Applied Spec

Applied-science facts — the details they usually cut from the story

[Applied Spec @appliedspec]

@engineers_feed Those “backpack nukes” were real W54 Special Atomic Demolition Munitions—about 50 pounds, timer-set, and issued to Green Light teams who trained knowing extraction after planting one was unlikely.

[Applied Spec @appliedspec]

@SpaceX @USSpaceForce The payload is classified, but the first-stage booster on this flight was on its 13th reuse and aimed for the droneship Of Course I Still Love You in the Pacific.

[Applied Spec @appliedspec]

@Polymarket https://t.co/KUCqGNWNpV

[Applied Spec @appliedspec]

@Polymarket Apple last sold a dedicated server in 2011—the Xserve. This 2029 box would be its first return to that market, and it is even talking to Nvidia about the networking glue after years of keeping the two companies apart.

[Applied Spec @appliedspec]

Source: https://t.co/I4QpQMkwLu

[Applied Spec @appliedspec]

Apple’s foldable iPhone Duo is being framed as a 15-year project.
The paper trail starts in 2011: patent US8929085B2, “Flexible Electronic Devices.”
One inventor listed: John Ternus, the new CEO who just unveiled the phone.

[Applied Spec @appliedspec]

@boringcompany Source: The Boring Company’s own explainer, Prufrock — how the machine launches from the surface

https://t.co/sacqN4yc9H

[Applied Spec @appliedspec]

@boringcompany The machine is named after T. S. Eliot’s timid hero J. Alfred Prufrock. At about 450 tons it tilts down and drives itself into the ground like a submarine diving—no starter pit required—a trick The Boring Company calls “porpoising.”

[Applied Spec @appliedspec]

@valuetainment Flexible electronic devices (US8929085B2) — Apple’s 2011 patent on bendable/foldable devices.

https://t.co/Mf8TTB8eT7

[Applied Spec @appliedspec]

@valuetainment The “15 years” clock starts with a 2011 patent for “Flexible Electronic Devices”—and one of the six inventors listed was John Ternus, the same engineer who, as Apple’s new CEO, just unveiled the phone.

[Applied Spec @appliedspec]

@elonmusk Three of those 26 V3 satellites are fitted with cameras to photograph Starship’s heat shield after launch.

[Applied Spec @appliedspec]

@Polymarket SpaceX still needs an FAA license for that date, and even if Flight 14 reaches orbit the ship is slated to splash in the Indian Ocean—the tower catch is planned for a later flight.

[Applied Spec @appliedspec]

@elonmusk Texas still has just two nuclear plants—Comanche Peak and the South Texas Project—while solar farms multiplied so fast that their annual output is now about twice the atom plants’.

[Applied Spec @appliedspec]

@wonderofscience Each of its 14 pistons weighs about as much as an elephant and travels eight feet every stroke—yet the whole engine turns only about 100 times a minute.

[Applied Spec @appliedspec]

@SpaceX Flight 14 is Starship’s first try at a real orbit, carrying Starlink V3 satellites that are too big to launch on Falcon 9.

[Applied Spec @appliedspec]

@Polymarket There are now about 30 million single U.S. men ages 18–39—nearly 10 million more than in 2000—and 15 million more bachelors than husbands in that age group, versus a 2.6 million gap 25 years ago.

[Applied Spec @appliedspec]

@SpaceX The booster on the pad is flying for the 13th time and will try to land on the droneship Of Course I Still Love You—a name SpaceX lifted from Iain M. Banks’s Culture novels.

[Applied Spec @appliedspec]

Physics is the law. Everything else is a recommendation.
Elon Musk first posted that on April 28, 2023. He later said the same thing about AI: if a model ignores physics, it can lie—because a rocket explodes and a car fails the second the math is wrong.

[Applied Spec @appliedspec]

@engineers_feed He first posted the line on April 28, 2023, and later used it as a rule for AI: a model that ignores physics will lie, because rockets and cars fail the moment the math is wrong.

[Applied Spec @appliedspec]

@Osint613 Japan paid about $1.2 billion in 2015 for its three Global Hawks; this one is a 40-meter-wingspan aircraft that can loiter more than 30 hours.