Rocket Report: OpenAI’s launch overture; South Korea making progress in space

The Department of the Air Force approves a new home in Florida for SpaceX's Starship.

See full article...

 

[wagnerrp]

Around the end of WW1 people were trying to improve the efficiency of steam turbines – still not as efficient as compound reciprocators meaning that warships needed both, one for extended cruising and one for war power

The problem they had with steam turbines is the same problem we still haven’t solved today. The turbine only has a narrow efficiency band.

 

[compgeek89]

What am I missing about orbital data centers? Having worked with data centers for decades, the idea of putting it in orbit is about the worst place for one. The biggest issue is usually heat dispersal. How do you do that in space? Then we have the cosmic rays causing things to flip or break more often. And, I guess we just don't hot swap anything when it breaks and just let it die?

Putting it at the bottom of the ocean is far more practical (better heat management and no radiation worries) and that experiment was also a failure.

But, smart people keep wanting to spend ungodly sums on it. What am I missing?

 

[Cthel]

Clever and very amusing.
Around the end of WW1 people were trying to improve the efficiency of steam turbines – still not as efficient as compound reciprocators meaning that warships needed both, one for extended cruising and one for war power – and a compound cycle was proposed using mercury for the high pressure turbine, at very high pressure. Various proposals were made for sealing the shaft, none of which were convincing.
Mercury is one of God's little jokes - apparently very useful for all kinds of applications if it wasn't so toxic. The other one is beryllium.

Some years ago I was involved in a conference involving control of hazardous substances and I was swapping horror stories with a French scientist. We had been talking about handling tritium. Someone overheard and said "Tritium, isn't that really dangerous stuff?" to which the French guy replied "oh no, tritium doesn't worry me at all. Mercury and cadmium, that's what gives me nightmares. They don't have a half life."

It might not have worked in warships, but a couple of coal-fired power plants using mercury topping cycles were built in the US.

lots more info

In the end, supercritical water plants offered comparable efficiency at lower cost.

 

[Mandella]

What am I missing about orbital data centers? Having worked with data centers for decades, the idea of putting it in orbit is about the worst place for one. The biggest issue is usually heat dispersal. How do you do that in space? Then we have the cosmic rays causing things to flip or break more often. And, I guess we just don't hot swap anything when it breaks and just let it die?

Putting it at the bottom of the ocean is far more practical (better heat management and no radiation worries) and that experiment was also a failure.

But, smart people keep wanting to spend ungodly sums on it. What am I missing?

You are apparently missing pages and pages of arguments over just exactly this subject in any previous article bringing up data centers in space.

In a nutshell, yes there are powerful technical issues that must be solved for them to be practical, but some folks feel that those technical issues are worth trying to solve to get the data centers off Earth and the regulatory restrictions here.

The thing is data centers have become the latest LULU (Local Unwanted Land Use) and it's worth the trouble to try to get them above it all.

 

[Wickwick]

The thing is data centers have become the latest LULU (Local Unwanted Land Use) and it's worth the trouble to try to get them above it all.

That and the power is "free." (once you've paid for launch).

 

[Cthel]

That and the power is "free." (once you've paid for launch).

The maintenance call-out fees are murder though

 

[nimelennar]

Isaacman's Project Athena has now been leaked on Google Drive (62-page PDF, draft dated May 2025).

There's definitely some items of concern there.

• "bias towards action" / "some risks are worth taking" /"physics limit schedule" gives a certain "Go Fever" idea to Artemis, and we know from the Shuttle and Apollo programs where that can lead.
• I'm also concerned to see that kind of attitude in a document that also pushes NASA to put more nuclear power into space
• Increasing Dragon crew size in the time remaining before ISS decommissioning seems rushed (see above concerns about Go Fever).
• A Mars mission in 2026? Really?
• Not gonna lie, "Fly Artemis II and III to determine the reasons to be on the Moon" is hilarious. Deliberately, I think, given how it then talks about basically scrapping SLS and Gateway and repurposing whatever can be repurposed.
• "Take NASA out of the taxpayer-funded climate science business" is horrifying.
• The idea that Trump needs to be given credit for everything is so incredibly sycophantic. But harmless, I guess, in the long term, and, given the ego involved, I'm not particularly surprised so much as disappointed.

