CatastrophicFailure
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Posts posted by CatastrophicFailure
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20 hours ago, Ultimate Steve said:
[another mind-blowing dissertation of rationality]
PLEASE send me a postcard when you get to Mars.
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Really kinda puts it into perspective…
…wait fo’ it…
4 hours ago, AckSed said:The cloth (?) covers are new to me. Have we seen this before?
Yes, think they started showing up around IFT-1, when everything started looking a lot more “finished” and a lot less “slapped together in a tent…”
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Got a nice peek up under the skirt here (scandalous!), everything is looking very tidy and finished. Now IIRC those “cans” around the outer engines are actually around all of them, specifically to contain a failure.
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Sigh. I’ma say this just one, and probably regret it, and hopefully the mods just delete this whole tangent, but anyways…
X is objectively doing better now than Twitter ever was. Twitter was on a short path to bankruptcy, X is now moving strongly the other direction, and likely to break a profit next year. Certain people have been foretelling the impending dooms of Elon Musk’s various ventures for years, and they’ve been wrong every single time. Hate what X has become if you want (that’s your right, and it’s mine to say you are incorrect in thinking so), but it’s no more dying than Tesla is bankwupt or SpaceX will never fly again.
/RantOff
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18 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:
I’m very lucky to live right on the edge of suburbia. If I drive 5 minutes one way I’m in ranch country and 5 minutes the other way there is a supermarket.
Spoiler
18 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:Also interestingly, the Cargo Dragon was dimmer than most satellites I see. I don’t know if that we because it was near ISS or if the solar panel side was facing me and absorbing light? If anyone knows please share your thoughts
There’s lots of factors that can determine the brightness of any given space thing. Solar panels are actually very reflective (that’s why the ISS is so bright), but the rest of Dragon is also rather reflective being white. Other satellites might have big solar arrays, too, making them more visible. Even some antennas can do that, like the old Iridium satellites that could flare brighter than the ISS, but only for a moment, if the sun hit the antenna just so from where you’re observing.
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18 hours ago, Cuky said:
Sadly no. Even starlink today I just happened to be outside at the time they were passing above. The problem I have is that it mostly passes far out of sight and is only visible for few seconds so I don't even try. But now that you asked me I went to check and on December 20th it should pass above just 100-150km north from where I am located and should be visible for around 5 minutes so I might go looking for it if I don't forget
Set an alarm. Download ALL! THE! APPS! Once you’ve seen it you’ll wonder how you ever missed it before, sucker is bright.
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18 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:
One blog called it “too big for LEO missions, too small for lunar missions”
So, basically, SLS?
Spoiler
1 hour ago, Cuky said:A bit under 3h ago was the first time that I have seen Starlink satellites passing above my island and those weren't as bright as I actually expected. If they didn't move in a perfect line one after the other one could easily mistake them for a star or a plane. But it was nice finally experiencing seeing something man made with my naked eyes in the night sky
Have you never seen the ISS?
22 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:Bruh, this is a real concept.
I wonder if we might see more "goofy" stuff like this as boosters start reaching a hard wall EOL? Like, they need to dispose of it anyway, might as well give it a Viking funeral vs scrapping it. Probably cheaper, too.
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11 minutes ago, tater said:
There's enough room and margin that they could plausibly put a couple options in there to try out as well.
From what I’ve gleaned it’s just a transfer between main and header tanks. Little to no change to vehicle, plumbing’s already there (to fill header in the first place), zero additional risk to mission.
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8 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:
These races are kinda lame IMO. I remember how during SLS' multiple failed launch attempts, everybody was so excited (confident?) SLS was about to be buried in history by Starship, which started development six years after SLS but would fly before the long delayed old space rocket. Starship flew five months later.
Stuff like that just seems like it will be silly in the historical record, kinda like how Soviet estimates for how much time it would take for them to beat Apollo are almost joke material in the present day.
I think they should take their time and make sure it works, not pit a medium lift rocket against a super heavy lift launch vehicle for the memes. Rushing to meet a certain date causes disasters. If the Soviets hadn't been so eager to return to crewed flight ahead of the 50th anniversary of the October Revolution, Vladimir Komarov might be still with us.
You saw the bit about the dance-off, right?
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3 hours ago, DAL59 said:
IFT-3 should have a race with Vulcan-1.
Or a dance-off.
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2 hours ago, darthgently said:
And pizza dough too!
A freefall recipe contest in orbit between famous chefs; Chef Gruel, Chef Gordon Ramsey, and ChatGPT simulacrums of James Beard and Julia Childs! It could get quite heated with so many cooks in the Orbital Reef Kitchen!
Yeah but just imagine the flambés…
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11 hours ago, tater said:
[BO flight hardware]
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8 minutes ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:
Whippersnappers.
I'll bet you don't even remember the 60s!
In all fairness a lot of people from the 60s don’t remember the 60s…
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3 hours ago, StrandedonEarth said:
Blood of a virgin? I'd be careful. Don't want to get any nightshade on it, of which many painkillers are derivatives, not to mention potatoes/tomatoes. Don't want to summon any demons...
Ref. "The Mangler" in the short story anthology Night Shift by Stephen King (a fantastic collection IMO)
Or feed it after midnight.
er, wait a sec…
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15 hours ago, mikegarrison said:
Every second before they boost back makes it harder to return to landing, and the whole premise of the booster is that it must return to landing.
It’s all about finding that balance point. SH started its flip almost immediately after separating, much closer, relatively, than an F9 booster. My own theory is it got kicked around faster than expected by the blast from SS, which just amplified the issues with slosh, “water hammer,” turbines, etc. If the solution really is to just wait a few more seconds, with a bit more throttle, before beginning the flip, that seems preferable to adding more mass with baffles or other structural changes.
