darthgently

SpaceX should send an even number of Optimus bots so as their final activity they can compete in the first sports competition on Mars to do “gravity science”. Soccer would be easy as only a ball would be needed. If we only send one bot we will have to settle for hacky sack, juggling, and a mime performance. Perhaps the lone bot lounging in a chair dramatically reading to us from Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles.

I posted this in the CLPS topic but seemed appropriate to put here also given it is a landmark event for Firefly

Fantastic imagery, including slo-mo and riveting analysis

It has recently been found that mothers have their children’s dna permanently as part of their bodies after giving birth that stays a part of them for the rest of their lives. Not merely the maternal portion, but the actual full dna of the children. One might wonder if this would be the case in an egg laying variant of us. What would it entail for the mother-child bond? Or the bond between the mother and the entire family as she may not have her children’s paternal dna as part of her body any longer On further thought, the lack of a placental connection could have big effects on the mother-child physiological, and perhaps psychological, relationship

A fortunate speed bump as it opened up the door for l33t-speak in a major auto maker’s nomenclature. About time. Obligatory SpaceX content: 6 to 20 minutes delayed, but why not?

Somewhat related, and many already know this trivia, but Tesla models S, 3, X, and Y were not chosen randomly

RL’s launch video is on par with SpaceX. Nice launch just happened, a bit overshadowed by Crew 10:

Crew 10 launch immanent SpaceX. Com

This is what I wondered about in a previous post. Probably the narrowest channel in the props flow path is the heat exchange channels in the bell. A small bit of debris could have been rattling around in the system to eventually get lodged in that narrow tube Are the 2nd stage bells pressurized during countdown? Honest question. It would make a good relaunch test. But it would only detect a leak, not a blockage.

Indeed. Economies of scale starting to edge in at Starfactory

If Pluto were a planet, it would be the only planet in the Sol system with a moon whose barycenter was outside the parent body. So if any moon has a claim on being an unqualified moon it would be Charon. Or Pluto-Charon is a dwarf planet binary system? Pluto is a bit of a platypus.

Lol

Get pics, and please share the imagery from the balloon assuming that is part of the design. These days it is kind of assumed. Cool stuff!

All I know is that if Pluto can’t be a planet then maybe some rocks orbiting planets shouldn’t be moons. Fair is fair. Dwarf moons?

Making the tanks larger would have lowered the frequencies of those resonances quite a bit. If the harmonics of the turbo vibrations and tank and plumbing positively feedback at some fuel level at some amount of g force it could shake the strongest welds to dust. I understand why they suspect resonance. As for sabotage. The fuel leak at the tail end of a bell is suspicious as it is in a location more than a few could likely have accessed after the static fire in close proximity, unlike an internal plumbing part. It could even have been hit by small arms fire aimed at the slots in the hot stage ring during launch. Tater’s mention of FOD is probably most likely though. That said, no one would hear multiple rifle shots during launch and hitting the rather large hot stage ring from 1 or 2 miles away with the right rifle and optics would be within the skills of merely a million or so people I’d guess Securing the area thoroughly just makes sense

My guess is that for the simplicity of television the normally moving layer was made static wrt the camera and starfield to prevent vertigo in the average person. In “reality” the apparently non-rotating chassis would be counter-rotating

I’m wondering if they lost or obscured the source of the fire because of the extent of the fire and the additional suppression may be a partially to be able to see the problem better. I dunno. Too exact a symmetry in the new plumbing could really exacerbate a resonance issue. A cylindrical vehicle with the curved walls and common centerline doesn’t help and can amplify resonances also, but that is somewhat unavoidable. Break the plumbing symmetry wrt resonance perhaps

Exactly. This longevity has to put them in the top 1% of space startups even ignoring all the other firsts they’ve achieved. But don’t you dare believe your lying eyes! Oh no! That would be incorrect. /sarcasm

It happens in a lot of engineering. Unless it would mess with their experiments maybe heating the regolith below the lander would be a good use of excess power as lunar night comes on as it might alleviate the battery heating load into the night a bit. Many sailboat and home solar energy systems will shunt excess juice into heating water in the hot water heater, or into a preheat tank feeding the water heater, as a more mundane example

I didn’t see anything to indicate that

Looks plausible

I read it as meaning they couldn’t have done it without one.

The remaining engines not shutting off really is a puzzler. But that assumes the software has a totally clear idea of what was happening back in the engine bay. If it assumed some vectoring engines were still operating the goal may have been to regain attitude, keep chugging, and get the debris field out into the mid Atlantic instead of in the islands. It broke one of my KSP rules: never thrust in the wrong direction. My kOS scripts typically taper the throttle as attitude error goes up as a safety net. No throttle, or just enough for vectoring steerage, if error is greater than 20 degrees or so on ascent. This code typically only kicks in when I’m doing something new but it allows me to keep playing and testing for awhile rather than crashing and starting over. Anyway, the point is that I’m not sure why they didn’t shut the remaining engines off, or at least throttle them down when pointed in the wrong direction. They may have made it well past the islands, even doing endos, if they only throttled up when pointed down range with a positive pitch and tapered throttle down when not. And maybe the engines were on for an reason but the software was confused about the attitude and available control authority

Very cool! Best of luck and looking forward to the update

A New Hope. Familiar names and a groundbreaking fresh approach