AngrybobH

This is good news.

Do you know anything else about these guys? Like timeline to orbit or if they are trying for reuse? I poked around on their site a bit and, while interesting, it was basically PR stuff, nothing much concrete. The impression I took from it was build 'em fast and cheap and dump 'em in the ocean when done. I don't suppose on a small enough scale that is all that bad. It is nice to see more companies trying for the cheaper access to space.

According to the wiki, silane looks to be a little more complicated than just having Si and H. Like catalyzing with a metal halide, is that available on the moon? I'm sure the Si on the moon isn't just pure Si laying around, how many steps and how much energy would be required to produce silane? Compared with just making hydrolox from moon stuff is it more or less energy? Silane also seems dangerous.

The article reads more like an advertisement than anything else. It was light on actual information. I'll file it under wishful thinking with a touch of looking for investment money so they can figure out what seems to be an extremely long list of technologies they need to make it work before they go broke.

How do you manufacture monatomic hydrogen? Is it possible to store H2 then make it on demand? And, would that end up more or less efficient than just using that energy to throw heated H2 out the back?

In west Texas(where I am) the winds were gusting to 35MPH. NWS says 5 - 10MPH winds until thursday. Looks good for tomorrow. edit: Boca Chica, according to NWS, will have 6MPH winds and cloudy tomorrow and 34MPH Wednesday. Will cloudy conditions matter for SN9?

There is only the cost of building the brakes,steering, and suspension to handle the new tire size. The cost of doing it right is too high for most. John Force (NHRA drag racer) once said the only limitation to speed is money. I tend to agree with him on most things in the automotive world. But also consider nearly everything on a vehicle is a compromise. Going full off road makes for a terrible street vehicle.

Clouds. Of course you need mods but, flying through clouds then seeing them from orbit still gives me a grin.

Credibility went out the window, for me, when he was tightening a starter on a Ford truck from underneath like you would a Chevrolet starter. Ford starter bolts are parallel to the crankshaft.

To me it suggests they just changed which shovel they are dishing out the BS with.

no more shock than the recoil that was felt when firing the rifle. Bullets are dangerous because all the force is put into a tiny pointy object focusing the force into a small area, not because of the total force.

It is feasible, But look at it this way, how long can the engine operate in those conditions without a filter? what is the likelihood of failure? Now with a filter, how long can it operate before the filter is clogged and gets sucked into the engine and 100% causes a failure? Then you look at the performance hit to see if it is really worth it. I would guess it is not worth it.

This is my exact feelings about that show. I'll continue to watch it if there are more seasons to come but, I'll likely groan many times while I do.

and that's where you leave the thermite.

Voted. You are 5th at the time I voted.

The BE-4 looks like a plumbers' nightmare.

looks like the worlds largest beer keg.

Having done a very small amount of climbing myself, I know strength is important but endurance is the key.

Sure, but why? Electric motors are better for the moon(lighter and have multiple possible sources of 'fuel'). Save the fuel/oxidizer for the fuel cells.

I wouldn't promote flying large amounts of liquid fluorine on a rocket and I would not ever be on a crew that had to handle that stuff. But I am curious, for a comparison, how much dV on average can you get for free going to Jupiter with gravity assists?

At least they don't have to pay for the booster to be refurbished. I wonder what that costs.

