m4inbrain

Care to share what numbers you used? I'm especially interested in what you'd assume would be the launch costs for a "generic satelite X". Basically, what the customer pays to get his satellite where he wants it to be. edit: and i certainly hope you didn't use the 6.6 million rubbish that was stated in the thread earlier. I assume it has to do with the fact that the Falcon is something entirely different. The Falcon is basically an improved design of something that already exist. Skylon is something that hasn't really been done before, all in all (closest thing in my mind would be the STS, but the technologies there are not compatible). SABRE plays a big part in there for example, where spaceX just used older (albeit improved) designs.

I agree there. But: we're assuming the current situation in terms of launches here. I wouldn't say that it'll triple or quadruple with the reduced launchcosts - but you will have a measurable increase in launches. I won't say "it's enough", but for an economic analysis, there's way too many holes in yours and nibbels. edit: including for example "knowledge". A lot of new stuff has to be invented/tested, and i'm pretty convinced that there's money there too. So i actually doubt the 37.5 units in the first place.

That's not what he's saying. That's what he's saying. From the exact posting that you were quoting. I don't care much for Skylon itself, but you and that other guy are either not able or not willing to actually read what your opposite is saying. I don't even, honestly.

It's a bit dishonest of K^2 to refer to deconvolution. He's not wrong in essence, but the tools required (the software, rather) is rarely, if ever, found in private households. It's a technique used for Hubble when the mirror was defective, for example. Or in microscopy. It's like saying that you totally can do your own gene-experiments at home. In theory you could, in real life though you won't have the tools necessary available. In terms of deconvolution, we are talking about somebody who wants to take pictures of stars with his phone. It's simply a red herring from K^2. Yes, there's free software out there that claims to do the trick, but they don't. I tried some of them to remove startrails after only a 35 second exposure, looked worse after it was processed. edit: and i shoot with a dSLR at f/2.2 and ISO 800 roughly, depending on light pollution - best premise to make those programs work in theory. Stacking for a cellphone is the only reasonable way to get decent pictures (not good, but decent). Single exposures will never look good. edit: Regarding Pawels question about the camera on the S3: That's ISO 400 and it's already pretty noisy. edit 2: and get something like http://www.amazon.co.uk/Tripod-Mount-Holder-Mobile-Camera/dp/B009J79NK8 , simply because it's impossible to shoot high exposures by hand - even if some people claim it. You will have trouble to keep a camera steady by hand for a 2 second exposure, let alone a 30 second exposure (or even minutes). Your heartbeat alone will ruin the picture.

First part is correct, more or less. There's a difference in noise between camera sensors and for example the Canon D series, and that's the pixel-size. Larger sensors generally (not always, but usually) have bigger pixels, which reduces noise and increases the high dynamic range. And the second part of your statement is wrong. In astrophotography you can only expose for so long until you ruin your picture. In general, on a tripod, you have a maximum exposure time of roughly 25-30 seconds. Everything above that ruins the picture. My phone has a fixed aperture (not iPhone), wouldn't work for proper pictures. Now i heard the iPhone of some sort has a fixed aperture of f/2,2 - which might be good enough if the ISO is adjustable (1200+). But in general, starphotography with a phone is pretty much like eating soup with chopsticks. Works. Kinda. But not really what you'd want. Or you invest 100 bucks or less in a used dSLR (Nokia D3100 springs to mind), and just go for it. A Galaxy S3 is kind of a pretty old phone, relatively speaking. I'd rather go for an Xperia Z1, which is pretty capable in the camera department.

I agree to a certain point though. There's nothing wrong with being sceptical. That's totally fine (and in my mind, important) for a scientist. What Northstar is saying, is not that "conventional" physics is holding back stuff, but the unwillingness to give stuff at least a chance. And that's where i agree. Scientists nowadays rely way too much on "what we know" (so much so that they rule everything else out), rather than "what we might not know". To think, that everything so far is hammered in stone and the law of the universe is quite arrogant really, considering that we're only researching for a couple of hundred years. Going faster than speed of light is impossible, until somebody found a (theoretically sound and working, and i know it's not actually going FTL) loophole. Who's to tell that this couldn't happen again? Now, i'm not saying that this device works (as i said, being sceptical is absolutely welcomed) - but a scientist being arrogant enough to say "there's no way that this could work because we know it can't" ("there's no way the earth is round/there's no way the earth orbits the sun"-syndrom) is not a good one. And, as a general sidenote: a person/scientist thinking "we got it all figured out already, can't work" won't ever make a big discovery. Same goes for people who actually think that there's no big discoveries out there anymore. And if somebody says "there's alot/too many scientists out there that think that way" - i'd agree.

