Nuke

just stick an srb on the bow.

this ship didn't even have a wikipedia article until it hit the bridge, now its full of data. thruster data wasn't there when i read the article this morning.

bigger aperture longer range i think. max range is limited by optics, but also light delay vs target maneuverability. at some point the time of light delay exceeds the time it takes for the target clear the beam path at a random angle (thus defeating predictions of where it may be). lenses are heavy and even very transparent mirrors lenses heat up fast when powerful lasers are going through them. deforming the lens and messing up focus. why i used the more general term optics. mirrors are easier to actively cool as you can have coolant channels baked into the mirror substrate.

wasnt sure about the thrusters on the ship. wikipedia article indicated single prop shaft. but on most designs with omnithrusters or lateral bow thrusters, the motors tend to be electric.

i wish reporters were more competent that randos on the internet. having met a few in my life, they are selected for looks not brains.

you can see the whole thing from the city cam video. power failures, the clearing of the bridge (in the minutes before traffic was light but consistent). i bet they called it in when they first lost power, i cant imagine 911 dispatch being that fast in baltimore. wonder why the word wasn't passed to the construction crew. judging by the length of the ramps it was likely out of bullhorn range and the crew was probably operating loud machinery wearing hearing protection and not listening to the radio.

100000 tons. thats a thousand direwolves. say goodbye to the free rasalhauge republic. the bridge pier didn't stand a chance.

was wrong about the electric thrusters, this thing has a conventional propeller.

no. physics wins every time. if it could fold a bridge tower like that, what do you think its going to do to an over zealous guard rail. those might be useful for small boats though. tug boats at least add some redundancy in the event of power failure on the main vessel. it also sounds like the ship was over speed, so you might also see a reduction in speed limits. this would increase time to handle problems like these and reduce stress on the ship's power grid (these kinds of vessels tend to have electric omnidirectional thrusters, as a rudder is slow on a ship of this size, titanic effect).

pretty sure spacex is sampling a wide array of mistakes. fix enough of them and you have a heavy launch platform. sure beats throwing a bunch of bureaucracy at the problem and hoping those pencil pushers caught something the engineers missed.

there was an 8-man construction crew filling potholes on the bridge. seems the vessel contacted the local department of transportation and were able to halt traffic in time. but nobody informed the construction crew. there were 2 survivors. this situation has made me question the competence of reporters though. one reporter seemed ignorant of the physics involved and tried to blame the construction crew. another claimed that there were 20 casualties. another used the phrase "we still haven't ruled out terrorism". it was clear from the source footage what really happened and they still had to make stuff up.

so this happened. i was about to go to bed and it was up on my youtube feed.

thing is capability is an x factor. i dont think anyone here or at spacex for that matter knows what this design is actually capable of at this point. that must be determined in testing.

^ we know what causes that now. don't midair refuel without protection.

i watched dune2, then i spent the last 10 hours talking about it on any forum i go to that has a dune thread.

diamond scarcity is mostly enforced by a small number of diamond cartels who fix the prices. diamonds are not in fact rare. granted you probably cant source enough to use as rocket fuel.

posting pics in forums is lostech to me, but if i were to post pics id have to post scaled composites proteus and boomerang.

finally saw dune2. went way off book there, but in a good way. gods below the worm scenes were awesome.

the software i run today is either old software, or open source software. was not too happy when autodesk bought and killed eagle, so i use kcad now. i still use a 10 year old version of 3ds max and not looking to upgrade any time soon. if i wasnt making do with gimp id be looking into setting up a vm so i can run photoshop 7. i have no desire to buy into cloud-based software.

things were better when computers were just computers. not a data mining apparatus used by someone who didn't pay for it. tech especially in the last 5 years feels like its all been phoned in. software is a barren husk when they sell it to you. the goalposts are constantly being moved, and reliability has gone to hell. cloud services and accounts shoved down our throats even though nobody really wants/needs them. i bought hardware i want to run software on it, not something out of my control. i dont like the internet being a requisite for basic functions. i want to go back to physical software bought anonymously at a store for cash.

also see zardoz. immortality sucks.

i honestly dont think one of these startups is going to beat iter to the punch. i used to think polywells were going somewhere until they weren't (they seem to have abandoned experimental approach and are now working with computer models, quietly, and not putting out any papers). seems while fusion startups try to find funding, iter is dropping in coils, some of the biggest superconducting coils humanity has ever seen. none of these are drives though. i figure the "asymmetrically leaky reactor" type drives will be a ways out. but those will be able to run steady state and provide power, which is what you will need for manned missions in the outer solar system and beyond. or just keep the reactor closed and use plasma thrusters (but you could do that with fission and nothing new need be developed). the technically fusion drives will come first, since you just need to funnel fusion products down the tail pipe.

forgot about that one. lol.

yea, you dont want to get blowed up by a vorlon dreadnought. its not pretty. i personally think it would be a total disaster. there's even a thrash metal rock opera about that.

my guesstimate is before fusion power. and sicne the drive wont be break even, idk what kind of power requirements we are looking at. there are some pretty low tech fusion methods. one in the uk i always forget the name of, they literally shoot at fuel cubes with a big gas gun. their research is mostly optimizing the kinetic targets. something like that with a proton-boron fuel. if you can make it go brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrt into a magnetic nozzle, you might have something and something that wouldn't require a lot of power to operate. pretty much just the superconducting magnets in the nozzel, and a few actuators/valves/igniters, etc. pretty much orion's less bombastic little brother. the fission reactor is the thing that seems to be missing. both the us and soviets have flown actual reactors before, but never really saw a need to perfect the technology. i think all are still in orbit. there is kilo power which i haven't been following, but idk how far they are from a test article. with a decent power plant, nuclear-electric can really take off. fusion gets us another order of magnitude or two of isp. still quite a ways from an interstellar mission. you can probibly sidestep the need for the reactor for a test article, but an actual mission to the outer system will likely need it.