 

[Bill Swallow]

What am I missing about orbital data centers? Having worked with data centers for decades, the idea of putting it in orbit is about the worst place for one. The biggest issue is usually heat dispersal. How do you do that in space? Then we have the cosmic rays causing things to flip or break more often. And, I guess we just don't hot swap anything when it breaks and just let it die?

Putting it at the bottom of the ocean is far more practical (better heat management and no radiation worries) and that experiment was also a failure.

But, smart people keep wanting to spend ungodly sums on it. What am I missing?

All of your points are quite correct. The only thing you're missing is the single most important factor - to those proposing the projects.

It's a great way to bilk money out of technically illiterate investors using gee-whiz buzzwords.

As a project to rake in cash with a project doomed to fail, I might go so far as to call it the Tech World's version of 'Springtime for Hitler'.

 

[Dtiffster]

The problem they had with steam turbines is the same problem we still haven’t solved today. The turbine only has a narrow efficiency band.

The old school method, partial arc emission, where the steam turbine inlet is divided into multiple plenums each fed by a stop and control valve and one valve is throttled instead of all of them does work and is still in use on big conventional boilers and nuclear plants. But modern turbines like those in combined cycles generally use a sliding pressure control scheme. Essentially the inlet pressure is allowed to float up and down with power/flow. From the everything but the last stages point of view the efficiency in the same.

Now the cycle efficiency will change over the range, because a higher cycle pressure ratio is more efficient, and the condenser vacuum can't be kept proportionally lower. Even if you have the heat transfer for lower condenser pressure at lower flows; low flow, low exhaust pressure leads to a flow induced vibrational excitation called blade flutter (especially in the long skinny last stage blading). Mid span snubbers and shrouds help, but the most efficient blades are free standing and the most efficient LP turbines have the biggest exhaust area possible. Still if you look at a 3 on 1 combined cycle, having 3 gas turbines driving a single steam turbine with their exhaust, that steam turbine has to operate between 3 gas turbines at 100% power plus auxillary firing in the steam generators on the high end and 1 gas turbine as low as 30-40% power these days on the low end. That's a pretty good amount of turn down, and the cycle efficiency isn't constant throughout but range is pretty reasonable.

 

[Dtiffster]

As a project to rake in cash with a project doomed to fail, I might go so far as to call it the Tech World's version of 'Springtime for Hitler'.

Springtime for hitler was a hit, for it to be analogous orbital data centers would have to turn out to be technically feasible.

 

[YetAnotherBoris]

There's definitely some items of concern there.

• "bias towards action" / "some risks are worth taking" /"physics limit schedule" gives a certain "Go Fever" idea to Artemis, and we know from the Shuttle and Apollo programs where that can lead.

This is specifically qualified as applicable mainly if not entirely to unmanned missions. He's basically saying we need to lower the cost of flagship missions to significantly sub-$Billion, and accelerate their development and launch cadence greatly - even if that comes at the cost of some of these missions failing.

• I'm also concerned to see that kind of attitude in a document that also pushes NASA to put more nuclear power into space

This is a major priority for Isaacman. He sees traditional rocketry as largely solved and in commercial domain now, so NASA has to move on and tackle the next great unsolved challenge with game-changing implications: which Isaacman firmly believes to be NEP.

Here, taking more risks could mean running more experiments, testing more frequently, and basically adopting a more Edisonian approach (of throwing a lot of shit at the wall, and seeing if anything sticks) where a straightforward solution can't be just computed from well-understood theory. With such an approach, many, if not most, if not all the attempted experiments will fail: the point is that this should be expected and accepted in advance, rather than feared and avoided.

