Jump to content

CatastrophicFailure

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    7,162

  • Joined

  • Last visited

 Content Type 

Posts posted by CatastrophicFailure

    What funny/interesting thing happened in your life today?

    in The Lounge

    Posted

    2 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

    Let's make a summary.

    1. A horror book had scared you.
    2. You keep it somewhere deep in the shed and didn't want to open it anymore.
    3. Unexpectedly there appeared its sequel.
    4. You feel an unconscious call to find the elder book where it lives now, open it, and combine both parts...

    Did I miss something?

    Don't forget to properly self-equip before reading.

    All Things Serve the Beam. -_-

    SpaceX Discussion Thread

    in Science & Spaceflight

    Posted

    4 hours ago, Beccab said:

    It's not "I want the crew to live" vs "I fanboy Starship"

    This. 

    NASA’s “acceptable” risk for crew is something like chance of LOCV of less than 1 in 250. Starship can achieve this by simply flying 250 times in regular operation (not counting special experimental versions along the way), heck, the requirement could even be 250 safe flights in a row and Starship could realistically do this in a reasonable time frame. The shuttle could have demonstrated reliability like this too, at least in theory, but it never had a realistic chance of the needed flight cadence (requirement for people on board notwithstanding). Starship could theoretically make enough flights in a single year. And still come in cheaper than developing an independent LAS the old way. 
     

    @Jacke You asked if I’d get on a rocket with a 1% chance of failure? HECK. YES. For the chance of getting that experience that so few have that is an extremely low risk. And there’s plenty of others who would accept that risk, too, even if you are not among them. The more Starship flies, the lower that risk becomes. When SpaceX is truly serious about putting a hundred or a thousand people at a time on board, as in rocket’s on the pad ready to go, that risk will have been retired down to a much, much smaller number. It’s not black/white either/or, even the most ardent SpaceX fanbois acknowledge it’s gonna be some time before anyone rides this thing uphill. That does not, however, mean never. 
     

    SpaceX Discussion Thread

    in Science & Spaceflight

    Posted

    8 hours ago, Meecrob said:

    We are arguing the same point, I think. My point is Launch Abort System is important, yes, but its as important as all other abort plans, yet it seems to have gained a grater emphasis lately. STS had zero launch abort, but we flew it anyways, so the argument that Starship has no LAS is incorrect. Period. NASA has proven they will fly without one for 30 years!

    An LAS is, in general, a reasonable thing to include on a rocket. In any kind of capsule—Dragon, Mercury, Soyuz—including one is certainly non-trivial but it’s also not exceedingly difficult, as long as your lifter can manage the mass. Likewise, simply wearing pressure suits, like after Challenger and that Soyuz, is a very reasonable design change. Creating some kind of EDL abort system for a capsule, well… for all intents and purposes, is impossible, the capsule is your abort system.  They actually did study shoving a capsule with abort motors into the shuttle’s payload bay, which would have given it the odd distinction of having a lifeboat during every single phase of flight, including reentry, but since that would have killed pretty much any payload capacity it never went anywhere. 

    Anywho, it’s all about managing the risk again, and reducing it to an “acceptable” level. Starship can accomplish this either by demonstrating sufficient reliability with real flights (which the shuttle never could) before launching people, or by including it’s own independent abort system a la that shuttle “capsule in the cargo bay.” Realistically, we might see some kind of hybrid system, since Starship itself is also capable of aborting from a failing Superheavy. I could have sworn that even before upping to nine engines Musk said that Starship would have a TWR greater than 1 on the pad, and could fire its own engines to abort within a fraction of a second. This was one reason the RVac was designed to be able to fire at sea level, too. It certainly can now with those nine. So, question becomes, how many successful launches (and landings) does the system need for that to be reliable enough?

    Also, a note on those zip lines: remember, the shuttle and Apollo were boarded after being fully fueled, so you’d have an entire ground crew up there, too. Those zip lines to APCs or Apollo’s bunker are exactly what you’d need for evacuating that ground crew, even if the flight crew were already buttoned up inside, if a fire broke out on the pad, very much like that Soyuz incident. If memory serves, the fire was going on for several minutes between the “oh, crap!” moment and the Big Boom. 

    SpaceX Discussion Thread

    in Science & Spaceflight

    Posted

    2 hours ago, Meecrob said:

    Edit: Think about it...go through the entirety of humanity's adventure with spaceflight. Tell me how many people have had their lives spared by a pad abort system?

