Josh Gilbert retweeted
Dostoevsky writing to his brother a few hours after nearly being executed by order of Tsar Nicholas I.
Josh Gilbert retweeted
I‘ll stop posting timelapses of the aurora from the @Space_Station when I’m tired of looking at them . . . so basically never! Another unforgettable display of this ethereal phenomenon as it danced beneath us last night, this one even more special as it was shared with @astro_anil, as he witnessed it for the first time with such intensity. The red wavelengths (above the green) were particularly bright in this pass.
Banger.
"Engineering problems can be solved with iterative design and brute force. Physics problems need true advances in science and technology."
Several comments asking me about Stoke Space
What they are doing (regeneratively-cooled metallic heat shield using LH2) is pretty neat and has promise.
I talk sometimes about how what SpaceX did with Falcon 9 was more of an "engineering problem" (taking proven mid-TRL technology and making it work on a real system) than the issues with Starship's heat shield that I see as more of a "physics problem" (depending on your definition of "rapid" reuse).
Engineering problems can be solved with iterative design and brute force. Physics problems need true advances in science and technology.
All that to say, IMO what Stoke is trying to solve is an engineering problem. With the right people, enough money, and enough time, I think it will work. Anytime your design relies this heavily on hydrogen you're inviting some (incredibly small) demons to the party, but alas, not my problem.
I'd love more details on their ground testing at "higher heat loads" than what is experienced in flight. But last I heard they're targeting a launch test late this year? Looking forward to finding out...
A lot of new language in the Space Warfighting 2040 document from US Space Command. Existing capabilties can get nowhere near some of these requirements, so I expect a lot of innovation and working with startups in the coming months/years.
Proliferation across orbits (p. 22)
"As space proliferates across LEO, MEO, GEO, cislunar orbits, and the Lagrange points, the on-orbit portion of the effect chain will shift from a small number of exquisite platforms to an adaptive, resilient network of many."
Unique vantage points (p. 33):
"The space between Earth, the Moon, and the Lagrange points contains areas of gravitational stability, maneuver corridors, and vantage points where presence confers positional advantage."
Novel orbits (p. 23):
"The mastery and application of novel orbits are a strategic imperative for ensuring the resilience of U.S. space capabilities, deterring conflict, and ensuring space superiority."
Maneuver without regret (p. 23):
"It gives U.S. Space Command the ability to rapidly replace capability, reconstitute under pressure, sustain effects, and maneuver without regret in ways a small number of high-value assets never could."
We recently published The Space Warfighting Environment 2040 as a foundation for sustaining space superiority & enhancing Joint Force readiness & lethality as the operational domain continues to rapidly evolve & our competitors mobilize with intention.
👉tinyurl.com/3s9fyk4t
CAPSTONE was a 25 kg satellite, CAPSTONE 02 is 400 kg per satellite.
Great for @AdvancedSpace to lead on this. RPO in a three-body regime will be v hard, and cislunar v important for national security (+ Chinese sats already there).
But re. the mass.. chemical runs about 2/3 of wet mass as fuel (once you're doing 3.5-4 km/s). So most of the weight jump is tank not spacecraft.
Not a criticism of the mission - just what the rocket equation does when you're going 10x further than GEO (380,000 km).
We're going for chemical in cislunar because we reached for chemical everywhere else. Not because it's the best option. There are other propulsion options not currently considered.
It's just not efficient to lug really heavy shit really far away.
Big News!
Advanced Space is heading back to the Moon with a new mission: CAPSTONE 02 🌕
Building on the success and lessons learned from the original CAPSTONE spacecraft currently at the Moon, CAPSTONE 02 is a new two-spacecraft mission designed to advance autonomous navigation, rendezvous, and proximity operations in cislunar orbit.
This mission is only possible because of the incredible collaboration behind it. Thank you to @NASA, @TerranOrbital and everyone involved. We’re honored to carry the CAPSTONE legacy forward and excited for what comes next as we continue to enable the future of operations at the Moon, and help establish infrastructure for NASA's Moon base. ✨
Read the full story here 👉 advancedspace.com/advanced-s…
nasa.gov/directorates/armd/n…
#HSMD #RTMD @TerranOrbital #SpaceDynamicsLaboratory @USUAggies #AdvancedSpace #CAPSTONE02 #CAPSTONE #NASA #Cislunar #Moon #Autonomy #RPO #Innovation2Orbit #StellarExploration @Livermore_Lab (LLNL) #MoonBase
Josh Gilbert retweeted
We are saddened to learn of the death of aviator and space traveler Wally Funk, who always strived for the skies and dreamed of space. After being the youngest pilot in the Lovelace Woman in Space Program in the early 1960s, Funk became the oldest woman to fly into space in 2021 at age 82. We reflect on her legacy: s.si.edu/44hhj6n
Josh Gilbert retweeted
We have an extraordinary opportunity just four and a half days from Earth.
