Kyle Cothern

first time electrical cabinet builders unite! I'm sure the second one will look better lol.

2/2 Regarding the need for a supply chain, I totally agree. I see NVIDIA developing chips specially designed for the space radiation environment, and I don't doubt SpaceX is working behind the scenes to adapt the Starlink architecture to data centers, but there's an opportunity for entrepreneurs to innovate many other components. If I were younger and wanted to start a company, this is what I would be doing. Regarding the need for in-space maintenance, again, I totally agree. The initial SpaceX versions based on distributed compute with optical links will probably just discard failed satellites (similar to Starlink) as the most economical approach, but longer-term having maintainable and more centralized compute will win out. This will require innovations in robotics for autonomous replacement of ever smaller assemblies. The math for reliability and economics of data centers show how progress in this area will be crucial. Should be straightforward robotics and AI engineering, but somebody's got to do it, and whoever leads in this could make a fortune. So which companies are working on these things? I bet there are many already in stealth mode in addition to the few that have announced. Get to work! Let's move most of our compute and energy footprint off the planet ASAP.

Solid piece on Space Data Centers by J. Callison and my good friend Joe Minafra (one of the coolest people in the world, BTW, and head of innovation for NASA SSERVI). They argue the need for supply chain and in-space maintenance of space data centers. 1/2 spacenews.com/hardware-is-no…

tragic that locomobile didn't make it.

it is remarkable how similar these graphs are.

Arguably satellite manufacturing has been around since 2017 or so, and everything before that was bespoke ornate artisanal crafts, in much the way Ford was the first scale automotive manufacturer, despite cars existing before Ford.

*Me, consulting the tube collection* "Hmmmm, yes, this shipping tube has the perfect dimensions for this rocket project. I wonder where I got it?" *Checks label* "Oh .."

Cowboy Bebop Tech Aesthetic:

@Foximus05 we had a pretty good system for finding the conference rooms that had catered leftovers. one time someone did a honeypot to lure and trap the scavengers, Lunch ops had enough intel to avoid the bait, circled back after the first group got yelled at and got free hummus house.

@risknc Lunch Ops had a much higher success rate than Launch Ops.

The Lunch / Launch Jokes have been in heavy rotation since at least 2011. but most likely going back to the dawn of rocketry.

@RyanOkerson who hired that guy? How did he get past the CAD test?

This just sounds like worse CAD Itd be more useful to have contextual highlighting that tells you when you're outside of your planned tool's capacity. (And has a tool library to guess which tool to use next). But the combinatorial would get real bad fast.

@emm0sh hardware startups tend to prioritize: 1. part needs to work 2. part needs to be as cheap as possible. Large manufactures prioritize: 1. Part needs to be as cheap as possible 2. part still needs to work.

@emm0sh The design meets requirements efficiently. Manufacturing realizes the design. Sometimes the design has manufacturing requirements, but manufacturing adapts to the design, not the other way around. Until you hit mass production. Then manufacturing drives the design.

this is a case where the CAD companies couldn’t actually make the product better, and it wasn’t negligence on their part the problem with “show the engineer their mistakes in CAD” is that “mistake” is subjective. not only does it depend on the machine shop, it depends on the person within the machine shop the reason why shops like sendcutsend and protolabs can give you fast CNC DFM is because they have explicitly developed their guidelines and no matter who you speak to, they have a hard line on what they can and can’t do this isn’t true outside of these services. everything is a negotiation. i can get my local machine shop to cut hard internal corners but i have to buy them the EDM machine first and this takes us to the fundamental problem with CAD, or engineering software in general being useful per DFM feedback — it has to be driven by the downstream operators (people who are doing the actual CAM and cutting the actual parts) this is nearly impossible because it requires: a. your manufacturers giving you up to date and reliable information b. that information being objective (it often isn’t) c. ingesting it into CAD quickly/naturally d. it being presented meaningfully in your CAD application of choice d is impossible because c would require an interoperable format from ISO or ASME (i’m currently working on this with the ASME MBE committee, so good news there) there are scammy-ish startups out there like bananaz purporting to be doing this but for the reasons i’ve listed they are not (i’ve already tried involving them to solve c and they are not interested)

the analogous tool would be CAD that only lets you design parts that have + margins in FEA you have to spend so much time defining everything else, and it could change quickly as you iterate, it might make sense to do CAD first and figure out FE models and tooling later

Ok so.... A friend sent me this I'd be down if they'd specify mono or unsymmetrical di, and add two more mugs for TEA and TEB. (The TEA-TEB mugs would be green when put together) Honestly they could probably make a mug for every spicy thing in ignition and make bank.

I know enough about hydrogen safety.

@Skyhawkson @sdamico Yeah in civil the government isn't going to absorb the liability. In aerospace the FAA sort of does.

@risknc @sdamico Typically the regulator, usually the FAA and FCC. You don't need an engineer of record, the company submits a report as-required and the gov't issues certification/approval. For commercial aircraft, this is a type certificate.

we’ve mostly dodged this but imagine if SpaceX had to hire “professional engineers” (this is a thing that has been largely evaded by Silicon Valley for decades) we would be grounded

@Skyhawkson @sdamico Cert and qual are set up on a per design basis. If you aren't actually validating the design for its flight like conditions then it can be certified and have passed qual but still fail. But yeah. Review is about redundancy in sets of eyes. Regulatory is too.

@Skyhawkson @sdamico Who confirms the cert and qual tests meet regulations.