Basically, Isaacman is calling for urgent, bold, and multi-pronged action, SpaceX-style, instead of the traditional analysis paralysis.

• Increasing Dragon crew size in the time remaining before ISS decommissioning seems rushed (see above concerns about Go Fever).

Probably with a view toward future commercial space stations... Another of Isaacman's big vision priorities is developing a thriving space economy that goes beyond just comms, observation, and space launch. That means a lot of in-space activity, including crewed activity - and the need to ferry more people to/from LEO as cheaply as possible.

• "Take NASA out of the taxpayer-funded climate science business" is horrifying.

This is more about asking whether academic institutions and consortia could take charge with NASA facilitating (including via provision of capabilities, services, and financing if necessary), rather than NASA being in charge, setting the agenda, and driving everything from the top down.

This comports with Isaacman's general vision of NASA acting as a catalyst or a force multiplier, to stimulate more contributions from private industry and academia - and thereby maximizing the return per spent taxpayer dollar.

 

[wagnerrp]

"Take NASA out of the taxpayer-funded climate science business" is horrifying.

I fully understand that this push within the current administrator is to just completely remove all Earth sciences outright, but why is this fundamentally a bad thing? NASA is historically involved because Earth science involving satellites is novel, and needs NASA to develop novel technologies. That hasn't been the case for decades. What's the reason to maintain these departments within NASA, rather than shift them over to NOAA or USGS, with a corresponding boost in their respective budgets?

 

[Oldmanalex]

What am I missing about orbital data centers? Having worked with data centers for decades, the idea of putting it in orbit is about the worst place for one. The biggest issue is usually heat dispersal. How do you do that in space? Then we have the cosmic rays causing things to flip or break more often. And, I guess we just don't hot swap anything when it breaks and just let it die?

Putting it at the bottom of the ocean is far more practical (better heat management and no radiation worries) and that experiment was also a failure.

But, smart people keep wanting to spend ungodly sums on it. What am I missing?

You are missing having some (sucker) skin in the game. By the time we have finished the launch infrastructure for some sort of orbital hyperspace Dyson sphere to use the sun as a giant quantum computer to make even more lifelike naked images of seven-breasted women, covering the local farmland with worthless data centers, while raising global temperatures and local electric rates at never before seen rates will look sane by comparison.

 

[Oldmanalex]

It might not have worked in warships, but a couple of coal-fired power plants using mercury topping cycles were built in the US.

lots more info

In the end, supercritical water plants offered comparable efficiency at lower cost.

Until the Vietnam War mercury was very cheap, but the demand for mercury fulminate detonators put an end to that. So being cheap meant that there were all sorts of hare-brained uses explored, despite the fact that it was still highly toxic.

 

[Oldmanalex]

I fully understand that this push within the current administrator is to just completely remove all Earth sciences outright, but why is this fundamentally a bad thing? NASA is historically involved because Earth science involving satellites is novel, and needs NASA to develop novel technologies. That hasn't been the case for decades. What's the reason to maintain these departments within NASA, rather than shift them over to NOAA or USGS, with a corresponding boost in their respective budgets?

"Peek a boo, I can't see you! Everything must be grand. Peek-a-bee, you can't see me, Because I have got my head in the sand!" Works for me. Whether it works for atmospheric physics and thermodynamics is another question, but I am confident that we can swing facts around to see everything our way. Or we will just socially cut them off. Worked for Knut.

 

[micktransit]

The maintenance call-out fees are murder though

There's a lot of talk about commercial space stations.
"But what will they do up there, that's worthwhile?"

There's also talk of space data centres.
"But how will they service them?"


Maybe the data centres will be crewed?