    Three more on Soyuz MS-10, which used a backup abort system, and a hair’s breadth of three more on Apollo 12 if not for the steely-eyed missile man. And any kind of abort system at all might have saved the challenger crew. 
     

    21 minutes ago, tater said:

    Regarding LES and SS... yeah, that's a tough one for me. I understand their rationale WRT making it reliable, then flying it, but... it's gonna take a lot of launches and landings, and some with edge cases (engine outs, etc) to demonstrate safety for humans even at NASA levels (1:270 LOC).

    The trouble with the Shuttle (aside from the whole design being inherently dangerous from the get go) is that it could never fly enough to gain and demonstrate the required reliability to be reliable enough. Starship not only has a real possibility of doing so, but it needs to. It won’t work otherwise, since it needs to have that crazy-high launch cadence to get anywhere BLEO.  A dozen flights a year won’t cut it, it needs dozens or even hundreds, and has a far better chance of actually doing so. 

    What funny/interesting thing happened in your life today?

    in The Lounge

    Posted

    18 hours ago, Hyperspace Industries said:

    These small monsters have transparent bags to float with, and have long blue tails which, on contact, release a substance into humans which causes extreme pain and a burning sensation. 

    FunFact: each individual is actually a colony of four different sub-kinds of genetically identical but specialized critters: gas bag, guts, stingers, and… gonads… -_- Also, they’re left- or right-handed. 
     

    17 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

    That's bad news. The sharks have started using tools for fishing.

    They probably just busted him for not having a license. <_<

    The possibility and ethics of contaminating Mars. (Split from SpaceX.)

    in Science & Spaceflight

    Posted

    9 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

    The point is though that others are concerned about it- not just random SpaceX haters, actual scientists interested in studying past or present life on Mars- and thus their concerns should be taken into account.

    Right. But the question is, exactly how much risk of ruining the scientific process actually exists? I'm asking. We agree that it's non-zero, right? Ok, there is a nonzero risk that I'll be struck by lightning when I go outside to feed the chickens. Now, obviously that risk is so exceedingly low that it doesn't warrant that I take any special precautions. So what is the real risk here? The risk of life on Mars AND the risk of a bug on the ship AND the risk of surviving the trip AND landing in the right place AND being compatible with the environment and so on, and so on. That all seems like an extremely low risk to me. And that's assuming SpaceX somehow intentionally blunders into the worst possible place right off the bat, which itself is unlikely. There's all sorts of measures they could take, and likely will, short of waiting on sample returns, in order to further reduce that risk.

    Those sample returns are a risk, too, especially if the results come back inconclusive, or worse, negative for life. Because in either case there will always be someone arguing "we can't do things yet, there might still be life and we just haven't found it yet." 

    I think Tater said, that the best way to actually find evidence of life on Mars is to get boots (and a proper lab) on the ground and go looking for it. Or, more likely, randomly blunder into the right place after years of living there and searching.

    7 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

    If there *is* life on Mars, we potentially learn a great deal about the origins of life

    Here's also the thing, if there is/was life on Mars, there almost certainly is/was life everywhere it's even remotely possible. Europa, Enceladus, Titan, heck, the Moon... if life is just one other place it's likely to be freaking everywhere, just like it is on Earth. So even if (and that's a very big if) the Martian biosphere is somehow compromised, it's less destroying an entire world and more stepping on a single plant. That is, unfortunate, but not of the gravity some would make it out to be. That's no excuse to go barreling through the cosmos strip-mining everything as we go along just for the lulz, but neither is it a valid reason to just sit here on our thumbs with analysis paralysis. 

     

    And, of course, this is all assuming Martian life is life as we know it, and not something so entirely alien that we've been looking right at it this whole time without recognizing it. -_-

    there's a reason The Face looks so done with our crap... 

    The possibility and ethics of contaminating Mars. (Split from SpaceX.)

    in Science & Spaceflight

    Posted

    4 minutes ago, tater said:

    If they wait for NASA/etc, we'll all be dead before it happens.

    I personally see no ethical issue at all, there is certainly nothing there past maybe microorganisms. It's an incredibly interesting scientific question, however.

    As for SS, didn't an early Soviet orbiter impact Mars instead of orbiting? That ship might have already sailed (not to mention any imperfections in keeping landers clean).

    There’s Mars Climate Observer, which burned up in the at atmosphere, tho bits could have possibly survived. 
     

    All in all seems an extremely low risk to me, odds of extant life on Mars + odds of something actually (not potentially) surviving launch, cruise, EDL, + odds of establishing on Mars…

×
×
  • Create New...