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3 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

At orbital speeds... Isn't the craft in 'daylight' for only about 45 minutes (give/take) each orbit? 

 

(and then gets another go @   45 minutes later? 

Yes, but if you orbit around the terminator you never go into shadow. Obviously you have to balance this with getting to the correct inclination, but every extra minute of sunlight you can get by getting closer to the terminator translates into being able to become operational earlier, and being less susceptible to upper atmospheric fluctuations of the type that killed most of a whole batch of starlinks earlier.

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44 minutes ago, tater said:

%$#@%$#@%$#@$#@$#@%$#@%$#@%$!

I could literally have looked out my window and seen that.

 

I still have a slim hope that Virgin Orbit's next launch will do something like that, or at least be visible from Italy

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2 hours ago, Beccab said:

I think it's important to post this follow-up tweet to the one above:

 

While NASA's HLS team may be impressed with  the access to data SpaceX has provided about their tests, they have not provided similar or satisfactory information to the public about the state of the project.
I don't like secrets.

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37 minutes ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Neither does SX's chief competetor. 

I am not sure about this. The huge amount of open data from SX keeps raising the bar for all competetor's. Moving targets, changing requirements to keep investors happy do not benefit competetor's development projects. A couple of rocket startups scrapped small scale projects just to go "all in" with bigger ones. Maybe they just skipped commercially irrelevant products, maybe the skipped cheap lessons on required knowledge.

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2 hours ago, RyanRising said:

While NASA's HLS team may be impressed with  the access to data SpaceX has provided about their tests, they have not provided similar or satisfactory information to the public about the state of the project.

I don't like secrets.

I mean...the public has visible and infrared cameras trained on the rocket and factory at basically all times, do you want the chamber pressure .csv's to go with that?

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11 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

At orbital speeds... Isn't the craft in 'daylight' for only about 45 minutes (give/take) each orbit? 

 

(and then gets another go @   45 minutes later? 

This is actually a problem for the ISS. It's inclination is high enough that it has "high beta periods" where it's in direct sunlight for too much of its orbit and keeping it cool becomes challenging. 

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42 minutes ago, Scotius said:

LEGO Falcon go! :D

Has it really been three years since last FH flight? Are there really no payloads for this HLS? Even after Delta IV demise?

That's sad. :/

Trouble is, Falcon 9 has just improved so much that it’s eaten most of FH’s lunch, even with booster reuse.  All that’s really left for FH is missions like this that go all the way to GEO (not just a transfer orbit), and the rare high-energy thing like Psyche. Even then, the only way to really maximize FH’s capability is to expend the center core, which we know SX hates. Trying to recover it at all is really riding the ragged edge of what it can survive. 

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13 minutes ago, Scotius said:

Huh. A thought: Because Falcon Heavy basically is Falcon 9 x 3, this rocket fell victim of its own success! :lol:

What a revolting development.

Quite. Remember, FH was first conceived before reuse was even really considered for Falcon 9. It just got lapped in the process, which really speaks to just how much dang performance SpaceX has squeezed from the ‘9. :D
 

Does mean we can be pretty sure of no Superheavy Heavy though. :(

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1 hour ago, Scotius said:

LEGO Falcon go! :D

Has it really been three years since last FH flight? Are there really no payloads for this HLS? Even after Delta IV demise?

That's sad. :/

To be fair the current FH manifest is quite busy, in fact there were supposed to be 6 this year and iirc a couple last year. Unfortunately, big payloads get big delays

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On 10/28/2022 at 3:14 PM, cubinator said:

I mean...the public has visible and infrared cameras trained on the rocket and factory at basically all times, do you want the chamber pressure .csv's to go with that?

That'd be nice, but they could start with actually talking to the public about what their HLS plans are or not firing people for sharing video of anomalies.
Lemme just be clear here, I know they won't suddenly start being transparent - they've chosen to do their business with trade secrets and that and PR stuff means they won't give the public any more info than they have to. However, simply because this is the way things are doesn't mean it's how things should be, and I don't believe companies should be allowed to keep secrets to preserve company interests.

Edited by RyanRising
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4 hours ago, RyanRising said:

I don't believe companies should be allowed to keep secrets to preserve company interests.

Are you saying companies should tell their competitors all their secrets?  Give away their competitive advantages?

If you just mean that government funded projects should be more transparent, I can support that in theory and within limits, but even then I don't think it is useful for them to show the public every iteration of their draft designs.  Atm I suspect that any designs SpaceX have for HLS are still in the draft stage. 

Has NASA even chosen who will build the final lander yet?  Or are SpaceX still competing with other companies?

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1 minute ago, AVaughan said:

Are you saying companies should tell their competitors all their secrets?  Give away their competitive advantages?

If you just mean that government funded projects should be more transparent, I can support that in theory and within limits, but even then I don't think it is useful for them to show the public every iteration of their draft designs.  Atm I suspect that any designs SpaceX have for HLS are still in the draft stage. 

Has NASA even chosen who will build the final lander yet?  Or are SpaceX still competing with other companies?

The HLS lander (Artemis III, Artemis IV), yes. The NextSteps lander which will do everything after that no

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11 hours ago, AVaughan said:

Are you saying companies should tell their competitors all their secrets?  Give away their competitive advantages?

Yes, exactly. That’d be great - no more holding back technical knowledge for the purpose of profits. Patents I can support, trade secrets I cannot. 

However, even failing this utopian ideal, it’s absolutely reasonable to require companies to share more internal detail about the progress of publicly funded projects like HLS than they have. We should not, for example, be asking if SpaceX even knows how many tanker flights will be required - whether they do or do not have the required details to finalise that number, they should be communicating that. Same with their plans for the demo, or the video of Crew Dragon exploding - the public absolutely should not be required to search for unsanctioned leaks to find this kind of information on programs with any public funding.

11 hours ago, AVaughan said:

Ah so they are still in competition with other companies for the the NextSteps lander(s), so it would be unfair to expect them to divulge anything to those companies at this point in time. 

Quite the contrary - divulging that info would allow each competitor to improve their design based on what the others are doing.

Edited by RyanRising
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2 hours ago, RyanRising said:

Yes, exactly. That’d be great - no more holding back technical knowledge for the purpose of profits. Patents I can support, trade secrets I cannot. 

LOL. No.

2 hours ago, RyanRising said:

However, even failing this utopian ideal, it’s absolutely reasonable to require companies to share more internal detail about the progress of publicly funded projects like HLS than they have. We should not, for example, be asking if SpaceX even knows how many tanker flights will be required - whether they do or do not have the required details to finalise that number, they should be communicating that. Same with their plans for the demo, or the video of Crew Dragon exploding - the public absolutely should not be required to search for unsanctioned leaks to find this kind of information on programs with any public funding.

Quite the contrary - divulging that info would allow each competitor to improve their design based on what the others are doing.

HLS is being partially paid for by the government. The public also funded stealth fighters,funds next gen 6 fighters, etc.—those are not open source, either.

They don't have to communicate every little thing.

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