141–150 of 513 posts
Also, if this succeeds, what happens to Google's moonshot projects? Is rebranding in the works?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The space ship is already being developed for the Commercial Crew program. The rocket is a new rocket but with the same engines and the same upper stage. This does not seem so impossible. A couple of delays will happen, but all in all, there is no fundamental problem.
I agree, there is no fundamental problem. But that couple of delays will bring the actual date much further away than "late next year". I'm sure Elon Musk is capable of great things, it's just that he's very obviously squeezing the people in his companies to the limits and beyond, by publicly announcing objectives that are just about possible, provided that his employees will work day and night for entire years.
Plus the actual evidence for Elons companies being far worse then anybody else is not really there.
Plus, its not like all those educated people that work at SpaceX would live in the gutter if they can't do the job.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't the exhaust just water?!?
Not for the Falcon 9/Falcon Heavy that will be used in this launch; it uses RP-1 (basically very pure jet fuel, AKA kerosene) and liquid oxygen as fuel. The Shuttle and the new Space Launch System will use hydrogen/LOX, which exhausts basically water vapor.
I'm gonna make my tip, given Elon's history: Sergey Brin and Larry Page Two of his freind rich enough, geeky enough, to go first.
Absolutely incredible. This will be the furthest that humanity has journeyed away from Earth in a very long time. However it is worth noting that there hasn't been a single crewed Dragon flight yet. There are demonstator flights scheduled for this year though with the first NASA crewed mission slated for May 2018. That's an incredibly aggressive timeline but if anyone can achieve it, SpaceX can. The long duration fli…
> That's an incredibly aggressive timeline Sometimes i wonder if that's an strategy from the management team to put pressure in the engineers.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not sure everyone will see it that way. One could look at it as taking the whole "wasteful private jet" to the extreme. Think of the sheer amount of fuel burned in the earth's atmosphere so a rich guy can fly in space. At least, I expect many will spin it that way.
Isn't the exhaust just water?!?
This is all quite separate from the moral issue, to which I have nothing to add.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Moon has no atmosphere to use to shed speed. Very different animal than a Mars landing, to the point where it'd need a totally different landing vehicle than Mars. Think heavy, shielded Apollo command modules versus the spidery lunar landers.
There's about .7kPa of atmos on mars. I'd have a hard time seeing how that would meaningfully influence escape or entrance velocity. In fact it should make entry easier because you'll have a higher resistance coming in meaning you'll have to do a lower deceleration burn. Could you provide a source, of someone with experiance in this sort of work, telling me why this is the case? Why does this completely change the ga…
Money quote: “There’s too much atmosphere on Mars to land heavy vehicles like we do on the moon, using propulsive technology completely,” said Manning, “and there’s too little atmosphere to land like we do on Earth. So, it’s in this ugly, grey zone.”