As a last, brief question before i go to bed - what would an "abort" look like? I actually only know what that looks like for SRBs. Just wondering: if the bell/nozzle failed, the rocket would not be able to produce enough thrust to keep itself in the air - and be subject to the big red button, no? I get the feeling that this "idea" is kinda not the solution to what happened there, i still wonder since i like learning.

The in-video timecode, 22:22:39 to 22:22:40. Fullscreen and 1080p, you can see/hear the small explosion pretty well (including the smokepuff). I hope i don't make myself look stupid though. :/ edit: the video was posted earlier in one of the now merged threads.

My mistake then, i assumed that an exploding turbopump (that small pop is an explosion, not a burn through, in my eyes - then again, as i said, layman) is out of the picture no matter what. Just looked at some "schematics" of a turbopump, and they seem decently fragile (relatively). On the other hand, in the HQ version of the launch, you can actually hear something properly pop. As i said, that pop, if it was on the turbopump, should've taken it out in my mind. Not to mention that a kerosine-leakage (or LOX, i'm too dumb to figure out which of the pumps it was) would be visible, wouldn't it? You actually would see leakage/flames? The thing that makes me wonder about the pump though, apart from the obvious thing that the rocket actually lifted pretty well to a certain degree - roughly 0.5 seconds before the antares exploded, there's a considerable jolt in the rocket, and the exhaustflame changes color/form. From light blueish to glaring golden (and it doesn't look like a blowtorch, but a flamethrower at that point). Couldn't that be due to a nozzel problem? Again, i'm the most basic layman there is, trying to wrap his head around things. Coming to think of it, the "jolt" and colorchange could be because of a fuel not being injected but just burned "on the outside" (english isn't my native language, i hope i made that point at least nearly understandable), no? Edit: nevermind. After watching the HQ version over and over, i'm pretty sure it wasn't a turbopump blowing up. In the HQ version, if you look closely, you see/hear the pop, and something drops off (one of the tubes/cables). Also there appears to be darker smoke (can't tell if black, but not white). Now i don't know if those tubes would be "popped off" via small explosive bolts or something (but i bet somebody here can help me there), but it certainly looks like it.

As a layman, it might be a stupid question: wouldn't a failure in the turbopump (catastrophic in this case, if that small explosion is the turbopump) prevent the rocket from actually climbing? The explosion happened before liftoff, and the rocket looked normal in acceleration (to me anyway, and, well, to the point where it kinda blew up) - wouldn't that be impossible without one of the turbopumps?

