CatastrophicFailure
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Posts posted by CatastrophicFailure
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56 minutes ago, Vanamonde said:
Where I live, the adults need to be lectured about crossing the street. Idiots wandering in the roads everywhere I go, lately.
As a transit bus driver, I most heartily concur!
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7 minutes ago, Just Jim said:
Yeah, way, way too much writing to take a chance. Although I imagine the chances of that happening are pretty slim.
There is a precedent...
This all reminds me I really need to get Revelations backed up too.
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Aaaaaand question answered:
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So, any comments from the peanut gallery here, as to whether this scrub will affect the FH launch? If it does go up tomorrow, that might mean two SpaceX launches from the Cape within a week of each other, albeit from different pads. Seems like that’d be a record of its own.
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Scrub? You mean they’re going to clean the booster after all?
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4 hours ago, DarkOwl57 said:
Help.
PleaseProbably can’t post a link on the forum, but google “Rammstein Moskau,” that mirror universe version should cancel this one out.
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5 hours ago, WolfCoAerospace said:
Are at fault for political protests in Russia(or any general unrest)
O, the irony.
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28 minutes ago, tater said:
Yeah, they're getting rid of old ones.
Oh, what a problem to have.
"Hey Bob?"
"Yeah Bill?"
"We got too many boosters, we need to dump some!"
Pity they can't give them away as like museum pieces or lawn art or something...
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Off-topic gagSo, I hear there’s a rocket launch tomorrow. ‘Bout 1:25 PST/4:24EST/21:25 GMT
No booster recovery.
It would seem, out of three regularly scheduled launches this month, no boosters are getting recovered.
SpaceX has officially made booster recovery “normal.”
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27 minutes ago, DAL59 said:
Wait, can't you just get a bottle of propane, a hollow cylinder of metal, and a spark producer? Yeah, this is a ripoff.
No, it’s quite a brilliant tool to raise funds.
Flamethrowers are so much more entertaining than shares of stock, and more likely to maintain value, too.
Also:
“Do you expect me to talk?”
”No, Mistah Bond, I expect you to fry...”
2 hours ago, Kerbal01 said:somewhere on NSF/reddit. It's because it's block 3 and previously flown. Hispasat 30W will be expended because it's heavy and Govsat-1 because it's block 3 reuse.
Google seems to be failing me, I’m not seeing anything but conjecture. PAZ is very light, which would give plenty of margin for a first-on-this-pad RTLS Test. OTOH, with a full-length burn they might be able to glean some useful data about reentry at Falcon Heavy core speeds.
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2 hours ago, Starman4308 said:
I will fully admit: your writing style has influenced some of my writing style. I suspect it's because overblown totalitarianism, when not taken seriously, can be quite funny, and Americans have a hard time coming up with an amusing American stereotype for a space program.... so we use the Russians.
I hope they one day forgive us.
Oh, I’m sure they have their own tropes of us. Probably think we are bunch of cowboys.
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1 hour ago, Kerbal01 said:
Paz on a reflown booster has been known since at least November, and not only is it not RTLS'ing it will be expended.
Do you have a source on that? I thought it was GovSat that was flying expendable?
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1 hour ago, Starman4308 said:
First, the Ministry of Truth would like to remind citizens that previous news reports of some "Jebediah Kerman" and "Valentina Kerman" are in error. Our astronaut corps is led by Natalya Tsydlerina and Laura Lawrence, whose daring suborbital flights definitely did not land them in the hospital.
T—This... this, we do not speak of?
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Possible new information (not FH-related): according to SpaceFlightNow, the launch of the Paz satellite on the 10th out of Vandy will be on a reflown booster (so will GovSat on Tuesday), IIRC this will also be the first West coast RTLS.
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15 hours ago, 1101 said:
This thread does science? I forgot it did science.
Well, the way I have it set up in the Admin building, it’s mostly about the money.
14 hours ago, NCommander said:There's a space program beyond Rald? Wow, amazings
(though the Rald exploration was very pretty. And insane)I don’t think I’ve ever spent so much time exploring a single world before. I thought that would be a quick detour, but this game has become quite... organic. I’ll have to get the map with the RaldBase’s odyssey put up.
12 hours ago, Geschosskopf said:Also, why did the lander sink so far into the ground? Is it that heavy or is the ground that soft?
Yes.
12 hours ago, Geschosskopf said:That's a nifty little cannoball you've got there
Are those retractable RTGs from SXT?
