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StrandedonEarth

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Everything posted by StrandedonEarth

  1. Launch was a hit in San Diego, it's all over imgur... E: Video clip: https://i.imgur.com/abb2NnA.mp4 E2: I have to wonder if those white dots are stars or fairing halves...
  2. Yeah, I was thining it would make more sense as combined cycle, since spacecraft need power. But would it not be more efficient to just keep heating the plasma with microwaves, like VASIMR?
  3. Falcon 9 wows the crowd (and the announcers) at a spring training baseball game in Pt St Lucie, Fl: https://x.com/awfulannouncing/status/1768804502390358102?s=20
  4. Methagox RCS makes the most sense, if reliable ignition isn’t an issue. The last thing they want is more complexity, especially hazardous chemicals like hypergolics. Although if that’s what they need for HLS, all bets are off…
  5. Well, if government would up their budget, but *politics*
  6. I had to watch the flight while also trying to work, and doing neither particularly well. Now I can catch up on the thread and post… What I did notice doing during reentry, after plasma started up, was “wait, now it’s moving sideways? …. Now it’s upside down?” Whoops, back to work, break was longer than it should have been…
  7. I’m pretty sure those types of defects are found with xray or ultrasound testing
  8. @Kerwood Floyd They also lost the first three Falcon 1 rockets (but they didn’t “blow up” unless you count the first one crashing) before succeeding on the fourth and final attempt. That story is detailed in the book “Liftoff!” by Eric Berger, which is worth the read IMO
  9. Does the F-15 even have any decent attachment point for the arresting hook. How much re-design would that have taken?
  10. Google is your friend... Oxford Electric Bell - Wikipedia
  11. Early theories also postulated that the large moon was necessary to strip away excess atmosphere, preventing a Venus-style runaway greenhouse effect. But I think that theory was disproven, or at least has not gained much traction.
  12. I was under the impression that the corona still emitted UV, and under the darker skies of totality the eye's pupils open wider, letting in even more. But apparently I was mistaken or misinformed. At least it spurred me to do a little research on that. I edited that post for clarity.
  13. I was going to call bullcrap, but decided to research first, and got an answer straight from one of the biggest solar experts: Safety (nasa.gov), so I would have been wrong.
  14. Hmmm, I wonder if the RV parks have cranked their rates too. Not that we would make it there…
  15. I’m guessing they need thrust for ullage to dump the LOX, especially at any reasonable flow rate.
  16. It’s also used as a command for my dog to find and clean up dropped food…
  17. Metal-poor worlds. Assuming intelligent life could even develop, advanced tech requiring metalworks would be rather difficult…
  18. Oh hey, something to make me late for work…
  19. Should be able to with a JWST-class sunshield. But that is multi-layered, and the biggest problem is preventing conduction from reaching the tank. Multiple sunshields for different directions would be needed to deal with planetshine
  20. Thanks for verifying that it's worth it. I was going to see it this Tuesday but my kid had a hockey game rescheduled then. So now we have to wait for next Cheapskate Tuesday.... When we moved to Mackenzie, BC in my teens, the theater there was many months behind. Even though we were only there for four months, it closed down in that time. That was right when VCR rentals were taking off, so that's what killed it.
  21. Someone would have to run the numbers, and it would be a delicate balance, for sure. A shorter trip would mean a much longer insertion burn, or more powerful (heavier) engines. Would it still have the dV for a shorter trip, with all that extra fuel/engine mass? Many trade-offs, to be sure. At least it wouldn't need as many RTGs, maybe.
  22. This. Dogs understand us, but we barely understand their body language. We expect other animals to understand our commands. We should be working to communicate and understand the languages of cetaceans.
  23. Rama II was a hard slog, I admit. Gentry added a lot of verbose social back story aspects to the story in the beginning, but it did pick once they finally reached Rama. III might even be the best of the sequel bunch, IV (Rama Revealed) went a little too far into the religious aspect IMO, which is presumably one of the reasons why the later books were generally panned. E: And while I know the pressure at 9G wont be a problem, I still don't know how the internal organs will handle the gees, or what it would feel like.
  24. Because at that point SLS is pointless. Three FH launches can put way more payload mass on orbit than a single SLS launch (two would do more, but most of the mass would be residual props), and for a lot cheaper. But, politics/jobs...
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