Conversation

Rocketry is easily the hardest subfield of aerospace engineering and one I don’t know much about. So I feel a bit guilty when someone says something like “ha ha so you’re an actual rocket scientist!” I feel like responding, “no, I specialize in somewhat easier stuff”
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Rovers are more my speed. Stuff happens in more intuitive and forgiving regimes. No 40,000 rpm compressors or huge tanks of cryogenic fuels. Or blistering temperatures and things exploding because of tiny errors. Very unforgiving shit.
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Fields acquire reputations for engineering badassery in proportion to how far away from everyday human experience their operating regimes are. Nothing you do in everyday life develops rocketry intuitions.
Replying to
Which is why brain surgery replaced rocketry as the paradigmatic “smart” field sometime in the 80s. It’s even more unintuitive. Even though we ARE brains, nothing in our direct experience works like a brain. Except maybe global population. 7.5b people/planet vs. 86b neurons/brain
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Replying to
lol remember when i deduced that if earth was much bigger the propellant mass fraction of the best chemical rocket would be way too high to be useful and so any potential civilization growing up on a big planet would have to go around chemical rockets if they wanted to go up
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