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SES-10 Mission

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Re: SES-10 Mission

#181

Post by monk_e_boy »

SEJeff wrote: post #53

I can't wait until I have a talk with my kids when they realize the significance of this day: Kid: Daddy, ou mean when you were growing up, they threw away rockets each time? Me: Yes Kid: Doesn't that make them expensive? Me: Yes. And then not long after will be the other talk: Kid: Daddy, you mean people used to be in charge of driving themselves in cars? Me: Yes Kid: Did people ever die? Me: Millions Good job Elon…

I pretty much have this conversation with my students. I love it when a teacher is observing me so I start with 'do you ever remember a time before the internet?' of course none of them do, but the teacher does. Then I ask 'do you remember a time when you couldn't talk to a computer' nope, all of them have grown up being able to talk to computers. Haha. Makes me feel old.

People drove busses?! What? And flew aeroplanes?! With other people in them? What if a pilot went mad and flew one out over the sea? Would it disappear forever?

Re: SES-10 Mission

#182

Post by grondilu »

acover wrote: post #165
grondilu wrote: post #82

I've noticed that during the webcast they talked much more about their planetary colonisation project than they usually do. I guess it makes sense since today is the first time they actually implement the re-usability plan they believe is the key to this colonisation. But frankly, is the cost of going to mars really that important for its colonisation? I mean, I wouldn't move to mars even if going there was free. For…

There are several reasons: adventure, incentivize cheaper space travel, drastically improve humanity's chance at survival. Waitbutwhy has an amazing explanation of the how's and why's. http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/08/how-and-why-spacex-will-coloni...

I'm familiar with this article.

First, "adventure" is a reason to go there, not to settle.

Second, I'm not buying the "drastically improve humanity's chance at survival" argument. There have been several mass extinction events in the past, so in order to survive one that might be coming, we should move to a place where there is likely no life at all? That does not make any sense to me.

If we can survive on mars, we can survive on Earth no matter what can plausibly happen to it.

Mankind will likely survive the next mass extinction[1], and we don't have to go to mars for that.

1. http://io9.gizmodo.com/why-humans-will-survive-the-next-worl...

Re: SES-10 Mission

#183

Post by monk_e_boy »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #180
jacquesm wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm ok with aiming high and en-passant solving cheap access to orbit. Anything else is gravy, imagine if that dream did not exist this whole saga would not have happened. Dreams are good, they allow people to expend energy chasing that dream and the spin-offs from that may be worth as much or more to humanity than the original dream, even if we may not be able to figure out what path that might take today. I'm certai…

It's a bit disappointing to me that poverty, human trafficking, addiction, habitat destruxtion, cultural erasure, genocide, torture, extinction, etc aren't very powerful motivators for such people. I feel such pressure to use our new skills to solve these problems, but I know 10 years ago they were a combination of invisible/impossible to me. If I hadn't been aggressively pushed by smart feminists to examine my life…

Easing violence is harder than getting to mars.

Re: SES-10 Mission

#184

Post by phkahler »

jacquesm wrote: post #48
neuronexmachina wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One could argue whether they're truly private sector, but they still haven't quite displaced ULA. In 2016 there were 12 ULA launches, 8 SpaceX launches, and 2 by Orbital ATK. Looking at other countries, there were 20 Chinese launches, 18 Russian launches, 9 European launches, and 7 Indian launches. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_in_spaceflight#Orbital_la...

That's why this is so big, dropping the costs significantly could easily pull a significant fraction of those other launches to SpaceX. Pretty soon the ability to re-launch the same booster will be considered a must-have feature if you want to be in the rocket business, unless you fly missions so close the maximum payload or trajectory that recovery is impossible.

SpaceX did all of their landing/reusability testing with disposable rockets. When they started all rockets were thrown away, so adding a bit of fuel or grid fins was a small price to pay for the development. Once reusability becomes common any competitor would have to test by sacrificing rockets where failures will be very expense - I mean who would throw away a rocket right?

