SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy successfully launches • Hacker News Board

Re: SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy successfully launches

#831

Post by spiraldancing » Wed, Feb 07, 2018, 12:05 PM UTC

ncallaway wrote: post #573

avmich wrote: post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that's important. Wonder what success of FH would do to works on BFR? If BFR would be as successful as Musk writes, would SpaceX make two rockets - or optimization will lead to just one?

If BFR is as successful as Musk hopes (_especially_ around the reusability aspect), I think BFR would replace the F9 and Falcon Heavy as a lift vehicle. If BFR is actually fully reusable it would be cheaper to launch than the F9 (due to the non-reused second stage).

Musk has actually said that he expects BFR to be cheaper to fly than their original Falcon 1 ... meaning prices in the $5-10M range, as opposed to $60+M for F9.

Re: SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy successfully launches

#832

Post by bigfudge » Wed, Feb 07, 2018, 12:21 PM UTC

refurb wrote: post #706

blt wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Pointing out someone's implicit biases is not necessarily a personal attack on them. Everyone has them so we should welcome when people point them out (unless done in an mean-spirited or aggressive fashion). I wish I could upvote this 1000 times. We all have implicit biases, and they are often a product of society rather than personal failures. It is painful when you suddenly notice your own shortcomings. But the d…

How about you just give the person the benefit of the doubt they weren't talking about race or gender unless they explicitly called it out? That would work to.

No, it wouldn’t and hasn’t. The whole point is that this type of bias does lead to discrimination in the workplace. Our prior should be that discrimination is happening. This doesn’t mean we are horrible people ... more often that we simply have reflected on the background assumptions/heuristics that drive our behaviour.

Re: SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy successfully launches

#833

Post by MayeulC » Wed, Feb 07, 2018, 12:23 PM UTC

jotm wrote: post #802

dtparr wrote: post #611

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The latest hardware revision that's expected to be the mainstay for F9 flights going forward. Has better performance and addresses some reusability issues discovered in earlier blocks.

But if they weren't on this flight, how sure is SpaceX that they are more reliable? But yeah, that's just a question from my mind. This launch was amazing, the future in the making right here.

As far as I know, the center core was a block five one, but they didn't intend to refly it anyway, from what Elon said in the press conference. Maybe they intended to study it? If that's the case, there will probably be another "expandable" block five flight.

Re: SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy successfully launches

#834

Post by MayeulC » Wed, Feb 07, 2018, 12:28 PM UTC

simonh wrote: post #793

imglorp wrote: post #654

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm kind of glad they had something fail. That means maybe they learned something new to improve the next shot.

The rocket ran out of engine igniter fluid. It had enough to light the centre engine, but not the two side engines. That seems to imply they were trying to do a 3-engine landing, which they tested recently in the 'failed to expend the rocket' incident. This might explain why they miscalculated the igniter requirement since they don't have much experience with 3-engine landings.

On the other hand, if you look carefully at the landing video, it looks like they did a three-engine landing boost on the other boosters: https://youtu.be/BBA7su98v3Y?t=517 So they have definitely learned something valuable in that landing incident.

Re: SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy successfully launches

#835

Post by natch » Wed, Feb 07, 2018, 12:34 PM UTC

Yetanfou wrote: post #738

natch wrote: post #609

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt anyone here is saying people aren’t free to speak. It’s just that speech has consequences. You yourself are being quite hypersensitive about someone having the temerity to raise the issue of harmful stereotyping, and you’re appearing to attempt to stifle the speech of those who would do that. The irony meter is pegged off the scale. I believe the comment that kicked off the long discussion was pretty measured…

I did not "have the temerity to..." nor do I "attempt to stifle..." anything. By all means you're free to make these claims as long as it is clear that we both realise they're not based on truth. In fact you are as free to make them as the original commenter who launched this thread was to say that the person "looked like an engineer". That is the whole point of freedom of expression, after all. Just don't act as if…

expletives?

Re: SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy successfully launches

#836

Post by collinmanderson » Wed, Feb 07, 2018, 12:44 PM UTC

MayeulC wrote: post #833

jotm wrote: post #802

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if they weren't on this flight, how sure is SpaceX that they are more reliable? But yeah, that's just a question from my mind. This launch was amazing, the future in the making right here.

As far as I know, the center core was a block five one, but they didn't intend to refly it anyway, from what Elon said in the press conference. Maybe they intended to study it? If that's the case, there will probably be another "expandable" block five flight.

According to reddit, even the center core (B1033) was Block 3. No block 5 cores have flown yet.

https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/wiki/cores#wiki_.5Bfh.5D_b10...

Re: SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy successfully launches

#837

Post by simonh » Wed, Feb 07, 2018, 1:01 PM UTC

MayeulC wrote: post #834

simonh wrote: post #793

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rocket ran out of engine igniter fluid. It had enough to light the centre engine, but not the two side engines. That seems to imply they were trying to do a 3-engine landing, which they tested recently in the 'failed to expend the rocket' incident. This might explain why they miscalculated the igniter requirement since they don't have much experience with 3-engine landings.

On the other hand, if you look carefully at the landing video, it looks like they did a three-engine landing boost on the other boosters: https://youtu.be/BBA7su98v3Y?t=517 So they have definitely learned something valuable in that landing incident.

Cool. I'd assumed they only did that with the centre core, but you're right.

Re: SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy successfully launches

#838

Post by ygra » Wed, Feb 07, 2018, 1:03 PM UTC

spiraldancing wrote: post #831

ncallaway wrote: post #573

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If BFR is as successful as Musk hopes (_especially_ around the reusability aspect), I think BFR would replace the F9 and Falcon Heavy as a lift vehicle. If BFR is actually fully reusable it would be cheaper to launch than the F9 (due to the non-reused second stage).

Musk has actually said that he expects BFR to be cheaper to fly than their original Falcon 1 ... meaning prices in the $5-10M range, as opposed to $60+M for F9.

I think that was referring to cost per kg to orbit, not cost per flight.

Re: SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy successfully launches

#839

Post by dqpb » Wed, Feb 07, 2018, 1:18 PM UTC

thanatropism wrote: post #167

I like everything about private space exploration except this: when we sent the Voyager golden record to space, we consulted with the great minds about which were the important landmarks of our civilisation. In this model, it's all about idiosyncrasies: the Voyager record had the Vitruvian Man, this has an astronaut on a sports car and largely-irrelevant sci-fi stories. Of course, private space probably means the who…

The golden record is more cringworthy

Re: SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy successfully launches

#840

Post by tialaramex » Wed, Feb 07, 2018, 1:19 PM UTC

mamon wrote: post #796

ygra wrote: post #782

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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" :)

Quantity has a quality all of its own. And quantity is only achieved through this sort of further optimisation.

It is much too easy to disparage an optimisation as unimportant compared to some hypothetical "original" idea of which it is a refinement, and we should not do this, especially to try to claim credit for people we know at the cost of those far away we've never heard of.

The "original" inventions behind recorded music, the telephone, the incandescent light bulb, and numerous other obvious examples are poor shadows of the commercially successful item that means we know them today. We honour many of the people who refined these items as "geniuses" today, often pretending to ourselves that they invented them rather than merely refining the work of others, this does everybody involved a disservice, and it disparages the real contribution of people (in China and elsewhere) optimising today's inventions. The flat panel display you're almost certainly reading this on is the product of _millions_ of such optimisations.