 

[Ted.Starchild]

That the ancient Sarmatians were Iranian peoples has nothing to do with the naming of the ICBM, and neither does any Iran‑RF relations today – it's just the usual Russian Empire cultural appropriation of any peoples historically living within its currently imagined borders (imagined since Sarmatians inhabited Ukraine as well). And they were perceived as war‑like nomads, hence probably the cultural appropriation of the ICBM's name.

To add insult to injury, the Russian Empire pretty much tried to genocide some of the Iranic peoples genetic descendants in the Caucasus, and actually utterly genocided other Iranian tribes still living within the Caucasus Imperial Russia in the 19th century (with a few remnants surviving in exodus in Turkey).

Russia is not a country – it's a cancerous genocidal empire – one of the only two or three remaining never having decolonised itself in the 20th century. Muscovites? The Moscow oblast? Now that could potentially count as a country. Even if the various "Kyivan Rus'" states they falsely claim heritage from were either Swedish or Ukrainian or both...

Bizarrely named Russian rocket have no connection to real Sarmatians.
You may want to check Wikipedia article on 'Sarmatism'.
In short, Sarmatism was medieval cultural fantasy fashionable in Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (PLC). Core tenet was belief that Polish nobility are not Slavs, but descendants of Sarmatians. That is culturally and nationally distinct people from Slavic serfs (not to be outdone, Lithuanian nobility claimed ancestry derived from Roman Republic). Bizarre as at is, this belief became very fashionable in 16th-18th centuries and heavily influenced clothing, 'Sarmatic' code of conduct for nobility, etc.
So this name is yet another instance of Russian cultural mis-appropriation. Only this time appropriation of cultural myth that has no relation to real history anyway.

 

[Malmesbury]

Bizarrely named Russian rocket have no connection to real Sarmatians.
You may want to check Wikipedia article on 'Sarmatism'.
In short, Sarmatism was medieval cultural fantasy fashionable in Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (PLC). Core tenet was belief that Polish nobility are not Slavs, but descendants of Sarmatians. That is culturally and nationally distinct people from Slavic serfs (not to be outdone, Lithuanian nobility claimed ancestry derived from Roman Republic). Bizarre as at is, this belief became very fashionable in 16th-18th centuries and heavily influenced clothing, 'Sarmatic' code of conduct for nobility, etc.
So this name is yet another instance of Russian cultural mis-appropriation. Only this time appropriation of cultural myth that has no relation to real history anyway.

Yup - think Aryan and all the fun that goes with that.

 

[Malmesbury]

You are missing having some (sucker) skin in the game. By the time we have finished the launch infrastructure for some sort of orbital hyperspace Dyson sphere to use the sun as a giant quantum computer to make even more lifelike naked images of seven-breasted women, covering the local farmland with worthless data centers, while raising global temperatures and local electric rates at never before seen rates will look sane by comparison.

Without the Dyson sphere of computronium, where will we be uploading the spiny lobsters neural nets to? Have you thought of that? Eh?

 

[FranzJoseph]

Bizarrely named Russian rocket have no connection to real Sarmatians.
You may want to check Wikipedia article on 'Sarmatism'.
In short, Sarmatism was medieval cultural fantasy fashionable in Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (PLC). Core tenet was belief that Polish nobility are not Slavs, but descendants of Sarmatians. That is culturally and nationally distinct people from Slavic serfs (not to be outdone, Lithuanian nobility claimed ancestry derived from Roman Republic). Bizarre as at is, this belief became very fashionable in 16th-18th centuries and heavily influenced clothing, 'Sarmatic' code of conduct for nobility, etc.
So this name is yet another instance of Russian cultural mis-appropriation. Only this time appropriation of cultural myth that has no relation to real history anyway.

Ah, that's even worse than I thought – not just a cultural appropriation, but one that went full‑on mis‑appropriating, imagined and even a myth stolen from another culture that appropriated it first. Something like orientalism, just even way dumber? Wouldn't surprise me at all for the Russian aristocracy kleptocracy of the time, or today...

