Last week I stood outside my apartment and watched Tiangong fly across the sky[0]. What an incredible time to be alive. [0] https://james.darpinian.com/satellites/
This is a fantastic website, thank you to whoever made it !!
As last module docks, China completes its space station
61–70 of 401 posts
Re: As last module docks, China completes its space station
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
That requires a truly astounding amount of material. Unless the cost to place it in orbit gets within an order of magnitude of our current terrestrial freight, it's not happening. Best bet is to construct these things in orbit, with materials sourced in orbit. But now you have a chicken and egg problem - need to send an incredible amount of material (and people) in order to (potentially!) save in the future.
Quoted post unavailable.
you’re so excited to destroy peoples lives and end the existence of species, and yet you think you represent the future…
Re: As last module docks, China completes its space station
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
I want a country to make one. Any country. I would gladly pay for a ticket for a week long stay on an aesthetic space station. You have no idea how badly I want to live in the kind of futuristic future depicted in science fiction.
> I would gladly pay for a ticket for a week long stay on an aesthetic space station. How much would you pay? Because the capital cost of building it was hand wavey thrown out as $500B and the operating costs of facility would be exorbitant. What do you imagine doing?
Staring out the observation bay for hours on end with my favorite mood music playing through my headphones. Then going for a spacewalk, before heading back inside and having dinner with my friends in the rotating orbital restaurant. After that, I'll play an online video games with Earth-based players. To conclude my day, I'll return to my luxury pod, lay on the side in bed while looking outside at the planet through the port window, a mere inches from my face, and let my dreams, and the low humm of the station's machinery, take me to sleep.
Re: As last module docks, China completes its space station
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, it does not. An uncaught error where you don't catch and gracefully handle errors in your promises is not the users' fault. It's sloppy workmanship.
I'm sure they'd be happy to give you a refund. :)
The point is not that one makes available one's site for free. The point is that the quality of the work is sloppy, price of said service notwithstanding.
There are many other ways to approximate a client's geolocation so as to prevent displaying an embarrassing error where one did not first check whether the object's property was truthy or not.
Justifying terrible UX by saying, "it's free," is a terrible strategy, tbh. Free shit is still shit.
Re: As last module docks, China completes its space station
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unfortunately it’s about $2,720 per 2.2 lbs in even the best case scenario.
How have you come up with this number?
>For a SpaceX Falcon 9, the rocket used to access the ISS, the cost is just $2,720 per kilogram.
https://theconversation.com/how-spacex-lowered-costs-and-red...
Re: As last module docks, China completes its space station
#66I hope mankind can move beyond building space stations as a handful of modular small cylinders, and start building space stations the way they appear in science fiction: dozens of rooms, cubical exteriors, hallways, human height doors that open and close, stairs, elevators, hangars, a nuclear reactor instead of solar panels, and modules that rotate around an axis to create artificial gravity. And a more diversified c…
While I too look forward to that day, at least for awhile longer due to physics, we are going to continue to have “rounded cylinders”. The main reason for this is very simple: Pressurized vessels. If you look at any type of air tank, and there is a reason they are a certain shape. The moment you do any type of “point” or “edge” it becomes a weak point in the design.
That said… you can always make a really large pressure vessel and put things inside…
Re: As last module docks, China completes its space station
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you're seriously overestimating Chinese economic capabilities. They are still constrained by the same economic realities as everybody else, and -- much as we wish it were possible -- they cannot afford to just do whatever .
"You can accomplish anything when you have vision, determination and an endless supply of expendable labor"
Presumably the problem there is that even a sea of expendable labour's useless, if what you need is a Von Braun[1]-esque figure and a paddling pool of engineering talent... .
[1] Korolev, Musk, &c.
Re: As last module docks, China completes its space station
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
We need a reason to do it first.
More habitable space, more luxurious accommodations, more energy generating capacity, more space for laboratory equipment and experiments.
More habitable space than the ground? Maybe some day but that would be a grim future indeed.
Re: As last module docks, China completes its space station
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
I want a country to make one. Any country. I would gladly pay for a ticket for a week long stay on an aesthetic space station. You have no idea how badly I want to live in the kind of futuristic future depicted in science fiction.
> I would gladly pay for a ticket for a week long stay on an aesthetic space station. How much would you pay? Because the capital cost of building it was hand wavey thrown out as $500B and the operating costs of facility would be exorbitant. What do you imagine doing?
> Because the capital cost of building it was hand wavey thrown out as $500B and the operating costs of facility would be exorbitant.
Yeah, estimated using the inflated cost of the ISS and other historic projects... give a tenth of the money to a private company not bound to political pork interest like NASA/ESA and they'll manage it just fine. Alternatively, give NASA/ESA free rein to do things the efficient way.
The problem at the root is that, historically, space access never was a plain "we need task X accomplished" - there always was the political interest of those with decision power to spread R&D and construction far across the country, so that everyone got a little piece (and every politician could claim of having brought jobs to their voters). That caused enormous inefficiencies - stuff needs to be shipped three times across the continent (look at Airbus supply chain, it's insane), there's an enormous amount of red tape and coordination efforts required, and turnaround times are insane. Meanwhile SpaceX has like two manufacturing plants and four launch sites and especially they manufacture a lot of what they need completely on their own so they don't have the typical delays you have with a classic vendor-supplier relationship, and they save on profit margins of all the intermediates as well.
Re: As last module docks, China completes its space station
#70I hope mankind can move beyond building space stations as a handful of modular small cylinders, and start building space stations the way they appear in science fiction: dozens of rooms, cubical exteriors, hallways, human height doors that open and close, stairs, elevators, hangars, a nuclear reactor instead of solar panels, and modules that rotate around an axis to create artificial gravity. And a more diversified c…
That will probably require finding an efficient way to extract building materials in space (possibly from the moon), moving those materials to where you want your station (probably a Lagrange point), and building with those materials. These are non-trivial problems.
Also solar is far more efficient in space, without any annoying atmosphere in the way, it makes perfect sense to use it there.