my neighboring rocket company told me defects kept destroying his rocket stages during testing so I asked how many rockets he built without improving QC and he told me he just builds a new rocket each time. I told him it seemed like he was just feeding rockets to bad QC and his CEO started crying

one of the really interesting elements was the Grumman beam builder, which automatically assembled trusses from rolled sheet metal stock. space based solar power is some significant distance from being proven viable but I find the sheer amount of work put towards it fascinating.

the engineering and the implementation parts are (in my heavily biased opinion) the most fascinating elements. One of Oniells other concepts that has had a deeper investigation, space based solar power, has some incredibly fascinating work that was done in support of maturing some relevant tech.

They seem like the ideal solution because nobody has gone far enough through the design process to find all the technical problems that turn every "simple idea" into a serious engineering challenge. To fully understand why a concept is flawed requires exponentially more effort than to propose it.

There is a really interesting certainty that emerges from design studies that never reached the implementation stage. The problems were never worked out or discovered but the concepts remain, indefinitely lacking an understanding of the problems that would emerge and need to be solved.

Jesus I've been in and out of that airport more than I could count, must have been on takeoff or soon after to get that crazy of a smoke plume

it makes sense for this admin which cargo cults authoritarian asthetics to have a "let them eat cake" moment without any deeper understanding of the irony of the statement in context

absolutely fucked but it's not surprising at this point

yeah that makes sense. For combat use it could be crazy if the crew could handle it. firing a single pulse unit to spin the entire ship 180 degrees in a second, and a second unit to zero out the spin whenever done. opens up some very violent aggressive maneuvering options to a captain if needed

oh that is gorgeous, I love Stuart platforms and using them to articulate an Orion is interesting. I feel like it would impart a really big torque depending on where the com is so even very minor angles could give good control authority. biggest worry would be the pulses limiting control authority

Critical support only because George Santos is an incredibly funny pathological gay man and I enjoy seeing the shit he gets up to.

I was born to smoke a cigarette on the outskirts of a blacksite contemplating the path ahead

the description of this raid feels like something straight out of the GWOT playbook.

their messaging and their actions show that they are declaring war on American cities, and they must face consequences for it when the sun rises on the other side of all this.

digging around rocky flats with a truffle pig trained to find plutonium just for shiggles