I mean, how dumb have you to be to even steal a total myth from the very country (Poland and PLC) you actively tried to erase, and parse it as your own? Oh, it's the Russian Empire, and stealing is the only thing they know, right. Makes sense now…

 

[Erbium68]

The problem they had with steam turbines is the same problem we still haven’t solved today. The turbine only has a narrow efficiency band.

That is not actually entirely correct. In fact, one of the earliest practical applications of low base arithmetic was a controller for steam turbines which opened nozzle groups based on demand, with a single variable nozzle for intermediate loads. Thus nozzle groups might go 1,2,4,8,16 and a controller selected the correct number using a rotating drum to operate the appropriate valves. I believe one was base 3, i.e. the nozzle groups went 1,1,3,3,9,9.
Steam turbines lend themselves to generating electricity because the efficiency depends on angular velocity, and driving an alternator requires constant speed.

It might not have worked in warships, but a couple of coal-fired power plants using mercury topping cycles were built in the US.

lots more info

In the end, supercritical water plants offered comparable efficiency at lower cost.

They actually built a couple? My British textbook of the era dismissed the idea on safety grounds.

Jesus H Fucking Christ, though I suppose I shouldn't be surprised coming from the country that thought of putting beryllium in rocket fuel.

 

[nimelennar]

This is specifically qualified as applicable mainly if not entirely to unmanned missions. He's basically saying we need to lower the cost of flagship missions to significantly sub-$Billion, and accelerate their development and launch cadence greatly - even if that comes at the cost of some of these missions failing.

How so? The last of those three quotes I took directly from a section on Artemis; as far as I know, there are no more unmanned Artemis missions. And the "some risks are worth taking" quote is the end of a sentence that starts with "We will ensure safety is at the forefront of our decisions, but..." And even the third: the quote continues "bias towards actions and achieving objectives" (in the list of "objectives" immediately below, human spaceflight is #1).

I could grant the benefit of the doubt and say that the "bias towards action" quote might be targeted more towards uncrewed missions (although I don't see where in the document you're drawing that "specific qualification" from; do you mind providing a quote?), but at least one of the "Go Fever" quotes seem to be specifically about crewed missions, and the other is specifically in the context of safety.

This is a major priority for Isaacman. He sees traditional rocketry as largely solved and in commercial domain now, so NASA has to move on and tackle the next great unsolved challenge with game-changing implications: which Isaacman firmly believes to be NEP.

Here, taking more risks could mean running more experiments, testing more frequently, and basically adopting a more Edisonian approach (of throwing a lot of shit at the wall, and seeing if anything sticks) where a straightforward solution can't be just computed from well-understood theory. With such an approach, many, if not most, if not all the attempted experiments will fail: the point is that this should be expected and accepted in advance, rather than feared and avoided.

Basically, Isaacman is calling for urgent, bold, and multi-pronged action, SpaceX-style, instead of the traditional analysis paralysis.

Sure, but "fly operational vehicles in the next few years," along with "safety is at the forefront of our decisions but... some risks are worth taking" seems like giving permission to bypass analysis paralysis by cutting corners on safety. Which, when launching nuclear powered spacecraft, seems concerning.

Probably with a view toward future commercial space stations...

I'm sure that's part of it. But the document also states that Isaacman wants to make the best use of the last few years' of ISS's lifespan by expanding crew size. And unless he's planning on lengthening the handover between crew rotations (possible, but tricky with other vehicles, e.g. Cargo Dragon, coming to visit), larger crew complements is the way to do that. In fact, I spotted the "larger ISS crew" point first, and had to go back to find the "7-seat Dragon" point to figure out how that could possibly work.

 

[Erbium68]

-deleted, apologies. -

 

[FranzJoseph]

Is this an Eastern European thing? Because when I see Benjamin Mileikowsky cosplaying a descendant of the tribe of Abraham as an excuse for trying to take over the West end of the Mediterranean, I see the same dire misappropriation at work.

