Oh hey! That's us!
We've known about this issue since March. OP's post is a very good explanation of the problem. Lemmy wasn't designed with one huge instance in mind like this and lemmy.world is the only instance I'm aware of being a problem. Our Kiwi sisters and brothers hacked around the problem five months ago: They set up a server in Finland, slurp up bulk lemmy.world content in batches and then insert that content into their local database. They invited us to share their code to do this, but:
- It required us to spend money on a VM in Finland specifically for lemmy.world content - a precedent that made us hesitate.
- This is a temporary problem, a new version of Lemmy was meant to come out some months to remedy it. It simply hasn't been released, yet.
Had we known in May that this would still be an issue in October, we might have chosen differently.
13 Minutes to the Moon
Season 1 is essential listening. It's not very long, and takes you through the journey of putting astronauts on the moon with tech far less advanced that what you're reading this on. It came sooooo close to failure on more than one occasion. When that lander touched down, it had something like 8 seconds of fuel left.
Season 2 is the story in detail of the Apollo 13 mission. If you loved Season 1 and want more, then go right ahead. I liked season 2, but nowhere near as much.