JoeSchmuckatelli

RCS is for docking / minor adjustments, right? For SS to gimbal, don't the big guns have to be firing? (I write this, but then I also remember seeing Falcon RCS active during the landing - so maybe it's necessary fine control that works hand in hand with gimbal?)

A few pages back, I expressed frustration with 'what zero' are the climate researchers and activists choosing when reporting discoveries or advocating change based on warming since a given date. In the days leading up to the UN climate report, I kept seeing articles talking about 'temperature increase since 1850' which I thought was a bad 'zero'. This one is interesting: It's from this page1 about 2020 tying for the hottest year on record. I like the 'zero' they use, which, while only a 40 year span of time (okay, they say 30) - is time that is relatable to those of us living today (highly likely for people born in 1940 to be still alive). It's a good, relatable zero. 1 2020 Tied for Warmest Year on Record, NASA Analysis Shows | NASA The thing that I find strange is I know from reading history that the Little Ice Age (far left side of the above graph) was a difficult time for people. From the 'zero' of this graph, those were temperatures barely 0.5 degrees C less than 'the Common Baseline'. So a question: would one expect that if 0.5 degrees lower than 'normal' causes misery that 0.5 degrees above normal should be uncomfortable as well? Where's the (broadly regional) misery? Admittedly this is a strawman - but it does go into my perception that humans living in a warmer world are better off than when we live in a colder world. Again, not advocating for continued pollution, but recognizing that we are not killing ourselves in the next decade, either. Another interesting thing: NASA analysis (link above) said 2020 tied for warmest, but NOAA data tells a different tale: Global Climate Report - Annual 2020 | 2020 year-to-date temperatures versus previous years | National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) (noaa.gov) Ultimately it doesn't really matter if 2020 tied 2016 or not... but why don't the two analyses match up? ... This, then, brings me back to a couple of things I've posted about in recent pages. Our concerned scientists are doing good work, but constantly learning new things - like that nations are underreporting emissions and their own best guesses underestimate the efficacy of how natural processes act as carbon sinks. This necessarily means that older models that did not have access to the newer data are likely to be less correct than their authors presented. (I'm aware that the newer models are broadly in agreement with the warming trends of earlier models - but its worth noting). Further, there really are reputable scientists looking at what's going on in the world who are concerned that we could see a global or regional cooling event (c.f. the Woods Hole links I posted). Those 'inputs' don't seem to be making it into the models of folks focused on atmospheric heating. Problem is, if the ocean scientists are right - the atmospheric CO2 clean-up advocates have a problem; if it happens, the present and immediate threat of colder climate on human life will almost certainly result in an uptick in CO2 emissions as people's demand for power for heating and food production/preservation will increase substantially. No one will agree to let Granny freeze to death so they can have a greener grid. ... Shifting a third time: I really do understand people's skepticism about climate change. Very few people do the depth of reading that we here are likely to do. But presuming folks here do read, I think it's fair for one of us to be skeptical and ask questions - with the caveat that I don't think its rational or fair to deny that our pollution is having no effect whatsoever, no how, no way. Similarly, I don't think its fair to expect orthodoxy with regard to climate concern. There are inconsistencies in how climate concern has been presented since the 1980s. The models are not perfect. They're akin to economic modeling; frankly more art than science (in the prognostication, if not the data)... which brings me to my final point: to the extent our scientists and experts advocate policies premised on reducing pollution, they will have my support. But any policy based on Climate Remediation strategy does not. This is one of the reasons I actively push back on trying to quell dissent. The real risk of any movement is 'what happens when they succeed?' History tells us they don't just quietly pat themselves on the back and move on.

This whole thing will change the minute SX lands the second orbital Starship. With that, there is no reason to not try to land on the moon

Here's something I don't fully understand - if they have vac thrusters and ASL thrusters, do they fire all 6 after separation from the booster, or just the vac thrusters and save the ASL for landing?

