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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • Meh that may be true in some ways, but not really in this case. RTGs were made using a surplus from production for nuclear bombs. As that production ramped down combined with better solar and batteries, the demand went down and it became more expensive to produce them. So not making them made sense.

    An RTG is really only useful for missions that go far away from the Sun, making solar non-viable. RTGs are a pain in the neck all throughout the process, are heavy and expensive (even back in the day). The amount of electrical power an RTG delivers is also very low. This is because an RTG only gets warm, nothing more. So we put TEG (Seebeck) devices on the sides to generate electrical energy from the thermal gradient. But TEGs suck ass, they are super inefficient. For example the RTG the big Mars rovers use put out 2000W of thermal energy, but they manage to get only 110W of electrical energy out of that. So if you are near enough to the Sun, solar is the much better option.


  • Who has nuclear diamond batteries? Those are a total myth drummed up to get investor money. They don’t actually exist.

    Sure the concept exists, in the form of betavoltaic batteries, those have been around for decades. They are tough and last dozens of years if not longer. The only problem is, they put out microwatts. You can use them in very niche applications, but those are few and far between. It’s hard to convey how little power a microwatt is, it’s basically nothing.

    What you care about when going to space is energy density, and the proposed energy density of nuclear diamond batteries is very poor.

    Rtgs are very useful for longterm missions, but are crazy expensive. They also aren’t being made anymore, so getting a hold of one is hard. The weight is an issue as well, they are super heavy.

    These commercial moon missions are primarily demonstrator missions. They aren’t meant to last, they don’t really have a goal and often don’t do something useful. The idea is to show you can do it, so you can sell a product. Other people that do want to do useful stuff can then pay to get their stuff to the moon. So if the mission is over when the sun sets in two weeks time, that’s perfectly fine.






  • So you go to the doctor to get a medical license so you can fly an airplane. The doctor asks if you have any physical issues, you say no. Then he proceeds to ask you about your sex life. And not just a single yes or no question, he goes into great detail asking question upon question.

    This is seriously fucked up, a doctor could lose their license where I live asking stuff like that. Like my man you are supposed to see if someone is medically fit to fly, not if they live up to some standard of how women are supposed to behave from the 1800s.

    The whole don’t seek mental healthcare ever or you’ll lose your license is also just crazy. I think Mentour Pilot made some videos about that as well.

    Iirc this one featured mental health issues among pilots https://youtu.be/988j2-4CdgM