Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

SES-10 Mission

spacex.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 368 posts

Re: SES-10 Mission

#211

Post by JabavuAdams »

madamelic wrote: post #71
7952 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, he was just doing an elevator pitch on reusability. Has probably done that thousands of times now so it will sound a bit scripted.

Fair enough, probably right. He just seemed really calm for what just happened. Like no emotions. :) Maybe he was just flipping out and not sure how to react yet.

He seemed teary-eyed at first, and his hair looked mussed as though he had been pulling it or holding his head. Might have been a headset, but not sure what you expected.

You can only WOOOO! for so long before it becomes forced.

Re: SES-10 Mission

#212

Post by Florin_Andrei »

ufmace wrote: post #199

Amazing! I genuinely think that this is a bigger deal than the moon landings. The moon landings were pretty awesome in their own way, but at the end of the day, with the way they were done, it was basically a stunt. None of it put any infrastructure for the long-term access of space into place, or anything to make future moon landings easier. This paves the way for the costs of space flight to be cut in half, or even…

> The moon landings were pretty awesome in their own way, but at the end of the day, with the way they were done, it was basically a stunt.

It was a pissing contest between the superpowers.

That doesn't mean there's less merit in that. In fact, what they did in the '60s was a heck of a lot harder, achieving so much with less tech, and hewing a new path through a virgin jungle.

It simply means - and explains why - those achievements didn't last. We put in a humongous effort to reach so far, but once the initial impetus died out, we had to scale it down.

Well, now we're back.

Re: SES-10 Mission

#213

Post by srssays »

andrewchambers wrote: post #185
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Even if large deposits of a rare mineral were discovered on Mars, surely a business would send robots to retrieve it -- not humans.

Re: SES-10 Mission

#214

Post by Florin_Andrei »

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?

Tracking is the hard part. The optics are relatively simple (if you do astrophotography as an amateur, you have the optics already). I have at least two optical systems at home that could do that, I just don't have the fancy tracking rig.

Re: SES-10 Mission

#215

Post by rblatz »

jacquesm wrote: post #173
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?

Something like this: http://www.rcopticalsystems.com/telescopes/images/24inchMili...

As an untrained person my first response to that picture was "yeah that looks like it would do the trick"

Re: SES-10 Mission

#216

Post by grondilu »

an_cap wrote: post #206
grondilu wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet as of today nobody has ever landed with just a wingsuit. You need a parachute.

Not true. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Connery

That's an argument of semantics. I mean people can jump onto giant airbags without either parachute or jumpsuit from very high heights. I wouldn't call that landing, and in any case that's not what Franz Reichet was attempting.

Re: SES-10 Mission

#217

Post by kilroy123 »

ncallaway wrote: post #139
mr_overalls wrote: post #87

The obvious question: how much cheaper will a reusable rocket make it, per pound, to put a payload in orbit?

Well, if you go to the extreme case (the entire rocket is reusable with _no_ refurbishment) the cost of rocket fuel is $200,000 while the approximate cost of the hardware is in the range of $60M. So, in the extreme case it would be _massively_ cheaper. On the order of 99% savings. At the moment, SpaceX is only reusing a portion of the rocket (the first stage, not the second stage or the fairings ). And that re-used p…

I honestly don't think they'll _have_ the chance to enjoy the margins. There will likely be a lot more competition in the future.

The Chinese, Russians, Indians, blue origin, vector space systems, and United Launch Alliance finally getting their shit together, trying to do a redesign to better compete.

Re: SES-10 Mission

#218

Post by mmalone »

Osmium wrote: post #113
Someone wrote: post #83

I understand the enthusiasm, but I don't see enough hard data to convince me this will be a commercial success. Looking at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_and_Falcon_He... , SpaceX has launched and landed about 10 of these rockets, and has so far reused one. That rocket was first used about a year ago. Factors that might prevent this from making this economically superior to 'just' ramping up productio…

> That's mostly guessing, though, as I'm not a rocket scientist and can't find hard information on this. Yeah, my understanding is that you're wrong on this, though I too am not a rocket scientist. But a few points: > SpaceX has launched and landed about 10 of these rockets, and has so far reused one. That rocket was first used about a year ago. While this is factually correct, extrapolating from this will not give a…

> especially in the context of the space industry generally.

You mean the industry that landed a man on the moon inside of ten years?

Re: SES-10 Mission

#219

Post by [deleted] »

Osmium wrote: post #113
Someone wrote: post #83

I understand the enthusiasm, but I don't see enough hard data to convince me this will be a commercial success. Looking at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_and_Falcon_He... , SpaceX has launched and landed about 10 of these rockets, and has so far reused one. That rocket was first used about a year ago. Factors that might prevent this from making this economically superior to 'just' ramping up productio…

> That's mostly guessing, though, as I'm not a rocket scientist and can't find hard information on this. Yeah, my understanding is that you're wrong on this, though I too am not a rocket scientist. But a few points: > SpaceX has launched and landed about 10 of these rockets, and has so far reused one. That rocket was first used about a year ago. While this is factually correct, extrapolating from this will not give a…

[deleted]

Re: SES-10 Mission

#220

Post by protomyth »

jacquesm wrote: post #8

History was being made today. Super, congratulations to all of SpaceX. Now let's see the landing :) STUCK THE LANDING :) :) :) Apologies to my neighbors who I surely woke up. Hah :) Incredible! Now, will they fly this one again?

My Dad who is his seventies calls me every time they launch and tells me how the landing went. I get the feeling he might be waking the neighbors too. I honestly think my nephew dreams of rockets because of his grandpa.
Post reply on HN