A note on resilience and why cleaning up our act is worth the effort https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/london-tope-sharks-thames-river-b1954967.html%3famp https://www.npr.org/2021/11/11/1054645619/state-of-the-river-thames-report-london Also this - from Woods Hole https://www.whoi.edu/know-your-ocean/ocean-topics/climate-ocean/abrupt-climate-change/are-we-on-the-brink-of-a-new-little-ice-age/ https://e360.yale.edu/features/how-a-wayward-arctic-current-could-cool-the-climate-in-europe

In the 3x3 config?

How thick can that band of condensation/frost get? Any risk of it knocking off tiles?

I'm no rocket scientist - but the space for the door of the new building looks narrower than the existing bay

They need to take a page out of the Chinese playbook.

I appreciate your post! Thanks for taking the time to write it Re: the quote above... I read people citing the work on that and worry that they assume the quote means the LIA was a tightly regional, North Atlantic event only. Instead we know that it did affect (at a minimum) the entire Northern Hemisphere albeit: '"...what we find is that the actual minimum occurred at different times at different places.” For instance, during the Little Ice Age, minimum temperatures hit the eastern Pacific during the 15th century, northwestern Europe and southeastern North America during the 17th century, and most remaining regions during the mid-19th century.' https://www.google.com/amp/s/eos.org/articles/the-little-ice-age-wasnt-global-but-current-climate-change-is In East Asia: "We find a rather warm period during the first two centuries CE, followed by a multi-century long cooling period and again a warm interval covering the 900–1200 CE period (Medieval Climate Anomaly, MCA). The interval from 1450 to 1850 CE (Little Ice Age, LIA) was characterized by cooler conditions and the last 150 years are characterized by a continuous warming... " https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-26038-8 The LIA is also a good metaphor for two other truths - rapid climactic change is hard on people and societies, and prolonged cold weather is hard on people. Period. On the other hand, Humans do seem to tolerate hot and wet climates pretty well; the highest population areas of the planet enjoy humid subtropical conditions.

LOLz Might work if you included an oxidizer - but 'Fuel-Air' typically doesn't have anything but fuel in it. (although the term is loose, most don't think of powdered metal as fuel) * okay, we're on a rocket enthusiast forum... so hush.

I used to laugh at the hype thermobarics caused among some folks. "Russia's doomsday RPG round" - I mean, really? Still, they're pretty cool - but not quite up to the hype. (Of course, we Marines got to play with our own version (novel)) I might remind readers that we were using similar tech in Vietnam (Daisy Cutter). ... I will say, however, that Russia did impress with some of the RPG rounds they sold to ISIL, Syria, et.al. Payback for Afghanistan in the 70s? Edit: this last is said with a knowing grin - no need to get upset by 'political' talk; this is about tech, not politics.

Until it doesn't. There's a reason they went out of favor. Flamethrowers have not been in the U.S. arsenal since 1978, when the Department of Defense unilaterally stopped using them ⁠— ⁠the last American infantry flamethrower was the Vietnam-era M9-7. They have been deemed of questionable effectiveness in modern combat. Despite some assertions, they are not generally banned, but as incendiary weapons they are subject to the usage prohibitions described under Protocol III of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons. Wikipedia

A note on resilience and why cleaning up our act is worth the effort https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/london-tope-sharks-thames-river-b1954967.html%3famp https://www.npr.org/2021/11/11/1054645619/state-of-the-river-thames-report-london

For fun, here's a little light reading on inflation https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/04/opinions/problem-with-the-big-bang-theory-lincoln/index.html

DUDE! The end of that video just about gave me a fright. I already knew the result - but seeing that was totally unexpected and cool! Thanks!

Rehearsing and simulating how to drive a future, completed, flyable rocket around outside is good practice. Good for them. Baby steps.

@Codraroll - there is a risk of this field becoming a chorus of orthodoxy. People need to be able to ask questions and point out inconsistencies without being accused of heresy or trolling. Would love to see a refutation of his writing, if you're interested.

