mikegarrison Posted June 10, 2021 Share Posted June 10, 2021 9 hours ago, AHHans said: what! That actually happened, and it apparently wasn't method acting or a joke : That's correct, I didn't make it up. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tater Posted June 10, 2021 Share Posted June 10, 2021 Another US congresscritter several years ago suggested that Guam might capsize because of troop buildups. People are... not smart. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StrandedonEarth Posted June 10, 2021 Share Posted June 10, 2021 Maybe another crazy multi-billionaire will come along to take that idea and run with it. Any records of who has been buying volcanic islands? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AHHans Posted June 10, 2021 Share Posted June 10, 2021 59 minutes ago, mikegarrison said: That's correct, I didn't make it up. 11 minutes ago, tater said: Another US congresscritter several years ago suggested that Guam might capsize because of troop buildups. It's not that I actually disbelieve you, but it still takes some effort to believe this. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kerbiloid Posted June 10, 2021 Share Posted June 10, 2021 What's wrong? Guam is floating in the ocean. If build a lot on top, it can tilt and overturn. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheSaint Posted June 11, 2021 Share Posted June 11, 2021 5 hours ago, tater said: Another US congresscritter several years ago suggested that Guam might capsize because of troop buildups. People are... not smart. Well, to be more specific, if they're smart they generally don't get into politics. I could list examples, but a) I don't want to 2.2b myself, and b) I have things I need to get done this weekend. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FleshJeb Posted June 11, 2021 Share Posted June 11, 2021 5 hours ago, kerbiloid said: What's wrong? Guam is floating in the ocean. If build a lot on top, it can tilt and overturn. All this time and not a single "your momma" joke--Honestly, you people are a bunch of squares. FleshJeb's mom / Went to Guam / To feast on the local Spam. As she landed / The island up'anded / And to the mainland they swam. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Admiral Fluffy Posted June 11, 2021 Share Posted June 11, 2021 Since you can have a twisted sense of humor, doesn’t that also mean you can have a straight sense of humor? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kerbiloid Posted June 11, 2021 Share Posted June 11, 2021 3 hours ago, FleshJeb said: All this time and not a single "your momma" joke--Honestly, you people are a bunch of squares. As Russia is a great continental country with poor maritime background in culture, this joke just born for/to me. But I'm glad that great minds think alike. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FleshJeb Posted June 11, 2021 Share Posted June 11, 2021 23 minutes ago, kerbiloid said: But I'm glad that great minds think alike. And we have excellent taste in avatars. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shpaget Posted June 11, 2021 Share Posted June 11, 2021 8 hours ago, FleshJeb said: And we have excellent taste in avatars. You two are being kind of negative about that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kerbiloid Posted June 11, 2021 Share Posted June 11, 2021 (edited) "Moderation & Brevity" is our aesthetic motto. Edited June 11, 2021 by kerbiloid Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DDE Posted June 14, 2021 Share Posted June 14, 2021 Why does the practice of launching two redundant planetary probes seems so rare? Shouldn't redundancy and relatively low added cost of building a replica make it worthwhile? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JoeSchmuckatelli Posted June 14, 2021 Share Posted June 14, 2021 My guess is the high per unit cost that is bourne by the taxpayers. If there was a profit to be made and a company running the show, a redundant craft might make sense. Webb. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kerbiloid Posted June 14, 2021 Share Posted June 14, 2021 (edited) They should launch Cocager and Pepsiger and make bets who sends better results. A bookmaker space race. Or Pioneer-Adidas-1 and Pioneer-Nike-1. upd. Confused with Mariner Edited June 14, 2021 by kerbiloid Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wumpus Posted June 14, 2021 Share Posted June 14, 2021 3 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said: My guess is the high per unit cost that is bourne by the taxpayers. If there was a profit to be made and a company running the show, a redundant craft might make sense. Webb. Depends on the probes. I did a quick search for Venus probes and hit this: https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/spacecraft/display.action?id=1978-078A Total cost for both probes: $83 million. Congress only deals with hundred million increments, so there was likely pressure to keep it below that magic number. Also when you are pitching a project, using two probes means a lot less "stuff" being researched, unless you can send them to wildly different targets. Seeing the bottom drop out of launch costs, you'd think they'd go back to making copies of probes. But from what I've heard of pitching a NASA proposal, the guys you are pitching to are from the early Shuttle design era, if not Apollo veterans. While they might have heard that launch costs have dropped, launches are still ungodly expensive in their world: no redundant launch costs! