381–390 of 839 posts
Can a SpaceX Crew Dragon launch from a non-SpaceX rocket? If NASA decides to diversify, can they buy a Crew Dragon and stick it on an Atlas V or Delta IV? It seems not. The Wikipedia page for Crew Dragon says "The spacecraft launches atop a Falcon 9 Block 5 rocket and returns to Earth via an ocean splashdown." [1] The Wikipedia page for Boeing Starliner says "It is designed to be compatible with four launch vehicles:…
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> You get access to rare materials that can be immensely valuable. Why would you want to send humans to get it? Space is really inhospitable for humans, but machines seem to like it just fine. Offshore oil and gas mining is rapidly being automated, and if they could, they would eliminate humans from the process altogether. Nobody wants to go out and live on a frozen windblown metal can full of industrial machinery, i…
> but machines seem to like it just fine. I think you are underestimating the challenges they have to overcome to get machines to work in space.
Even if it’s hard, it’s still a lot easier than getting humans to work in space.
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I’m not super well informed on this, but is there any reason for sending humans to space at this moment in time (or for the next 20 years for that matter). The only reason my layperson understanding can think of is mining minerals in space, but I fail to see why robots wouldn’t be able to adequately do the job. In fact wouldn’t sending humans make future space ventures even more costly and put people into unessisary…
> is there any reason for sending humans to space at this moment in time? Well, tourism, if nothing else! Some people don't see that as a sufficiently serious reason to go. Those people are wrong.
Is it real paper and pencil? Or some sort of e-ink tablet. iPad? Kinda bukly, though...
Who needs a space-pen? Got a space-watch? :)
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I think the whole quote is in order here. > I suspect it's a question which is considered less important so far, so SpaceX didn't pay that much attention to it, considering they had to do a lot of other things already. They had a lot of other things to work on, so they - because of that, I suspect - didn't pay that much attention to it. I don't think it's the same as what you wrote.
I strongly suspect they've given the matter orders of magnitude more engineer-hours of consideration than you have. Yes, they have many other things to consider as well; that's why they have a lot of engineers.
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And it’s painted black against black backdrop when the decision to pull it happens in milliseconds level. :facepalm: This is what a Martin Baker ejection handle looks like: https://c8.alamy.com/comp/BJTDWG/martin-baker-ejection-seat-... With all due respect to all the engineers that work at SpaceX, the UI of the cockpit has regressed to the point of pure marketing. Same with the suit design, looks like an awful low b…
> Same with the suit design, looks like an awful low budget sci-fi film. Or a high budget sci fi film, or a medium budget sci fi film, since literally every film involving a spacesuit ever made had a more reasonable design than the utterly ridiculous, cumbersome, and bulky Hamilton Standard design American astronauts were stuck with for such a long time.
I'm actually surprised they use a touchscreen interface, and they will use that for the manual docking too! https://i.imgur.com/YKiqIqO.jpg
Display can be used for manual docking, however there is no plan to ever do that outside of an emergency.
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I’m not super well informed on this, but is there any reason for sending humans to space at this moment in time (or for the next 20 years for that matter). The only reason my layperson understanding can think of is mining minerals in space, but I fail to see why robots wouldn’t be able to adequately do the job. In fact wouldn’t sending humans make future space ventures even more costly and put people into unessisary…
Maybe intercontinental travel? I was watching the launch live stream and at one point, they said, "if they abort in this zone, the crew will land just off the coast of Ireland". That was like 9 minutes after liftoff! So if I understand that correctly, if you go to space, you can travel from Florida to Ireland in ~20 minutes?
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Non-toxic would be better than toxic. What would be the options? Compressed cold-gas (which don't have much kick, and require compressed gas which carry their own dangers). You could go with a monoprop Hydrazine which would eliminate half the toxic stuff. There are also some new developments here: hydroxylammonium nitrate (HAN)/water/fuel ? No idea of the trade offs there. Biprop hydrocarbon/gaseous compressed oxygen…
> What would be the options? Soyuz uses straight hydrogen peroxide, I believe, 82% concentration. For 3 tons capsule it takes 30 kg of peroxide - monopropellant - to land. Buran is still the example of a high tech option - it used LOX and kerosene for RCS, the biggest trick was to keep LOX liquid for a month-long missions. It was done with mid-1980 technologies. Kliper planned to use LOX and ethanol. The craft wasn't…
Perhaps of interest to HN, the cockpit displays seen in the videos are HTML pages rendered in Chromium. https://twitter.com/alteredq/status/1266853705632145409?s=19 SpaceX recently released a browser game where you use the real flight UI to dock with the ISS: https://iss-sim.spacex.com/
Aren't physical buttons that you can feel with your touch safer than touch screens?