151–160 of 497 posts
A white ball of fire. And then there it is...resting! Beautiful!
Love how the autobalance on the cameras cut almost everything to black so you could not see the rocket at first, until it emerged from the darkness.
Here is the video http://www.space.com/32811-spacex-rocket-landing-jcsat-14-la... Hopefully we won't have the typical hacker news discussion about why the employees chant USA.
Yoo.Ess.Ae! Yoo.Ess.Ae! Yoo.Ess.Aeh! There. See. No harm, no foul. Anyways, as a non-American living in the US since 2001, I fail to see an issue with chanting USA, one way or another. It is an American company, with majority US employees, running this project (mainly) for an American entity (NASA), on US sovereign territory (or ocean?), using a significant chunk of US resources. So, it is their company and their cou…
Whether the USA is worth praising for this particular success, I'm not as sure. But damn, congrats to everyone involved. You just landed a fucking space ship. Good job.
I remain confused about why SpaceX is getting so much fanfare and praise. What have they accomplished that NASA didn't already accomplish during the Apollo missions? I know SpaceX is doing it all more cost effectively, because we have better technology, but have they actually accomplished anything tangible that NASA didn't a generation ago?
Are they also testing similar things but we aren't hearing? Or they aren't threatened by the advances?
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Do customers get a discount for launching on a used rocket?
Assuming SpaceX gets to the point where they are re-flying stages a dozen or more times, I might expect to see a discount on a "new" rocket, as opposed to a "tried and true" rocket. Would you rather be on the first flight an aircraft makes after leaving the factory, or the tenth?
It could easily be the case that the initial launches have the lowest failure rate.
Doing it one time is a technological leap. Doing it twice in such a small window of time is a logistical/programmatic leap.
Were they different rockets? If so I don't see the logistical leap.
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No, it's something else, a cultural quirk among Americans.
No it's not. The French, British and Italians for example all have extreme amounts of nationalistic pride and show it throughout their economies, the pride they hold regarding their history and culture. Scandinavia is very proud of its broadly tremendous standard of living and their well run welfare states, etc. - and Scandinavians are never shy about bragging about it online in my observation, you can hardly get awa…
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I'm still surprised there's no active system on the barge to secure the rocket. Even now they seem to be able to stick the landing with some reliability, it's always nice to have belt and suspenders. I'm thinking a system with a pillar at each corner of the barge, pairs of cables between opposite pillars, and puller cables to open out the main cables into an iris-type aperture which can be rapidly closed on the rocke…
The center of mass of the rocket is _very_ low. According to Elon, the CRS-8 core was very stable (it needed even less stabilization than they thought it did). They may add some means to secure it if it needs to travel through rough seas on the way home, but if the conditions are calm enough to land, they're calm enough for the stage to be stable. Watch the CRS-8 landing and look at how much the barge is rolling whil…
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> you just KNOW What a complete load of utter tripe. Its a bunch of people getting excited and happy and celebrating success. That's it. Are England supporters chanting after a soccer match aggro-patriotic douchebags? The SpaceX crowd aren't even celebrating a victory over anybody, it's purely about achievement. Good for them.
> Are England supporters chanting after a soccer match aggro-patriotic douchebags? Aggro-patriotic douchebaggery isn't exactly unheard of when it comes to football stadiums. For some it's a feature, for most others it's a very well known bug. Also, you seem to have completely missed his finer point: a nuanced distinction between those who start and those who just sing along because they are in the mood for making noi…
That's because I don't think there is a finer point. If the only way a chant like that could happen is if it's started by aggro-patriotic douchebags, which specifically was the contention, then the chanting only exists as a result of aggro-patriotic douchebaggery. That's a slur that taints everyone involved in it, and I don't accept that at all.
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> because there's not much fuel left in the tank to hover They can't hover at all, since the throttle doesn't go low enough. They need to do the landing perfectly, on a single try.
Interesting. That's a change from the Grasshopper testing platform? If I recall correctly, it was able to hover.
Wikipedia says that these produce 700kN at sea level and can be throttled down to 70%, which means at minimum power one engine could hover about 50 tonnes.
I can't find out what Grasshopper massed. Does anyone know?