Racescort666

I generally pronounce it “oo—RAN—ohs” and people look at me funny. Of all the possible names, I would prefer “King George” the best.

From when I calculated a Uranus probe (hehe) that used 85% of Falcon Heavy’s payload it barely fit in the fairing. And it was around 40t of propellant. It was an NTR/NH3 propellant probe and I think it had like 13 km/s dV. edit: found my old post: details: prop mass: 48t, dV: 11.7 km/s, fairing margin (w/o probe): 1.8m

Is there a good resource to follow in order to find out when FH static fire will be? I'm leaving for Daytona tomorrow and I'd hate to miss it.

Of the stuff I've worked on, 3g bump is a pretty serious bump but that's something you could easily experience driving around Detroit. Most cars should be able to take a 2-3 g bump without sustaining any damage. This is all vertical of course. For lateral and longitudinal 2 g is what most cars should be able to take without sustaining major damage. This loading is intended to act through the suspension but if you mount into the rigid structure of the car (like the Tesla's battery pack) then it should be able to sustain much higher accelerations. Your typical crash event sees peaks around 45 g but the way stuff is simulated could mean different requirements for how strong stuff needs to be. From my experience on electric vehicles, the battery mounting is probably one of the strongest parts of the car since it can't have electrolyte leakage during a crash event as dictated by FMVSS requirements.

I haven’t caught up but I wanted to say that my parents are hosting a neighborhood Christmas party and I took over their tv and put the launch stream on.

It is pretty tough stuff but it will be in an environment that it wasn't designed for. It will probably look like a car that's been sitting in a barn for 40 years after a short period of time whose duration I'm completely unqualified to guess at. There is a non-zero chance that it has structural failure after being exposed to space. The Roadster and the Lotus Elise which it is based on have a bonded aluminum structure. The adhesive could easily degrade rapidly in space and thermal expansion of different parts could easily put unforeseen stress on the joints. You'd be surprised at what gets us technical people excited. I'm a firm believer in simplicity which usually translates to less expensive which the business people like. The person that asks me for more "wow factor" had better be ready for a rant on unnecessary over-complication.

We have race cars in the museum that are in the same condition that they left the track, filthy and covered in confetti. Definitely a badge of honor.

You betcha: On topic: I as well remember hearing that BO was more concerned with killing lateral velocity than hitting the LZ perfectly. It could also be that SpaceX has openly talked about landing boosters back on the launch pad and they’re experimenting with trying to get that kind of accuracy thus the difference in landing accuracy.

That's about how much I saved to put down on my Alfa Romeo 4C and it worked out all right. If that's something you want to do and you can manage your money well, go for it. I wouldn't call it "crippling debt" but getting into the Alfa as a young guy definitely set me back. Now that I'm looking at buying a house, I have been lectured several times about how expensive the car was.

When the NRO is more forthcoming with what they’re up to, it is certainly frustrating.

I’m supposed to be on site with a customer today and the delay means that it’ll be easier for me to watch.

If the first stage is 44m then an AN-225 might work. http://www.aircharterserviceusa.com/aircraft-guide/cargo/antonov-ukraine/antonovan-225

5 Core RTLS... It's just that the center core does a once-around before landing. Actually, some back of the napkin maths tells me that with 4 boosters, you could wait to light the center core until mid-flight (a la Titan).

That's backwards: 30 psig on the ground is 45 psig in space because they're both 45 psia. Either way, the nominal inflation pressure is way less than the failure pressure of the tire. I'll tell my friend to upgrade his Tesla satellite to the higher capacity battery then.

Decreasing the tire pressure is probably unnecessary because tires can take quite a lot of pressure before failing however they will probably be UV damaged to destruction rather quickly. Is 56 kWh a lot of battery for a satellite? Asking for a friend...

That would be really cool. It's been my tradition for the last few years to stay up and watch the Rolex 24 while playing KSP. It would be even more awesome to see Falcon Heavy launch at the same time.

I can't bear it.

My gut says no, you would have vector addition of the momentum of the 2 objects. I suspect you would change the combined orbit to a 45 degree inclination with 1.414 V_orbit velocity at the intersection point. I'm not as good at calculating orbits as some other people on this forum but I can do vector addition.

I feel like this is something I would see on Cody’s Lab.

I’ve got it:

I don’t think that theft was the point. But for arguments’ sake, the best way to steal a car (if you don’t have the keys) is to just tow it. Although I bet that most spaceships don’t have keys...

Defeating the tracking system is usually the best way I’d say. That’s basically how most aircraft countermeasures work.

Yet... The point remains that something will have to land on an unimproved surface.

One of the drivers for solid rockets was the US Navy wasn't real excited about hypergolic fuels on submarines. They wanted something that was storable and fairly safe to store. The Soviet Navy appears to not have this same requirement because a cursory search reveals that most of their submarine launched ballistic missiles are all liquid fueled. The US spent a lot of time and money getting usable SRMs to a point where the Navy was comfortable with them and as a byproduct, they also made it into orbital launch vehicles as well. Titan has optional SRBs for the Titan IIIC, IIID, IIIE, 34D, and IV and only the SRBs fire at liftoff with the main engine firing after liftoff.

There was literally no mention of P2P in that article which was already very speculative to begin with. I suspect that Shotwell is on track with the Air Force being interested in having a gigantic rocket to play with and launch new payloads on: And the fact that they have already received funding for Raptor development that has the following verbiage specifically mentioning EELV: https://www.defense.gov/News/Contracts/Contract-View/Article/1348379/ So Raptor being complete by April 20th of next year sounds exciting. Also, in regard to other SpaceX happenings, what's the deal with the fairings? I don't see this holding up FH static fire but I'm hoping with fingers crossed that they launch when I'm down in Florida for New Years.