Please don't bring Israel's either currently perpetrated genocides or being a victim of one some 80 years earlier into this, as we don't really need a flame war here – plenty of flammable propellants around rockets!

Also, WTF would it be some "Eastern European" thing? Since there is literally zero connection of those quoted historical tidbits to him (B.N.), as much as I may find his views quite deplorable.

Apologies, but coming from Eastern Europe by genes and parents, I do find that statement kind of offensive?

As in my blood relative saving a Jew girl by giving her their own German ID, randomly on the street, then later pretending she lost her own clean ID (a serious offence)? Or my grandpa being forced into force labour at some weapons factory which got bombed (and rightly so!) by the allies, suffering life‑changing injuries back then? Sure, there are much worse stories of people being killed like chattel in both the Nazi and Soviet camps, but I am talking only about the one I relate to personally from the family side. And we weren't even Russian – to our luck, since the NKVD stormed all the Soviet‑occupied areas just literal days after the victory, abducting any Soviets who had previously sought refuge from the Soviet regime in pre‑WWII European countries, even (illegally) the numerous ones who had a European country citizenship.

 

[FranzJoseph]

Is this an Eastern European thing? Because when I see Benjamin Mileikowsky cosplaying a descendant of the tribe of Abraham as an excuse for trying to take over the West end of the Mediterranean, I see the same dire misappropriation at work.

Also, Poland isn't Eastern Europe.

 

[Bill Swallow]

Ah, that's even worse than I thought – not just a cultural appropriation, but one that went full‑on mis‑appropriating, imagined and even a myth stolen from another culture that appropriated it first. Something like orientalism, just even way dumber? Wouldn't surprise me at all for the Russian aristocracy kleptocracy of the time, or today...

I mean, how dumb have you to be to even steal a total myth from the very country (Poland and PLC) you actively tried to erase, and parse it as your own? Oh, it's the Russian Empire, and stealing is the only thing they know, right. Makes sense now…

cough Just about every holiday in the Christian calendar, taken from the Pagans, with the serial numbers filed off and a new coat of paint? cough

 

[zoltan_merc]

This is more about asking whether academic institutions and consortia could take charge with NASA facilitating (including via provision of capabilities, services, and financing if necessary), rather than NASA being in charge, setting the agenda, and driving everything from the top down.

What academic institution would want to take over from NASA any project that is even tangentially-related to climate change, when doing so would directly create a very high risk of being targeted for punishment by the Trump administration?

Either Isaacman has not thought this through, or he is fine with such projects riding off into the sunset.

 

[Erbium68]

cough Just about every holiday in the Christian calendar, taken from the Pagans, with the serial numbers filed off and a new coat of paint? cough

Spaceflight involves referring to the Roman names of planets, which for some reason Christians didn't abolish.
And then there's the days of the week as well as holidays, where English is still full on pagan though many Romance languages are not entirely.
Written on the Saturn-day 6th of the Roman Tenth Month.

 

[wagnerrp]

Jesus H Fucking Christ, though I suppose I shouldn't be surprised coming from the country that thought of putting beryllium in rocket fuel.

Don't forget "Green Dragon" pentaborane jet fuel, and open cycle nuclear gas turbines.

 

[wagnerrp]

What academic institution would want to take over from NASA any project that is even tangentially-related to climate change

The NOAA? Monitoring these sorts of things is their specific role, and they're already doing it, in collaboration with NASA. Remove the collaboration. Push it all into NOAA, and only bring in NASA as necessary for technical support.

when doing so would directly create a very high risk of being targeted for punishment by the Trump administration?

Yes. That's the key issue. This is a proposed reorganization to delete duties of the government, not shift them elsewhere. Trump's budget proposal included slashing NOAA by 30%, and completely closing the whole OAR.