Re: SES-10 Mission

#185

Post by andrewchambers »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #120
grondilu wrote: post #82

I've noticed that during the webcast they talked much more about their planetary colonisation project than they usually do. I guess it makes sense since today is the first time they actually implement the re-usability plan they believe is the key to this colonisation. But frankly, is the cost of going to mars really that important for its colonisation? I mean, I wouldn't move to mars even if going there was free. For…

Its a reach. For comparison, lets start a city on top of Mt Everest? Better air, better weather, lots easier to get to, and help is only days away instead of months. Yet we haven't begun to do things even that ambitious yet.

If people can get rich from colonizing Mars, it will be attempted. I don't think there is any financial incentive for mt Everest however.

Interplanetary trade will be a huge business. Think of the old east India trading companies only bigger.

Re: SES-10 Mission

#186

Post by olegkikin »

nradov wrote: post #125

The launch video is amazing! How are they able to get clear video with stable tracking of a rocket >10km away? What sort of lens and camera makes that possible?

While they probably use something much more serious, you could technically use something like Nikon P900, which is 2000mm equivalent, and is very affordable.

Re: SES-10 Mission

#187

Post by BigJono »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #180
jacquesm wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm ok with aiming high and en-passant solving cheap access to orbit. Anything else is gravy, imagine if that dream did not exist this whole saga would not have happened. Dreams are good, they allow people to expend energy chasing that dream and the spin-offs from that may be worth as much or more to humanity than the original dream, even if we may not be able to figure out what path that might take today. I'm certai…

It's a bit disappointing to me that poverty, human trafficking, addiction, habitat destruxtion, cultural erasure, genocide, torture, extinction, etc aren't very powerful motivators for such people. I feel such pressure to use our new skills to solve these problems, but I know 10 years ago they were a combination of invisible/impossible to me. If I hadn't been aggressively pushed by smart feminists to examine my life…

They're not really comparable. You can engineer your way to Mars. You cannot engineer your way to a solution for addiction or violence; unless you want to launch a full-blown dystopian eugenics program.

Re: SES-10 Mission

#188

Post by [deleted] »

braymundo wrote: post #44

Fantastic!!! Being able to watch a reusable rocket land perfecty, from my mobile phone while casting to a TV, over a computer network​, while located in southern Brazil makes me SO PROUD to be human!

[deleted]

Re: SES-10 Mission

#189

Post by afterburner »

eliaspro wrote: post #65
braymundo wrote: post #44

Fantastic!!! Being able to watch a reusable rocket land perfecty, from my mobile phone while casting to a TV, over a computer network​, while located in southern Brazil makes me SO PROUD to be human!

It just depresses me seeing how many people don't have the slightest clue why this is something incredibly remarkable - the complexity behind each and every component, process, research and engineering making this possible - and then start bitching about the new Emoji set on their smartphone

Recycling a rocket isn't anywhere near as interesting as building the first rocket. Rockets are oooold technology; the rest is automated control systems, whose most interesting breakthroughs came when enabling oddities like stealth planes to fly when they should tumble out of the sky under purely human control.

In short, this is more an iteration than a breakthrough. Not to take away from the effort of course.

Re: SES-10 Mission

#190

Post by sqeaky »

jacquesm wrote: post #126
beamatronic wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a lot of it comes from the fact that (almost) every literate human being can communicate (almost) instantly around the planet with (almost) every other literate human being, and the fact that with machine translation, language is less of a barrier all the time.

Illiterate people can too using Skype and such. Instant planetwide communication between any party of humans sharing a common language is now pretty much a given.

While you are correct for the most part, I would point out that text services have wider distribution even if only for bandwidth reasons. But there are other reasons, there are good (enough) and widely distributed text standards (SMS), but not yet for video.

But maybe we are both over thinking it, does the old voice network reach even further?

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