thanær

@CSI_Starbase @rocketrepreneur They will just switch to Nitrogen if huge Helium shortage issues arise.

@rocketrepreneur SpaceX uses massive amounts of Helium to maintain temperatures in all of their LOX tank farms.

I wonder if this ends up impacting rocket launches. While some cryogenic stages are working toward autogenous pressurization, my understanding is that most of them currently use helium in COPVs for pressurization...

@mcrs987 @heartagramed The Chinese are watching and their copycat infrastructure is ready. All they need is a few technical details from SpaceX and they win the race.

It's more of a 'there's nothing of substance here' typa thing. We go entire years without updates on it and when we do the most substantial thing done so far is an ECLSS prototype. They say they're building a flight-like cabin now but there's been no material on it. Same goes for supposed leg drop tests. There's been utterly nothing on the propulsion system, ie, the engines that do final descent and their supporting systems for managing propellant. Every single time we see it the design also is changed which isn't exactly promising. The most recent update in (august?) 2025 had quite literally one thing done that year out of the 14 items listed. Everything else was done in 2022/23/24, concentrated around the earlier side of that window. Most of said items were small things, navigation and such. One was even just "integrated lunar mission operations plan review". Nothing of any material substance, quite literally just listing teleconferences as progress. And it's supposed to launch next year for the A3 orbital docking if not doing an uncrewed lunar landing before that happens. And people are only just realizing the problem here

Okay so first it was “SpaceX hasn’t given us any update on HLS”, and then when they do that; now we’re complaining about them not doing a bunch of PR photo shoots? Y’all niggas complain too much lol.

@RedwoodMat It’s just regulations: “UL 1973 does not yet provide a compliance pathway for repurposed automotive packs. This is a standards gap, not a safety gap.”

Energy demand is surging. Storage is the unlock. We’re building a faster, lower-cost solution using batteries already here. Our whitepaper goes deeper: how we decide reuse vs. recycle, system architecture, and how Redwood Energy compares to LFP (90%+ lower carbon emissions). redwoodmaterials.com/resources/unlo…

Don’t get me wrong; I’m all for power electronics, since I’m deep into the renewables and storage field for over 10 years. However, the fact that indeed power electronics - based “inverter failures accounted for 36% of lost energy in utility-scale systems over a 27-month study period, with inverters failing 300 to 500 times more frequently than PV modules” seems counter-intuitive.

@CSI_Starbase Keeping in mind that we’ve already reached peak oil globally, thanx to RES energy production and electrification of all, there is zero incentive in putting new oil or gas rigs online.

I've noticed there appears to be a fundamental misunderstanding about how the oil and gas industry actually works, especially in the US. So let me try to put this into proper perspective. You can’t dramatically increase oil output without bringing new wells online. There is no magic dial you can just turn up when ever you need more. From leasing and permitting, to site prep, to drilling, to completion, to production, the process can take anywhere from 4 to 12 months. So companies don’t respond to today’s prices, they respond to where they expect prices to be over that entire window. If the expectation is that current conditions are short-lived, there’s very little incentive to ramp activity. If the message being communicated is that the conflict is already over, or close to it, that reinforces the idea that by the time new wells come online, prices will likely have normalized. Because of that, we’re unlikely to see a meaningful increase in rig count in the US in the near term, and in fact, activity has already begun to trend lower. The only thing that reliably drives higher activity is sustained confidence that elevated prices will persist long enough to justify the investment. In other words, they are waiting for a clear signal that current conditions will last, not just spike. In this case that signal would probably be an openly communicated commitment to a lengthy ground war. Everything I've just stated is basically a fact, although I'm sure some will disagree about specific details. Now here's where the speculation starts. If someone were trying to plan for this potential disruption in advance without a clear understanding of how the industry works, they might assume Venezuela, the country with the largest oil reserves, could simply be brought in to offset any future supply disruption. And from that perspective, you could imagine taking aggressive action in an attempt to force that into reality. But that was never a realistic short-term solution. Even under ideal conditions, increasing production there would require tens of billions of dollars in investment and many years of development before meaningful volumes reach the market. Unfortunately, having reserves is not the same thing as having supply.

@LevLime @yatharthmann That’s before the event

@yatharthmann Looks intact

@Starlink @SpaceX @Space_Station Looks like it could take up to a few years.

@Starlink @SpaceX @Space_Station How long would it take for all relevant debris to deorbit from 560km?