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JoeSchmuckatelli Posted June 14, 2021 Share Posted June 14, 2021 Well - in KSP terms, there is less utility in running the same test twice. Given that the real risk to mission is the launch (boom), followed by a lower chance of failure to wake up - once you have a mission in orbit, having two ships with the same science gear makes the redundant one... Redundant. But if you are mining unobtanium and profits are measured by the grams returned to Earth's surface... Redundancy becomes 'additional resource recovery'. We keep making dedicated, unique craft for every single mission. What would be cool is if we had a 'general service core module' being produced for any mission, and science teams could just hang different stuff on the core for any mission desired. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kerbiloid Posted June 14, 2021 Share Posted June 14, 2021 (edited) They should make DLC. Upd. Btw. On the KSP Final release, with the finalized API, integrated KAC and maneuver planner, it will be much easier for them to develop interplanetary crafts and calculate the ballistics. Now the NASA specialists can develop a standard API wrapper. Edited June 14, 2021 by kerbiloid Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
K^2 Posted June 14, 2021 Share Posted June 14, 2021 9 hours ago, DDE said: Why does the practice of launching two redundant planetary probes seems so rare? Shouldn't redundancy and relatively low added cost of building a replica make it worthwhile? Cost of launch is often comparable or even lower, these days, than the cost of building a probe. And highest risk to mission is usually on launch and/or defects inherent to design. It's better risk management to send your first payload, see how it does, then send a follow-up, possibly with some modifications. See Mars rover missions for some great uses of this strategy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mikegarrison Posted June 14, 2021 Share Posted June 14, 2021 10 minutes ago, K^2 said: defects inherent to design Yeah, it would totally suck to make and launch three identical probes, only to find out that they all have the exact same identical design flaw. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Admiral Fluffy Posted June 14, 2021 Share Posted June 14, 2021 Couldn’t you equip a rover/telescope with a launch escape system? So if it failed you wouldn’t lose a whole lot of time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mikegarrison Posted June 14, 2021 Share Posted June 14, 2021 11 minutes ago, Admiral Fluffy said: Couldn’t you equip a rover/telescope with a launch escape system? So if it failed you wouldn’t lose a whole lot of time. I'm going to guess that insurance is cheaper than LES. (Obviously not relevant to actual human lives.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheSaint Posted June 14, 2021 Share Posted June 14, 2021 9 minutes ago, Admiral Fluffy said: Couldn’t you equip a rover/telescope with a launch escape system? So if it failed you wouldn’t lose a whole lot of time. You could, but then you would also then have to equip the payload with systems to allow it to soft land on Earth after it had been extracted from the failed launch. And (in the case of U.S. and ESA launches) you would have to proof the entire payload against landing in salt water in order to make recovering it worthwhile. All of that is going to have a penalty in cost and mass, which you would have to weigh against the cost penalty of simply taking out an insurance policy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shpaget Posted June 14, 2021 Share Posted June 14, 2021 Aren't we out of Pu238? As in, down to low double digit kg worldwide? Wasn't already New Howizon project struggling to procure enough of it? If my memory serves me, and this is correct, we just can't send more probes because Pu shortage sets a hard limit on all project that would need it, and everything gouing to deep space needs it Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mikegarrison Posted June 14, 2021 Share Posted June 14, 2021 6 minutes ago, Shpaget said: Aren't we out of Pu238? As in, down to low double digit kg worldwide? Wasn't already New Howizon project struggling to procure enough of it? If my memory serves me, and this is correct, we just can't send more probes because Pu shortage sets a hard limit on all project that would need it, and everything gouing to deep space needs it It's an artificially created element, so surely we could make more. It's quite toxic and also potentially used in military applications (bombs), so maybe that's an issue. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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