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SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy successfully launches

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Re: SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy successfully launches

#721

Post by oska »

swat535 wrote: post #588
CydeWeys wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're showing your biases here. The other people on the livestream are also rocket scientists. They aren't PR people. They just happen to be younger, or women, or of color. So you might want to re-evaluate what you think a rocket scientist "looks like", because your notion is outdated. Sorry to call you out like this, but these kinds of prejudices about who is the "correct" kind of person for tech jobs are harmful a…

sigh. yet another thread completely derailed by a meaningless and frankly irrelevant comment to the topic at hand, such as the one you made here. perhaps if we were not hypersensitive to every little detail, engineering would be a more welcoming discipline. I came here to read comments about this amazing achievement . so how about we focus on discussing the actual topic for a change ? I hope I'm not the only one feel…

There's a [-] sign next to every comment. You could have easily just collapsed the thread under that comment if you wanted to avoid that part of the discussion. Instead, here you are contributing to the very noise you're complaining about.

Re: SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy successfully launches

#722

Post by jpgvm »

phpnode wrote: post #272
webXL wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was there anything special about the center core other than boosting longer and needing to land out at sea? Seems like they've landed plenty out at sea, but not while landing two on land. I thought this was impressive: "With a total of 27 first-stage engines, Falcon Heavy has engine-out capability that no other launch vehicle can match—under most payload scenarios, it can sustain more than one unplanned engine shutdo…

The centre core is significantly strengthened to cope with the additional load from the side boosters. It also has slightly different aerodynamic properties because of the fixed struts that hold the boosters in place. Either of these could have affected the landing. They'll collect data and fix it.

It ran out of fuel. There was enough to relight the centre engine but not the 3 outer engines required to complete the landing.

Re: SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy successfully launches

#723

Post by josu »

Laforet wrote: post #684
akozak wrote: post #550

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think he said in the press conference that they weren't planning to reuse the core or boosters. (But then mentioned later they wanted some of the parts? IDK)

Correct, the engines were going to be retired anyway but they are keen to reuse the titanium grid fins on the boosters which cost a small fortune to make. The core actually had older ablative grid fins made of aluminium so no great loss there[0]. [0] https://i.redd.it/l6s2bds7pl801.png

Can they still recover them?

Re: SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy successfully launches

#724

Post by visarga »

latj wrote: post #522
protonimitate wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's something awesome (in the literal sense) and unsettling about watching something and being able to say "I am witnessing history".

Did anyone else notice that the bottom two windows are not different cameras on different boosters? The guy even told us, "I know they look similar but they're different". Nope, they are the same. Watch how you can see two pads and they both land on the pad on the right. And you can see the second booster burning in the same orientation. The roads leading to the pads also make it easy to notice.

They are slightly different, I suspect it's for creating 3d illusion. If you cross your eyes and overlap the two images you will see the landing in 3d.

Re: SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy successfully launches

#725

Post by narrator »

krapp wrote: post #633
narrator wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get a headache watching Star Wars like sci-fi where everything is manually controlled by the pilot. How did sci-fi get so disconnected from the actual future?

>How did sci-fi get so disconnected from the actual future? The original Star Wars was made in 1977, and based heavily on World War 2 combat films (much of the space combat and the trench run on the Death Star was lifted - sometimes shot for shot - from a film called "The Dam Busters.") For reasons of continuity and tone, that mechanical aesthetic can't ever change much throughout the franchise, or else it wouldn't "…

Maybe they could explain it all away saying that in a previous era autonomous weapons were used and almost exterminated everyone in the whole star wars universe, so all parties including the empire and the rebels agreed to not make use of automatically controlled weapons or space craft.

Or maybe software technology was lost and they are only able to use extremely rudimentary systems...

Re: SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy successfully launches

#726

Post by 0xTJ »

Laforet wrote: post #684
akozak wrote: post #550

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think he said in the press conference that they weren't planning to reuse the core or boosters. (But then mentioned later they wanted some of the parts? IDK)

Correct, the engines were going to be retired anyway but they are keen to reuse the titanium grid fins on the boosters which cost a small fortune to make. The core actually had older ablative grid fins made of aluminium so no great loss there[0]. [0] https://i.redd.it/l6s2bds7pl801.png

Have you seen an approximate price for those fins anywhere. I saw the interviews, but I want to know how expensive is expensive.

Re: SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy successfully launches

#727

Post by philwelch »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #643
pilsetnieks wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, I think the Space Shuttle was substantial progress as well. An evolutionary dead end maybe but still a lot was learned.

