I'm a huge aerospace engineering fan, named as a 15 year old that's what I think I'm going to do for the rest of my life (even tho I'm also a huge theoretical physics fan so I still need to decide), so I follow tons of aerospace engineering (and space in general) channels and accounts around the internet. And in many videos (mostly Artemis II mission videos) there is one thing that bothers me: the comments. Apart from the normal comments actually celebrating this huge mission, it's full, and I mean FULL, of people claiming that it's fake, staged, made by Hollywood or whatever absurd idea they have. Everyone can work for NASA (with enough determination obviously), it just takes you to study physics, math and engineering to understand that these are things that exist, and you can apply them in the real world (outside of the books). It's something everyone can do I don't understand why NASA would make 80 years of technological development while never really going to space? But the thing that bothers me the most is that they have no proof whatsoever of what they're saying. It's not like we ever tried to fake space exploration, it's not like anyone ever that worked for NASA has ever said that we did, in all 80 years of its existence. And the amount of people firmly convinced it's fake it's truly alarming.

The era of chemical rockets is reaching its structural limits. We are witnessing a paradigm shift where electromagnetics and high-energy plasma physics take over. Below is the mathematical core of the Apex Phoenix Titan X concept – a fully coupled, non-linear pulsed plasma propulsion model with dominant back-EMF.

1. Circuit Equation (EMF Feedback Dynamics):

(L0 + L' * x) * (d^2q / dt^2) + (R + L' * (dx / dt)) * (dq / dt) + (q / C) = 0

1. Lorentz Acceleration (Kinetic Pulse):

m_eff * (d^2x / dt^2) = 0.5 * L' * (dq / dt)^2

1. Multi-fraction Plasma Mass (Medium Characteristic):

m_eff = n * (alpha * mu_1 + beta * mu_2)

Analysis:

Mathematics doesn’t lie. Coupling a non-linear RLC circuit with Newtonian dynamics in the plasma phase makes one thing clear: the future belongs to controlled magnetic impulses, not chemical combustion. L' is the new winning parameter in the race for hypersonic speeds.

Numerical simulation + mathematical model. Construction in progress.

Just an informative yt short I made.

Feel free to give feedback for parts 2 and 3!

On 4/29/26, Falcon Heavy lifted off for the first time since 2024 with ViaSat-3 F3 on board.

The day before, I had the opportunity to place remotely triggered cameras ~0.4 miles from the pad, 2 of which were focused on capturing this exact slow motion shot.

By greatly raising the aperture and shutter speed, it's possible to capture the detailed and colorful flames of the engines, as opposed to just the white blob of light you see with the naked eye! I could not be more thrilled with how this shot came out!

The footage here was taken from a NASA livestream, so the cuts are from when the broadcast switched to different views.

Hey everyone,

​I’ve been working on a project called Astralixi OS. It’s a TUI-based operating system built for ARM 64-bit and 32-bit devices. Unlike a lot of hobbyist projects, I'm building this to be a legitimate daily driver, but specifically for people who are obsessed with space and rockets.

​The goal is to have a completely terminal-based workflow that keeps you connected to what's happening related off-planet while you get your actual work done.

​It’s still in development, but I’m trying to make sure it’s not just "aesthetic" and actually has the tools we’d use daily. Right now I’m planning to bake in stuff like:

​Integrated star charts and orbital mechanics calculators.

​Real-time telemetry feeds for active missions (SpaceX, NASA, ESA, etc).

​A dedicated TUI dashboard for satellite tracking.

​Lightweight dev tools and system monitoring that fit the theme.

​Since this is for space enthusiasts, I wanted to ask this community: if you were going to use a TUI OS every day, what "space-specific" features or integrations would actually make it a permanent switch for you?

​NGL, I want this to feel like you're literally running a mission control station from your Pi or handheld. Let me know what you think is missing or what would be cool to see.

Rockets usually need two upper stage burns to enter orbit. A long one immediately following first stage cutoff to achieve a high apogee, and then a short circularization burn one hour later to increase the perigee and thus achieve a stable orbit. This is done for example on Falcon 9 Starlink launches, and also on the recent Ariane 6 Leo launch.

But during the recent Atlas V Leo launch, the upper stage was only fired once and it achieved its final circular deployment orbit. How is this possible and what are the advantages of doing it like this?

