“provocateur” - SatNews | Co-Founder @ General Galactic (@gengalactic) | formerly @spacex, @stanford
El Segundo, CA
Joined December 2010
- Tweets2K
- Following722
- Followers2.5K
- Likes12.8K
Pinned Tweet
This month, General Galactic (@gengalactic) broke a nearly 70-year-old record in rocket science.
Announcing Genesis, our water-electrolysis space propulsion platform.
We're the first company to demonstrate this capability with real flight hardware.
My X account got hacked earlier this week and they immediately started posting crypto garbage and AI doomer slop
Nice try losers
It will be one thing when AGI is built internally, something very different when rolled out to the masses.
It will be hard to know when we’ve hit a point of no return.
When Jeep sells their last vehicle, we will know humanity has truly become super-intelligent.
I wrote my first G code and ran my first CNC for a sophomore class in HS.
Incredibly grateful to have had access to that kind of training, and in public school!
Average chat with a 27-year old VC friend
BREAKING: In a phone call captured on an FBI wiretap, now-indicted Virginia State Sen. Louise Lucas said, “This is our last chance at generational wealth…I’ve got too old not to be greedy.”
VIA: @willchamberlain
JAXA (Japan's aerospace agency) just launched MMX: Martian Moons eXploration -- a sample return mission to Mars' moon Phobos.
It launched a few hours ago and will return to Earth in 2031 with a 10g sample
Question for my VC friends (based on a real example):
A startup pitches you for their Series A. It's expensive, and hyped up by some smaller firms. They claim to have a major ($100M+) contract coming from the gov't.
You invest. After a couple months, turns out, deal is completely fake. It was really just an IDIQ that they received $0 from.
But, the startup now has your money, and they do eventually (years later) start landing real contracts, maybe even bigger deals.
And the startup is good at fundraising, so they keep raising and you mark up your books.
Is it actually bad that they lied to begin with? Do you even care as long as the $ come in eventually?
The processes and overall bureaucracy of the US gov't present a chicken-and-egg problem for new startups.
In order to raise capital to build great things, VCs will want to see firm commitments from the gov't.
To get those, you often need to spend a few million (at minimum) to get the meetings, people, and processes in place. And even then its still super hard.
Now I see why so many of the energy and defense-tech founders just straight up lie to the VCs. Way easier, and you'll probably never get caught!
The processes and overall bureaucracy of the US gov't present a chicken-and-egg problem for new startups.
In order to raise capital to build great things, VCs will want to see firm commitments from the gov't.
To get those, you often need to spend a few million (at minimum) to get the meetings, people, and processes in place. And even then its still super hard.
Now I see why so many of the energy and defense-tech founders just straight up lie to the VCs. Way easier, and you'll probably never get caught!
If you think the maneuverability conversation is just for defense satellites, you might want to follow along
Russian Kosmos 2612 and ICEYE-X36 (providing Ukraine military support) are now in perfect sync with each other. The Russian military satellite is intentionally stalking and tracking the Western radar satellite. Keeping a satellite "bumper-to-bumper" in this manner allows Russia to intercept or jam data transmissions, physically inspect Western technology, or quickly pivot to execute a kinetic or non-kinetic anti-satellite (ASAT) attack with very little warning or fuel expenditure.
Kosmos 2612 executed a series of highly precise, fuel-heavy maneuvers to force itself into a "coplanar" orbit—matching ICEYE-X36's exact altitude (~555 km), speed, and inclination (~97.8°). The ICEYE-X36 satellite is giving the Ukraine military support.
HLS supporters rise up
NASA has given us lots of information of Starship HLS, this is a very real vehicle with tons of work being put into it.
SpaceX has nearly completed HLS Cabin One, a 1:1 matching of the real flight cabin for astronaut testing operations. SpaceX will likely show off the hardware for it within 2 months (this month is a high contender)
The Artemis III Starship will have its docking system integrated by the end of the year and have its emulator and communications delievered in early 2027, this Ship will perform cryo and static fire tests in Q2 2027.
HLS landing legs to be demonstrated in Q2 of 2027 along with Cabin One's airlock.
Orbital refueling test of Starship set for Q1 of 2027!
Pad LC-37 to be ready in Q1 2027 (already was known)
First Cape and V3 booster reflight in Q4 of 2026, this may mean 3 more flights this year?
Tank pressurization upgrades to SuperHeavy (?)
Uncrewed HLS lannding mission in Q4 2027 with tankers.
Russian satellite posturing to attack a commercial satellite stationed over Ukraine, potentially in the next few hours.
Lusitania moment coming?
The whole CLD situation is bizarre to me at this point.
Are these contracts even remotely close to the original plan?
In the most exciting positive feedback loop of all time, Guinness literally tastes better when more people at the bar are drinking Guinness
Irish people swear Guinness tastes better in Ireland. So four scientists spent a year drinking 103 pints across 14 countries to check if that's actually true.
Ireland won in a landslide. Pints there averaged 74 out of 100. Everywhere else averaged 57. The difference held up even after they adjusted for pub atmosphere, how the pint looked, mouthfeel, and which researcher was drinking. Real 2011 paper in the Journal of Food Science, titled "Does Guinness Travel Well?"
So you can see why Zuck hauled a keg over from Dublin.
Here's what makes it funnier. The draught Guinness already on tap in San Francisco gets brewed at St. James's Gate in Dublin, the exact brewery that fills the kegs for Temple Bar. One recipe, one source, barrels on a boat either way.
The researchers figured the real culprit was the tubing. Irish pubs pour so much Guinness that beer never sits in the line between barrel and tap. At a slow bar in America, your stout has been aging in warm plastic hose for days before it reaches the glass. The barrel makes the trip fine and then gets wrecked in the last three feet.
So the one thing that actually makes a pint taste like Dublin is a packed pub drinking fast enough to keep the lines fresh. Good luck fitting that in cargo.
