Recent Posts

41

Engineering / Re: Interesting stuff about SpaceX Starship (hate the name)

« Last post by Nemesis on February 21, 2026, 01:10:02 pm »

Looks like Artemis 2 has been delayed to Wed • Apr 1st, 2026  6:24 PM - 8:24 PM EDT due to a helium leak in the "interim cryogenic propulsion stage" that carries the Orion capsule from orbit to the moon and back to LEO.

The interim cryogenic propulsion stage is built by ULA. 

Given the history I expect delays.  They apparently have something like 16 backup dates allocated which seems to be a lack of confidence in their ability to launch. 

Edit 1:  I've posted elsewhere about this so I thought I should add it here.  With the inability of SLS to launch on time comes a MAJOR issue for Artemis III.  Before Artemis III launches the HLS is supposed to already be in lunar orbit waiting for them.  It can't loiter out there indefinitely.  So if Artemis III has long enough delays the HLS will "expire" and not be able to fulfill the mission requiring ANOTHER HLS to be sent before Artemis III can launch.  With another possible round of Artemis III delays potentially allowing HLS to expire again.  This is a MAJOR defect in the whole Artemis program if the SLS can't launch reliably in a particular time frame. 

42

Engineering / Re: Interesting stuff about SpaceX Starship (hate the name)

« Last post by Nemesis on February 20, 2026, 01:56:26 am »

Vulcan now Projected To Launch Thu • Feb 12th, 2026

Watched the flight it was "successful".  Again it had what appears to be an issue with one of the SRB rocket nozzles failing.  Not a good sign as this is the 2nd occurrence.  I believe this gives these SRBs a 25% failure rate with the nozzles and it can use up to six on one launch.  When the nozzle fails the effective thrust falls, it has been fortunate that the 2 failures were on missions with small cargoes not pushing limits, which allowed the missions to succeed anyhow. 

Seems they went on the low bidder for the SRBs to keep launch costs down.  This is not the same supplier of SRBs for prior ULA rockets.

Seems Amazons LEO has contracted with SpaceX for another 10 Falcon 9 launches.  Whether this is connected with the Vulcan issues above or with the generally slow pace of launches by anyone not SpaceX is unclear. 

43

Engineering / Re: Interesting stuff about SpaceX Starship (hate the name)

« Last post by Nemesis on February 20, 2026, 01:40:45 am »

The one manned flight of Starliner has now been classified as a CLASS A mishap, the same as the two lost shuttles. 

Apparently it should have been at the time but NASA was convinced not to as they wanted to protect the reputation of Starliner.  There are issues with Starliner where they don't know what the root causes are.  Without the root causes they can't be sure that any fix will actually work instead of making things worse. 

The odds of a manned flight before the end of the ISS seem very low.  Maybe cargo flights. 

44

Starfleet Command Models / Re: Permissions (Remake) - Sticky this in favor of old.

« Last post by Starforce2 on February 05, 2026, 07:20:06 pm »

anyone know what destynova's policy was on using his stuff?

45

Engineering / Re: Create your own private GPT

« Last post by Lono on February 04, 2026, 11:09:41 am »

So, it appears this has kind of fizzled out. The llama models produced by Meta are just not competitive with other newer models.

This will likely take off again when Deepseek creates a reasonable modern clone of ChatGPT that requires significantly fewer resources.

The morality of using such a tool produced by an authoritarian regime I guess is a gray area.

46

Ten Forward / Re: After 27 years SETI is finished.

« Last post by Lono on February 04, 2026, 11:02:07 am »

I loved this as a college kid - but after talking to SETI researchers online for years I quickly got the feeling it was all for show.

Now we have ongoing congressional hearings where multiple trained military officers testify under oath that they are regularly encountering vehicles of unknown origin and inexplicable performance characteristics.

I feel like the public shall have an answer soon if we are alone or not.

47

Engineering / Re: Cancer vs Alzheimers

« Last post by Lono on February 04, 2026, 10:54:31 am »

Very interesting - I hadn't heard of that study - thanks!

48

Engineering / Re: Interesting stuff about SpaceX Starship (hate the name)

« Last post by Nemesis on February 03, 2026, 10:17:10 am »

Vulcan now Projected To Launch Thu • Feb 12th, 2026

49

Engineering / Cancer vs Alzheimers

« Last post by Nemesis on January 28, 2026, 05:50:33 pm »

For decades, researchers have noted that cancer and Alzheimer's disease are rarely found in the same person, fuelling speculation that one condition might offer some degree of protection from the other.

Nature:

Now, a study in mice provides a possible molecular solution to the medical mystery: a protein produced by cancer cells seems to infiltrate the brain, where it helps to break apart clumps of misfolded proteins that are often associated with Alzheimer's disease. The study, which was 15 years in the making, was published on 22 January in Cell and could help researchers to design drugs to treat Alzheimer's disease.

Now if that protein can be duplicated (or extracted from cultured cancer) it might help those with Alzheimers (and maybe other types of dementia?).

50

Engineering / Re: Interesting stuff about SpaceX Starship (hate the name)

« Last post by Nemesis on January 22, 2026, 11:17:33 am »

New Glenn returned to the launch schedule - Projected To Launch February, 2026

Different cargo - a communications satellite not the prototype lunar lander they were planning before.

Edit:  BO has added 3 more NG flights all for December.  The last one on the list is the Blue Moon prototype lunar lander that was supposed to go on the next launch till it was replaced with the communications satellite.

Edit 2: Interestingly there are 6 Falcon Heavy flights on the schedule.  3 listed for December which usually means the launch is planned but not the date so it is possible that not all of them will launch this year.  If they do all launch I'm pretty sure that is a record for Falcon Heavy. 

Edit: #3   New Shepherd flights are suspended for at least 2 years to "free up assets" for their HLS system (currently delayed)