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CatastrophicFailure

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Posts posted by CatastrophicFailure

    What funny/interesting thing happened in your life today?

    in The Lounge

    Posted

    Finally found the load limit on the tractor. :cool:

    lJgeF8c.jpg

    Could lift this basket of alder but juuuust barely. Check how squooshed the front tires are, I could barely turn the steering wheel, either. Yup, split the whole load by hand, too. -_-

    And of course by “by hand” I mean my hands worked the levers on the wood splitter. Yet I still somehow feel like I got hit by a truck. :confused:  And that’s not even half of what needs splitting. :wacko:

    Also, this finally happened: 

    dYxwN5Y.jpg

    :D

    Temporarily “installed” our Dishy in a horrible location on the perennially dirty squirrel porch table.  And right off the get go, Comcast decided to plotz and not stream anything so we broke it in with the first episode of Loki, which worked perfectly well despite the app reporting disconnects every few minutes. 
    yes I drink the Kool-Aid, and it is sweet

    SpaceX Discussion Thread

    in Science & Spaceflight

    Posted

    29 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

    don't know what you are talking about. Capsule recovery was fine on Starliner's OFT-1.

    What @Silavite said. Y'know, like how in-game you hit 70km and pop the service module only to have it come flying back moments later all "oh, hai Mark Bob!" :D

    32 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

    Do you really think nobody else builds test articles and prototypes?

    What's getting critiqued aren't boilerplate half-completed, ahem, mockups tho, pokes @kerbiloid with a stick, it's mission-ready hardware that's "supposed" to be finished. If Boeing was blowing up test articles and then being even remotely transparent about it, that would be different entirely, as would a "finished" Dragon capsule that suddenly experienced potentially life-threatening errors. 

    SpaceX Discussion Thread

    in Science & Spaceflight

    Posted

    53 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

    True enough, but you know that if a crew had been on the Starliner first flight they would have survived just fine.

    Until, perhaps, they burned up on reentry cuz a certain engineer didn't remember Scott Manley's Golden Rule at the last minute and checked the staging. That kind of error is "not supposed" to happen on a mature design. 

    56 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

    Anyway, I'm not here to claim the Starliner hasn't had some embarrassing problems. But I still think there is a double-standard in this forum where SpaceX problems are, if anything, celebrated -- "move fast and break things!" -- while anybody else's problems are attacked.

    Again, there's that difference. "Move fast and break things!" Breaking things is an inherent, and necessary part of the process. "Go slow and don't break things!" is an equally valid, if frustrating for spectators, design philosophy too, but in that case things are not "supposed" to break. Breaking things is bad. Something has gone wrong when things should not go wrong. 

    59 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

    Maybe it's just a disconnect in experience. I've been part of this industry for more than 30 years, and I know that internally the attitude toward competitors, while fierce, is quite different from the rather partisan nature of discussions in this forum. And it's hard not to react to partisan attacks with partisan counterattacks.

    I think, perhaps, what you're seeing is not so much a double standard as much as (rightfully earned) criticism towards certain other players for very certain things, not just simple tribalism. Most SpaceXers are very supportive of Rocketlab, for instance, through their recent tribulations. But Boeing has been really, really screwing up lately. What began as light rivalry for many of us has turned to frustrated consternation, because a, if not the, major aerospace company should not be making such "rookie errors" as not doing integrated system tests and checking they staging software. Not to mention something as mundane as stuck valves. Boeing should be better than that, it's Boeing for Jeb's sake! 

    And then the Chosen One of NewSpace flat out turned to the Dark Side and went full Vader on us... :unsure:

    SpaceX Discussion Thread

    in Science & Spaceflight

    Posted

    13 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

    I'm just once again struck by what seems to be a double standard among SpaceX fans. Anything that doesn't go perfectly in a test flight for somebody else is an abject failure, but if it's SpaceX, it's "a great learning experience".

    There's very clear differences that, ahem, non-SpaceX fans tend to ignore when pointing this out: 

    Starship is not an operational vehicle, it's not even close to being operational. Ship 20's test flight is at best a proof of concept, from the very outset its not expected to go perfectly, or even go well, it's purpose is to gather data, anything at all beyond that is just icing. 

    That's very different from, say, a verification test flight of a vehicle that's supposed to be "ready," that's intended to carry people on the very next flight, or is otherwise validating systems that are expected to be "finished."

    SpaceX Discussion Thread

    in Science & Spaceflight

    Posted

    1 hour ago, MKI said:

    If you could bet on SN20+B4 chances of failure, what stage do you think would be the most likely to fail?

