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Phil Metzger
@DrPhiltill
Director, Stephen W. Hawking Center for Microgravity Research & Education @UCF. Prev: co-founder NASA KSC Swamp Works. Space Mining. Space Settlement. Science.
Orlando, FL
linktr.ee/drphiltill
Joined December 2012
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    Phil Metzger
    @DrPhiltill
    Nov 11, 2023
    Three collections of threads from over the years, sorted by how interesting (IMO). I hope you enjoy! 1. IMO, the best 🧵s. x.com/drphiltill/sta… 2. The 2nd best set. x.com/drphiltill/sta… 3. The 3rd best. x.com/drphiltill/sta…
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    Phil Metzger
    @DrPhiltill
    Nov 11, 2023
    This third and final 🧵 of 🧵s is for the those that I put into the 3rd tier of interestingness. I hope some will enjoy them, but they are probably not for all. /1
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    Phil Metzger
    @DrPhiltill
    Mar 23, 2025
    Last night our youngest daughter was making “simple syrup” but fell asleep on the couch. I came downstairs to see what was up with the smoky smell and I found out that he had created carbon aerogel. It weighs almost nothing. 😂
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    Phil Metzger
    @DrPhiltill
    Mar 23, 2025
    Replying to @defnotbeka
    We tasted it. It has literally no taste. Like exactly zero. No burned taste. No ash taste. Nothing. (We did both spit it out to be safe lol.)
    364K
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    Phil Metzger
    @DrPhiltill
    Jul 22, 2021
    The most difficult part of space exploration isn't rocket science, it is economics.
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    Phil Metzger
    @DrPhiltill
    Jan 22, 2021
    Here's a concept I developed at NASA 18 years ago: "Multipole Radiation Shielding." Our director called it the First Generation Star Trek Shield. My lab lead had the idea to use electrostatics to protect spacecraft from cosmic radiation and he asked me to lead the effort. 1/n
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    Phil Metzger
    @DrPhiltill
    Apr 28, 2024
    Untrue. This does touch on something related that actually happened, which people have apparently distorted and used to prop up the dumb conspiracy theory. I will explain… 1/N
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    Mike Gorman
    @mikexgorman
    Apr 26, 2024
    NASA deleted ALL the footage and telemetry data from the moon landing … this was an amazing #JRE with Bart Sibrel
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    Readers added context
    NASA did wipe and re-use the video tapes containing the raw Apollo footage, however all of the original broadcast footage still exists. reuters.com/article/idUSTR… space.com/nasa-apollo-11…
    4.3M
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    Phil Metzger
    @DrPhiltill
    Jul 24, 2025
    The heat capacity of the room’s walls, ceiling, furniture, is vastly higher than the heat capacity of the air, so most of the heat pulled out of a room by an AC actually came from the walls, ceiling, furniture, not the air. It just went thru the air as it was being taken out. 1/2
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    Phil Metzger
    @DrPhiltill
    Mar 23, 2025
    Replying to @AntonMuller14
    It was a typo
    251K
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    Phil Metzger
    @DrPhiltill
    Jul 31, 2025
    Neutron stars are not made of chemicals.
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    Simon Maechling
    @simonmaechling
    Jul 31, 2025
    Hi 👋, PhD Chemist here:- Anyone else agree that literally everything is made of chemicals?
    405K
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    Phil Metzger
    @DrPhiltill
    Sep 10, 2024
    NASA has not done supersonic retropropulsion to land a booster. I remember being in a meeting at NASA where one of the agency’s top experts on supersonic retropropulsion was saying they weren’t sure it could be stable. Now SpaceX does it routinely. So there’s that.
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    Adrian Dittmann
    Zenno Astronautics
    @AdrianDittmann
    Sep 8, 2024
    Neil deGrasse Tyson, an astrophysicist and “science communicator” thinks that Elon Musk, one of the most successful entrepreneurs of all time “Hasn't done anything that NASA hasn't already done” And doubts that “his new ventures have commercial support, [and] commercial value”
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    Phil Metzger
    @DrPhiltill
    Feb 25, 2024
    I could write a 50 page paper answering this :) A few points in outline form only: 1) The rocket exhaust is expanding into vacuum, so viscosity breaks down, so the gas does not obey the Navier-Stokes equation, which is the basis of CFD (computational fluid dynamics) models. /1
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    John F Kross
    @johnfkross2
    Feb 25, 2024
    Replying to @DrPhiltill
    Can you elaborate on your statement that "we haven't solved the physics of blowing dust." In what manner are CFD models of lunar dust under rocket plume inadequate?
    2.4M
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    Phil Metzger
    @DrPhiltill
    Mar 23, 2025
    Replying to @kar_nels
    Maybe, I don’t know. It was pretty funny that it just happened, though 😄
    198K
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    Phil Metzger
    @DrPhiltill
    Jun 21, 2020
    Saw the most brilliant double rainbow today. It is cool how the sky is darker between the two bows and lighter inside the smaller now. This is because light that hits raindrops bounces back more in some directions than in others.
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    Phil Metzger
    @DrPhiltill
    Jul 13, 2022
    Contrarian perspective. I am sure there is NOBODY in this picture looking back at us. There might be beings out there looking in this direction, but they are looking at dinosaurs, or single cellular life, or a Milky Way before our Sun had formed — humans are not in their view 😞
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