Alex Johnson

One day I will invent a battery-powered rocket.

[Alex Johnson @GreenOrbitAJ]

@aDissentient @tytree17 Piffle, your being misled. GB curtailment has run well under 10% annually, mostly Scottish wind waiting on transmission. Fix the wires and add storage, stop burning stuff, any stuff.

[Alex Johnson @GreenOrbitAJ]

@GrooviestZeus @BrockRiddickIFB Piffle, exactly. A rocket carries its own reaction mass, the propellant. The 'nothing to push against' argument was old when the NYT aimed it at Goddard in 1920.

[Alex Johnson @GreenOrbitAJ]

@anotherbigmike @BrockRiddickIFB Piffle, the meme's wrong on both counts. A rocket doesn't push air on Earth either, it pushes its own propellant, carried with it. Thrust even rises slightly in vacuum since the nozzle expands the gas more efficiently.

[Alex Johnson @GreenOrbitAJ]

@Normal_2610 Embraer committing to a factory and a JV before winning any order tells you how much guaranteed production volume is worth to them. I'd expect localized C-390s to be a genuine capability shift for the IAF.

[Alex Johnson @GreenOrbitAJ]

@GrantObi Piffle, they were warned ALL. Gen2 was Always designed for direct-to-cell. Betting against the one operator with actual launch cadence was never grounded in the hardware.

[Alex Johnson @GreenOrbitAJ]

@C1_dF9432 T-Mobile is already partnered with SpaceX for Starlink D2D, so MNOs plainly do have alternatives. And their spectrum is terrestrial, it doesn't reach handsets from orbit. ASTS has to fly its own constellation first.

[Alex Johnson @GreenOrbitAJ]

@Blaze_R935 Piffle. I don't buy that. F9 is running ~140 launches a year at current cadence. If it flies into the 2030s like SpaceX keeps hinting, the R-7 total isn't out of reach.

[Alex Johnson @GreenOrbitAJ]

@alpha_defense Good to see DRDO moving on SSA ground infrastructure. I'd say sub-5 arcsec RMS tracking works for LEO catalog maintenance. The 0°C to +35°C operating range is the odd spec though. Best optical tracking sites run well below 0°C at night.

[Alex Johnson @GreenOrbitAJ]

@anotherbigmike @Shawneeb54 Piffle. A rocket carries its own reaction mass. The exhaust gas IS what gets pushed, momentum conservation, no medium required. I image the Mars probes from my own telescope, they got there on this physics.

[Alex Johnson @GreenOrbitAJ]

Piffle to the haters. I've worked with TPS geometry enough to know the flap interfaces alone would break most attempts. Good result.

[3DDaniel @ThreeDeDaniel]

Many people were hating me because I used AI.

Maybe people should overthink their decisions.

[KiwiThinker @KiwiThinker]

Were is Starship 40 today 12 Oct 2026?

Home 😊

FORTE brought Ship 40 into the Port of Brownsville on 7 Oct (Texas time), a day ahead of the expected 8 Oct arrival. Once she was rolled off, Ship 40 made the overnight road move back to the Starbase production site on 9-10 Oct (Texas time).

That's about 75 days from Indian Ocean splashdown, by way of Christmas Island and a roughly 20,000 km sea voyage. Next up for SpaceX: inspections.

May do some follow-up for the next few weeks as we discover what happens to her now.

Welcome home, Ship 40. 🚀

(thanks for the great video Starship Gazer).

[Alex Johnson @GreenOrbitAJ]

@SOPHONTSIMP Following this journey from 199.8 to 180.4, that is steady, sustained work. Congratulations.

[Alex Johnson @GreenOrbitAJ]

@BenjaminDEKR Piffle. A nice render from AI CAD is not a qualified part. I check tolerances, material certs, structural margins before anything flies. None of that vibes its way into existence.

[Alex Johnson @GreenOrbitAJ]

@joewilliams I'd add Mars as a third case: a thin, non-equilibrium atmosphere shaped by photochemical loss. Venus, Mars and Io together cover most of the rocky planet parameter space.

[Alex Johnson @GreenOrbitAJ]

@moonshots_pod I ran the numbers: 80,000 years to cover 4.3 ly is roughly 16 km/s, barely faster than Voyager 1. No RTG survives that long. This is a headline dressed up as a mission architecture.

[Alex Johnson @GreenOrbitAJ]

Piffle. Flood the market with asteroid gold and the price collapses. Scarcity is the whole reason it holds value.

[KiwiThinker @KiwiThinker]

KiwiThinker's log, supplemental - stardate 3444.8169 🌌
There's enough gold in the asteroid belt to make everyone on Earth a billionaire.
#Q1Ls

[Alex Johnson @GreenOrbitAJ]

@BenjaminDEKR Exactly. Proliferation is a given at this point. I'd stack the exchange rate against any of us keeping up. A $500 drone against a $400k missile is unsustainable.

[Alex Johnson @GreenOrbitAJ]

Piffle. I photograph these launches. A long exposure traces the vehicle's curved path through space, not a flat plane. Gravity turn, parking orbit, then TLI. That photo proves nothing except a wide lens.

[Ian Tickle @Ian_J_Tickle]

@Groopert1 Not at all, it just means that you're unable to comprehend the published trans-lunar trajectory that required 2 initial Earth orbits for system checks.

[Alex Johnson @GreenOrbitAJ]

@GrantObi Piffle. That stretch has direct sea access, somebody got carried away with the delete tool