Shpaget

Planes have plenty of power for takeoff. Airliners with two engines must be capable of taking off with only one.

You don't need to! The exact same technique you used for the photo above is just fine.

HA! That's awesome! This is the very first photo I took with my first film obscura I made from a cellphone box. Anyway, your room definitely qualifies for this: http://pinholeday.org

Yeah, they still use SIDs (Standard Instrument Departure Route) and STARs (Standard Arrival Route) that are usually based on some radio equipment, but it doesn't need to be with with todays tech. Anyway, AI would have no trouble flying any reasonable 3D pattern and satnav is more than capable of providing positioning, which is why modern autopilots do it on regular basis. Autopilots control the aircraft most of the time.

Can we spam SpaceX with requests for telemetry of the first stage on the return and landing? I would find that info interesting, and I assume the necessary hardware is there, it's just a matter of displaying it on the webcast.

So, any ideas on how the ILS would work on it? Other than "poorly"...

Nah, apparently the satellite video link doesn't work through the exhaust plume.

That red hot grid fin and the paint peeling off got me worried. ELON!!

Whoops! Almost forgot about this!

I don't think so. Any engineer worth his salt would just file the proposal in the drawer marked "Shredder".

George Clooney would just waste it on a joyride...

Of course. This is what happens:

Another bonkers concept is unleashed upon us. You thought that space elevators were hard enough? Well, you haven't seen anything yet! Take a look at a skyscraper that hangs from an asteroid placed in a geosynchronous orbit (not geostationary, mind you), so it travels around the world and always comes back to the same spot, in this case New York, because why not New York? http://edition.cnn.com/2017/03/29/living/analemma-tower-orbiting-skyscraper-trnd/ Even Popular Mechanics author (while not entirely optimistic) hasn't bothered to research what this abomination would take for more than 30 seconds. http://www.popularmechanics.com/space/a25853/clouds-architecture-asteroid-skyscraper/ Then look at the comments here, if you're brave enough. http://www.unilad.co.uk/best/plans-unveiled-for-incredible-skyscraper-that-hangs-from-an-asteroid/ Come on journalists!! Do some basic research before you print rubbish!

Since I'm annoyed that they don't post simple smart time displays everywhere, and that every timezone other than the one I happen to live in is wrong I did this: https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?msg=SpaceX+F9+-+SES+10&iso=20170330T18&p1=2273&ah=2&am=30 So there... Maybe someone finds it useful.

Why keep the entire rocket prepped?

From the video: "The circular runway is equivalent in length to 3 straight runways" "But the team calculate [sic]" "It can handle the work of 4 normal runways" I call BS. They speak of headwind, so in order to get direct headwind, you can only use one (very) small section of the circle. The rest is useless, so it does not help to increase the capacity. They also speak about wake turbulence as if their concept would help reduce its effect - it would not. The 3 km diameter their design speaks of is not sufficient. International airports have 3 to 4 km long runways for a reason.

Can somebody please explain why does it cost $150 million for a spacecraft to sit in a storage for a year? Ok, the seismometer needs to be rebuilt, but that is only a fraction of the $150 M. Is it personnel? Surely, they have other things to do besides standing in a circle around the bubble-wrapped spacecraft waiting for the next launch window, meaning they don't incur any additional cost. So, what is it?

Yeah, it is a lot of nines, but I had to put that many to get into the blueshift-to-gamma ballpark. Subterranean nuke is a tricky approximation, sure, but I have no idea how to calculate the penetration depth of the particle in question, so I just took a data point that was available to me. As for the rest, of course, one approximation on top of another, but in each step I took took the less dangerous end of approximation, and rounded up or down towards a less cataclysmic scenario. In any case, I believe that 0,999999c is just as unachievable as 0,9c is.

100 GW shining on a circle with 10 km diameter delivers 1270 W per square metre. That is quite close to the radiation coming from the Sun (1370 W/m^2 in orbit, 1100 on the surface), so it would get quite hot - nice summer day hot, not counting the Sun. Combined with Sun, it could definitely start forest fires and cause sunburns - the Sun alone does that. The same 100 GW beam shining on a 100 m radius is another story. Can you say death ray?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fizzle_(nuclear_test) It's not easy to trigger a nuke.

Perhaps, but you only trade kinetic energy for thermal. Total is the same.

That would only add the energy of the laser to the energy of the particle. Double the trouble.

Hmmm, I wonder how long it would last. Let's go and do the math! I'm doing the calculation and googlinglive as I type, so I don't know what result will I get. First, let's figure out the kinetic energy of a typical micro particle found in the interplanetary space. They are usually under 100 micrometers, so, let's take 50 um. The volume of sphere of that diameter is 6.545x10^-14 m^3, with the average M class asteroid density of around 5 g/cm^3, that brings us to the mass of 3,27x10^-7 kg. So, the kinetic energy of that particle at 0,999999c would be 2,07x10^13 J, which is roughly equivalent to a 5 kt nuke, which is a modest sized tactical nuke. Now, let's see how often would our spacecraft be struck by such particle. I'm having trouble finding the data on the frequency of such particles in space but I did find the estimate that Earth is struck by 37,000-78,000 tons of the stuff each year. Let's take the low number of 40 000 tons, or 40 000 000 kg per year. There would be roughly 120 000 000 000 000 particles that hit the Earth in such a scenario. If we take our spaceship to have a rather tiny cross section of just 200 m^2, that means, our ship would be struck around 180 times in one Earth orbit, which it would cover in just under an hour. This article https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-size-of-a-crater-left-by-the-average-thermonuclear-bomb states that a 104 kt (subterranean) bomb excavated 11 000 000 tons of material, so our 20 times smaller bomb would dig up 500 000 tons. To reach our 60 gigatons mark, we would need 120 000 strikes, which would occur in roughly 25 days. Shield not heavy enough.

Here's my attempt to capture the Big J from way back in 2012. If you squint and follow a line from the planet to the lower left corner you might see two dots. Those are Io (the one closer to the planet) and Ganimede (near the corner). When I set out for some night photography, all I had with me was two DSLRs, a bag of lenses and a tripod. I took my motorcycle and crossed a local mountain, so that I can at least put the mountain between myself and all the light pollution from the city. So, there I am, in the middle of nowhere, halfway down the wrong side of a mountain (no big towns anywhere near), in pitch black night, on a road that sees little traffic even during the day, clicking my long exposures when suddenly a pair of xenon lights turn around a corner and mess up my shot. Ah well, memory card space is cheap :). But, the car stops just by my side and a bunch of guys start pouring out. "Whazzup!" "Hey" "What ya doing" "Shooting stars" "Did we mess up your shot?" "No biggie"... Long story short, these guys start unpacking this huge telescope out of the trunk of the car. Great! More small talk and they seem cool enough so I kind of attach myself to their eyepeice. They have some trouble with polar alignment, but eventually they turn the scope to Jupiter. Of course, they don't have the adapters to mount my camera on the scope, so I take the picture above afocally, handheld, hence the shake. Unfortunately the camera didn't catch Callisto that was just outside of the frame.

Once you get to five or six nines, you'd be facing quite a bit of gamma radiation from all the blueshifted starlight. Come close (astronomically speaking) to a star, and you're zapped. No worries, though. Dust particles will nuke you long before that.