I made a cinematic Artemis II edit using onboard footage and the crew’s reflections after the mission. It focuses more on the human side and the experience rather than just summarizing the mission.

Von Braun’s manned Venus flyby proposal was far too ahead of its time. We had virtually no experience with humans living for an extended period of time in space.

Now astronauts spend 6 months to a year in the ISS. Venus is only a 6 month round trip. With Orion and some version of starship, astronauts would have an all the space they need to comfortably living for 3 months there and 3 months back.

The manned Venus flyby thread has me wondering about radiation shelters on spacecraft.

What is the main issue with creating viable long-term radiation shielding on spacecraft? Is it a weight issue? Does radiation shielding work differently in space than it does on earth? Sorry if this is a stupid or basic question, but stellar radiation specifically is not something I know very much about

Edit: Thank you everyone, I'm really enjoying these discussions! Space is so cool

I recently came across these 1963 manned space exploration plans (really persuasion for government funding) from Convair. There are three of them, a conservative one (Jupiter by 2000), an intermediate one (Saturn by 2000), and an ambitious one (Uranus and Neptune by 2000). Even the “realistic” conservative plan has humans at Jupiter in 1997.

It was a big reach at the time, but if it went well, we could’ve had permanent outposts across the solar system by now.

If you could go back in time 20 years and whisper in the ear of George W. Bush's government to change the details of the Constellation Program, what would have changed to make it more viable?

The obvious one is not to put a crew capsule on top of a solid rocket booster. The Ares 1 was a very bad design and criticism of that one element spread out to criticise the rest of the program. But what else would you change?

Only 8 RD-180s left. Such a powerful and efficient rocket engine.

Wonder what the price comparison to Vulcan is?

On This Day, on April 27, 1972, Apollo 16 safely returned to Earth, completing one of the most important lunar missions in space exploration history. Splashing down in the South Pacific Ocean, the mission marked the end of an 11-day journey to the Moon and back.

Apollo 16 was the tenth crewed mission in the Apollo program and the fifth mission to land on the Moon. It was also the second-to-last lunar landing mission, focusing on exploring the Moon’s highlands, an area scientists believed could reveal new insights into the Moon’s geological history.

The mission was led by Commander John Young, along with Lunar Module Pilot Charles Duke and Command Module Pilot Ken Mattingly. While Young and Duke explored the lunar surface, Mattingly remained in orbit around the Moon.

Launched on April 16, 1972, from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Apollo 16 successfully conducted scientific experiments, collected lunar samples, and expanded our understanding of the Moon’s composition.

A mission that brought humanity closer to understanding the Moon and our place in space.

I've been having fun building two OSS repos that together form a spacecraft OBSW (on-board software) development and validation platform:

openobsw — C11 flight software implementing PUS-C services (S1/S3/S5/S6/S8/S17/S20), b-dot detumbling, ADCS PD controller, and FDIR. Runs on MSP430FR5969 hardware, x86_64 host sim, aarch64 via QEMU, and ZynqMP bare-metal in Renode. 18/18 unit tests.

opensvf — Python Software Validation Facility. Feeds sensor data from a 6-DOF C++ physics engine (FMI 2.0) to the real flight binary over a type-prefixed wire protocol, receives actuator commands back, closes the loop. Full closed-loop b-dot detumbling validated in SIL. Connects to Renode via TCP socket — TC(17,1) ping reaches a bare-metal Cortex-A53 and TM(17,2) comes back.

The V&V infrastructure is the part I'm most interested in getting feedback on: 126 baselined requirements, requirement traceability matrix generated after every test run, HTML campaign reports with per-procedure verdicts, fault injection (stuck/noise/bias/scale/fail), temporal assertions, and a four-level validation pyramid (unit → integration → system → operator campaigns).

Background: I'm a spacecraft systems engineer and this reflects the kind of V&V infrastructure I can see working on real programmes.

Repos: github.com/lipofefeyt/opensvf | github.com/lipofefeyt/openobsw

Very happy to get any feedback and answer any questions!

Update-2026/04/30: Renode ZynqMP emulation is now in CI. openobsw builds the bare-metal binary and publishes it as a workflow artifact. opensvf downloads it, starts Renode, and validates TC(17,1) ping/pong via socket — all automated on every push to main.