SunlitZelkova

Harvesting energy from souls in the after life to power a rocket factory sounds like the plot of an anime.

I live in Portland so this was all over the local news. Here’s a piece @PakledHostage might agree with (at least partially). https://www.koin.com/news/oregon/seattle-aviation-lawyer-pilot-calls-alaska-plane-incident-preventable/ The Seattle-based aviation attorney says he thinks it is an isolated incident, not a major defect with the MAX. I take this to mean it could have happened with any aircraft. Alaska had already cleared 18 of 65 MAXs to return to service by the way.

Merriam-Webster states the definition of humanity is “the totality of human beings”. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/humanity I don’t think there is any need for a logical justification for saving humanity. Survival is a natural behavior, and humans should have enough cognitive capability to understand that survival means saving all or a good portion of the species. Contrast this with dinosaurs. I would imagine T Rex’s turned to cannibalism on many occasions after the asteroid. I wouldn’t rule out interstellar travel, but it is really out of our ability to know right now. It’s certainly a possibility it’s impossible. Interstellar space has barely been explored. Once we attempt something like Daedalus or Project Longshot (a probe) I think we will have a better idea. Kinda like how although it isn’t spoken of, crewed Mars mission design was almost certainly influenced by what probes found out about interplanetary space. I’m not suggesting people who want a Mars colony want the people on Earth to die, I’m just saying there is a flaw in the language they use. That only goes for the “colony as a backup” people though. I get the feeling the “colony as a new home because climate change has destroyed the Earth” people don’t really care about anyone who would be left behind. The reason I had this thought is because there was this guy on r/ForAllMankindTV saying a Mars colony should be built because Earth is already doomed. If someone supports a Mars colony as a “just in case” I think there is nothing wrong with that, but trying to abandon 99% of the species population by assuming that nothing can be done for Earth (“the disaster has already happened”) is just sick, to be frank. To be clear, I don’t think the majority of colony supporters are like that. It’s just this one dude I encountered that bugged me and caused the shower thought.

If I tell you, "the lifeboats on this ship will save the passengers" wouldn't you think I meant all of the passengers, not 1% of them? The only way a ship with 100 people and a lifeboat holding a single dude "saves the passengers" is if 99 of the people are not classified as passengers. Same for a Mars colony "saving humanity"- only 1% or whatever number of the human species counts as "humanity". Now if you say "A Mars colony will save the human species" you are correct. But a Mars colony will not save humanity. To be more specific, it won't save all of humanity, only some of humanity. The distinction is important.

Unless someone can describe a convincing manner of building "bomb bullets" I think this thread belongs in the lounge, because it has nothing to do with actual science or spaceflight. To answer your question, what you are describing is basically infantry turned into a sort of mini-artillery. So I imagine it would be dealt with in the same way that artillery is- counterbattery fire or air support. In this case if the good guys don't have bomb bullets, they would just use tanks or regular artillery (maybe in direct fire mode) to counter the bomb bullets.

I have a truck with a missile on it that is supposed to be a GAZ-69 and it looks exactly like one of those pics (but with a rotating launcher for the missiles instead of the fixed one).

When people say they want to save humanity by creating a colony on Mars, they are implying people on Earth don’t count as humans/part of humanity.

I thought I remembered there being one, but I did a search and couldn’t find any. Maybe it was just posted in the science news section or something.

December is over, so let's recap what China launched last month. December 4th, 2023: A Long March 2C launched the Egyptian built, Chinese supported MisrSat-2, along with two other commercial satellites into SSO from Jiuquan. MisrSat-2 is a remote sensing satellite. December 4th, 2023: The Ceres-1 commercial solid fuel LV launched two commercial satellites into SSO from Jiuquan. This marked a successful return to flight after a failed mission in September. December 5th, 2023: A Jielong-3 solid fuel LV launched a communications satellite into LEO from a barge in the South China Sea. December 8th, 2023: A Zhuque-2 commercial methane rocket launched three technology demonstrator satellites into SSO from Jiuquan. December 10th, 2023: A Long March 2D launched three reconnaissance satellites into LEO from Xichang. This was the 500th launch of the Long March series. December 14th, 2023: A Long March 2F launched China's experimental spaceplane into LEO from Jiuquan. December 15th, 2023: A Long March 5 launched a reconnaissance satellite into GEO from Wenchang. This flight featured an extended payload fairing. December 17th, 2023: A Hyperbola-1 launched the DEAR-1, a prototype of a future recoverable cargo spacecraft similar to Cargo Dragon, that perhaps might one day replace Tianzhou. December 25th, 2023: A Kuaizhou-1A launched a meteorology satellite into SSO from Jiquan. The KZ-1A is based on the DF-21 medium range ballistic missile. December 25th, 2023: A Long March 11H launched three technology demonstrator satellites into SSO from a barge in the South China Sea. December 26th, 2023: A Long March 3B with a Yuanzheng-1 upper stage launched two Beidou satellites into MEO from Xichang. December 27th, 2023: A Kuaizhou-1A launched a meteorology satellite into SSO from Jiuquan. December 30th, 2023: A Long March 2C with a Yuangzheng-1S upper stage launched three communications satellite into LEO from Jiuquan. In comparison, there were five non-Starlink American launches in December, and counting Starlink there were 11 American launches in total. Russia conducted four launches and South Korea conducted one. China conducted 67 launches in total this year. The US conducted 116 launches in total, while Russia came in third with 19 launches. Everyone else had single digit numbers.