@mikegarrison you are right, of course, about many things here but you seem to have the assumption that humans are good at driving. They are not, in general, and training is nearly non-existent in the US. In the US we basically give out a drivers' license if you can sign your name (yes, an exaggeration). The longer people drive on a limited access high speed road the worse they get too (highway hypnosis and wandering minds because of monotony). Add in phones, radios, passengers, kids, french fries, drinks, smoking, and on and on. A large percentage of drivers can't be bothered to look out of the windshield for more than 2 seconds at a time. That is the reason all of these safety systems have/will become standard features. Car companies keep trying to make fool proof cars but they keep making better fools. To a certain degree this proves your point. The less drivers have to do the less they can do. But, people get in less (and less severe) crashes than they did before all the automated/safety systems started getting installed. So, it seems, removing as much human as you can from the control system is better for safety. It is also a terrible idea to expect the average driver to be the primary system. I too drive a manual transmission(less than 10% of all passenger cars on the road in the US) and I pride myself on my ability to handle my automobile(manual trans drivers are 40% less likely to crash, old insurance stat from back in the '80s). I have an uncommon background with vehicles, though (racing), and I would not expect most drivers to be capable of handling that. If we had an extensive training and testing program for drivers in the US, perhaps I would expect the drivers around me to be competent. But, I don't even advocate for full autonomous cars for all situations, I advocate for highway self driving because the variables a far lower there and a driver entering a city without highway hypnosis is going to be generally safer. This is very true. reaction gets you into a situation where you (or a computer) must make a proper decision as quick as possible sometimes without all the facts. That's a bad place to be. But consider a situation on a highway where all the automated cars(and the equipped human driven cars) can send and receive a signal to each other about whats going on around them. A one or two car accident doesn't become a twenty car pileup. Also, AEB/FEB radars the car in front of the car in front of you so, reaction is better than what you as a driver can react to. An autonomous car highway system would not be perfect even with better tech than we have now but, I believe it would improve overall safety and fuel consumption. The added benefit would be pushing the tech to improve and the system would have to be able to deal with non-automated cars from the start so that tech would also improve. There would be no need for me (or you) to give up on actually actively driving, which I happen to enjoy. Having 'full autonomy' won't save everybody, either. Technology fails, machines break, designers fu.....mess up, manufacturers cut corners, etc. But, I do believe more autonomous cars would begin to increase road travel safety.

AEB is equipped on many (even low end) cars today. It, when active and not malfunctioning, will always reduce the severity of a crash but not always prevent it. AEB also enables smart cruise control with only extra software. Smart cruise (ICC in Nissan land) makes even human operated cars safer on the highway. Other techs that go along with those are blind spot warning and intervention, lane departure warning and intervention, and cross traffic alerts. Almost all of these technologies are on even modestly equipped cars and they only require a couple of sensors and software for the ABS module. Yes, most of these systems are run on your brake control module. Added weight is virtually nothing and cost of the 3 radars and 1 lane camera is the only reason they are not standard equipment. As for drive by wire, almost all cars today are drive by wire except for steering. The transmission shifts (or doesn't for a CVT) by computer control only. Brakes can be entirely and fully operated by a computer, engine power is not directly controlled by the driver. You are being driven as much as you think you are driving. As they said in a technology class I had many years ago, "you are no longer the dictator. You are only a voting member of the control system." (also heard "meat servo") Now steering is a handled a bit differently. On some vehicles (Ford F150, Nissan Rogue and Sentra to name a couple) the steering assist is handled by an electric motor that is actually strong enough to steer the vehicle by itself. On higher end vehicles (like the Infiniti QX80) when the vehicle is running the steering column is decoupled from the steering gear and steering is handled entirely by the computer with some software tricks and an electric motor to trick the driver into thinking they are in direct control. With a couple of cameras, a computer, and some real good software a QX80 (and many others) could drive itself. The hardware is already here and already installed on existing automobiles. I would like to see a self drive system become universal for highway travel. Intermediate technology could be deployed along roads to help cars navigate until the software gets up to speed. Road crews and emergency vehicles could carry transmitters to alert self driving cars (you already likely have a telematics (cell phone) module that sends and receives installed). Rest areas near the beginning of driver-must-operate areas could be set up for cars to stop in for sleeping or inattentive drivers. These things would get the tech out there and on the road in large numbers and allow the whole concept to mature. And, none of that tech is sci-fi, it all exists and is in production in some form. If the system was universal (like other car techs, OBDII, CAN, etc) you would avoid problems that like Tesla has had.

So, what do we (US taxpayers) have for our $17 billion? Stage 1 (almost) and Orion? or am I missing something? I'm rather disappointed in the whole thing.

As I understand it, the deviations are applied for before manufacturing, not after. From an engineering perspective, if the wiring is actually the same as the NG, then it has proven itself and leaving it alone is fine. Which that is why deviation rules exist. But, the law and engineering are two different things. I agree that changing something to a less proven design (but meets a safety reg) has it's own risks but rules have been written for reasons(not all good ones). I am certainly glad that I do not have to make this call. If you say fine keep it and a plane crashes because of this issue, you are at fault. The same thing happens if you change it and it causes a crash. So, defaulting to the law is probably the only 'right' way to handle it.