On Sunday, March 29, Starlink satellite 34343 experienced an anomaly on-orbit, resulting in loss of communications with the satellite at ~560 km above Earth. Latest analysis shows the event poses no new risk to the @Space_Station, its crew, or to the upcoming launch of NASA’s Artemis II mission. We will continue to monitor the satellite along with any trackable debris and coordinate with @NASA and the @USSpaceForce. The event also posed no new risk to this morning’s Transporter-16 mission, which was designed to avoid Starlink with payload deploys well above or well below the constellation. The SpaceX and Starlink teams are actively working to determine root cause and will rapidly implement any necessary corrective actions.

@Fishcleaner13 @VictoriaZeev @SpaceX That’s what ordinary people understand, though.

@thanarious @VictoriaZeev @SpaceX As if GPS is used only for navigation.

Watch Falcon 9 launch the Transporter-16 rideshare mission to orbit twitter.com/i/broadcasts/1…

@LAPanagoulia @SpaceX @grok They (SpaceX) launch multiple times per week.

@SpaceX @grok wasn’t that last week?

@VictoriaZeev @SpaceX Wouldn’t know. Except maybe if there were no satellites into space, you wouldn’t be able to navigate your way using GPS, maybe?

@SpaceX Another launch, more hype… but how much of this actually benefits everyday people?

@garyblack00 As long as Iran’s leadership keep chanting “Death to Israel” and “Death to America”, there will be no peace in the Middle East, unfortunately.

We believe three conditions are needed for the war in Iran to end: 1/ Removal of Mojtaba Khamenei as Supreme Leader of Iran and the son of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who was killed by the U.S. on the first day of the war; 2/ Permanent re-opening of the Strait of Hormuz to ensure availability of 20% of the world’s oil supply; and 3/ Commitment and verification by Tehran to abandon production of all nuclear weapons. Trump reiterated this morning that negotiations to end the war between Iran and U.S. began last night.

@eager_space @peterrhague I think Peter meant that oxidizing nitrogen produces lots of NOx which is actually a pollutant.

@peterrhague This works just fine if you have a carbon neutral source for ammonia. Which you don't, at least not at any scale. You can get hydrogen from electrolysis but nobody does right now, but you'd need power to do that so you're just round-tripping power to generate power.

Yeah because oxidising nitrogen is lovely and doesn’t cause any problems like oxidising carbon does!

@CDCCellular @WilliamShatner NIO has swappable batteries and stations over at China and Europe. The difference it time between “swapping” and “charging” a pack is minimal.

@WilliamShatner Mr Shatner: A friend of mine smarter than me has a great point on this. The only way electric vehicles will take the next step is when batteries can be swapped out. Pull into a station, pay, get a battery exchange. Kind of like propane for your BBQ I think he has a point

And for the #teslarites who don’t understand 500 miles. Time is money. How long does it take to pump a tank of gas? 4-5 mins versus 30. Early last week I went up to the Yosemite area (about 300 miles.) I got up there, did my thing and got gas (5 mins) and drove back. With a Tesla. It would be drive up (maybe on one charge) charge up 20-30 mins, do my thing. Drive back, stop along the way to recharge (again probably another 20 mins…) That’s too long. 500 would be one recharge so it’s 10 mins gas versus 29-30 mins which I would consider.🤷🏼

@CSI_Starbase @Teslarati You can easily make your own electricity if you have the required area, but you definitely can’t make your own oil or gasoline, no matter what.

@Teslarati Genuine question, isn’t charging your car still subject to increased energy costs ?

When people complain about gas prices, I always laugh because there’s a really simple fix. Buy a Tesla.

@LimitingThe Why did they charge the battery to only 50% prior to storing?

Today's video from Donut Lab was a Self-Discharge Test to prove that their cell is a battery and not a supercapacitor. 🙄 Really?

@baraklaniado @grok @yatharthmaan You can just walk there while pushing the car on neutral for 40m

@grok @yatharthmaan You're only making it worse for yourself @grok, stop! Hint: how is the car going to actually get washed? 😉

@Kekius_Sage There is no mass, only spacetime curvatures. Light has to follow spacetime.

If light particles have no mass why are they attracted by the force of a black hole?

@planet4589 e-mail addresses of retirees should never change. It’s literally a zero cost and effort thing.

Thanks to my retirement from the Center for Astrophysics, my old email address jcm@cfa.harvard.edu no longer works. I had that email address for 38 years!! Before that I was JBVAD::JCM, CAVAD::JCM, and (1978) UK.AC.CAM.PHX::JCM4.

@cb_doge @elonmusk I can see no Grok icon on any post, on my iPhone. What’s the deal?

“You just press the Grok icon on any 𝕏 post and it will analyze for you and research it as much as you want. So, just by tapping the Grok icon, you can assess whether that post is the truth. Grok is actually very good at piercing through propaganda." 一 @elonmusk