@K^2 has been successful in answering similar questions for me in the past. One of the answers I've gleaned from what he and others have written is that Relativity and Newtonian physics are exceptionally good mathematical analogs to what is really going on. Solid tools to help us understand the universe we live in. Thus, in many ways matter acts as though it bends (warps) spacetime - but it may not literally curve space. A distinction that is largely esoteric and moot for most of what people have used Einstein and Newton's work to understand and predict natural processes.

The whole problem I see is that 'space' as an economic resource / market is still very nascent. There is a reason it was only done by governments - even if subcontracted to a variety of suppliers, the ultimate risk and very few (economic) rewards retained to the nation controlling the launches. Certainly satellite data and television and GPS and the many other LEO applications have been beneficial, and one hopes profitable... but there's a real question of 'how much more' is attainable in the short term. Exceptionally high cost and literal rocket science being barriers to entry. The thing I like about what Relativity said was that they expect to get costs an order of magnitude down from traditional expectations - but also have remarkable flexibility to change direction if they discover something works better than a first or subsequent iteration; an issue that plagues traditional manufacturing. Musk is working on the same theory, but also in a much lower tech way. They're like, 'lets break this down... what is a rocket? A tube with stuff in it. Okay, who builds tubes? Look - these guys over here build stainless steel tanks all the time, lets hire those guys to weld stuff together for us!" And it works. Musk's success poses a real risk to every other player - because what happens if he manages to be able to bring much more payload to LEO than anyone else for lower cost, and then literally captures the entire market? For everyone's benefit, I hope that SX doesn't capture the whole thing - that they become (assuredly, if successful) the big player... but there's room for lots of other players in an economy that demands ever increasing access to launch services. As launch market matures, space opportunities on the ground take off | TechCrunch One of the things that players like Relativity may relegate to (if being a launch service provider is not profitable) is taking the technology and processes they've developed and being a subcontractor - building bodies or rockets or parts thereof... but that requires customers that are not 'in house', in other words, not SX.

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Don't take it personally. It's pretty typical for space enthusiasts to have to search for routine space news, and something like 'just another astronaut doing a spacewalk' isn't going to make the front section, much less the front page. OTOH - if an insular but saber rattling nation does something weird - like build 1:1 scale replica of American warships in a desert missile target range... That's going to be talked about... ...after we finish discussing some 3d tier actress's wardrobe 'malfunction'. I had a friend who I met in Munich in '94 - he was a former Soviet Artillery Officer who emigrated with his wife and kid - he said one of the weird things about being in the West after growing up in the East was TV. The thing that you take for granted and which is so often just background noise can be a bit jarring when not normal. He spent a bit of time trying to get a bunch of us (an American and several Western Europeans) to understand the subtle but jangling dissonance that would occasionally strike him - usually when he was only peripherally aware of the TV.

Here's some fun sciency stuff to brighten your day: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/11/10/1054224204/how-sars-cov-2-in-american-deer-could-alter-the-course-of-the-global-pandemic ... . . . ...of course I've said for a while that Covid isn't 'going away', it's just going to become the new 'seasonal flu'. Thus, along with the seasonal flu we'd enjoy seasonal covid. This was basically a presumption of mine based on a lot of reading, the history of the 1918 pandemic and the most likely course of events. But now it seems some smart folks have figured out the mechanics. Great thing is that White Tailed Deer are to my neck of the woods like rats and pigeons are to New York City (oh - and basically take a look at any large groups of critters living near people in the world and assume that any one of those can be reservoirs. So just as we get Bird Flu and Pig Flu from Asia occasionally - the world can look forward to Deer Covid from N. America, Capybara Covid from S. America, Pangolin Covid from China, Goat Covid from the Middle East...

https://www.google.com/amp/s/arstechnica.com/science/2021/11/scientists-extend-and-straighten-iconic-climate-hockey-stick/%3famp=1

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.sciencenews.org/article/human-history-society-dawn-of-everything-book/amp