CatastrophicFailure

The Tooth of October… Somehow fitting.

Sooooo… how long til Russia gives control of their nuclear missiles to a highly advanced AI which begins learning at a geometric rate? Asking for a friend… by the name of Ivan Connorski…

Well… at least we know what really happened with Nauka…

Took the puppy on his longest adventure yet today. First he went to the pet store where he was instantly fawned over by mobs of random strangers. Which he loves. I mean, c’mon, just look at that face… [file photo… silly amount of new ones following…]

Not even moderators can escape the all-seeing Eye of Sauron Google…

Ok, now I’m curious…. my notification email said “grammar bad person thread”, but this says ‘pedant’; but it,s not been edited? I”m confused… What?

I still remember how floored I was by SN8's flight. The descent, using a control method never before used, especially at that scale, was absolutely rock solid. No oscillating, no wobbling, it was under complete control the entire way up and down, to the point of engine ignition. That kind of control can only come from extensive and exhaustive simulation. The ultimate failure was a hardware issue, of the sort of thing that's extremely difficult to properly simulate and only rears its head in actual testing.

Er... Vostok/Voshkod? Pure spheres... Not quite a rock, they've already demonstrated pure aerodynamic control during terminal descent: close enough to the pad for the engines to get it the rest of the way. F9 also has a 1:1 LD ratio as just a cylinder with fins.

Scientist, engineer, pilot.

Hmm, so all this time I’ve been writing in Russian, no wonder I can’t even read my own handwriting.

It’s a really cool concept if you’re unfamiliar, basically the back of that suit “docks” to the hab/rover/crashed lander etc. Ivan climbs in, hatches close, then goes around slaughtering his enemies like Death incarnate with that scythe (FITTING HOW RUSSIAN ONLY HAS CAPITAL LETTERS, Death grinned), docks again, climbs out, then goes on to celebrating and/or pondering his own impending demise without tracking the blood of his foes that tricky regolith all over the nice clean space carpet.

Air drag gets a lot of conversational real estate in this thread, but keep in mind, it’s a bit of a lesser concern vs airplanes. After the first couple of minutes of flight it ceases to be a concern at all, really. A rocket only needs to be aerodynamic enough, obsessing over minimizing every tiny bit of drag loss quickly becomes a diminishing return. If you’ve ever seen a closeup of the shuttle ET, or even an Atlas V, the surface is extremely rough from the insulation. Making it less so just isn’t worth it in the grand scheme since it’s a trivial loss vs the mass penalty (among other things) of making the skin perfectly smooth. I reckon it’s a similar deal with Starship, the tiles are aerodynamically good enough. At least for now. Mmmmmmm, riblets…

I think that's supposed to be headER tank...

Placed order in Feb, got it about a month ago, 48°N. Seems kinda random when people are getting theirs.

Especially the brown sort.

Around 5 years is the expected lifespan, when they’ll be intentionally deorbited and replaced with a new, better generation.

w00t w00t! The next day: booyah. For a whole six miles of trailering. Now for a real challenge. following distance is life

BFR is much more tolerant of losing a single engine than Astra is. Also, SpaceX has to work with that they've got, they don't have nearly the real estate down there that KSC does. Hopefully they've already had enough on the pad Oopsies to retire that risk as much as possible.

Safer, and prolly save you a few bucks, too.

Yeah, otherwise he might have to pay for two seats, he’s been looking a bit… tribble-esque the last few years. Oh, and a third seat for his ego. still love the guy. Kirk>Picard.

Bingo. It’s a really, really cool concept, but most things related to crewed spaceflight don’t respond well to being bumped. I think the Chinese Mars lander actually did something like this, ejecting a tiny camera bot to take pics after it was on its way, but that’s a much lower risk situation when it’s constantly getting farther away and not doing anything… complicated.

Woe be upon thy plumber!

Today was the annual blood sacrifice to the ancient Armenian deity of suffering and mortification, Rubus armeniacus.* However, the sacrifice of human flesh was found wanting, and the harvest was poor. Fortunately, still had the previous harvests from the last couple years in the deep freeze. And a few dozen pounds of strawberries: Many hours of blood, sweat, and tears later: three & a half gallons of berry jam and a gallon of cider in the fermenter. My. Kitchen. Is. So. STICKY!!! There's schmutz on the counters, schmutz on the appliances, schmutz on the ceiling-- How the flarping flapjacks did we get schmutz on the ceiling?!? The dishwasher has plotzed and the trash is overflowing, but our Christmas "shopping" is done. *Anyone who's ever picked, traipsed through, cleared, or even looked at blackberries knows exactly what I mean. Oh, and there were wasps too...