Bill Trinen

Bill Trinen

@trintran.bsky.social

Nintendo. Ducks Football. Skiing. Hiking. PJ, MLB & TotD. 日本語. My views are mine and mine alone (unless they are also yours).

2,793 Followers 198 Following 636 Posts Joined Sep 2024
Posts Following
1 day ago

That’s nice

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1 day ago
Email from Chris Reynolds to the AXIS Team. Subject is disappointing AXIS news. Text of e-mail reads: Dear AXIS Friends, The AXIS team has received some very disappointing news – we have been informed by NASA HQ that AXIS is not eligible for selection and hence the Concept Study Report (CSR) will not be subjected to the full review process. AXIS represents the scientific aspirations of a large international community. As a member of one of the AXIS science working groups, you deserve a candid explanation from the PI of what happened and why. That is the purpose of this note. NASA’s decision was programmatic and not based on a review of the technology or science; the mission profile described in the submitted CSR was over the allowed budget and schedule. How was such a thing possible? In short, with NASA-GSFC as the AXIS managing center, the mission formulation process was critically compromised by the seismic shifts occurring in NASA and the Federal government. The AXIS study team was hit hard by three unprecedented challenges: NASA’s Deferred Resignation Program (DRP) and the pressure at GSFC to resign/retire created a rapid and uncontrolled loss of over 20 personnel with key expertise during a critical mission formulation period, including the main GSFC Project Manager (Jimmy Marsh) and the X-ray mirror lead (Will Zhang) and many discipline engineers. GSFC priorities rapidly realigned to the FY2026 President’s Budget Request (PBR) that eliminated the Probe program, further reducing the availability of GSFC engineering and mission formulation personnel (incl. cost analysts and schedulers) over the critical Summer and Fall months. Key work was halted for almost seven weeks when the core GSFC AXIS study team, dominated by NASA civil servants, was furloughed during the government shutdown. NASA HQ’s extension to the CSR submission deadline (from 18-Dec-2025 to 29-Jan-2026) was inadequate compensation for the disruption and lost time. Taken together, these factors disrupted the basic grass-roots costing process (which requires extensive “reach back” to the discipline engineers to assess labor requirements) as well as the cost-design iteration process that is central to the formulation of a cost-capped and schedule-constrained mission. While the mission design was finalized in April, our initial grass-roots costing (which was ~10% over budget) could only be completed in September due to the lack of assigned resources. With the subsequent government shutdown and then “pens down” in early-December forced by the GSFC Executive Review process, there was no opportunity to work through the set of cost/schedule savings that had already been identified by the AXIS team. Ultimately, the GSFC executive council gave AXIS leadership the choice of submitting a CSR with a non-compliant schedule and cost, or not submitting a CSR at all. We of course proceeded with the submission, including a narrative that we understood the path to a cost-compliant profile (that we would have discussed with the review panels during the Site Visit). NASA HQ has ruled this stance to be unacceptable. It is important to stress that NASA’s programmatic decision was before any technical review had been conducted. The decision was NOT due to any concerns about AXIS technology. Indeed, the AXIS Phase A work had major successes with furthering Indeed, the AXIS Phase A work had major successes with furthering the key technologies. GSFC’s Next Generation X-ray Optics (NGXO) team successfully demonstrated iridium-coated, stress-compensated mirror segments that meet AXIS baseline requirements (i.e. segment-level performance at sub-arcsecond level).  NGXO also built the first AXIS demonstrator mirror module, learning critical lessons about mirror alignment, mounting and bonding. On the detector side, MIT quickly moved to fabricate AXIS-like CCDs and, working with our colleagues at Stanford, recently demonstrated that they achieve the required readout rate and spectral resolution. Similarly, NASA’s decision was NOT a judgment of the importance of AXIS science. The AXIS science case was rated excellent in the Step 1 review, and it only became stronger during our Phase A study. The AXIS Community Science Book, which many of you contributed to, is an extremely powerful demonstration of the relevance and importance of high-resolution X-ray observations to all areas of astrophysics. The Science Book is one of the most important legacies of the AXIS Phase A study and, I believe, will help define future mission concepts for many years to come. I thank you all from the bottom of my heart for all of your work on this. AXIS has been a long journey; we started under the leadership of Richard Mushotzky more than nine years ago. During that time, it’s been an enormous privilege to work with amazing people; the AXIS science team, the incredible/brilliant GSFC and Northrop Grumman engineers, and the wider astrophysics community. I am, quite frankly, livid that AXIS ultimately fell victim to the programmatic chaos of 2025. The astronomical community deserves better. I hope that NASA leadership, especially at GSFC and HQ, can have an honest discussion about how to better support and protect programs during extraordinary times. For now, as a community, we must look forward. There is still one excellent mission under consideration for the Probe program, PRIMA, and we wish them a smooth and speedy path to selection and flight. In X-ray astronomy, the SMEX and MidEX programs represent concrete pathways for focused, high-impact missions, and the scientific case we built for AXIS provides a strong foundation for those concepts. The technologies we advanced in Step 1 and Phase A, particularly the NGXO mirror work and the MIT/Stanford detector demonstrations, can anchor the next generation of proposals. Most importantly, the AXIS Community Science Book, representing more than 500 scientists across, is a living document and a powerful signal to NASA leadership that this community is organized, serious, and not going anywhere. I encourage everyone to use it actively, as a resource for future concept development, for Astro2030 engagement, and for building the next mission that will deliver high angular resolution X-ray imaging to address the fundamental questions about black hole growth, galaxy evolution, and the hot universe that motivated AXIS from the beginning. This community built something remarkable over nine years and that doesn't end here. Thank you again for your support of AXIS over these times. Best Chris and the AXIS leadership team

The @axisprobe.bsky.social team learned that the phase A concept study report of AXIS (the Advanced X-ray Imaging Satellite) will not be reviewed because the lost personnel at NASA Goddard and government shutdown impacted our schedule and budget. 🔭 Here is the PI's e-mail with the explanation.