The Moon is our proving ground. It will shape the technologies we build, the discoveries we make, and the generation that will one day carry humanity farther than ever before.
We're only just beginning.
This and the recent Alex Karp interview are two examples of what I learned from first time founder to now.
Don't make it personal, seek the truth, but also.. do not give a fuck who you upset if you're in the right.
Call out the bullshit, because there is a lot of it out there.
Wanted to add a clarification/followup here.
Have chatted with @packyM directly and more thoroughly understood the sequencing, and I fully retract my implication that Packy and/or Not Boring have acted inappropriately or unethically.
As I now understand it, Packy and Not Boring use the AngelList platform to manage their entities (which lots of funds do!). USVC is, of course, a new fund affiliated with AngelList.
Ankur seems to have asked for Packy's permission to email his LPs. Packy says he did not give Ankur a list of contacts, but that USVC already had a list. Packy said they could email his LPs. Ankur represented they had Anduril permission, and Packy took them at their word.
Ankur emailed Packy's LPs (see attached photo) representing that they had Packy's permission and that they'd "only consummate the transaction with company signoff." I understand Ankur/USVC may have similarly solicited the LPs of other fund entities managed on the AL platform.
Anduril did not, in fact, sign off. We probably don't even have the legal standing to sign off or not, but saying one thing and doing the other is, IMO, a bit deceptive.
One of Packy's LPs agreed to sell their position in Packy's SPV to USVC. This transaction did not require Packy's approval (which is odd to me, but ok). The transaction was completed on the AngelList platform. Thus USVC is an investor in Packy's Not Boring SPV, which in turn does actually own some direct Anduril shares.
Packy's got a fair point that many VC or PE funds routinely have investors that need liquidity for whatever reasons, including diversification, emergencies, taxes, other investment opportunities, or just plain old "I want cash." Anduril has had many early investors in exactly that position, and we've gladly facilitated transactions for folks to get liquidity.
Those transactions, however, are usually *very* quiet and do not result in chest pumping flexes from investors touting their access so as to gin up interest and raise more money for their funds.
Packy also asked me a very reasonable question... why do I care so much?
There are a few reasons. First, honesty is important, and there are genuine bad actors in the secondary markets. Indeed a gentleman just got sentenced to 4 years in prison for fraudulently representing access to Anduril shares: justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/man… My spidey senses start to tingle when I see investors we've never heard of or specifically not brought into rounds representing Anduril access they don't have... what's going on here? Obviously I don't think that is what Packy or USVC are doing here, and I'm explicitly not drawing a comparison between either of them and the Pennetta case, but that case is a main driver why I care about honesty and transparency in these markets. Along those lines, USVC's own website represents the fund is an Anduril shareholder (and not a shareholder in Not Boring SPV). Maybe semantics, sure, but as Packy's followup tweet clarifies, his entity does have a carry that USVC's position would be subject to... do the investors in USVC know that? To his credit, Ankur's tweet thread did clarify the SPV holding... in tweet 4.
Second, transparency is important. Investors buying into USVC (or any other SPV/secondary entity out on the market) have zero access to any of Anduril's financials, strategy, plans, goals, etc, nor do they for any other company they're hawking access to. We've never shared any information with Ankur or USVC, so we know they can't be sharing any (accurate, at least) information with their investors. The angle of "what story are they pitching about us" does genuinely concern me... my cofounder Trae and I have both seen "pitch" decks or, in one case, sat in on a webinar where an investor (not USVC, to be clear) was pitching Anduril with *completely wrong information.* Some of the information was falsely flattering, some of it falsely negative... but false either way. Pretty wild! It's not hard to imagine someone forwarding a deck like that to a journalist or tweeting it out, and then there's a public record of fake information with some vague "sources say" attribution. Not great!
Third, smart companies care a LOT about managing the pace of fundraising, which investors they're targeting for which round, what valuations are justified they can feel comfortable growing into, etc. We genuinely want to make our investors money by spending their cash on growing Anduril through hiring, new factory buildouts, new R&D efforts, etc... and we are *extremely* diligent about who we're bringing into the fold, what promises we're making them, what targets we think we can realistically hit, etc. Every company should be the same! Secondary buyers throwing around inaccurate information to solicit interest or brokers making commission based on transaction *volume* in a thinly traded market is not conducive to our goal of carefully managing growth and investor expectations. Clearly that's not what Packy was doing here, but I can't speak to USVC's side.
So TL;DR - I retract any negative implication about Packy, clearly not his intent to facilitate anything unethical. The reader can take their own position on USVC's conduct.
I'm very late to this.. but what an incredible articulation of what's really important in the world today from Alex Karp. The world is messy and complicated, but we must win the geopolitical/technology game.
Unkind truth > kind lies.






