As always, they have the data, we just have armchairs.
16 hours ago, Minmus Taster said:Come to think of that, what is the price of a fully expended vehicle? I assume it's cheaper than a typical rocket of this size but probably not economical to have without it being reusable, especially with all the engines.
IIRC SS/SH is figured to be cheaper to manufacture than F9, or cheaper per kilo even expended, or something like that.
On 11/23/2023 at 12:03 PM, Mikki said:...a bit off-topic the recent events at SpaceX...
I would slap some wings to SH and weld a proper cone on top (Blast cone hehe) and land SH like a glider...
Hoverslam is nice and all, mechazilla is great but i think landing like a plane would be more logical.
Or is this tube too bottom heavy to glide at all?
Wouldn’t work, without a ground-up redesign. Superheavy can’t go horizontal, ever, it’s not designed for it. And wings, especially big wings, are heavy. SpaceX are the raining champs of propulsive booster landing, they’ll figure this out. And likely already have.
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1 hour ago, Flavio hc16 said:
Then you haven't played KSP enough: try to reach 88% of orbital velocity in KSP, and you will see that you will cover less than 20% of the planet. It's the last few hundreds m/s that makes you go places. And this is eve more pronounced with a bigger Kerbing, aka Earth.
I just tried this in RSS, not surprisingly it confirms reality.
On a less-lofted trajectory (AP=156km), destructive reentry began about 3500km downrange. Puerto Rico is about 3300km from Boca, and Starship AP=250-ish km at FTSECO.
So, Math=KSP_Confirmed.
1 hour ago, tater said:A render
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18 minutes ago, Ultimate Steve said:
I can't wait until Starship deploys a Starlink, then this silly suborbital vs. Atmospheric unstable orbit vs. Orbit debate can end.
I'm betting the first "true orbit" flight is S27 as a cryo-transfer demonstrator, snag some quick contract payouts.
11 minutes ago, magnemoe said:Now I assume this in the Caribbean, if somewhere like the Indian ocean ignore rant. Else can someone explain there 15-20.000 km/h went and let it fall down so fast as orbital mechanics don't work like that. Starship should continue on its path even if blown up. I think all here agree on it.
This leaves some options: 1) the guy talking mixes up superheavy and starship fields 2) SpaceX lied on the telemetry, I see this as very hard to do, for one other was watching this including NASA and other powers.
3) they somehow cheated, say generate a lot of drag in 150 km attitude or somehow.
1) is the simplest answer, yes its much more east than I would expected from superheavy but it did not do an braking burn like F9 does.No it was not an orbit and they missed more than I imagined, its 27000 km/h and they only reached 24, but it should still reach much longer? Again easy to use KSP to test this, it reached 88% of orbital velocity with an AP clearly in space.
And yes KSP is not accurate but here +-100% does not matter. Will you clear the ocean east of KSC? Gone try this myself.
Starship was around 3000kph/830m/s short of orbital speed. Doesn't seem like much on the surface but that's a LOT of difference in the shape of an orbit. Gonna plug this into RSS right now out of curiosity.
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5 minutes ago, Geonovast said:
Why only 20 minutes this time?
So those of us getting up at zero-dark-fifty-five on a weekend to watch this can just roll over and go back to sleep when it scrubs instead of waiting for a reset.
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28 minutes ago, insert_name said:
SpaceX got another X-37b launch, this time on falcon heavy, wonder why they are using it instead of regular falcon
https://spacenews.com/u-s-air-force-x-37b-spaceplane-to-launch-on-a-spacex-falcon-heavy-rocket/
That’s an awful lot of extra delta-V there… could an X-37 survive reentry from medium/high orbit?
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On 11/3/2023 at 10:39 PM, Piscator said:
Or maybe they're afraid of succeeding. A starship drifting out in the ocean might be more trouble than its worth. After all you would have to scuttle it manually somehow. The thing seems to be quite resilient.
And if there’s even a chance of that, they’d have to have some kind of recovery/scuttling power on standby, far from their usual areas of operations. That’s a pretty significant expense for nothing if Starship never even gets that far, which is still extremely likely.
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7 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:
The Vostok is only for getting the cosmonaut to the 1L in Earth orbit. It returns to Earth before TLI.
The spherical descent apparatus was only capable of a ballistic reentry, so if they tried to use it for a lunar return, the cosmonaut would either be severely injured or killed.
Very Kerbal.
But that begs the question, why not just launch in the 1L? Not the first time the Soviets launched with no abort ability…
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46 minutes ago, SunlitZelkova said:
1L was the name of the spacecraft the cosmonaut would fly around the Moon and return in. He would be launched in the Vostok-7, a souped up Vostok with docking equipment and more engines for orbital maneuvering. The cosmonaut would EVA to the 1L crew compartment.
Why is there a separate “descent module” at the forward end, or does the Vostok not go along for the ride?
3 hours ago, sevenperforce said:Weren't there at least some EVA transfers during Skylab and during the construction of the ISS?
I don’t believe so, certainly not with Skylab and pretty sure on the ISS. Wasn’t much need, since they all had crew tunnels, and seems very high risk.
On a less-lofted trajectory (AP=156km), destructive reentry began about 3500km downrange. Puerto Rico is about 3300km from Boca, and Starship AP=250-ish km at FTSECO.
SpaceX Discussion Thread
in Science & Spaceflight
Posted · Edited by CatastrophicFailure
Apollo used a significant percent of GDP at the time to put two dudes in a bedroom closet on the moon for a couple of days. I’d rather see all parties involved did not simply do that again, and actually expanded our scope and capabilities, for a fraction of the relative cost.
Let’s not merely repeat the past, let’s actually build the future. I’m ok with a heavily-regulated player with massive oversight blowing up a few pre-prototype concept demonstration rockets to accomplish that.