Ben Longmier
1.3K posts
Ben Longmier
@longmier
Sr Director, Satellite Engineering @Spacex
Bay Area Katılım Mart 2015
342 Takip Edilen15.7K Takipçiler
2 down, 48 to go
Here we come IL
Travis Kavulla@TKavulla
Delighted to announce @basepowerco has received its first state license to operate as an electricity retailer outside Texas. We're heading to Illinois! Thank you @ILCommerceComm for approving our application! Let me explain why we're heading to the Land of Lincoln🧵
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Xenon.
Nice work to the team on a fast spin.
From the neutral line emissions (magenta halo) it looks like the background pressure may be 2 to 5e-5 Torr (pumping speed is quite expensive, no fault). If so, be sure to do a check at a facility like the U Mich chamber and do a pressure / pumping speed sweep so you can back correlate your real efficiency and thrust measurements to this data. 3 days at PEPL with Ben Jorns, with students taking real performance data is not too expensive. My guess is your efficiency and thrust may be 15-20% higher than at 5e-7 Torr. Stability is also quite different vs background pressure. Godspeed.
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Name that emission spectrum if you can
Halen Mattison@HalenMattison
Sharing one of the coolest photos from @gengalactic last year. We went from clean sheet design to operating a next-generation Hall thruster in a vacuum chamber in 43 days! This is a fully in-house design (not licensed) and among the first commercial thrusters intended for a wide variety of propellants. And we've got several other major wins to share soon, but more on that later. By far the hardest part of this was manufacturing. There are so few machinists that can work with ceramics and magnetics, even in LA. We'll be vertically integrating a lot more of the manufacturing processes moving forward.
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@cambridgemike Just default settings on my iPhone 17 Air, which is a far worse camera than the 16 or 15 pro.
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Beautiful day in California for a solo flight up to Point Reyes, Bodega Bay, and where the Russian River meets the Pacific.
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I hope thats true with companies like Joby. Although I’ll still fly for fun (I suppose its like people that still horseback ride for fun).
I have about 400 hrs (VFR and IFR) over 19 yrs. Mostly just local flights but sometimes use for norcal to socal for fun or work trips. This one has a whole plane parachute (Cirrus SR22T).
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nice plane and scene.
How many hours of flight have you logged? I still wonder about doing this myself but the single engine and crash potential concern me.
I wonder if these can be made dramatically simpler and autonmously fly in the next decade. It'd be a nice thing if we're right about costs coming down.
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@BigTechAlert @ConsulofRome_ In between current situations to monitor, one must be informed about historical situations, including the ultimate situation.
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@Rainmaker1973 The universe is fundamentally integer.
There are a finite number of Planck cubes, which means a limited number of digits of pi (which can be thought of in integer form) to calculate volume.
And you cannot have a fraction of a quark or lepton, so … integer.
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Did you know?
NASA only uses 15 digits of π for calculating interplanetary travel.
At 40 digits, you could calculate the circumference of a circle the size of the visible universe with an accuracy that'd fall off by less than the diameter of a hydrogen atom.
π Day 2026
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There is no civilian application on earth that requires 60% enriched uranium.
None.
Power plants run on 3-5%. Research reactors the most specialized civilian use in existence top out at 20%.
The entire legitimate civilian nuclear spectrum, from the smallest research facility to the largest commercial power plant, lives below 20%.
Everything above that line is weapons-usable by definition that’s not an opinion, that’s the International Atomic Energy Agency’s own classification standard.
Iran was at 60%. Not 21%. Not 25%. Sixty percent three times past the civilian ceiling, eleven percentage points from weapons grade, with the centrifuge infrastructure to cross that final gap in under one week according to the Defense Intelligence Agency.
There is one reason and one reason only to enrich uranium to 60% you are building toward 90% and you want just enough plausible deniability to keep diplomats arguing while your centrifuges keep spinning.
And anyone telling you it was for energy either doesn’t understand basic nuclear physics or is hoping you don’t.
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@calidaysay I’m an extreme night owl by nature and now get up at 5 am bc of daughter.
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Two orders of magnitude improvement in Direct to Cell (now called @Starlink Mobile) for V2. Huge improvement and amazing forthcoming work by the Starlink team.
Starlink@Starlink
Starlink Mobile is providing data for video, voice, and messaging services in areas where terrestrial service is unavailable Working with global mobile network operators, our satellite-to-mobile network has grown to 32+ countries, home to 1.7B+ people → starlink.com/mobile
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Ben Longmier retweetledi
Starlink Mobile’s next-gen satellites will deliver 5G speeds from space with 100x the data density of the current V1 generation satellites
V2 satellites will seamlessly enable streaming, internet browsing, high-speed apps and voice calls, just like being connected to a terrestrial network → starlink.com/mobile
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Neutrino comms or you’re not even trying.
This dude developed a super small detector using a cesium iodide crystal, for detecting some flavors of neutrino.
ornl.gov/news/worlds-sm…
It rather shocks me, that we really only use 2 particles for almost all of our daily information processing widgets. I guess they are the easiest to use and modulate with fets and diodes.
outside five sigma@jwt0625
very nice demo, if it's not directional enough, would still be jammable. to really be safe, you either make it highly directional, or use some very uncommon waves or particles. now hear me out, laser plasma muon source: highly directional, exotic particles, penetrate thick rocks, and muon detection is cheap.
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Ben Longmier retweetledi
NEWS: Globe Telecom targets 100% coverage across the Philippines in 2026 using Starlink Direct-to-Cell, becoming the first major carrier to commit fully to SpaceX's satellite-to-cell technology. globe.com.ph/about-us/newsr…
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@DrPhiltill Speaking of which (A), do you think the CCP had an influence in the recent Dutch wealth tax craziness? If some of the senior or top engineers depart the Netherlands/ASML, seems like an advantage for China?
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I think control of the world comes down to which is first:
(A) China develops EUV lithography tech comparable to ASML’s tech
(B) The US develops automated manufacturing cities that produce AI and energy systems at extreme speed.
As of now, I think China wins. Stealing and copying of IP means China will get EUV lithography fairly soon. But regulations, politics, and lack of urgency in the US will hold back development of robot cities for manufacturing. I think setting it up on the Moon will be necessary later, but not fast enough to beat (A). I think to compete, western countries need sidestep the regulations by establishing special economic zones (SEZs) right now and go all-in as a wartime economy.
Sad to say, but this is my honest view.
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@Jason @BigTechAlert Haha sorry, didn’t mean to unfollow. Love the podcast. Carry on :)
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Clearly the true explanation is that Johnny 5 went full AGI laser lips mode without warning anyone else first.
OSINTdefender@sentdefender
Wednesday morning’s brief airspace closure over the Western Texas border city of El Paso stemmed from disagreements between the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and Pentagon officials over drone-related tests, multiple sources close to the matter told CBS News. The Pentagon had undertaken extensive planning on the use of military technology near Fort Bliss, to practice taking down drones, with two sources identifying the particular technology used Wednesday as a high-energy laser. Meetings were scheduled over safety impacts, but Pentagon officials wanted to test the technology sooner, stating that U.S. Code 130i requirements governing the protection of certain facilities from unmanned aircraft had been met. However, on Tuesday night, FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford decided to close the airspace - without alerting the White House, Pentagon or Homeland Security. Bedford told officials the airspace restrictions would be in place to ensure safety until issues had been resolved with the War Department.
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