This is a use-after-free, which should be impossible in safe Rust due to the borrow checker. The only way for this to happen would be incorrect unsafe code (still possible, but dramatically reduced code surface to worry about) or a compiler bug. To allocate heap space in safe Rust, you have to use types provided by the language like Box, Rc, Vec, etc. To free that space (in Rust terminology, dropping it by using drop() or letting it go out of scope) you must be the owner of it and there may be current borrows (i.e. no references may exist). Once the variable is droped, the variable is dead so accessing it is a compiler error, and the compiler/std handles freeing the memory.

There’s some extra semantics to some of that but that’s pretty much it. These kind of memory bugs are basically Rust’s raison d’etre - it’s been carefully designed to make most memory bugs impossible without using unsafe. If you’d like more information I’d be happy to provide!

The GPU I used is actually a 1080, with a (rapidly declining in usefulness) Intel 4690k. But I suppose laptop vs desktop can certainly make all the difference. What I really want is GPU virtualization, which I’ve heard AMD supports, but I’m not about to buy a new GPU when what I’ve got works fine.

My experience with single GPU passthrough on Proxmox to a media VM was pretty positive, especially for it being an old Nvidia card. Even as someone doing it for the first time, it just took about 10 minutes to figure out the passthrough itself and another ~15 to figure out some driver issues. And it’s worked perfectly since then. All in all much better than what I’d expected.

Pretty crazy that losing a booster is exceptional now. This also gets me thinking about whether the final F9 life leader, as F9 retires, will be lost or recovered and still able to fly if it needed to. Either way it’s exciting to think about a future where Falcon is obsolete!

I’m really hoping for before '24 of course because of the yearly launch limit, but realistically I think January is possible and February is most likely. I’d be surprised if it isn’t before March unless there’s extenuating circumstances, e.g. FAA or lawsuits.

Thanks for this! Really want to keep up with the goings on in space but it’s really hard without Reddit.

Having made the choice to use GTK for a Rust project years ago - before a lot of the more Rust-friendly frameworks were around - this is exactly why I chose it. Nothing to do with DEs or any of that, just looking for a better coding experience. Now I’d probably choose one of the several Rust-focused solutions that have popped up though.

For reference, OTV stands for “orbital transfer vehicle”, basically something that can change its orbit via onboard propulsion. And Tom Mueller is the guy behind Merlin and Raptor. Almost certainly SpaceX wouldn’t be anywhere near what it is today without him.

I certainly do, thanks for the correction!

The China thing is stupid but the review after the failure of the pad and the FTS isn’t really what this is about. I’m sure SpaceX would be happy if they could talk congress into relaxing that type of thing too, the reality is that by all accounts both parties are happy with the way the safety review has gone, and with this type of thing the FAA works very closely with SpaceX (though I suspect Elon will be upset if the Fish and Wildlife Service consult takes long given his impressive record of stupidity). In fact, given the wording the SpaceX rep used, I’d bet his mentioning Starship and the Moon is because Artemis is very important to a lot of people in Congress for several reasons - if this were about Elon’s ego and disregard for safety, I expect they’d instead mention Mars and China’s growing economic, not scientific, rivalry with the US. But that’s besides the point.

The real issue at hand for the FAA, and the reason for this hearing, lies in the fact that starting with the Falcon 9, commercial space launches are becoming more and more routine, and they’re only going to keep picking up the pace as Starship, Vulcan, Proton and others enter service. And while at the moment the FAA is managing to keep most things running, they’re critically understaffed for the workload to begin with before you even take into account the pace at which the space scene is changing. And most of what was said in the article lines up with what the FAA says, which is basically “sorry guys, we’re doing the best we can, but we don’t have enough people”. I think this quote from SpaceX does a much better job than the crap they have to tell senators:

“Our concern is even today Falcon and Dragon are sometimes competing for FAA resources with Starship, and the FAA can’t handle those three activities together. So let alone what’s coming next year, or maybe even later this year, we just don’t think the FAA is staffed ready to support that.”

They also recommend that the FAA be allowed to use NASA’s and the Space Force’s resources, which sounds like a great idea worth exploring to me. It should also be mentioned that these complaints are almost exclusively targeted at unmanned space flight, and that manned space flight is a different story entirely and not really relevant to this hearing.

So really a better non-sensational title would be “FAA understaffed for space boom even with doubling of staff, says space companies” or something along those lines.