521–530 of 899 posts
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I've got the black and white arty photo as my lockscreen which gives you an idea https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/E46BxzjjUkpthVBNE6k8mn-192...
My desktop. My login screen is two Falcon heavy side boosters landing.
It still almost doesn’t look real.
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You have to be careful how much wisdom you glean from fiction. The sheer hostility of space kind of precludes the "she's a good ol' ship" trope. When your door doesn't shut on your pickup, you can bang on it a bit. When your door doesn't shut on your spacecraft, you've got a ship full of corpses that look like a blob fish brought up from the Marianas Trench.
Everything's relative. People a century ago would probably have felt uncomfortable at the idea of DIYing a multi ton vehicle being accelerated by a extremely high power pistons pounding up and down thanks to creating a controlled explosion inside a tight little box, that you can then hop in and cruise around at 80MPH+. And indeed if something goes critically wrong, you're dead. We just work to reduce the number of wa…
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Why is that one implementation detail notable? Is it also notable that Starship's main engines are unused at launch? I realize re-lighitng main engines is novel but it isn't unique and even if it was that doesn't make the up-thread claims any less inaccurate. Shuttle was a reusable orbital vehicle with multi-day endurance capable of hypersonic reentry. Falcon 9 is not that.
I guess it implies that all major systems are still fully operational after re-entry. The engines still work etc. So in theory you could just refuel and send it back up.
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Except Google is making money on it too by serving the ads.
It's crazy that Google doesn't prevent those videos. It can't be that hard to detect and block.
I marvel every time I see people on HN talking about being served ads on youtube videos or elsewhere. You would think here of all places adblock would be standard.
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I'd really expect SpaceX to have more cameras, and to have some shielding - maybe so that cameras would get open shields at different points in flight, so they'd be protected before that. We only saw left-back flap, I suspect there's a camera looking also on right-back flap, maybe towards the engines section too. SpaceX is known to have rich telemetry, that would be awesome to see.
They had at least 3 (I think 4 but there were 3 visible at once) different camera's on the upper stage I think they also got destroyed though and the melting fin was the most interesting thing they could show so they just stayed with it. As neat as the idea of different shields is that's a whole extra layer of weight and controls for a non critical thing so I'm not surprised it doesn't happen.
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It's easy to say that now. Have you lived through unrestricted, total warfare, where one side intends to conquer a continent or the world, invades without provocation, and won't stop until brought to submission through extreme force? The Allies did not initiate war and did not want war. How many of your country's people should you sacrifice to end a war of aggression started by the enemy? Should you not use the means…
> Allies did not initiate war and did not want war. An argument made that WW2 was continuation of WW1 and that WW1 was wanted by British leadership who were locked in an arms race with Germany that they could not sustain much longer and wanted a war with Germany while they were ahead so the assassination that triggered WW1 was the pretext tobstart WW1. If you disagree please try to answer why leaders are regularly as…
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The 'worst' thing about watching space launches on streams is that you simply cannot grasp how ridiculously huge these things are. Even if, like in the stream today, you see a water tower for some scale, the size discrepancies just make it so hard to intuit. Starship is 121 meters high. That's something taller than a football field, jetting off into space! I've only gotten to see a decommissioned Space Shuttle in per…
I only live close enough to be able to see Enterprise, which didn't go to space, but I like to go there at least once a year, just because seeing the sheer size of it and knowing that all the Shuttles were like that is inspiring (the SR-71 helps too). I'm planning a trip to the space coast when family visits next year though.
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> It's pretty trivial. Put mass in between you and space. Seems like you quite confident. So go on. Expand on that a bit... its trivial after all. You will teleport all that mass to ELO? Or use tracker beam to capture asteroid and space mine it to smelt shielding. I am super curious how you solve it trivially. edit: You downvote but dont explain this trivial solution. Am I asking too much? Calling someone out to expl…
Many basic materials, like water, make great shields if necessary. For Mars one plan is simply to organize the ship such that the water reserves can act as an radiation shield when necessary. You don't need anything particularly massive or overly fancy.
Folks on Mars is still quite a ways away. Not impossible or pointless by any means but it will require significant advancements in many domains before we can really do it safely.
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It's easy to say that now. Have you lived through unrestricted, total warfare, where one side intends to conquer a continent or the world, invades without provocation, and won't stop until brought to submission through extreme force? The Allies did not initiate war and did not want war. How many of your country's people should you sacrifice to end a war of aggression started by the enemy? Should you not use the means…
Japan was already trying to negotiate conditional surrender when Hiroshima and Nagasaki were nuked. The US demanded unconditional surrender, and they nuked hundreds of thousands of civilians to force that demand. The bombing of Dresden is arguably a war crime by todays standards. It was unnecessary. Remember that we were allied with the Soviet Union (Joseph Stalin was the "good guy" on our side). After WW2 he was giv…
And yes. Stalin was a bad guy and it's a pity the war didn't end with the demise of both the Nazi and Soviet regimes. This is also irrelevant to the matter of strategic bombings perpetrated by America and Britain.