Here is, from just 10 days ago, Jared Isaacman replying to my tiny account while discussing military aircraft spending (and, indirectly, SLS...). He interacted with my posts a few times during the last few months. No PR manager there, it's really him posting. He also gave countless interviews to any spaceflight-related (and not) outlet out there. It's refreshing to see such a humble, patient and tactful leader in a world of shouts, narcissism, insults and hateful Us vs. Them rhetoric. It's also incredible to see how well focused he is on advancing spaceflight in a very pragmatic way. Oh, and he started his adventure in space... by donating $100M to @StJude on Earth, and challenge us all to do the same. Despite his young age, Jared's experience extensively covers both the first A and the S in "NASA". I think he fully deserves a shot at the second A, perhaps more than anybody right now. Here's to your success as Administrator, Commander Jared! Ad Astra! 💫

@GrantObi That's what you get when you buy Neuralink on Temu.

@GrantObi That's disgusting. Give it back!

Oh don't worry man, the hope has been lost long ago 😅 But I feel like I have to warn you guys instead, the US of the last decade is starting to look like the Europe of the past few decades. Rampant immigration, inflation, more bureaucracy, high spending, government corruption, raising crime, universities seized by marxists, "activist judges", censorship, and other pleasantries... we've been there already. You can see the results for yourself. So maybe try to steer the country away from that. The US is probably the last bastion of sanity and freedom in the West. Don't let it fall too.

@BellikOzan @CJHandmer Italy. World leader in food and nepotism.

@BellikOzan @CJHandmer Hard to do here. They're close to impossible to fire. Any union and any judge would side with them, sometimes even in the presence of provable misconduct. Best you can do usually is pay for their early retirement; anything else is probably gonna fail.

@SciGuySpace Surely that's 5% lawyers and 5% infographics department? I mean, they're just warming up with the engineering...

@BellikOzan @CJHandmer Using public sector jobs as welfare for the unemployed (and sometimes unemployable) friends, relatives, party mates, business associates, supporters etc. (and their families) has been a thing for a very long time here in Europe. I've never seen a single party being immune to it.

@typezerofun @joebarnard So, do they have +X pointing in the direction of the launch complex gate?

@AJamesMcCarthy "This is what I'm gonna do with every inch of your 26 square feet poster, Andrew"

Usually they run static fires at 50% thrust, which would mean close to 750 metric tons. But here they explicitly say they throttled up the engines, so they definitely run much harder for at least a few seconds. Since this is just a test stand not intended to support actual launches I believe they simply bolt the ship down, no need to have a clamp/release mechanism for static fires...

@SpaceX Holy cow! 🤯 (sorry for the technical jargon, it's rocket science)

@SciGuySpace @AJ_FI Hopefully doing something on the Moon with the whole world watching will force them to be more sensible than they are when they're playing on home turf (hypergolic stages dumped over people, not-so-static fires in the middle of a metro area, and similar amenities)

I've always wondered if a (6+3)-engine ship would be easy/cheap to replace, for expendable missions only (e.g. deep space) with a 6+1 engine variant, all RVacs, that just does orbital insertion through differential thrust (no need for a gimbaling RVac, although there would be plenty of room for the center one). Or maybe just the outer 6 RVacs with no center: more commonality with the standard version, so probably cheaper if a bit less fuel efficient. However, the fact that they currently keep closing orbital insertion with the SLRs while the RVacs get shut down much earlier makes me think that perhaps it's not practical to have a ship without gimbaling Raptors.

@xdNiBoR They were v1 starlinks with no lasers. F9 could fit 60 of those.

@BellikOzan Important data point to understand how Limp Time relates to Elon Time. The latter is based on Mars years so I'm guessing the former would be somehow related to the Moon.

@xdNiBoR (Oh, and higher bitrate too. That's not strictly UI but has an obvious impact on your experience.)

@BellikOzan There were 89 Starlink missions in 2024. One less SL per flight would require just 4 extra flights to launch the same # of Starlinks, if selling all the spots (not likely). So in other words, an extra weekend of work, tops...