I'm pretty sure @Hotel26 was saying this in jest.

My new profile pic is a picture I took of one of the scenes in the manga Space Brothers. Japanese astronaut Namba Mutta looks back at the Earth while sitting by himself on the Moon, as his brother, Japanese cosmonaut Namba Hibito, trains to join him on the Moon, becoming the first brothers to set foot on the Moon together. A quote from the manga is also in my signature (in blue).

Meanwhile in War Thunder: T a i l c u t l o o s e *crash*

This question of whether launch demand comes from availability of vehicles, or if availability of vehicles comes from launch demand is so interesting. I'm writing an alternate history where commercial spaceflight takes off in the 1990s, and don't know whether it would be possible for there to be more satellites built in the 90s or not. Thoughts? (from anyone?)

But Starship isn't "certified for flight". It is in the testing phase. There is no issue with explosions right now because these are development flights. What do you propose for correcting Starship? Ground tests? Cancellation?

Hyperloop for Mars is such an anti-SpaceX design choice though. Why use this incredibly complex thing when you could just build a normal railroad. And if you need to get something somewhere fast, just use a suborbital rocket.

I wouldn't put money on it because of that. Japan's HOPE spaceplane, the counterpart to Hermes, had subscale test vehicles too, and got cancelled anyways.

Then we come back to the question of what the point of a full thrust ground static fire is if the stage is going to explode anyways, why not do it in the air. In the 60s I think the Soviets could be criticized for not doing so because they needed it to work on the first try and perhaps the ability to monitor the characteristics of the flight of the rocket was limited, but with fancy 21st century computers and no deadline, it isn’t necessary. @Exoscientist, I apologize for asking if you have already said it, but why do you believe a full thrust ground static fire is necessary for Starship? We have pointed out multiple times there is no major benefit to it compared to flight testing. I ask because you seem to be repeating the same arguments over and over again without addressing our counter arguments.

I don’t think easy land grabs or even funding played a role in the fate of each rocket, at least as far as the performance record of the rocket itself goes. The thing with the N1 wasn’t really its design per se, it was more so severe quality issues, which were endemic to the Soviet industry throughout the USSR’s existence. If the Americans tried to build the N1 and the Soviets the Saturn V, the Saturn V would have exploded dozens of times and the N1 would have flown flawlessly. That’s a dramatic statement, but what I’m trying to say is that a big part of it had to do with the inherent strengths and weaknesses of each country’s manufacturing sector. Heck, the Americans even could have done the artillery style of development and still probably had better success than the Soviets did. Coming back to Starship, I’ll repeat what I said in the Artemis thread when Exoscientist was bringing up similar gripes. Starship is early in the testing phase. There is no reason to be crying about failures right now. Flight testing instead of ground testing is a valid method of development (not that Starship isn’t ground tested at all), for example the R-7 series was tested this way and it is literally the most reliable rocket in the world equally or at least on par with Falcon 9. To the naysayers, I say: give it time. It’s been said the N1 might have succeeded on its fifth flight, as it was doing better and better and getting farther and farther each time. Starship will succeed one day too.

What you said was basically Korolev’s justification for not doing static fires with the N1’s first stage. Extensive ground testing is part of why the Saturn V was so successful compared to N1. However, I personally don’t think this rules out the use of the “artillery method” of development (basically firing off a bunch of “rounds” (rockets) over and over again) for SpaceX. For one thing, SpaceX is not in a race with anyone, and the US government has also claimed it is not racing anyone (well, China) back to the Moon. Or at least Bridenstine said that. But anyways, there is no imperative to meet a certain date like Apollo or N1 had to, and also importantly, SLS’ own long lead times give Starship plenty of time to mature before Artemis III comes around. And finally, SpaceX as a whole is pretty onboard with Starship. There isn’t a confidence and funding crisis like Korolev and Mishin faced when the Soviet government began asking questions about the successive failures. Of course, that applies to Starship as an SHLV, not HLS. I’m not sure if NASA is concerned with the failures or not (probably no).

Commercial launchpad at Wenchang SLC has been completed. https://x.com/raz_liu/status/1740544727932678301?s=46&t=Jd73T2beq0JLNtwTy1uR5A

I don't think this has ever been used as an excuse. The potential range of the booster impact is massive and thousands of people live in it. There is no way they could evacuate everyone every time. I would guess the justification is similar to that of Roscosmos dropping Soyuz boosters on Kazakh and Russian farmland- "it's not very well populated". Compared to dropping it on Beijing, in theory this should have less of a chance of impacting property. The odds just weren't in their favor this time.

Do you know if there happened to be any military radar stations nearby? Maybe a SAM unit close by was testing the fire control radar on that day?

I’m not sure, but the Geriatric Coffee Neutralizing Robot should maintain 78% levels of wumbo.

What about the Good Capybara Neutron Repository?

I caught COVID-19 for the first time And it’s my last Christmas before moving to Japan… My dad did too, but his symptoms are less severe than mine. Which is interesting, because he smoked for about 30 some years before quitting in 2020 when it became too difficult to buy cigarettes because of quarantine (and hasn’t restarted yet thankfully). When I fall into sleep it becomes such a haze. I sincerely thought I was living on a Mars base and had to discuss why balloons were being shipped from the crew back to Earth. I’m trying to look at this positively though. Maybe if I hadn’t been sick, me and my family would have died while driving to Hood River, the town we were planning to visit this weekend. Or maybe me and my sister would have been killed in a car accident on the way to my mom’s house, which is where we do the celebrations.