His blog's comparison of NASA's SLS based Artemis architecture versus a Lunar program based on Starship makes the point.
This is a phase change difference in access to space akin from the X-Atlantic air travel jump from Charles Lindberg to the wide body jet in 5-years. 2/
For the logistical types, these are your current price points:
$100,000/kg for LEO bulk cargo
$1,000,000/kg(+) for deep space exploration.
Starship will do 100 ton (+) chunks for <$10m per launch.
It will be launching several hundred times a year w/in 5-years. 3/
Starship will be doing 1,000(+) flights a year in about seven to 10 years.
And no one in the NASA or the incumbent space industries world wide are doing jack to prepare for that reality. 4/
Casey Handmer's point is how will...
"NASA and industry will have to find a way to produce 100x as much stuff for 1/10th the price. Rovers will have to be $1000/kg and we will need 100 tons of them every year."
5/
That isn't where NASA is
Nor Boeing,
Nor Lockheed Martin,
Nor Aerojet etc. etc.
They are all pretending the SpaceX's Falcon & Falcon Heavy rockets don't exist 6/
Another of Handmer's point's --
"History is littered with the wreckage of former industrial titans that underestimated the impact of new technology and overestimated their ability to adapt. Blockbuster, Motorola, Kodak, Nokia, RIM, Xerox, Yahoo, IBM, Atari, Sears, Hitachi, 7/
What we are seeing here is an industrial/institutional version of Thomas Kuhn's Theory of Scientific Revolutions. People invested in the old ways 8/ amazon.com/Structure-Scie…
...will be displaced by those who believe in the new, relevant, scientific & technological paradigms.
And politics will follow this shift.
9/
Starship's success, and it is looking increasingly successful, will be akin to a seed crystal dropped into a supersaturated solution.
The first fully successful Starship orbital launch & return will kill stock values of every other space launcher firm overnight. 10/
And the NASA SLS architecture - long nicknamed the "Senatorial Launch System" for its major supporters - will not survive past the 3rd launch.
What there will be left of NASA after Starship enters regular daily service is conjecture. I too, like Handmer, hope it can adapt. 11/
But whatever comes after...it won't include the Senatorial Launch System.
/End
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In WW2 according to US Army Medical department statistics, the US Army ground forces in NW Europe and the Mediterranean took 65% of their casualties from Artillery.
In 2025, Russia is taking 75% from drones.
2/
Drones are now more lethal in Ukraine than artillery was in the WW2, the most artillery heavy war in human history to date.
Drones have replaced, and then some, tube artillery, rockets and mortars as the indirect fire "King of Battle."
Strategypage -dot- com has a new article out on the decline of Russian that civil infrastructure that makes Frederick Lanchester smile.
Russian Civil Infrastructure Attrition🧵
1/
Text from the article:
"Russia wants to end the Ukraine War via negotiations with the United States. This will work if done from a position of strength. The current Russian situation is weak and getting weaker.
2/
...Russian forces in Ukraine are stalled and too weak to launch another offensive, even a small one.
It will get worse. The Russian economy is starting to collapse in some or many areas because of disinvestment.
3/
The semiconductor industrial base is the foundation of 21st century economic & military power.
The USSR only ever produced single detector element technology like Long Wavelength Infrared (LWIR) Infrared Line Scan (IRLS) or scanning infrared Search and Track (IRST) like those on the MiG-29 Fulcrum A.
2/
The USSR never produced any of the classic nodding or spinning mirror LWIR Forward Looking Infrared (FLIRs) sensors that the US introduced during the Vietnam war.
In fact there is no evidence Russia was able to sustain any of the large Soviet semiconductor industry.
3/
The vast majority of US military aid to Ukraine was in fact spent inside the USA to replace vastly overpriced by the Biden Adm. National Guard & Air Guard surplus weapons.
Spending aid money buying Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV) to replace NG surplus Humvees
...was just one of the aid grifts @JakeSullivan46 NSC crew played to pretend they were helping Ukraine while not offending Russia & buying US Defense contractor kit.
Pres. Trump is literally parroting Russian reflexive control scripts from Biden Adm.
This should not be a surprise as I've pounded on the fact for 2 years that Russia has mapped & fed to each specific US tribal & professional demographic the data to eat up messages/memes Russia wants those groups to believe.
This @sambendett thread here makes Russia seem like a poor kid looking through a candy store window at the "candy" of Ukrainian ground resupply drones.
I mean, seriously, Russia is now introducing a camel transport corps because the Russian startups and big defense contractors cannot produce supply UGV's at scale to deliver potable water to front line troops.
This 🧵by @GrandpaRoy2 demonstrating the increasing battlefield obsolescence of tube artillery in the face of fiber optic fiber guided FPV drones is a useful jumping off point the following:
66% of RuAF AFV's & equipment killed in Jan 2025 were victims of drones
Back in November 2024 I did a long thread on how drones were an "effectiveness revolution" on the battlefield and we would see drones displacing other battlefield weapons because of it.