> the Space Shuttle was substantial progress Marginal at best. The Space Shuttle lofted 833 astronauts at a cost of $209 billion [1]. In 2013, NASA was paying Russia $70 million per astronaut for a Soyuz lift [2]. That comes to $58 billion in 2013 dollars. That leaves $151+ billion, ignoring inflation, to justify everything else the Shuttle did. $150+ billion is 10x SpaceX's lifetime capital expenditures. (It's about…

The Space Shuttle was remarkably well designed for orbital bombing missions, which is the only reason the Soviets felt compelled to build the Buran to reproduce its capabilities.

Re: SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy successfully launches

#728

Post by heyoni »

djrogers wrote: post #521
CydeWeys wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're showing your biases here. The other people on the livestream are also rocket scientists. They aren't PR people. They just happen to be younger, or women, or of color. So you might want to re-evaluate what you think a rocket scientist "looks like", because your notion is outdated. Sorry to call you out like this, but these kinds of prejudices about who is the "correct" kind of person for tech jobs are harmful a…

You're being overtly crass to call someone out for being racist and bigoted when another reading of the same comment could imply that the other host were so professional, well spoken, and polished that he wouldn't be surprised if that was their profession. Isn't it rather biased of you to assume that being an engineer is somehow superior to being a professional actor, spokesperson, or hostess?

This. Precisely.

Re: SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy successfully launches

#729

Post by ghostcluster »

CydeWeys wrote: post #586
Yetanfou wrote: post #569

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seeing how a harmless comment on a man 'look[ing] like an engineer, a rocket scientist´ leads to yet another long thread about 'bias' and similar concept is worrisome. The more speech is stifled, the more people have to weigh every word, every expression before they dare to utter it for fear of being accused of violating something, somewhere, making someone feel 'harmed', the less open and welcoming society will be.…

It's not harmless though, even if no harm was intended. My girlfriend is an engineer like me yet her experience in tech has been radically different than mine. She is constantly subjected to similar kinds of comments that imply that people like her don't fit in or belong, and it takes a real toll. It's a part of the reason why there's so few women in tech. I would never want to censor anyone. I'm just asking people t…

> It's a part of the reason why there's so few women in tech.

I find this rhetoric overblown, as it doesn't match the results of serious inquiry into the topic.

> Cross-cultural consistency of sex differences for four traits: extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism, and male-versus-female-typical occupational preferences. Men and women differed on all four traits. 200,000 participants from 53 nations.

> Only sex predicted means for all four traits, and sex predicted trait means much more strongly than did gender equality or the interaction between sex and gender equality. These results suggest that biological factors may contribute to sex differences in personality and that culture plays a negligible to small role in moderating sex differences in personality.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-008-9380-7

Re: SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy successfully launches

#730

Post by jacquesm »

chisleu wrote: post #701
jacquesm wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tough crowd. I'm rather more amazed at what did happen than at what did not.

I guess "amazing science" wasn't strong enough for you. If we were able to look around 360 from the POV of the driver, rather than getting the two feeds, it would be better. It doesn't cost a lot to put a lens on the camera you have, provided it was high enough resolution. Even a 1080 can do 360, but 4-8k is better. I'm not sure what happened that was new here other than the PR of putting a car into solar orbit. They…

Amazing. Do you honestly believe that what you've just witnessed is prioritized in terms of the quality of the video feed rather than everything else that just happened?

Do you even begin to appreciate the challenges in getting a 4-8k feed from space to earth?

I've been in the video business from '95 to 2015 and there is so much going on behind the scenes from even a simple live stream from a spacecraft to earth that I am wondering what it would have taken for you to be satisfied. FWIW I've personally done the Internet portion of two Space shuttle launches live-stream to earth and I can tell you that nothing about such an event is 'simple' by any stretch of the imagination. 2.5 million people watched that stream and it 'just worked'.

This never was about the quality of the feed (which is nothing short of amazing by the way), but about testing a new rocket. The fact that only one of the three first stages didn't make it is also quite impressive.

Yes, it was PR. But given the amount of work that went into this I figure they were entitled a bit of leeway.

This comment is totally out of place on a site like this, and it makes me wonder (1) what incredible stuff you've been up to today and (2) whether or not you are even remotely aware of any of the complexity a feat like today's launch entails to put you in a position to criticize any of this rather than to accept it in gratitude and wonder.

Keep in mind that according to Elon Musk there was a 50% chance the whole thing blew up on the pad I'd say they got their priorities right and spent what time and budget they had on the main item rather than on the PR bit.

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