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Blue Origin Thread (merged)


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On 1/30/2017 at 2:18 PM, DerekL1963 said:

Sounds more and more like Musk is starting to throw insane stuff out there because nobody is willing to tell him "um, wait...".  A victim of his own ego.

He was smart enough not to want to be anywhere near his hyperloop idea.  Even if it could work in practice (a big if, but Musk has pulled off some miracles), the local politics of right of way, eminent domain, NIMBY, and BANANA should have made anyone run screaming from it.

On 1/31/2017 at 11:18 AM, YNM said:

I... Just noticed something - Perhaps this is for his Hyperloop.

It's a really bad sign if it is (see above).

On 1/30/2017 at 5:48 PM, magnemoe said:

It should be possible to increase tunneling speeds a lot with an better cutting head, Lasers or water cutting are options here. Explosive shaped charges with is another. 
Main issue is that its lots of companies doing tunneling and making the hole is just part of the work, you have to reinforce it and you better examine the rock you want to drill trough first. 
If you just make the drilling faster you might well be better of selling the patent to somebody who do it today. 

Explosive shaped underground charges in southern California?  Even if it hasn't a prayer of destabilizing the local geology that isn't going to go over well with the locals.  Also try driving through some mountains and figure out just how much mountain construction companies took out of the way because they didn't want to bore through.  Some of those cuts are staggering, but still are cheaper than tunnels.

On 1/30/2017 at 0:58 PM, Streetwind said:

- Ultimately transportation must go "3D" to solve traffic issues, and doing so underground is much preferred to doing it aboveground

The biggest strike against the "flying car" is that most people shouldn't be allowed near the stick of an airplane.  Tesla's "autopilot" seems to be much further along a vastly harder problem (instruments should give an autopilot everything it needs to fly, the computer vision of an "AI driver" is an other story).  A VTOL (or short TOL more likely) Tesla would be almost as much of a jump as the "3" and probably cheaper to R&D than boring.

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4 hours ago, wumpus said:

Explosive shaped underground charges in southern California?  Even if it hasn't a prayer of destabilizing the local geology that isn't going to go over well with the locals.  Also try driving through some mountains and figure out just how much mountain construction companies took out of the way because they didn't want to bore through.  Some of those cuts are staggering, but still are cheaper than tunnels.

The biggest strike against the "flying car" is that most people shouldn't be allowed near the stick of an airplane.  Tesla's "autopilot" seems to be much further along a vastly harder problem (instruments should give an autopilot everything it needs to fly, the computer vision of an "AI driver" is an other story).  A VTOL (or short TOL more likely) Tesla would be almost as much of a jump as the "3" and probably cheaper to R&D than boring.

No problems with sharped charges, most tunneling or rock removal involves explosives anyway. Exception is full profile drills for long tunnels or using an pneumatic spike on an  excavator then you can not use explosives. 

And they are not used for rock blasting as they are less effective than filling holes with explosives, you also have to secure the back from high speed fragments. 
Security aspect is irrelevant as you are underground and have armor between you and charge. Explosion is far lower than even tiny rock blasting, cost is still very relevant as you will use a lot of charges and run it mostly like an automatic cannon without the barrel. Patent was for settings there time was more important than money: rescuing trapped miners or dig an tunnel in places there downtime was very expensive. 



 

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4 hours ago, Firemetal said:

I don't think launching every 2-3 weeks is taking it slowly.

Fire

The idea is to work up to it. :wink: Given that their last kerfuffle was launchpad related and this is a brand new pad, I hope their checks are very thorough. 

They were pretty close to that cadence before September...

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3 minutes ago, RCgothic said:

So CRS-8 first stage is due to be reflown as SES-10.

How do we refer to reflown stages? CRS-8/SES-10 could get a bit unwieldy after a few flights.

If only they had cool whimsical names, like Atlantis, Challenger, Columbia, Discovery, and Endeavour.

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2 hours ago, StrandedonEarth said:

When they get re-flown they should be christened "Alpha, Beta, Gamma," etc. Then if they get a third flight it could be the "Alpha-2" mission etc.

They have to be initiated into the reflight club to earn a Name :cool:. Much better than tracking core Serial Number XXXX

A company I used to work for had model prefixes for all the serial numbers and vehicles were generally referred to by their serial numbers. e.g. RB-11. Although I will admit that I like Discovery more than OV-103 so there is a compelling case for creative names especially those that have earned them.

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4 hours ago, Racescort666 said:

A company I used to work for had model prefixes for all the serial numbers and vehicles were generally referred to by their serial numbers. e.g. RB-11. Although I will admit that I like Discovery more than OV-103 so there is a compelling case for creative names especially those that have earned them.

When I was in the Navy, we referred to ships as much by their numbers as by their names.   The last two digits of the 41 boats were all unique, so we usually just used those two digits.  ('55 for 655, USS Henry L. Stimson for example.)

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9 hours ago, HebaruSan said:

If only they had cool whimsical names, like Atlantis, Challenger, Columbia, Discovery, and Endeavour.

SpaceX goes with sci-fi stuff. I vote for red 1, red 2 and so on. Obviously red 5 will allways shut down it's sensors shortly before landing and STILL hit the X on the mark.

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7 minutes ago, hms_warrior said:

SpaceX goes with sci-fi stuff. I vote for red 1, red 2 and so on. Obviously red 5 will allways shut down it's sensors shortly before landing and STILL hit the X on the mark.

Well, landing a rocket is quite literally applying the product of mass and acceleration... :cool:

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Well, SpaceX gives their cores a number based on when it was produced. The CRS flight 8 core is the 23rd Falcon 9 first stage that was produced, so it is numbered "0023". Most times. these numbers coincide with the flight number (CRS flight 8 was the 23rd Falcon 9 launch). But in a few cases, cores were swapped between flights when something needed fixing. And, of course - once first stages start getting reused, the flight number will start climbing faster than the production number.

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10 hours ago, HebaruSan said:

If only they had cool whimsical names, like Atlantis, Challenger, Columbia, Discovery, and Endeavour.

The PR department was practically the only one to use those names. Most people who worked on the Orbiters called them OV-102, OV-99, OV-103, OV-104, and OV-105.

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