301–310 of 317 posts
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> Lol we didn't agree mate Your comment says otherwise.
No, my comment agreed with the idea that the US is the most significant factor responsible for what happened in the USSR.
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I'm reminded of the story of two economists walking down the street. One sees a dollar bill on the ground, and the other decides "that can't be right; if there was a dollar bill on the ground someone would've picked it up already". Not saying that a bunch of random folks on HN are seeing dollar bills in this analogy, but I've never quite been satisfied with the "if we're thinking of it then they probably already trie…
"Question: Why only light 2 engines for landing? Any engine failure means loss of vehicle, so you have two single points of failure. Why not light all 3, do the flip, then pick the best two and turn off the other?" "We were too dumb" https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1357256507847561217
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The sheets of stainless steel appear to have separated at the joints. This says the sheets are stronger than the joints, meaning they're overweight :-)
They're experimenting with 3mm steel instead of 4mm steel. A test tank they've built already passed an initial pressure test on 26 Jan. One Starship requires 15 rings, a nosecone, a bottom and tanks. If they would all move from 4mm to 3mm then that would save a lot of weight. About 7-10 tonnes according to [1]. [1]: https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=52701.160
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On the 'repeated failures' piece, that's somewhat new for aerospace. Traditionally, things would be over-engineered, and losing a test vessel would be considered a bad thing. SpaceX seems very content to blow up a bunch of rockets on their way towards not blowing up rockets. This seems to have caused at least part of their recent issues with the FAA, who seem to be less ok with explosions. It will be very interesting…
It’s really a throwback to the old days of aerospace. From the 1930s to the early 1960s, the standard method was to iterate rapidly with relatively cheap hardware, to learn and fix problems as quickly as possible. The von Braun and Korolev teams operated this way, among others. They all blew up a ton of rockets. What changed was the necessity of completing Saturn V and landing on the Moon by the end of the 1960s. Apo…
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just don't sit near the launchpad
And if anyone believes wp381640 is joking, this lesson seems to have been learned the hard way: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nedelin_catastrophe
Wow, I can't imagine a disaster happening in the United States where we barely even knew the order of magnitude of fatalities.
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The US fought an actual civil war over the right to OWN people. How is capitalism, THE economic system the US has used since it's inception, not responsible for that, as well as the current demand for slave labor that exists today? I will answer your question when you can answer that one honestly.
To our fellow readers: Notice how Layke1123 has dodged my original question no fewer than 4 times (!), all while continuing to launch barrages of new questions in an effort to derail the conversation and avoid having to answer it. This tactic has a long history in Soviet propaganda. Let's try again: If the USSR had such a wonderful society, why did they have to systematically mass murder ordinary people who wanted to…
To our fellow readers on HN: notice how alentist himself cannot answer a question asked back, even though I have given him the answer to his question directly multiple times. It is his attempt to save his narrowly constructed world view that he is right, America has never committed atrocities against its own people and others, and you should accept his point of view matter of factly without questioning! Notice how he acts more like the places he criticizes than I do simply for questioning his assertions?
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No, my comment agreed with the idea that the US is the most significant factor responsible for what happened in the USSR.
Yes, it's always someone else's fault when Communist policies inevitably fail and murder millions.
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After accomplishing their primary mission, which is a key distinction. If you blow up on landing that just means you lose your reuse discount on a future flight.
That's no good for Starship, which is meant to land with passengers and hardware on board.
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It takes a profoundly ignorant view of historical facts to ignore the immense pervasiveness of foreign interference in the Russian Civil War. The mere presence of the Bolsheviks as a dominant force was due to foreign interference, as the Germans installed him and his friends in an attempt to destabilize the Russian Empire. Trotsky's growth in authoritarianism, when he was previously a moderating force, started with t…
To claim all of this was based on foreign interference is revisionism without foundation, ignoring the agency of the Russian people and its tragically flawed and corrupt leadership/aristocracy. The Germans did not create or even influence the conditions that led to the Russian civil war or the various abortive revolutions prior to the one in 1917; beyond helping Lenin get back to Russia from Switzerland there is a sh…
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It’s really a throwback to the old days of aerospace. From the 1930s to the early 1960s, the standard method was to iterate rapidly with relatively cheap hardware, to learn and fix problems as quickly as possible. The von Braun and Korolev teams operated this way, among others. They all blew up a ton of rockets. What changed was the necessity of completing Saturn V and landing on the Moon by the end of the 1960s. Apo…
The acceleration of aerospace development costs started long before the Apollo program.