History, Politics And Current Affairs

The steam catapults are a lot bigger than the EMALS and need a steam buffer, and a lot of pipework. So retrofitting steam catapults is essentially a complete redesign between the flight deck and the keel. So 10 years. Fun factoid each launch uses the same energy as 4 gallons of diesel. The steam is...

The steam catapults are a lot bigger than the EMALS and need a steam buffer, and a lot of pipework. So retrofitting steam catapults is essentially a complete redesign between the flight deck and the keel. So 10 years. Fun factoid each launch uses the same energy as 4 gallons of diesel. The steam is...

Someone needs to take the crayons away from the President and he needs to focus on his broader policy agenda rather than military design engineering. This is not helpful! That is the part that leaves me scratching my head. So much "odd" things have been happening over the last several mon...

Someone needs to take the crayons away from the President and he needs to focus on his broader policy agenda rather than military design engineering. This is not helpful! That is the part that leaves me scratching my head. So much "odd" things have been happening over the last several mon...

How does this make any sense? New technology has issues, US navy works through the issues and long term it will be better for US navy carriers. https://www.wsj.com/us-news/trump-orders-navy-to-restore-old-technology-in-aircraft-carriers-costing-billions-0055ec1b?st=FVHpft&reflink=desktopwebshare...

Flight 13 flew on Friday. https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2026/07/starship-flight-13-flight/ You can see the shockwaves in the air from the 18M+ pounds of thrust. https://x.com/SpaceX/status/2081103113054802105?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2081103113054802105%7Ctwgr%5E0eead41...

I am sure stories like this upset Democrats because it doesn't follow the agreed upon narrative that only the rich benefit from IPO's and not employees. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/spacex-spcx-stock-ipo-welder-employee-millionaire/ More than 4,400 current and former SpaceX employees became milliona...

Sometimes we forget how rockets are basically a controlled explosion. Because, to their enormous credit, our rocketeers made it look easy, safe and routine. To quote Elon, “rockets are hard,” but we get them right the vast majority of the time. Makes me appreciate more the launch cadence that Space...

Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket just detonated on the pad during a static fire for a planned upcoming mission to deliver Amazon LEO sats to orbit. Looks like some major damage to the pad, one of the lightning towers is just gone. This will have major impact on the Artemis program with New Glenn's onl...

Not a clean sweep but overall a pretty good first flight for Starship V3. Starship V3 is a clean sheet re-design of Starship incorporating all the lessons learned from earlier V1 and V2 versions. Including brand new V3 Raptor engines and a brand new launch pad and tower and 18Mlb+ of thrust at lift-...

CA Coastal Commission has issued a court ordered formal apology to Elon Musk and SpaceX. The Commission admits some officials made politically biased and improper statements about SpaceX and Elon Musk • It formally apologizes for those remarks • Agrees it will not consider political views or speech ...

LFP Batteries are awesome. Recently built a 48V battery for my Golf Cart that I use on my property out of 16 3V LFP cells. Each 3V cell is 308AH and only cost me a little more than 4x12V batteries and I will probably never have to replace the batteries in my golf cart again. I put an LFP battery in...

SpaceX recently put out a 25 minute video on Starship development. Lots of behind the scenes insight, hopefully they will release more.

https://youtu.be/ANe_HW4X8oc?si=t30prtgykILtNMi5

My company recently purchased two lithium iron phosphate batteries in place of deep cycle marine lead acid batteries. They seem to work just as well, even in the deep cold we had here in February. Don't know about longevity, and won't for a few years. The field guys LOVE them. They're about a third...

This picture of Integrity, The Moon and Earth to me nicely sums up the mission.

Message from Artemis 2 Pilot Victor Glover to Earth. Thank you to all of you for allowing us the immense privilege to be on this journey together. It's quite amazing. And as we go on this journey, thinking about the NASA mission to explore the unknown in air and space, to innovate for the benefit o...

Yesterday Trump spoke directly to the Artemis 2 astronauts. I thought it was very well done and Trump had some very relevant questions to ask the astronauts. He seemed really hyped and had a lot of praise for the astronauts including toward Canada and the Canadian astronaut onboard. https://www.yout...

Message from Artemis 2 Pilot Victor Glover to Earth. Thank you to all of you for allowing us the immense privilege to be on this journey together. It's quite amazing. And as we go on this journey, thinking about the NASA mission to explore the unknown in air and space, to innovate for the benefit of...

When I was at JSC, one computers in our shop was quarantined by NASA for being used by someone as a Napster server. Don't remember what happened to the person. We also had someone on third used his JSC supplied computer to hack other people. Not sure how much jail time he served. Back in my early d...