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The red warning light on Richard Branson’s space flight

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Re: The red warning light on Richard Branson’s space flight

#211

Post by erostrate »

teekert wrote: post #203
helsinkiandrew wrote: post #202

Richard Branson does seem to be a little accident prone: https://thebookofman.com/body/adventure/sir-richard-branson/ “On my first time skydiving, there was one cord that opened the parachute, and one that got rid of it. I pulled the wrong cord by mistake. I was falling through the air before an instructor managed to yank my spare ripcord.”

Why would there be a cord to get rid of an unopened parachute?

The cord is designed to get rid of an incorrectly opened main parachute. Not an unopened one. This is to allow safe deployment of the reserve parachute.

On modern parachutes it won't actually get rid of an unopened main parachute. A main parachute that refuses to open at all is actually scarier than a poorly opened one, because it could get open anytime. Including after you have opened the reserve one. Then you have two parachutes open, and they can get into surprising unstable aerodynamic configurations (a downplane). And you can't easily get rid of an unopened main parachute.

Source: I learned skydiving this summer

Re: The red warning light on Richard Branson’s space flight

#212

Post by darkcha0s »

vultour wrote: post #194
darkcha0s wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>activation at too low a speed would cause the vehicle to break apart. A breathtakingly bad design for a spacecraft. I do hope you know that outside its designed flight envelope, almost any space craft / rocket / airplane breaks apart pretty fast.

It is very difficult, and often impossible with all systems operational, to get a modern airliner outside of its flight envelope. I'd imagine a tiny glider with a rocket bolted on is a different story.

Most probably because that tiny glider with a rocket bolted to it, is pushing more / has more dangerous limits than a subsonic airliner. It's much faster to go outside the designed flight envelope if you're 3x supersonic at FL800 than cruising subsonic at FL320.

Re: The red warning light on Richard Branson’s space flight

#214

Post by Felz »

Kliment wrote: post #209
monocasa wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm, that certainly colors a rumor I've heard about Apple. That they'll have two or three teams compete on a new product... but they won't tell the teams that they have competition until final demo day.

I cannot reveal the source or the company but a major household-name automotive company would have several teams working on projects, with one pre-selected as the "real" one and the others not told their work would be discarded. The idea being that this way you can multiply the size of each engineering team and starve the competition of competent engineers. The fact this system exists was not disclosed to the enginee…

It sounds like a more realistic motivation for that would be to reduce the risk of failure- if the primary team flubbed the project, the secondary team would still be an option. (Such a system would also give you an opportunity to judge how effective either team was.)

Awful thing to do to engineers, but you can understand why management would do it and why they wouldn't want to demoralize the secondary team by telling them.

Re: The red warning light on Richard Branson’s space flight

#215

Post by RegW »

jonplackett wrote: post #111

> And now they were accelerating to Mach 3, with a red light glowing in the cockpit. Fortunately for Branson and the three other crew members in the back, the pilots got the ship into space and landed safely It seems like we’re missing the crucial step of how it all turned out OK. 2 paragraphs earlier they’re saying how red lights ought to ‘scare the shit out of you’ and ‘it’s too late once it turns red’.

> It seems like we’re missing the crucial step of how it all turned out OK.

Pulled over, hood up, wiggled a few leads. Light goes out, hood down, back on the road, job done.

Re: The red warning light on Richard Branson’s space flight

#216

Post by tsukikage »

drno123 wrote: post #213
tsukikage wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, it beats eating horse dewormer.

You are aware that Ivermectin is FDA approved for human use?

FDA approves particular formulations of drugs for particular uses, generally in the context of being prescribed by a medical professional who understands when the treatment is appropriate and what the correct dosage should be.

To the best of my knowledge it has not approved people randomly going down to the pet shop and chomping down on the horse dewormer just because they've chosen to eschew interventions that actually help but also don't want to get scarred lungs and/or die.

But you don't have to take my word for it. Here's what the FDA has to say on the subject:

https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/why-you-shoul...

Re: The red warning light on Richard Branson’s space flight

#217

Post by bamboozled »

baud147258 wrote: post #208
bamboozled wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny too because no one cares,few months after the event and it’s all water under the bridge. People remember Yuri Gagarin, not these people.

I'd wager that if Branson had died on the flight, people would remember it

Yuri didn't die, everyone remembers it, I don't get your point.

Re: The red warning light on Richard Branson’s space flight

#218

Post by eplanit »

iab wrote: post #132
dimitrios1 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK. That's it! I draw the line at Guy Fieri slander! That's not fakery. That's every classic car owner's dream. You get to show off the hot rod and not put miles on it. I am sure he does plenty of joyriding in that thing. Guy is anything but phony. He is actually one of thee more wholesome dudes on television ATM. We need more Guy Fieri's.

Guy Fieri's character is unimpeachable

His hairstyle is annoying, and that's a fact. /s

Re: The red warning light on Richard Branson’s space flight

#219

Post by Kliment »

Felz wrote: post #214
Kliment wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cannot reveal the source or the company but a major household-name automotive company would have several teams working on projects, with one pre-selected as the "real" one and the others not told their work would be discarded. The idea being that this way you can multiply the size of each engineering team and starve the competition of competent engineers. The fact this system exists was not disclosed to the enginee…

It sounds like a more realistic motivation for that would be to reduce the risk of failure- if the primary team flubbed the project, the secondary team would still be an option. (Such a system would also give you an opportunity to judge how effective either team was.) Awful thing to do to engineers, but you can understand why management would do it and why they wouldn't want to demoralize the secondary team by tellin…

No, the work of all teams except the pre-selected real one was discarded and never passed on for evaluation. If you wanted to do it for real you would do it up front and ask them all to try different approaches and have rendevous points to compare and evaluate and exchange findings. I suspect that would be much better morale for all teams involved, but would require management to give up on their "chosen" team, and put some real effort into this, which they were not willing to do (and before you ask, yes, the "backup" team suggested this and got rejected, and then got the fuck out)

Re: The red warning light on Richard Branson’s space flight

#220

Post by Noumenon72 »

bnralt wrote: post #102
bee_rider wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole exercise was dumb. Flying up and then down on a rocket is a difference in degree, rather than type, from taking a ride on the Vomit Comet. Orbit -- half way to anywhere -- that's the accomplishment.

I also don't think people realize how close to the earth these people still were. Take a globe, hold your finger as close as you can to it without touching, and that's about as high as Bezos and Branson went. As you said, orbital is what matters, and a suborbital flight around the Karman line doesn't mean much.

For comparison, how high off the globe would orbit be?
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