It had two sea-level engines that had 6s more ISP than Raptor 2/3 these days - but that's fine. Notice the thrust. It's much lower. This was a smaller Starship overall. I also think lowest thrust is now limited to 30% these days.

This was 2016. Raptor engines had 175 tons of thrust at lift-off. Starship had a lift-off mass of 4400 tons - 8 times as much as Falcon 9. And a fully re-usable(!) payload of 150 tons - 8 times as much as Falcon 9. No payload penalty at all. 250t fully expendable. www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdUX...

When I wrote that SpaceX should land and launch Starship on the ocean last Friday, I was told I didn't understand what SpaceX is doing etc. (insert usual fanboys foaming at the mouth). SpaceX 2024:

WWII sunk tonnage by month in the Atlantic. Russia just lost 105 ships damaged and unusable in a week. Each about 4-5,000 tons. Russia lost as much tonnage in *a week* in the Sea of Azov as the allies lost in the Atlantic in the worst *months* of WWII.

This isn't cute. Stocks only do this when they are really distressed.

Wikipedia has a good picture of the catch process. Much less precision needed for landing, since the cables can freely move in 2 dimension to wherever the rocket is. With much larger tolerances for place, speed and angles during landing than with either stiff arms for catching or stiff landing legs.

Per capita, it's barely above the global average. Only Finland and Slovakia are worse - and Finland has good reasons for that. So, if the UK wants to feel proud for being better than Slovakia - fine. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_p...

The trick for having a lot of storage per kW of solar power is not having a lot of solar power to begin with. ;)

Global electricity use has been growing by about 700 TWh every year over the last 10 years. The total is about 32,000 TWh. You are talking about a growth of 12 TWh in one year. There are plenty of good reasons to criticize AI. But call 12 TWh growth "mind-blowing" in a global context is bullshit.

This is how the article starts and the proceeds to try to disprove. But the fact is, that this is generally true. The majority of science claims people hear about is either fraudulent or misrepresents the real science. And the business model of Nature is one of the culprits.

Found the publication: advanced.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/... This is absolutely atrocious. Reverse osmosis needs about 3 kWh/cubic meter, some are much better. They get ~1500 kWh/year/sq meter. Getting 20 liters per day from 750W of installed solar is a ridiculously small amount.

The city of Derbent - which is oh so very obviously in Russia - is just one degree further south (at 42 degrees north) than Vladivostok, which is basically in Siberia and next to China and North Korea.

Admittedly, I'm biased towards European latitudes (and Alaska is obviously also rather extreme). On the other hand, prime farmland is also biased towards northern latitudes of the continental US / Great Lakes region.

Gold lost another $10. And Silver is just crashing. Lost almost 9% in price just today. There are a lot of people suddenly in need of cash it seems.

Also, silver, platinum and copper (which was a speculation asset in the AI bubble) are all losing even more than gold. This is starting to look like a crash.

And almost another $10 lost. Now more than 3% down in one day. "Only gold is a stable store of value" my ass.

Gold just dropped below $4,000. I really get the feeling like the everything-bubble might be bursting.

This is what clean air gets you. www.statistiques.developpement-durable.gouv.fr/media/5646/d... If you're fine with science saying that coal (and other) pollution reduces solar power, you'll either have to admit that it reduces temperatures as well, or you hate physics. www.ox.ac.uk/news/2026-05...

Science denial strikes again. These people are incapable of discussing the facts of just how bad pollution was and how big the influence on temperatures is.

There may have been a few remaining glaciers left in Canada when the Pyramids were build in Egypt, or at least it hadn't been more than a couple centuries since the last ones had melted. So, what extend of ice-cover is "normal"?

What nobody noticed: SpaceX peaked in market share in number of launches in 2024. Hence the pivot to mass delivered into orbit. In 2026, the number of SpaceX launches will decline for the first time since 2019, when they had caught up with their backlog of GEO satellites.

Maybe it's because this guy isn't real. Try this one:

No idea what is going on there. Maybe they don't want Europeans to read their stuff? (Honestly, I find it very dubious that anybody is anywhere close to a fusion power plant. Too many steps and ancillary technologies are still completely undeveloped.)

It's weird that people are talking about attacks with a few hundred drones each carrying a bomb load of usually 100kg or less, as if those were big attacks. This is what a single attack on Cologne in WWII looked like. Each bomber carried about 2,000 - 8,000 kg of bombs, depending on type.

I'm sure they'll sign the next big treaty in some small town in western Belarus, or perhaps a coastal town north-western France.

Mehr als das hier kann ich nicht lesen, aber genau so ist es perfekt. So sollte die Diskussion anfangen, egal was dann hinter der Bezahl/Registrierungsschranke noch kommt.

This is what the Starship Wikipedia page said on April 19th 2023 - a day before the first launch of what we call Version 1 of Starship these days. Payload to LEO was given as 150t (100t SSO; 21t GEO), empty mass of Starship 100t. Now: 15t LEO (never demonstrated) en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?...

Welchen pH Wert und Temperatur müsste das Wasser denn haben, damit dort bevorzugt blaue Algen/Bakterien wachsen? Ist in der Natur ja durchaus ein Ding und das sogar in den USA.

So, it took over decades of development and 4 years of war to figure out that putting a wing on a quad-copter drone makes it go about twice as far. Or at least to bring that into a) regular use and b) my attention. dronexl.co/2026/06/02/u...

Mit 300-400 km/h ist die nun aber auch nicht schneller als ein Doppeldecker. Zugegeben, genau ein Doppeldecker aus dem zweiten Weltkrieg. Aber andere Maschinen erreichten deutlich über 600 km/h. Und es geht auch darum, die Option zu haben. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat_CR...