they typically are within a few hundred feet of terrain. Their reserve parachutes have special bridle lengths so as to be deployed w/o cutting away & [hopefully] w/o tangling with the glider!

@RedPanda556 @DJSnM Plenty of men have done plenty of stupid things in planes too

In December 2023 a plane crashed while being flown by an influencer going by the nickname 'TNFlyGirl'. There was lots of discussion at the time, but it took over 2 years for the report to be finally released. And honestly the report is somewhat unsatisfying, attributing the blame to the pilot's inability to control this higher power aircraft. And looking back it's clear the pilot had trouble with the whole straight and level thing, not just in this flight but previous flights. However this feels a bit like a cop out because it's not clear what went so radically wrong in the last minute of the flight that prompted her to declare an emergency just before the plane nosed over rapidly and then failed to pull out of its dive in time.

@metoffice The previous version is still available from apkmirror.com/apk/met-office… Hopefully they don't break that too

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@Erdayastronaut It made lots of really pretty explosions

We had SO MANY write-ins for "Starship" to win the top award for most inspirational, innovative and important mission of 2025... So... tell me, what specific thing did Starship do in 2025 that makes it deserve an Astro Award, let alone the TOP award of the year?

@DJSnM @SandyofCthulhu en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Push-butt…

@DJSnM @SandyofCthulhu wikipedia says the casio 14-A was released in 1957 with the bell push button phone following in the early 60s en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calculator casio-calculator.com/Museum/Pages/N… en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Push-butt…

A guy who worked for TI back in the day told me that after they created the first electronic hand calculator, they got a call from Bell Telephone. The folks from Bell sounded uncertain and worried. You see, when they were creating the first push-button phone, they did extensive tests to determine the exact best pattern for the numerical buttons - the pattern that would be easiest for people to tap in the dark or by muscle memory. But now they were concerned they’d completely blundered, because they saw that TI’s machine had the exact opposite layout. “So,” they asked. “What did your tests show?” The guys at TI just stared stupidly and said “Tests?”

@proales @DJSnM She had a medical issue that was causing depression (with no mention of it being as bad as suicidal), during that time she didn't fly. She's had treatment, is feeling better, why shouldn't she fly?

I really want to share this video highlighting a current problem with the FAA medical process. Xyla is an awesome person who builds all sorts of cool things and also flies planes for fun, but not any more. youtube.com/watch?v=aj0H8o… Under the current set of rules it's very likely a career ending move for a professional pilot to get any kind of professional help The FAA Special Issuance Certification process covers a lot of 'permanent' conditions - things like heart problems which require lots of extra work to get approved for flight a process that takes too long and leaves pilots grounded for months *every year* even if they ultimately get cleared. And this covers even the slightest hint of mental health issues, which means pilots are just avoiding things that could be dealt with easily because once the medical records hit the system they're in this bucket, in a constant battle to keep their medical. And some end up 'self medicating' with alcohol which is also a condition on this list, I'd prefer qualified pilots not making the world less safe because of antiquated rules. Last year the FAA reauthorization bill required the establishment of a working group to modernize this process, but this was always going to take a long time even before staff reductions.

@stuartitter @CasualArtyFan There should be built in checks and tolerances to prevent a small error by one person causing an accident.

@stuartitter @CasualArtyFan Even if the investigation shows this to be the case (which is hasn't yet), pilot error will only be one of the many holes in the Swiss cheese causing this accident. Routinely having aircraft passing with 200 feet vertical separation is crazy, it was an accident waiting to happen

All I’m asking for is human decency. If people won’t listen to experienced pilots on this event, please listen to this woman who just lost her husband.

@DJSnM FTS triggered as soon as the last sea level raptor died and therefore no gimbal

Doesn't look too good for the ship though, loss of telemetry with one vacuum engine showing lit, I wonder where the ship is coming down at that speed.