As far as the tank idea goes, there's way more drawbacks that a hovering vehicle brings to the table than upsides. The only argument for a hovertank would be, if you're generous, the "strafing". But in modern combat situations (speaking from experience), you actually don't attack around a corner, exposed. You call for support, which is always with you (soldiers/airsupport/flanks/artillery/or simply fog). If you don't know that you have a tank in your flank somewhere, you wouldn't know it in either tank. Few other issues that weren't mentioned: turretrotation would shift weight and accelerate the tank into a specific direction except if stabilized by computers, your gimballing engines would need to be immensly powerful to accelerate a, let's go easy on you and say, 20t tank (which is nothing for an MBT, in reality we're talking 60+ tons, 20 is generally not even enough for APCs) up a hill, or even worse: rough terrain, which would bring the need for the gimballing engines to accelerate the tank, keep it stable in height, AND do the "countersteer". You said, these vehicles would be used for urban combat, meaning that a relatively small mine (or even handgrenade/pipebomb) under the tank would render it unable to move (i suppose you can't armor the propulsion devices, correct me if i'm wrong though). You also said the tank wouldn't need a turret, which is impractical since you can't (in urban combat) turn the tank everywhere (there's a reason why tankdestroyers with fixed guns died out - and in urban combat rockets are pretty useless, that's why MBTs still use cannons, and APCs have AT rockets only as secondary weapon). Another problem would be, if the tank hovers "a couple of feet above ground", what happens if it gets trapped, by rubble or other cars/trucks? I can't believe that you could make those engines powerful enough to push a 20t tank and whatever is in front of it away. But i might be wrong on that one, it's just a guess. There's two things though that render the tank actually useless to me as a former gunner on a tank: for the ability of strafing (if needed or not doesn't matter in that argument) you give up on two very important things. First, you want your tank to be as low in profile as you can get. Hovering a few feet above ground would make your tank stand out alot, and render alot of potential cover (walls etc) useless. And the fact that you try to build a tank that is supposed to drive (strafe) into the crosshair of an enemy, intentionally (which btw wouldn't work either, since no matter what you do, the other tank will have the first shot - and while the front is the toughest part on a tank, it's not invincible - especially if weight is such an issue). Now, i sound overly negative, but don't worry. I am. As a tank, that idea is flawed horribly, and i never ever see it working. But. That doesn't include civilian vehicles. I'm not sure that your idea has the same energy consumption as modern cars (which get more and more efficient too), but that's because i can't do the math for it. I do see applications, maybe not really in the sense of "cars for people" (alot of people can't drive a car properly, let alone something that reacts so differently to steering inputs like a hovercraft, and i had the enjoyment of driving a small one on an event, for like 5 minutes or something), but rather public transport. You asked for opinions about advantage for hovervehicles - i don't know enough about complexity, theoretical fuel/power consumption and whatnot for civilian vehicles - but for military vehicles, i see so many drawbacks already out of the top of my head, i don't think it'll ever be worth it. Not even for those drawbacks, but for the simple fact that modern warfare has no use for it. There's no upside to a hovertank, all our military strategies and tactics are based around how to fight in an urban enviroment with conventional tanks. That entangles with soldiers, supportunits, aircrafts and all kinds of things, you'd need to change all that just to get literally no upside. A military vehicle nowadays has to integrate into the existing force, i don't see that working for hovertanks. I don't mean to attack you though, if i come off like that.

I'm honestly interested in what the physicists in here think about that. I guess it was beaten and debunked to death already in this forum, in a time where i wasn't part - but i really would see this "paper" discussed and at least theoretically debunked/confirmed. I'm a dumbass if it comes to numbers, so the paper actually doesn't really make sense to me (i'm more muscle than brain, if you want) - to me it reads like that they tested a stick, which puts out 1,5 mwatts over 32 days. Which would be quite impressive. Yeah.. I'm a simpleton, and i do understand that Rossi has "SCAM! FRAUD!" written all over his forehead, but yet a tiny bit of "what if" remains to me.

Okay mates, was fun fueling the hypetrain, see ya on .25.

Started steam, and there was an update!! .. for counterstrike, bonerkill D:

That pricechange is a tactic to reduce serverload briefly. Every person who just checked if the prices really went down to 0 is like 200 F5s less.

Or we could just use these.

I actually go to bed and lurk via tablet, muaha. Thanks for the info.

While generally being just a lurker, Rowsdower - since it's quite late, would you stay up for the thing that you have up your sleeve, or is it safe to go to bed?

Much appreciated. Do you have a "changelog" that you'd share?

You didn't pay for anything. If you use a free mod to modify something that you paid for, it's on you, not on the programmers. It's hard to keep up with the thread and updates of sirkut because it get's cluttered the last couple of pages for a non-issue.

Since i can't edit my posting, because it didn't show up yet (-.-) .. Before going to space center: And when i came back from the space center, it looked like this: Sorry for the borked images, i'm just cropping willynilly.

Ah okay, my bad then. Got it working, thanks for the info - immediately ran into the same problem as the guy you were talking to before, it kinda goes haywire if i return to space center. One of the hinges flips, and the piston seems to be kinda inverted (i'll upload screenshots in a second).

Don't know what was reported, fixed, discussed etc, just wanted to share this small hickup: Sorry if that was reported already, or known - it's the most recent version of IR (14). Also, two motorized 90 degree hinges don't stick together on the part that moves (english isn't my first language, sorry). Anyway, awesome work so far!

Just registered to thank you for your work, and i'm also refreshing like a madman.