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SpaceX nails triple booster landing after satellite delivery

bbc.com

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Re: SpaceX nails triple booster landing after satellite delivery

#111

Post by philipkglass »

chucksmash wrote: post #99
narrator wrote: post #46

Can we finally stop having sci-fi films in which the whole outcome of the movie is solely determined on some heroic manual flying of a spaceship while simultaneously using manually aimed weapons like it's World War II?

Seems like it'd be tricky to do from a story telling perspective. Totally removes all agency from protagonists. Every fight becomes a deus ex machina - "welp, our targetting subroutines continue to be superior to their maneuvering systems so they died. Hooray us?" Or I guess more probably just a numbers game: "welp, our effective weapons range is larger than theirs, so that's that" with an MCRN exemption clause.

Isn't this how real-world warfare is trending already? A vehicle full of soldiers may die before they even know there was a threat flying overhead. But it's not very heroic-looking to just keep the laser designator on target until the bomb lands.

I suppose that's why so many contemporary thrillers or even far-future science fiction movies devolve into hand to hand combat for the climactic showdown. It looks more interesting. (Though personally it makes me groan and want to throw things at the screen.)

Re: SpaceX nails triple booster landing after satellite delivery

#112

Post by Retra »

philipkglass wrote: post #111
chucksmash wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like it'd be tricky to do from a story telling perspective. Totally removes all agency from protagonists. Every fight becomes a deus ex machina - "welp, our targetting subroutines continue to be superior to their maneuvering systems so they died. Hooray us?" Or I guess more probably just a numbers game: "welp, our effective weapons range is larger than theirs, so that's that" with an MCRN exemption clause.

Isn't this how real-world warfare is trending already? A vehicle full of soldiers may die before they even know there was a threat flying overhead. But it's not very heroic-looking to just keep the laser designator on target until the bomb lands. I suppose that's why so many contemporary thrillers or even far-future science fiction movies devolve into hand to hand combat for the climactic showdown. It looks more inte…

You can't really write a compelling story where your logistics make the hero rather than... heroism.

Re: SpaceX nails triple booster landing after satellite delivery

#113

Post by RcouF1uZ4gsC »

azernik wrote: post #57
Ajedi32 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just speculation, I wouldn't cite it as an authoritative source.

The part that says they're able to reuse these ones is a tweet directly from Elon Musk; he also confirms they were recovered from in the water, not caught in the air.

>The part that says they're able to reuse these ones is a tweet directly from Elon Musk;

And we know that Elon Musk only ever tweets true information.

Re: SpaceX nails triple booster landing after satellite delivery

#114

Post by philipkglass »

Retra wrote: post #112
philipkglass wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this how real-world warfare is trending already? A vehicle full of soldiers may die before they even know there was a threat flying overhead. But it's not very heroic-looking to just keep the laser designator on target until the bomb lands. I suppose that's why so many contemporary thrillers or even far-future science fiction movies devolve into hand to hand combat for the climactic showdown. It looks more inte…

You can't really write a compelling story where your logistics make the hero rather than... heroism.

I wonder what the makers of Zero Dark Thirty did to keep it compelling. I haven't seen the movie myself. The real-life mission resulted in only one light injury among the Americans and involved zero fist fights. Osama bin Laden himself was killed before he could fire a single shot or throw a punch.

Re: SpaceX nails triple booster landing after satellite delivery

#115

Post by [deleted] »

bergoid wrote: post #66
narrator wrote: post #46

Can we finally stop having sci-fi films in which the whole outcome of the movie is solely determined on some heroic manual flying of a spaceship while simultaneously using manually aimed weapons like it's World War II?

The Apollo 13 astronauts would like to share a couple of anecdotes with you.

[deleted]

Re: SpaceX nails triple booster landing after satellite delivery

#116

Post by chasd00 »

rjf72 wrote: post #96

I find this, and SpaceX, so inspiring. It's easy to feel that technology just moves itself forward. After all there are billions of people on Earth with people working on a countless array of different problems. And each day things seem to move forward, almost inexorably so. And so it's easy to feel that the value of the individual is really relatively low. Yet imagine a world where Elon did not exist and thus SpaceX…

if you want to talk inspiring, consider Gwynne Shotwell. She's tasked with turning Musk's crazy ideas and timelines into reality. I can't imagine a tougher job and she's killing it.

Re: SpaceX nails triple booster landing after satellite delivery

#117

Post by darkpuma »

grey-area wrote: post #91
JshWright wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd be hard pressed to fit 32 tons inside Falcon Heavy's fairing. It's far more likely to be volume constrained than mass constrained when flying to LEO.

That could bring satellite costs down a lot though - if launches are cheap and not weight limited a cheap steel frame satellite with heavy solar panels becomes feasible - all the old rules about building to optimise weight and not price go out the window. I wouldn’t be surprised if spacex also enter the satellite building business after mass producing starlink.

Light weight satellite construction will still be a very high priority because making the structure of the satellite lighter extends its operational lifespan.

The reason is attitude control. Reaction wheels can be used to orient the satellite, but eventually reaction wheels get saturated. At that point you need to use thrusters to cancel out the reaction wheel saturation. Those thrusters require propellant, e.g. something to push against. The greater the ratio between propellant mass and structural mass the satellite has, the longer it can remain operational before the propellant runs out and your reaction wheels finally saturate, leaving your satellite tumbling useless without attitude control.

Re: SpaceX nails triple booster landing after satellite delivery

#118

Post by TremendousJudge »

jniedrauer wrote: post #80
bergoid wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Apollo 13 astronauts would like to share a couple of anecdotes with you.

Apollo 13 (the movie) had plenty of careful checklist readbacks and minimal explosions or shaky cameras. Most scifi is more like Michael Bay in space. See Gravity for a more egregious example of a movie that tries to play itself off as "hard scifi" but ends up just being an over the top action movie.

Yeah, The Martian is like, the hardest sci-fi book I've ever read, but I found the film adaptation... lacking

Re: SpaceX nails triple booster landing after satellite delivery

#119

Post by TremendousJudge »

chasd00 wrote: post #116
rjf72 wrote: post #96

I find this, and SpaceX, so inspiring. It's easy to feel that technology just moves itself forward. After all there are billions of people on Earth with people working on a countless array of different problems. And each day things seem to move forward, almost inexorably so. And so it's easy to feel that the value of the individual is really relatively low. Yet imagine a world where Elon did not exist and thus SpaceX…

if you want to talk inspiring, consider Gwynne Shotwell. She's tasked with turning Musk's crazy ideas and timelines into reality. I can't imagine a tougher job and she's killing it.

I always read about Musk like he does the whole thing on his own. Never read about all the engineers that work their asses off to achieve these results

Re: SpaceX nails triple booster landing after satellite delivery

#120

Post by nostrademons »

DennisP wrote: post #109
grey-area wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That could bring satellite costs down a lot though - if launches are cheap and not weight limited a cheap steel frame satellite with heavy solar panels becomes feasible - all the old rules about building to optimise weight and not price go out the window. I wouldn’t be surprised if spacex also enter the satellite building business after mass producing starlink.

And that makes solar power satellites more feasible, especially with the BFR. Musk has expressed skepticism, famously asking "what's the conversion rate?" The answer is that microwave transmission is 40% efficient with today's technology. This isn't bad considering that average daily sunlight in geosynch is five times higher than on the ground,[1] and you don't need much storage or backup. The early SPS designs were…

Hmm, what's the cost to put solar panels in heliocentric orbit? Dyson spheres anyone?
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