Ben Brockert

Photos: Nationwide Protests Against Trump and Musk - Images from some of the hundreds of demonstrations held across the country, described by organizers as a “National Day of Action,” against the policies & actions of President Donald Trump and Elon Musk. theatln.tc/zlJak2EX

@davill Leaving debris in a near permanent orbit when you've never demonstrated stage safing does not seem great.

Our Blue Ring Pathfinder hit all our mission objectives within the planned six-hour journey after being inserted into the desired orbit by New Glenn with an apogee of 19,300 km and a perigee of 2,400 km at a 30-degree inclination. GS2 and the BE-3U engines nailed insertion with a less than 1% deviation from our exact orbital injection target.

@planet4589 For your orbital milestone collection: every object Astra launched has re-entered, OreSat0 was the final one about a month ago. Virgin Orbit has one object remaining, BRIK-II.

@SciGuySpace A single cost-plus contract would require SpaceX to rebuild their entire accounting system, open their books to government audit, and require them to add a bunch of overhead like tracking hours of their employees. Shouldn’t be a surprise to NASA or anyone else when they say no.

What I find interesting about the ISS deorbit contract is it started out as a hybrid: cost-plus for design, fixed-price for development. The final contract is firm, fixed price for all. I have not confirmed this, but I don't think SpaceX bid under the initial contract structure.

@AvalancheFusion Thanks, always good to have options that aren’t NI.

@wikkit Movicon. It’s open standard allowed us to use any hardware in the experiment instead of having to buy expensive Labview gear.

High-Voltage Wizard Moein Borghei at work making a run at conditioning fusion core to 300 kV

@DJSnM I made that engine, and shot that video. It's sitting in my storage unit.

Back in 2011 Armadillo Aerospace demonstrated a 4000lb Methalox engine which would be used for Project Morpheus. The VR900 engine on Intuitive Machine's NOVA-C isn't nearly as powerful, but shares heritage.

@TurbulentSphere Regen, so separately to keep the passages open, a fairly small fusion weld on the inside with basically no feature.

@wikkit @lars_0 Did you weld the two walls separately, or just blast through the whole thing?

Radax joints and U/C valves have names, I wonder if the "my printer is too short" split ring weld joint that shows up on almost every printed engine has a name?

@vanHinsbergen @twinderseis @Suzannavdl @UUGeo @UUEarthSciences Thanks!

@vanHinsbergen @twinderseis @Suzannavdl @UUGeo @UUEarthSciences Is the name a joke?

@Schlangenstein People are getting phished through booking.com's messaging system. old.reddit.com/r/travel/comme… - old.reddit.com/r/travel/comme… - old.reddit.com/r/travel/comme… - old.reddit.com/r/travel/comme… - old.reddit.com/r/travel/comme…

@milan_tomicc @RocketManJon @DJSnM Exactly. It is obviously better to fail on the stand than on the rocket, but an engine in acceptance testing should absolutely not explode. I went into it in more detail on Mastodon: @wikkit/110697445289408265" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">mastodon.social/@wikkit/110697…

@RocketManJon @wikkit @DJSnM That is most definitely NOT the purpose of acceptance testing. Acceptance test serves to verify if the system meets the operational requirements. When you reach that stage, failures of any kind, let alone catastrophic ones, are no longer expected to occur.

As we've seen with Raptor - expect engine failures during testing.

@twinderseis @Vedurstofan Interesting, thanks!

@wikkit @Vedurstofan Approximate position shown by the pink line. All of this activity is happening within the plate boundary zone. It isn't possible to draw a simple line when you are zoomed in this close! Background image from: facebook.com/17360633732744… showing lava flow path modelling.

If you look closely at the seismogram from @naspmon station faf, you can see a final burst of small earthquakes as the magma forced its way to the surface. Even better, they are located just beneath the eruption site where we now know the magma is! Which all makes sense. 🌋

@twinderseis @Vedurstofan Is this site north of the 'continental divide' of the peninsula? I'm having a hard time finding a proper topographic map.

Webcams from @RUVfrettir @morgunbladid youtube.com/live/yJfiMhqLg… youtube.com/live/iAD3F0EWv… Seismogram here: hraun.vedur.is/ja/drumplot/dr… (c/o @Vedurstofan) Earthquake viewer here: vafri.is/quake

@Rocket_Flyer @lougrims I can't find the original place I wrote it, but that very video prompted me to make up the Law of Rocket Test Videos, as paraphrased by Paul: twitter.com/unrocket/statu…

@wikkit @lougrims If you watch the video, it is a compilation of the same run,from different angles, which was only 2s long. The trombone TCA was only cooled to the throat. The rest was heatsink and that was the ultimate run limitation. The fully cooled TCA was a turd.

This is nerd bait.

@Rocket_Flyer I have it on a hard drive, but it’s in another country. I’ll put it up on YT next time I’m there.

@wikkit do you by chance have a copy of the old armadillo video of crash highlights (with the bomb pop) played to classical music?

@unrocket Every single Lunar Lander Challenge team went under. We all have to hope that the echoes of our work makes a positive value in the end.

@masa_rockets @BestCoastBrian Some days I regret the entire unreasonable rocket project, a huge commitment of time and resources to no good end. Then I see remnants of that project (forklift in this picture) still doing good and feel less bad about it.

Clem is goin’ on the rail!