     

    Been mulling this over myself for a while, I think I give it 50/50 odds of surging to/through staging (that’s a LOT of plumbing), 50/50 that Starship makes it to SECO (Rvacs remain “untested”), then maybe 25% chance of surviving reentry intact enough to even try landing. So many unknowns here, but up til reentry SpaceX at least has a lot of data on things. 
     

    41 minutes ago, Elthy said:

    Im not sure about the separation using just rotation of the combined rocket which afaik has never been done before. Lots of stuff that can go wrong, we have also seen that SpaceX had issues with ullage before. And they lost a Falcon1 during this.

    Great opportunities to learn from those failures. :wink: That whole stagey-flippy thing sounded nuts to me til I saw the animation a couple pages back, I think it will seem much less extreme in the flesh, as it were. 

    SpaceX Discussion Thread

    in Science & Spaceflight

    Posted

    15 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

    It's just that, for years, I read in this forum that the Shuttle was fundamentally flawed as a crew vehicle because it simply could never have had a robust launch abort mode. But now, Starship fans are saying that Starship is somehow different?

    There’s a key difference here: Shuttle could never fly enough, especially without crew, to significant retire risks or demonstrate reliability. Starship could, and most likely will, fly hundreds of times before people are ever on board for launch. 
     

    (My personal bet on DearMoon is the crew ends up getting cut to 7 and launching/returning on a Dragon.)

    Blue Origin thread.

    in Science & Spaceflight

    Posted

    1 hour ago, MKI said:

    I feel bad for most of those working at BO. They are seeing their company turn into a villain in the industry before they have been able to do much.

    "You were the Chosen One! You were supposed to destroy OldSpace, not join them!"

    <_<

     

    neither Bezos nor Vader have hair... just sayin...

    Relevant:

     

     

    SpaceX Discussion Thread

    in Science & Spaceflight

    Posted

    1 hour ago, StrandedonEarth said:

     

    I'm sure EM is hoping for and would love to see this scenario

    Spoiler

    [grumbling] fancy Brachistochrone courses… back in my day it took a whole year to get to Ceres! And we liked it like that! Plenty of time to read, and binge watch all 421 Star Wars movies! Why, we explored the whole solar system on nothing but determination and liquid farts!

    [gurgles] uh oh, speaking of which… knew I shoulda skipped that third helping of insects! [exit, stage up]

    [droid]: [sad beep]

    -_-

    SpaceX Discussion Thread

    in Science & Spaceflight

    Posted

    32 minutes ago, StrandedonEarth said:

    Ima gonna just drop this here,,,,

    Heh, now I'm picturing some greasy old space mechanic in 2087 wrenching on a beat-up Starship in some asteroid docking bay, grumbling to his droid about "kids these days and their fancy fusion drives, back in my day..." :lol:

    SpaceX Discussion Thread

    in Science & Spaceflight

    Posted

    8 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

      

    No. My whole argument is "the best of the best aviation engineers tried do to that, and look how it worked"

    The elementary physics says the same.

    A simple cylinder is a harsh way to aerobrake from both aerodynamics and thermodynamics pov.

    The best aviation engineers of the time tried to make a highly complex vehicle to a meet a very specific set of conditions, including massive cross-range capability. They got much right, and much wrong. 
     

    Now, 40 years later, the best rocket engineers are trying to make as simple a vehicle as possible to meet an entirely different set of conditions, having learned from those 40 years of others’ experience much of what to do and what not to do. The technology available has radically changed in that time too. 
     

    They believe it can be done. Not just Musk, not just Shotwell, but a whole bunch of really really smart talented people arguably at the top of their industry who’ve done the math and done the physics and done the simulations. 

    SpaceX Discussion Thread

    in Science & Spaceflight

    Posted

    4 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

    Do you think the shuttle developers would not make it a simple cylinder if it worked?

    Do you doubt that "they know better than you?" (as I always hear here).

    As they had to make the shuttle shuttlish, they were forced  to complicate this this way.

    So, again, your whole argument is, “it’s never been done like that before so it can’t work?”

    SpaceX Discussion Thread

    in Science & Spaceflight

    Posted

    6 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

    Of an empty mockup,

    Just like Enterprise? No engines, RCS, heat shield, payload…

    You keep splitting hairs over what qualifies as a flight test article for an orbital rocket you’re gonna end up looking like Picard sooner or later…

    2 minutes ago, Beccab said:

    Which doesn't contradict what I said at all. Your argument "it's bigger so it can't work" is meaningless

    I think he’s trying to argue “it’s not a space shuttle so it can’t work…” :rolleyes:

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