Will Wade

May 16, 1963. Gordon Cooper was orbiting Earth alone inside a capsule barely big enough to turn around in, moving at 17,500 miles per hour. He had been up there for over a day. Then the warnings started. First a faulty sensor screaming that the ship was falling — it wasn't. He switched it off. Then something far worse: a short circuit knocked out the entire automated guidance system. The one that kept the capsule steady. The one that was supposed to bring him home. Without it, reentry was nearly impossible. Too shallow an angle and the capsule would bounce off the atmosphere back into space. Too steep and it would incinerate. The margin for error was razor thin — and every computer that was supposed to hit that margin was dead. Down on the ground, NASA engineers watched the telemetry in silence. They could see everything going wrong. They could fix nothing. Cooper didn't panic. He uncapped a grease pencil and drew lines directly on the inside of his window to track the horizon. He looked up at the stars he had spent months memorizing and used their positions to orient the ship by eye. Then he set his wristwatch. Because when you have no computers left, you become the computer. At exactly the right moment — calculated in his head, confirmed by the stars outside — he fired the retrorockets. The capsule shook. The sky turned to fire. For several minutes, no one on Earth could reach him as plasma swallowed the ship whole. Then the parachutes opened. Faith 7 hit the water just four miles from the recovery ship — the single most accurate splashdown in the entire Mercury program. The man with a wristwatch and a few pencil marks on a window had outperformed every automated system NASA had. We talk a lot about technology saving us. And it often does. But Cooper's story is a quiet reminder that behind every machine, there still has to be a human being who can look out the window, think clearly under pressure, and decide what to do next. The final backup was never the software. It was him.

So cool, @HiMichelleMa

You always gotta read @HiMichelleMa and this one today is a banger. #geothermal energy is fascinating!

Incredible post. I had no idea the industrial policy that helped spawn the world's biggest semiconductor manufacturer traces directly back to the New Deal's Tennessee Valley Authority.

The Trump Administration just canceled another one of my projects even though we hit all of our technical and scientific milestones. What a way to run a country.

Released 49 years ago today: "White Riot" by The Clash, the band's first single from their debut album The Clash (with Jimmy Pursey) – White Riot - Live 1978, Victoria Park, London #punk #punks #punkrock #theclash #whiteriot #history #punkrockhistory #otd

“But, as you see, it's a beautiful day, the Strait of Hormuz is open and people are having a wonderful time!”

Big scoop this morning: The Trump administration has held talks with Westinghouse's rivals to discuss potentially funding construction of large reactors *other than the AP1000*. The move comes as the Energy Department grows frustrated that it hasn't reached a deal yet to fund another large reactor with a settled design. So officials from the agency met with executives from GE Hitachi to talk about bringing back the ABWR, the nearly 1.4-gigawatt beast of a design with a great record of running for decades Japan. Likewise, the administration met with the South Korean government to discuss the possibility of building that country's lead third-generation large reactor, the APR-1400. There are big questions around both designs, but one thing is sure: Like the AP1000, both are already certified to be built in the U.S.

Javier Blas is the best. He’s unmute every time

Journalism/PR bulletin: I reported a story this week on a very large company. Gave them 24 hours notice to provide comment. Which they later did via a brief email that was devoid of details. They offered no on-camera interview. Big companies rarely do those anymore. 1/

Map of where coal burning power plants will begin releasing higher volumes of toxic heavy metals. These are the regions that industries of the 21st century will abandon. They will be left behind, for the benefit of few. In economics, it called opportunity cost.

US Is Rapidly Expanding Its Nuclear Supply Chain: It's Not Nearly Fast Enough zerohedge.com/energy/us-rapi…

🧵: 8 Big Wins for Nuclear in the Trump Administration’s First Year A quick thread on some MAJOR changes that gave the U.S. nuclear energy industry huge momentum heading into Year 2 (1/6)

Puerto Rico hasn't had reliable power in a decade. The grid sends occasional surges through the wires that fry appliances. Electricity rates are among the highest in the entire U.S. Heat waves are getting intense in the summer, and outages mean air conditioning is no guarantee for an aging population. A coal plant producing deadly pollution was just extended for years because the island needs more power generation. Utility-scale solar projects have also taken a toll, messing with local hydrology and flooding neighboring barrios. The territory depends on a financially troubled LNG company that has given up its long-term incentives for good service in favor of short-term payouts for the natural gas that's supposed to shore up the grid. Pretty wild that a small part of that story was told on stage at the Super Bowl halftime show tonight.

Well that’s an awkward way of finding out that RING cameras are remotely controlled and have facial recognition.

Yesterday a NYT investigation came out, documenting how the executive branch is stalling hundreds of wind and solar projects nationwide — not by denying permits on the merits but by ignoring requests for permits, slow walking them, and otherwise intervening in the federal permitting process in an unprecedented way. An illustrative project is Kaskaskia Wind — delayed indefinitely waiting for wildlife and water permits. The project lost its spot in the interconnection queue after the developer had **already invested $10 million.** Coincidentally, yesterday a new bill, the FREEDOM Act, came out that attempts to respond to just these problems. ifp.org/how-to-create-… FREEDOM would give agencies set timelines to issue (or deny) permits with fees paid to the developer if those are missed, along with many other reforms aimed at "permitting certainty" to address the exact problems the investigation reveals.

lol (not lol). Lorain County Ohio voted for conservative commissioners. Funding levels are now at the lowest level since 1996! Huzzah! So the county commissioner decided to default on payments for 41 police cruisers which are now being repossessed They defunded the police lol

Don Lemon and Georgia Fort have been released. But the procedural history now emerging is unusual. Before the arrests, a federal magistrate judge found no probable cause to arrest them. The government appealed anyway. Here’s why that matters—and what it signals more broadly.

I…worked on this story for years…and… he just sang it out as pop punk emo.

one startup begins delivering power this year and is worth multiples less than the other startup that begins delivering power next decade? geothermal needs some sexier marketing