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3 days ago
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China leads the world in solar deployment. Even parking lots and rooftops are being turned into solar power plants — generating electricity while using space that’s already paved.

China also exceeded its 2030 wind + solar capacity target (1.2 TW) in 2024 — about six years early. #Bettrification

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4 days ago
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Carbon emissions now more than double the planetary boundary, analysis finds Earth is not infinite. Pollution beyond certain levels threatens the climate and ecosystems. To prevent this, scientists have proposed planetary boundaries, defining the safe operating limits of the E...

We cannot forget the planet has limits.
#climatechange #carbonemissions #climateemergency

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4 days ago
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The window for effective climate action closes soon.

#ClimateEmergency #auspol #USPOL #USA #us #uspoli #poli #politics #cdnpoli #canada #MeidasMighty #america #Ethics #ClimateJustice #bcpoli #abpoli #topoli #Klimapolitik #ClimateActionNow #ClimateChange #Climate #capitalism #FalseConsciousness

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4 days ago
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#IsmuasMonthOfMusic
#MusicChallenge
🕰️
3/07 - A song you would play for your younger self.

“You can spend your time alone redigesting past regrets
Or you can come to terms and realize
You're the only one
who can forgive yourself
Makes much more sense
to live
in the present tense”

#pearljam 🖤
🎼

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4 days ago

You can’t spell “fail” without “ai”

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5 days ago
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The world is getting hotter faster — its pace nearly doubled in the past decade Earth is now warming at a rate of around 0.35 ºC per decade, fresh analysis finds.

Climate change is accelerating. A new paper from @rahmstorf.bsky.social and Grant Foster argues they've nailed it statistically for the first time. 🧪

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

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1 week ago

Treepeople

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1 week ago
Picture of Marjane Satrapi alongside a quote from her. The quote reads: The world is not divided into countries. The world is not divided between East and West. You are American, I am Iranian, we don't know each other, but we talk together and we understand each other perfectly. The difference between you and your government is much bigger than the difference between you and me. And the difference between me and my government is much bigger than the difference between me and you. And our governments are very much the same... - Marjane Satrapi, Iranian-French graphic novelist

Thinking about this quote from Persepolis creator Marjane Satrapi again.

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1 week ago

Treepeople were such a killer band.

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1 week ago

“I’ve been using Ecosia for years. Instead of using your searches to fill corporate coffers, it uses them to plant trees. Ecosia commits 100% of its profits to climate action, produces more clean energy than it consumes via its own solar plants, and collects minimal data on its users.”

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1 week ago

Post a picture you took, no context, to bring some Zen to the feed

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1 week ago

"A handful of companies monopolise the web, with unprecedented access to our data. But there are many more ethical – and often distinctively European – alternatives"

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1 week ago

It’s the knees and the running for me.

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2 weeks ago

I hate MLS officiating

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2 weeks ago
https://pitchfork.com/features/article/the-untold-story-of-elliott-smiths-teenage-band/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=dhtwitter&utm_content=null

t.co/YrGKz7ScHA

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2 weeks ago
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More Bands Left Behind By Streaming Under-appreciated post-rock and electronic groups spanning the mid-’90s through the 21st century, appreciated.

This @bandcamp.com review for Seattle/OlyWA band IQU
is a solid appraisal of their excellent debut: "an overlooked gem of the late ‘90s indie scene, combining acoustic and electronic elements in a manner that few were able to master."
(used to work w/ them + why I am living in Seattle today).

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3 weeks ago
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#PNW #Hiking

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3 weeks ago
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Scientists no Longer Find Twitter Professionally Useful, and have Switched to Bluesky Synopsis. Social media has become widely used by the scientific community for a variety of professional uses, including networking and public outreach. For

Bluesky is the new science Twitter, new study by @whysharksmatter.bsky.social and Julia Wester concludes!

"Results show that for every reported professional benefit that scientists once gained from Twitter, scientists can now gain that benefit more effectively on Bluesky than on Twitter."

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1 month ago

Oregon vs USC in 1985 for the Mirage Bowl, too.

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1 month ago

@liambme.bsky.social

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1 month ago

My son co-authored a research paper on a CubeSat Robotic Grasping Mechanism for In-Orbit
Manipulation

#Space #Aerospace #CubeSat

arc.aiaa.org/doi/pdf/10.2...

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1 month ago
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Warm winter liquidates nearly half of Washington state snowpack Washington state’s snowpack held just 52% of its normal volume of water on Thursday, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service.

Washington state’s snowpack held just 52% of its normal volume of water on Thursday.

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1 month ago
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A Dry, Warm January Leaves the West With the Worst Snowpack in Decades
www.drought.gov/drought-stat...

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1 month ago
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1 month ago

It’s so good

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1 month ago
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Democracy is not a spectator sport!
@kexp-feed.nvm2u.com now going hard on #InternationalClashDay and @djeviestokes.bsky.social leading the way with a killer set 🎶👊
KNOW YOUR RIGHTS

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1 month ago
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#InternationalClashDay

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