811–820 of 926 posts
I feel like I must be crazy, but did anyone else notice that the two videos from the pair of boosters seemed like they were cloned from the viewpoint of a single booster? I don't mean they look similar. I mean they look like they came from the same video feed . When completing the touchdown, they both seem to land at the same pad -- you can see the flame of the other booster and the pad the other booster is landing a…
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The goal back then was to make things possible. Right now, especially with SpaceX shaking the competition up a bit, the process is making things cheaper, which enables space access for uses that have been cost-prohibitive in the past. However, I guess cubesats and tiny launchers are just as much a part of that development as SpaceX' work on reusability. And the landing shots are just damn cool.
Ok, so Musk is basically doing the job of the Chinese companies of the past: producing cheaper copy of other people's inventions. And yet, some call him "visionary" or "genius" :)
The launches are cheaper because of the breakthrough in being able to reuse the rockets by landing them.
That's the exact opposite of copying.
Devil's advocate, here. Am I the only one that find it quite disturbing that a private corporation taking over more public space? In the long run this stuff will bite humanity at large in the butt.
As for space launches - well, the US Gov did a "great job" at saving what they learned from building the Saturn V, can't imagine them being better at space exploration, either.
Besides, all of the planes and ships are built by private companies, and it's worked OK-ish so far.
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Honestly it’s amazing how much better I understand this and other space stuff I’ve seen in the last year or two (like shows about Apollo, etc) since playing KSP. No better way to learn basic orbital dynamics out there.
SpaceX should create their own space simulator or buy KSP, let players test and sort out various problems - crowdsourcing! :D
(Hell, I might even be among them.)
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The goal back then was to make things possible. Right now, especially with SpaceX shaking the competition up a bit, the process is making things cheaper, which enables space access for uses that have been cost-prohibitive in the past. However, I guess cubesats and tiny launchers are just as much a part of that development as SpaceX' work on reusability. And the landing shots are just damn cool.
Ok, so Musk is basically doing the job of the Chinese companies of the past: producing cheaper copy of other people's inventions. And yet, some call him "visionary" or "genius" :)
Did they need to modify the Tesla to make it vacuum worthy? Like, remove any fluids, remove any parts that might explode in the hot or cold of space, deflate the tires, etc. Note: I'm more interested in a scientific answer, as opposed to casual conjectures. Preferably from an engineer knowledgeable of such things. And specifically, the materials sciences aspect of how materials will survive in a vacuum.
Elon says, albeit casually, here in the press conference at 5m36s: https://youtu.be/sytrrdOPYzA?t=5m36s "We didn't really test any of those materials [...] it's just literally a normal car in space"
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What are you talking about. That gif is showing the fairing separation. There's no sphere.
amazing, is the car strapped to the outside of the rest of the ship? how does it remain so stable after the separation? by "sphere" i just meant the case it is shown inside of at the start, since the markings on the wall resemble motion tracking panels used for 3d projection. perhaps I just underestimate the precision and smoothness of the fairing separation, or am misunderstanding how the car is rigged so as to rema…
I feel like I must be crazy, but did anyone else notice that the two videos from the pair of boosters seemed like they were cloned from the viewpoint of a single booster? I don't mean they look similar. I mean they look like they came from the same video feed . When completing the touchdown, they both seem to land at the same pad -- you can see the flame of the other booster and the pad the other booster is landing a…
No.
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>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...
Except that fully sentient AI is already commonplace in the form of droids, including battle droids.
This is a universe where a small robot that only speaks in clicks and whistles had to physically transport holographic "data tapes" about a moon-sized space station that can travel faster than light. A lot of it doesn't make sense when you think about it, but then it's supposed to be Flash Gordon with the serial numbers filed off.
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Yep - Titanium is notoriously difficult to work with.
So difficult that the SR-71 leaked fuel before starts and had to be re-fueled right after take-off. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_SR-71_Blackbird#Fuel
The mental image of it leaking so much fuel on the ground such that it needed immediate refuelling is a myth propagated extensively on the internet.