Your guess is as good as mine, I have no idea what anything is from anymore.
9 hours ago, insert_name said:Does the orbiter have rtgs as well, I don't see any solar panels?
Near Future nucyaler reactor (running at a bare trickle).
Ain’t messin around this far out.
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46 minutes ago, tater said:
Looks just like Elon Musk’s boring company flamethrower minus the plastic gun part. And not $600.
Yeah but then you’re not helping to fund his super secret Bond villain base and eventual invasion of Mars.
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9 minutes ago, Geonovast said:
I wasn't worried, heading straight east from the KSC. I knew I'd be back or it'd run out of fuel before a "sudden" mountain would be a problem and cause a @CatastrophicFailure.
Heh, I'm a little too used to 6.4x GPP, I guess. My launch site has 10,000+ meter cliffs on two sides.
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37 minutes ago, Geonovast said:
KER says more than 2 hours of fuel left, Cruise control is on, I'm going grocery shopping!
Let's see how reliable this autopilot is when I'm not looking.*glances at that altitude*
Suddenly, a mountain!
8 hours ago, Laie said:I almost landed on Tylo
You’ve got MechJeb, I see. Have you tried the landing AP? Might be just the tick in efficiency that’s needed.
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28 minutes ago, tater said:
Buy one, then a $20-30 nerf gun, figure out how to combine them, sell for under $600, profit.
I do believe that was Musk’s entire ebil pan all along.
whether or not collecting underpants was involved remains pure conjecture.
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Year 8, Day 124...
*Yawn...*
That was... rather refreshing. Who knew a few days in a padded sensory isolation room could be so relaxing? I may have to make this a regular thing, maybe even put it into the staff training rotation.
Moving on, NOVA Gratian has at last arrived at its encounter! We're still not... sure who put that voice file in the data stream. Normally I'd suspect Vlad, but I have it on good authority (and corroborated by several witnesses) that he was otherwise engaged, getting soundly beaten by butter-filled socks, during the last data uplink, so the Masked Snarker remains at large.
Spoiler
After more than a year and two hundred days in deep space, the probe remains in good health, having only lost one backup reaction wheel to entropy. Long-range imaging of the area around Gratian has confirmed the presence of a large moon orbiting the roughly Rald-sized world. But our first order of business is braking into orbit with the aptly-named Braking Stage.
1400m/s or so later, and our first tentative science readings, and the NOVA has entered a stable, highly eccentric orbit!
The science team is practically salivating at this point. Which is nothing unusual, we should probably feed them more often.
We shall soon be back around, Gratian.
But first, we're also getting our first close-up-yet-long-range images of the planet's Moon, which Andrei has named Germinus.
Geminus? Geminus. It's only a distant encounter, but it's enough for us to pin down that it has a slightly inclined and fairly circular orbit. We'll be back here, soon too.
But first (wait, did I already say that?), the distant encounter has given NOVA an advantageous gravity assist, nudging the apo-Grate a bit lower and dipping the other end into the atmosphere, just as we wanted. With a few final course tweaks, the lander's target is set.
That's right, the NOVA-series carry and integral atmospheric lander package! It's a very simple design, purely sedentary, but should be robust enough for a range of landing conditions.
Once the lander is dispatched, the nearly spend braking stage is also left on a collision course. Wouldn't do to have it cluttering up space. Hopefully it will burn up in Gratian's atmosphere.
And if not, wouldn't be the first time we've littered all over a pristine planet.
The NOVA orbiter corrects its course once more, regaining a stable orbit and distancing itself from the lander. Soon after, we get our expected loss-of-signal, as the lander's EDL antenna is very short range. The landing sequence is completely automated from this point.
It's a tense time at Mission Control. The lander should be entering the atmosphere at this point, at a speed similar to low Gael orbit.
As well as recording our first data about the beige world's atmosphere. Wait, it's taupe? It's taupe.
Coming in at well over 6500m/s, it's going to get toasty...
With our luck, it's probably going to land on the side of a mountain.
Yeah, like that one.
The engineering team has programmed with caution, the chute should open as soon as conditions are safe, even if it's a bit high.
The probe will continue gathering data all during its descent, even as it heads toward...
...yep, the side of a mountain.
At a couple of kilometers up, once safely hanging on the main chute, the heat shield and fairing will decouple.
It's gonna be the side of a mountain, isn't it? I just know it's gonna land on the side of a mountain.
Any minute now...
