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Cake day: June 8th, 2023

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  • If you’re meeting the cycler in its orbit, you’re already on a free return trajectory back to Earth by definition. You need another burn if you want to stop at Mars and another burn after that to leave and get back on a trajectory to Earth. In any event, you need to bring all of that propellant one way or another through some combination of independent launches. I’m still not seeing what a rendezvous with the cycler craft is doing for an unmanned mission. Any delta-v you take from the cycler has to be put back via refueling or reboosting at some point or another.












  • It’s absolutely blue bubble exceptionalism and both Apple and Google are to blame. Google couldn’t focus on a single messaging strategy and has created and destroyed half a dozen workable cross-platform messaging solutions. Meanwhile, Apple did and pushed iPhone users into its walled garden while Europeans turned to Whatsapp which has the virtue of being multi-platform but it’s owned by Meta which has its own set of problems.

    RCS might’ve worked out if Google had just cut the carriers out from the beginning. It’s not even that great of a protocol but it’s probably the only one likely to supplant SMS as the lowest common denominator if Google gets its way with regulators and forces Apple to play along. It doesn’t benefit Apple to bother until they’re forced to.