@Erdayastronaut There is a scheme attacking the problem from the other direction by certifying genuine content c2pa.org

I'm already getting VERY concerned about how easy it is to deceive people with AI generated content. I think there needs to be a protocol that these generators are required to bake into the metadata that says how much of the image is artificially generated, and then platforms that share images (X, Instagram, Facebook, etc etc) have a place to click that discloses how much of the image is AI generated. Then we also need Apple / Android etc to take the same precautions when trying to screen capture DMCA content (where it either blacks out the screen) or inherently captures the AI metadata so you can't just override it by screen capturing. This has already gone from fun and games to misleading and in the very near future it will not only make people believe false things, but it'll also falsely raise skepticism when things are real and actually worth paying attention to. What do we do about this?!? @elonmusk you have a lot of say on both sides of this coin with both X and Grok, what's the plan on preventing this from being a horrible thing for humanity?

@danw58 @DJSnM making the fibres and connectors robust enough to survive launch might be an issue

@DJSnM I'm ~70% on board: It eliminates EMI problems, charged particles hitting cables, & reduces total mass (copper is heavy). But why not use very lightweight opto-fiber connectivity? Same advantages but with much higher speed and without needing camera + sight AI with its latency.

This is a neat concept, get rid of a whole bunch of wiring for low bandwidth data and just have each component have a LED blinking coded status that can be picked up by a camera occ4sat.eu

@AsthMattic117 @DJSnM Has happened a few times space.stackexchange.com/questions/1893…

@DJSnM How common is humans taking one vehicle to space and then returning on a totally different vehicle? I feel like this is a first but also don't follow the specific logistics too closely.

Starliner is still the contingency return vehicle should there be an emergency, but it needs to undock, and after that the Crew 8 dragon will be the return vehicle until Crew 9 arrives.

@jabe8 @SciGuySpace Has to be dragon ones, they're essentially an integral part of the vehicle

@SciGuySpace Did I miss what suits they will wear on return home?

NASA is saying "early September" for the uncrewed undocking of Starliner from the ISS. The tentative date I've heard is September 6.

@SpaceByStorm @DJSnM Depends on your definition of "safe", i think they're reasonably confident that they would land safely, just not completely confident

@DJSnM Ummm if it’s not safe to return home in. I’m not sure I want it as my emergency lifeboat. 😑

@DJSnM @NASA Nothing they don't want to lose 🤣

So, if starliner is going home solo, are @nasa going to use any of the cargo capacity to bring things home?

@NicCompton1 @DJSnM Vulcan is the plan once it's certified for human flight #Launch_vehicle" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_St…

@DJSnM Remind me, what are they planning to launch Starliner on for future missions (if there are any) if Atlas is fully booked out?

It occurs to me that if another Starliner flight were needed there are no free boosters because they’re all assigned to customers like Amazon Küper. But Boeing could negotiate ‘buy’ the booster from Amazon. ‘Customers who bought this also bought….’

@DJSnM I'd guess they removed it to save on QA, if it's not there you don't need to test it still works

Regarding the rumors about the ‘overspecialization’ of Starliner’s software I once again find myself as a coder wondering how such a thing could happen. But equally I find myself unsurprised that management focussed on short term bottom line could enable this kind of mess.

@GregKustanovich @DJSnM @SpaceX I'd imagine they didn't do the engine test due to not being in a controlled attitude, the reentry failed for the same reason. I don't get the impression that the relight test would have used significant fuel. Starship needs to reenter with fuel anyway if it's going to land

@DJSnM @SpaceX It didn't survive reentry because they did not test the in flight engine re-ignition. That's why planes dump fuel before making an emergency landing. You are too heavy to land with fuel on board.

OK, so Congratulations again to @spacex on pushing out the envelope further, achieving orbit, prop transfer and not exploding are all good. And I hope we're back again in a couple of months to see another flight with more success.

@Thisguyhere85 @Orbital_Perigee @lrocket @johnkrausphotos @SpaceX The cost is less important on starship as it'll be reused

@Orbital_Perigee @lrocket @johnkrausphotos @SpaceX The Starship use a nobium skirt?

@SpaceX The streak pattern is caused by the vanes that center the turbine exhaust housing at the slot that injects the turbine exh into the nozzle. We tried to reduce the streaks but found they actually acted like structural ribs and improved the buckling margin on the niobium skirt.