cubinator

RCS would probably work for dampening oscillations, but so would the stuff they use in buildings that regularly experience earthquakes.

I find it quite elegant. Sure, parachute deployment needs to happen in just the right way, but no complicated control systems or delicate piloting, and it just comes down nice and slow. Glad to see this one back on the ground intact.

That's a pretty fast back away, I wonder if they're in a hurry to get it away from the station or if that's the normal trajectory.

Wish they'd land stuff in the Great Lakes once in a while so I could see it...

Let's hope they've also succeeded in building a rocket!

Thanks!

Recently I learned how to solve a 4x4 Rubik's cube blindfolded. Today I looked at a 5x5 blindfolded tutorial, and it's quite similar. I think I can do it, it's just a much longer memorization that'll take me more time.

I'm pretty sure stuff like this happens all the time at every level of aviation. There's rules for individual aircraft types, pieces of equipment, airports, airspaces, and everything in between. They're trying to keep three steps ahead of anything that could possibly turn into a dangerous situation. They say takeoff is always optional, so if everything is not 100% perfect and they still have the margin to stop that is totally the right call.

https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/oral_histories.htm This might help.

The really bright red star in that general direction right now is Arcturus. If I were to catch a passing glimpse of the western sky after dusk, I'd see that star before any other. I can't confirm what you saw, though.

Update: I caught a break in the clouds and checked with my binoculars. I definitely don't see the nova.

I don't think I can check tonight as it's cloudy. However I don't see any post on the AAVSO forum, and no alert notice, and it's been dark for a little while in much of the US. We'll have to see. There should be two twinkly stars in the same area, one being the normal brightest star in CrB and the other being the nova. The REALLY bright, red, twinkly star in the west right now is Arcturus. If the nova were that bright, it would be a supernova and we'd have gotten a neutrino burst. I also don't think the nova will look red.

Mine is not so good, lol! Still proud of it.

Hard to be sure. Better crash it into Jupiter instead, just to be safe.

I think we just solved dark matter.

We should eat the bugs too. Also, parasitoid wasps are helpful in controlling insect pests, when they can be found. No poison required, but we don't have a wasp for every pest yet.

Think I will go do some plane spotting tomorrow today, as I will happen to be near the airport with a fair amount of time to kill.

I dunno, Celestrak has a "click to estimate decay date" for a Starlink that says yesterday (because perigee < 150 km) and another that says tomorrow. https://celestrak.org/NORAD/elements/table.php?GROUP=last-30-days&FORMAT=tle

So what would be the time of day to go watch for falling satellites? 7PM/7AM? It's not dark then, but such things are pretty bright sometimes.

If you have a core, and you want to add side boosters to it for the purpose of adding thrust, then the core has to be designed to take all that thrust into its structure. It might be able to handle two big boosters or six small ones, but six big ones might crush it. Separating thrust out into many individual boosters also increases the dry mass of tank walls, number of parts you need to manufacture and test, etc. when you might be able to accomplish the same thing with fewer boosters. It's a big complicated tradeoff with many different answers, but I guess people who do it generally find they can get by best with smaller numbers of boosters.

Definitely smaller. We are comparing the groups of people "I think rockets are cool and I like to dream about them" with "I build real rockets for a living at the rocket company". Real rockets are a lot more complicated than KSP rockets and you're really going to be using a multitude of different softwares to simulate and evaluate them for real work, there's no one program that'll do it all and I think KSP wouldn't be a very good base for such a thing.

Have you tried GMAT? I haven't seen what it can do between ground and orbit, but it's highly versatile and professional for interplanetary stuff.

https://www.aavso.org/t-crb-time-sensitive-alerts-forum-thread I know I'll be posting about it here as soon as I see it, but the initial call to action will likely come on this AAVSO forum thread.

Were you expecting a smaller explosion when the rocket fell over into the water and broke apart completely nominally as per the test plan? Remember, they are undoubtedly still tuning the landing control systems for this new vehicle as they test, and they're probably leaving the tanks fuller than they need to be so as to have extra margin.

You could probably have a spacecraft that approaches space debris and spears or tangles it with a disposable electrostatic drag tail, or perhaps even a large inflatable balloon (no power!). The spacecraft could be armed with many of these devices and maneuver to rendezvous with numerous pieces of space junk.