 

[YetAnotherBoris]

How so? The last of those three quotes I took directly from a section on Artemis; as far as I know, there are no more unmanned Artemis missions. And the "some risks are worth taking" quote is the end of a sentence that starts with "We will ensure safety is at the forefront of our decisions, but..." And even the third: the quote continues "bias towards actions and achieving objectives" (in the list of "objectives" immediately below, human spaceflight is #1).

I could grant the benefit of the doubt and say that the "bias towards action" quote might be targeted more towards uncrewed missions (although I don't see where in the document you're drawing that "specific qualification" from; do you mind providing a quote?), but at least one of the "Go Fever" quotes seem to be specifically about crewed missions, and the other is specifically in the context of safety.

Here's one quote:

And another:

And another:

Contrast with discussion of safety specifically in the context of crewed space flight:

Sure, but "fly operational vehicles in the next few years," along with "safety is at the forefront of our decisions but... some risks are worth taking" seems like giving permission to bypass analysis paralysis by cutting corners on safety. Which, when launching nuclear powered spacecraft, seems concerning.

Throughout the document, almost every time he talks about accepting higher risk, he qualifies it as "programmatic risk". I don't read this as risk of spreading radioactive debris in orbit or on Earth, or killing astronauts, but as risk of program failure and setbacks due to high ambition and tackling challenges that have some notionally plausible ideas but no high-confidence solutions. Basically, I read this as calling for a Skunkworks-like approach to new tech development. Or indeed, a "mini-Manhattan project" with regard to NEP. All read in the context of his general mantra of attempting the near-impossible.

This should be contrasted to "low programmatic risk" programs such as SLS, which attempt to use only proven tech while lacking ambition to significantly push the state of the art.

I'm sure that's part of it. But the document also states that Isaacman wants to make the best use of the last few years' of ISS's lifespan by expanding crew size. And unless he's planning on lengthening the handover between crew rotations (possible, but tricky with other vehicles, e.g. Cargo Dragon, coming to visit), larger crew complements is the way to do that. In fact, I spotted the "larger ISS crew" point first, and had to go back to find the "7-seat Dragon" point to figure out how that could possibly work.

Another way to read this is that Isaacman wants the last few remaining years of ISS exploited to the fullest, with as much crew as can be accommodated. This is in contrast to ideas involving reduced crews (in the name of cost savings) as ISS operations wind down.

 

[InvariantCapitalist]

View: https://bsky.app/profile/esghound.com/post/3m7bbc64uc223


ESG Hound is 100% sure SpaceX as a company and it's business units individually aren't cash flow positive

How did they establish this? What are their source materials?

Seems speculative given we know the massive cash flow at Starlink, and that SpaceX hasn’t raised funding in quite a while.

 

[Markkf]

Also, Poland isn't Eastern Europe.

Which side of the iron curtain was it on in the 50’s & 60’s?

 

[Markkf]

The Warsaw Pact one. Which, for various geopolitical and cultural reasons, still doesn't make it Eastern Europe at all, unlike your ignoramus understanding.

Just to enlighten you, there are various definitions of Central Europe and Eastern Europe, all of which are quite contested historically.

To be short, modern Poland would definitely fall into the Central Europe envelope, if you still wanted to use such historically idiotic terms.

Soooo the eastern side. “Ignoramus” out!

 

[paulfdietz]

Until the Vietnam War mercury was very cheap, but the demand for mercury fulminate detonators put an end to that. So being cheap meant that there were all sorts of hare-brained uses explored, despite the fact that it was still highly toxic.

Mercury is once again very cheap, with the price down more than 99% since the peak in the 1960s. The reason is that due to toxicity, almost all uses of mercury have been replaced with non-mercury alternatives. Mercury is a poster child for the principle of resource substitutability. It's conceivable the price could go negative, if the value declines below the cost of disposal. In this scenario mercury would be extracted from waste streams and then would have to be dealt with somehow.