21–30 of 203 posts
I am approaching my 40's and wonder am I just a bit too old that by the space flight is for the common person I will have missed my chance. I really hope I can make it to space one day.
I’m not counting it out just yet.
All modern liquid rocket motors use turbo pumps to pressurize liquid fuel and drive it into the combustion chamber. All other rockets use some fuel to run a turbine that powers the pumps, with the variations being how that entire system is piped together.
The Rocket Lab motor, Rutherford, uses a lithium ion battery and electric motor to power the pumps. This reduces the amount of fuel required to lift cargo into space by about 10% compared to SpaceX’s already impressive Merlin 1D motors.
Also, they 3D print them in 24 hours, all in one part (sans electronics I suppose). Which is incredibly impressive.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
in the not very far future it probably will be possible to buy hosting services on a platform that is a xen or kvm hypervisor in low earth orbit.
Hopefully, soon it will be "just another AZ".
I'm still chuckling that they called the rocket "It's Business Time". I'm guessing partly a hat tip to SpaceX and the naming of their drone ships, but more so named after a song by the Flight of the Conchords.
I wish I could put software in one of those shoebox satellites.
I just had a daydream of Satellites as a Service. "give us a docker image extending our base image, no larger than x MB delta, and we will run it on a chosen satellite for a certain time slice for $y" I can see that future. Even if purely as a learning tool for students.
Even cooler if one of them launches a flying data center. Limited bandwidth would be an issue.
I wish I could put software in one of those shoebox satellites.
I just had a daydream of Satellites as a Service. "give us a docker image extending our base image, no larger than x MB delta, and we will run it on a chosen satellite for a certain time slice for $y" I can see that future. Even if purely as a learning tool for students.
I was about to say that launching so far from the equator sounds very fuel-inefficient, but it turns out that their launchpad's latitude (39 degrees south) is nearer the equator than Russia's primary launch site, the Baikonur Cosmodrome (45 degrees north). For reference, Cape Canaveral is 28 degrees north.
TBF Baikonur is known to be a fairly bad location from an efficiency perspective if you're trying for GTO/GEO: using pretty much the same rocket, you can send 6~7t to GTO from Baikonur while you can send 10 from Kourou (on 5N). That's why as time went on, China kept building their new launch facilities more and more southernly (Jiuquan was built on 40N in the 50s, the recently opened Wenchang sits on 19N).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I just had a daydream of Satellites as a Service. "give us a docker image extending our base image, no larger than x MB delta, and we will run it on a chosen satellite for a certain time slice for $y" I can see that future. Even if purely as a learning tool for students.
Would the satellites have some known set of sensors or something like that? Just trying to figure out what would be the point, other than just the coolness of running code in spaaaaaaaace.
I just remember growing up thinking that I'm a C student and so all this stuff is to be left to the smart people. And that error in perspective drove my thinking for a long time.
You never really know what will be the spark that helps someone discover their passion. Maybe it's Nyancat Sputnik.
I was about to say that launching so far from the equator sounds very fuel-inefficient, but it turns out that their launchpad's latitude (39 degrees south) is nearer the equator than Russia's primary launch site, the Baikonur Cosmodrome (45 degrees north). For reference, Cape Canaveral is 28 degrees north.
If you think about it, the added starting velocity from launching on the equator is nice but is still only ~6% of the total velocity required to get into low Earth orbit. (0.0625 = 1.5 / 24 given orbital period in LEO is ~90 minutes and rotation period is 24 hours). Even at 45 degrees latitude you're only losing 0.707*6=4.4% of your target velocity.
The years I spent in New Zealand painted a vivid picture of a society of doers. I think there’s something to the idea that this comes in part from being a landmass the size of Colorado, with not much more than 4 million people, with the freedom and requirements to maintain the infrastructure of being a sovereign nation. Seeing a NZ rocket launch condures an image of a small group of doers dreaming big. Way to go NZ!