111–120 of 539 posts
Unkind quotes, but hilarious and probably well deserved: "SLS looks like someone started building a Space Shuttle and ran out of legos for the orbiter" "But on top of this monster sits a second stage so anemic that even its name (the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage) is a kind of apology." "the minds behind SLS achieved a first in space flight, creating a rocket that is at the same time more powerful and less capab…
Destin from Smarter Every Day gave a talk that addresses a lot of these issues that I found pretty interesting too. https://youtu.be/OoJsPvmFixU
NASA is excellent at its job. You just have to accept the fact that in 1969, NASA's job was putting astronauts on the moon, and in 2024 NASA's job is distributing taxpayer money to various places that don't deserve it. They're damn good at their job.
White House corrects NASA chief on Muslim comment
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said on Monday that NASA administrator Charles Bolden was wrong to say that reaching out to the Muslim world was a top priority of the U.S. space agency.
Bolden raised eyebrows in the space community and outrage among conservative pundits by telling Al-Jazeera television recently President Barack Obama had instructed him to work for better outreach with the Muslim world.
He said Obama told him one of his top priorities was to "find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math and engineering."
Improving relations with the Muslim world was a top foreign policy priority for Obama on taking office last year and he delivered a major speech on the topic in Cairo in June 2009.
The White House last week sought to clarify Bolden's comment, saying Obama wanted NASA to engage with the world's best scientists and engineers from countries like Russia and Japan, Israel and many Muslim-majority countries. That failed to end the controversy.
Gibbs, at his daily news briefing, was asked why Bolden had made the comment. "It's an excellent question, and I don't think -- that was not his task, and that's not the task of NASA," Gibbs said.
Many in the U.S. space community, such as moon astronaut Neil Armstrong, are disgruntled by Obama's proposals to bolster support for private space companies and abandon an over-budget NASA moon program.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The lack of bladder seems directly driven by the cryogenic temp. Whats stopping you from using large (or many) bladders for warm fuels? I don’t see the hard problem of “hunting” for fuel in a rigid container. Yes you need ullage, but how is this worse than what you need typically to feed an engine?
I'll defer to people who know more about rocket design about why you couldn't have a huge stretchy bladder holding RP-1 (for example) in a rocket stage. The problem with hunting is that a liquid/gas system forms a bunch of weird intermixed 3D blobs in microgravity. You either need to accelerate the docked rockets (so the liquids pool at one end) or you need some apparatus to separate liquid and gas in microgravity. B…
Do you mean you have a cite to this claim? Would love to read.
> You either need to accelerate the docked rockets (so the liquids pool at one end)
Right, this is what I was referring to as “ullage”.
> Engines never have to worry about the microgravity case, there are always ullage motors
My point was that standard ullage motors can and will be used by SpaceX for the transfer. Why do you think this is harder than the fairly standard case of starting an engine in microgravity?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
No idea if they did or not, but one immediate issue is that if anything does go wrong, now you have a nuclear incident as well as a tragedy.
I still remember the fears of Cassini. What a different world it would be if that Earth fly-by* fucked up * edit I knew I got it wrong the first time, it’s not a transfer
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'll defer to people who know more about rocket design about why you couldn't have a huge stretchy bladder holding RP-1 (for example) in a rocket stage. The problem with hunting is that a liquid/gas system forms a bunch of weird intermixed 3D blobs in microgravity. You either need to accelerate the docked rockets (so the liquids pool at one end) or you need some apparatus to separate liquid and gas in microgravity. B…
> I'll defer to people who know more about rocket design about why you couldn't have a huge stretchy bladder holding RP-1 (for example) in a rocket stage. Do you mean you have a cite to this claim? Would love to read. > You either need to accelerate the docked rockets (so the liquids pool at one end) Right, this is what I was referring to as “ullage”. > Engines never have to worry about the microgravity case, there a…
No, I mean that I have a handwavy explanation for why you can't put 500 tons of kerosene in a big stretchy bladder inside your rocket, but I'm hoping that someone who knows more about rocket design than I do will comment here.
> My point was that standard ullage motors can and will be used by SpaceX for the transfer. Why do you think this is harder than the fairly standard case of starting an engine in microgravity?
Because the motors have to run for much longer (many minutes instead of a few seconds) and the mass distribution of the docked system is rapidly changing during that entire time.
We are going to The moon for two reasons. First, we want to set up a more permanent base. Nasa refers to this as "we're here to stay" The second reason we are going to the moon so that we can put the first person of color and the first woman on the moon. That is explicitly an Artemis mission purpose. Only time will tell if either of these two missions were actually worth it. One more point > Early on, SLS designers m…
> That is explicitly an Artemis mission purpose.
Where does it say that?
Finally someone is saying it like it is. Sadly this someone isn’t a bigwig at NASA. NASA still can’t take humans to/from orbit on its own. To believe that in 18 months we’re going to have a successful lunar landing is batshit grade insanity.
Why not, if NASA outsources 100% of the actual operations? Find reasonable contractors (for certain values of "reasonable" that would match SpaceX), give them attainable goals, provide the money, provide publicity, and otherwise stand back and do not interfere. For extra credit, provide some scientific mission spacecraft and rovers, the things NASA us actually quite good at. Key bureaucratic feat: keep Boeing away. 1…
Finally someone is saying it like it is. Sadly this someone isn’t a bigwig at NASA. NASA still can’t take humans to/from orbit on its own. To believe that in 18 months we’re going to have a successful lunar landing is batshit grade insanity.
I don't think you're reasoning is actually sound here. Nasa doesn't have the capability today, but that does not mean that the capabilities that they are building for tomorrow are "batshit Insanity". This is a very silly take.
IDK why 81 year old Poli-sci major, attorney, and ultimate NASA executive decision maker Bill Nelson wasn't forced out of office after he incorrectly explained to Congress that the far side of the moon is always dark https://youtu.be/daZyPwCQak8?si=n9KXH-LJFBlpKXUp&t=153
Like it or not, the job of the NASA administrator is not to actually do science or engineering, it is to fight for the agency’s budget with the President and Congress—a job for which political schmoozer extraordinaire Bill Nelson is eminently qualified, much more so than “real astronaut” Charlie Bolden, who struggled in this role despite being the epitome of the hypercompetent NASA pilot. I know which one I want at t…