The Twitter account for the book Safe Is Not An Option: How a Futile Obsession With Getting Everyone Back Alive is Killing Our Expansion into Space.
Jackson, WY
Joined March 2013
- Tweets64.2K
- Following1.3K
- Followers1.2K
- Likes3
SafeNotAnOption retweeted
Incredible as it may seem, this one building will likely produce as much value as a member of the G20.
And that's just a single facet of the megacorp that will one day (soon?) rise from the amalgamation of SpaceX and Tesla.
Who knows, maybe NVIDIA will end up in there too.
SafeNotAnOption retweeted
16.5 years ago, one-sixth of a century, I was a prospective student here at the Berkeley School of Physics. Now it's Sunday and the doors are locked. No one's around. Are we going to make it?
Maybe the centaurs are working from home.
SafeNotAnOption retweeted
While it's an overgeneralization, physicists tend to be better at telling you why something won't work than they are at figuring out how to make it work.
SafeNotAnOption retweeted
Wendell Barry has passed, at age 92. He was virulently opposed to space settlements. Here is an exchange he had on the topic with Steward Brand in the 1970s: nss.org/settlement/nasa/CoEv…
SafeNotAnOption retweeted
Hmmm...probably Michael Mann. He owes me half a million bucks after his lawsuit against me.
SafeNotAnOption retweeted
Your occasional reminder that physics PhDs are not engineers. The physics PhDs told us that we couldn't do missile defense.
Gavin Baker says the physics PhDs calling orbital data centers impossible on X have not out-thought the 10,000 SpaceX engineers who treat it as solved
"It's very hard for me to engage. There are all these people on X and they're like, I am a physics PhD and this is impossible."
"There's a friend, another investor, who actually is a physics PhD, who I had many arguments about it with him, and he's like, I am a PhD and this is impossible. And then he goes to the SpaceX day and talks to the SpaceX engineers, and he's like, well, I was wrong."
"So let's say you're an astrophysics PhD. You are brilliant, you're hanging 100 IQ points on me. Have you thought about this for an hour? Have you thought about it for 10 hours?"
"Because you have 10,000 of the world's smartest engineers at SpaceX who've thought about this each for hundreds if not thousands of hours. And the sum of that, working with very sophisticated engineering tools, is it's a solved problem."
_______
For more on Gavin Baker: firesidealpha.substack.com/p…
SafeNotAnOption retweeted
Me on why this is a BFD: "When China figures out how to reuse them, that is going to drop the launch of cost for them tremendously and then they could use it as part of their soft power outreach to launch things for potential allies very cheaply." techcrunch.com/2026/07/10/ch…
SafeNotAnOption retweeted
Because an entire generation was told that any degree was your ticket to big money, rather than specific degrees in specific areas. The result was every kid applied game theory and worked on the easiest possible degree to get the biggest gain, which was useless.
"Why recruiters can’t find workers and new grads can’t find jobs (it’s not AI)"
washingtonpost.com/education…
SafeNotAnOption retweeted
Actually incredible how close Flight 12 was to shitting itself on ascent but the hand of fate felt bad about the 2025 V2 saga so SpaceX caught a lucky break for once
With SpaceX aiming to launch the Starship Flight 13 mission from Starbase later this week, the @FAANews said the following regarding the closure of the Starship Flight 12, SpaceX-led mishap investigation.
SafeNotAnOption retweeted
The electric vehicle transition is not going as planned
youtube.com/watch?v=_6r9XWUn…
SafeNotAnOption retweeted
Last time I asked SpaceX, the goal was forty. Looks like they can exceed that, except they want to retire Falcon ASAP.
The King has returned! SpaceX flight leader Booster 1067 just returned from its 36th mission to space. Carrying 29 Starlink satellites it landed on the drone ship & returned to Port Canaveral this morning. Originally boosters were hoped to have at least 5 reuses & 10 was considered the goal, reuse is now the standard.
SafeNotAnOption retweeted
That's stupid. It advanced because it largely gave up on socialism in the 80s and allowed the market to work.
SafeNotAnOption retweeted
And not just that expendables were better, but that reusables would never be practical. It held us back decades. One of the stupidest lessons of X-33 was that it "proved" reusables won't work.
SafeNotAnOption retweeted
People don't appreciate the degree to which Apollo and Shuttle screwed everything up by convincing them that expendables were better.
SafeNotAnOption retweeted
If anybody is bummed about there being no women on Artemis III - bear in mind that anybody who flies on this mission won’t get a landing mission any time soon. So by not flying women on this mission, the female astronauts can still get places on IV and V…
SafeNotAnOption retweeted
I think the dam has broken on being able to look at alternatives to the previous insane mission architectures imposed by the legal necessity of using the ridiculous SLS.
SafeNotAnOption retweeted
I fervently await the day that who is going to the Moon is not an event worthy of a national news conference and press release, and that no one gives a rat's patoot other than their friends and family.
SafeNotAnOption retweeted
The Dem corruption in CA is not new. Back in the 90s I registered Libertarian and it came back Democrat.
SafeNotAnOption retweeted
You want to know why everyone in Corporate America hates HR?
Here's why.
Working with one of our Fintech clients to extend an offer for an AI Engineer.
This candidate's background is ridiculous. Coming out of one of the hottest startups, degrees from IIT and Carnegie Mellon.
He's got a competing offer, so the hiring manager and director decided to bring him in at Principal level to beat them on title, beat them on comp.
Done deal, right?
Wrong.
Enter HR.
They rejected it. "Doesn't have enough experience."
This is an AI Engineer. From IIT and Carnegie Mellon. With a competing offer. And they're saying he doesn't have enough years of experience although he has amazing skills.
Now a week has gone by. More people need to sign off. The manager has zero backup candidates. And the candidate just let me know he's leaning toward the other offer. This whole thing left a bad taste in his mouth.
So to recap: HR just cost a team their number one candidate, wasted a week of everyone's time, and killed a hire that the actual business wanted to make.
But sure, tell me how HR "adds value."