Aaaaany minute now...
Once the lander is safely down, it should automatically deploy long-range mission antennas as well as triple-redundant RTG's.
Any minute now...
Just as panic is starting to set in, the NOVA orbiter gets a low pass over the landing site, and communication is restored! The lander is safely down, but for some reason the main antenna did not deploy. Fortunately, this has been planned for, and the orbiter automatically relays a signal to deploy them.
We only get a few tenuous bits of data, though, before the orbiter passes below the horizon. It's going to be a long wait until we can recover the rest.
A small course tweak, and the orbiter is once more on course for Germinus.
Geminus? Geminus.
We're going to do a full survey of the Mün-sized moon before focusing attention back on Gratian, there's not enough delta-V available to do it any other way.
The orbiter makes a low pass, once more braking into an eccentric polar orbit. It's a lucky encounter, and the final orbit will allow a full mapping of the world as well as gathering as much critical low-altitude science as possible.
Over the course of several days, on Germinusian month, nearly the entire surface is mapped and biome scanned, revealing several anomalies. These will necessitate further study on a future mission. Who know what's down there...
Geminusian? Geminusian.
But, we can't stay here forever. The orbiter once again fires up its thruster and heads back to Gratian.
The limited data we received from the lander was just enough, the engineering team has agreed to a risky attempt at aerobraking to reduce our apo-Grate away from Germinus's potentially dangerous pull.
Geminus? Geminus.
More tense moments. The orbiter was never designed for this, it lacks any kind of heat shielding, but Gratian's atmosphere seems just thick enough...
It's getting hot in there...
But the maneuver is a success! Nothing too important is lost, although all the photos the cameras return are now a little blackened around the edges. Gives them a nice, nostalgic feel.
Over the next dozen orbits or so, we'll maintain this peri-Grate, which seems to be just at the edge of what the probe can handle. This will slowly drop our orbit for our full scan.
During one of these passes, we finally regain contact with the lander! All systems are still in good health. Once again it's only a trickle of data, but it's good to know it still works.
Finally, we've tortured the poor orbiter enough. The last of its fuel and backup attitude/maneuvering propellant is spent to circularize to a polar 2700km orbit, now that we've also gathered as much low-altitude science as we're going to get.
This will also conclude the "active" portion of the mission. The orbiter's big high-gain antenna has already returned a trove of science data, now it's down to mapping and slowly downloading the lander's store as it passes in and out of contact.
Overall, the mission has been a stunning success! Even more than the data returned, it has validated the robustness and adaptability of the NOVA platform. We've got two more en-route to Gauss and Otho, and what we've learned here will be absolutely critical to those missions as well.
This has been just the morale bump the space program needed. Oddly enough, the random beatings didn't seem to help at all, go figure. Gratian has also proved itself a fascinating target for further study, although there are no firm plans in the pipeline at the moment. Between its just-thick-enough atmosphere, handy moon, and potential resources, it may be just the place for a future crewed mission. Only time will tell.
OK, guys you can put the socks down, now. Guys? Guys? Guys....
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20 hours ago, KSK said:
Ahhh - you've been to Scotland then.
That's sound advice. And now - back on topic...
I think I might have been, but I was far too young to remember it... or appreciate the local cuisine.
Actually on topic... the next topic is still maybe a week out. It’ll be a bit... different. And As always, progress is slow but... sporadic. Wish I could pump out words like the smidgen above on a regular basis.
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It’s not new, but the launch date has been officially confirmed:
In slightly related news, Elon Musk is also literally selling flame throwers:
Gotta love this guy.
Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Bezos. Maybe this nut can give you a light.
Now, I wonder how many of these things I’d need to duct tape together to equal a Falcon Heavy...
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22 minutes ago, Just Jim said:
This is one of those few cases I might think about hitting alt-F12 and going indestructible, just long enough to get past the jumping part safely and not lose the ship.
It’s not cheating if the game cheats first.
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4 minutes ago, Ultimate Steve said:
Also, by some miracle I'M GETTING SICK!!!! However, it's 1-2 weeks early. On one hand I don't want to be sick for two weeks, but if I can watch heavy...
It’s That F9H1 flu going around... funny how everyone’s getting it on the same day...
Flamethrowers are so much more entertaining than shares of stock, and more likely to maintain value, too.
SpaceX Discussion Thread
in Science & Spaceflight
Posted
*stares*
Wait... so does this mean the Heavy will do The Roll after liftoff??