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Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico

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Re: Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico

#561

Post by pdonis »

FredPret wrote: post #541
xcv123 wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Conditional surrender would have been completely unacceptable given that they were the aggressor and had a million troops in China, and wanted to hold on to their conquests after the war. Even after the first nuke they didn't surrender. It took the emperor speaking up - for the first time ever - after the second nuke, and even then the military junta tried to stop it. Your points about the Communists stand, but keep…

> Even after the first nuke they didn't surrender. It took the emperor speaking up - for the first time ever - after the second nuke, and even then the military junta tried to stop it.

All this is true, but it's also true that the nukes weren't the only factor involved. A good case can be made that it was actually the Soviet invasion of Manchuria, which started at midnight local time on the same morning that Nagasaki was bombed, that gave the peace faction in the Japanese government enough leverage to get the Emperor to intercede. The Japanese still weren't exactly sure what the nuclear bombs were, and they had already been firebombed for months so having two more cities incinerated was not the huge change that later US propaganda made it out to be. But the Japanese had been trying for many months to get Stalin and the USSR to broker a peace agreement, and Stalin and Molotov had been stringing them along without any real intention of helping, to ensure that Stalin would have time to enter the war against Japan. The Soviet invasion of Manchuria shocked the Japanese government into realizing their true position and made surrender an urgent priority since Japan greatly preferred being occupied by the US to being occupied by the USSR. The nuclear bombs were a convenient way for the Emperor to save face and not have to admit that it was really the strong desire of the Japanese to surrender to the US and not to the USSR that drove the decision.

See the excellent book Racing the Enemy by Hasegawa for a detailed and thorough exposition:

https://www.amazon.com/Racing-Enemy-Stalin-Truman-Surrender/...

Re: Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico

#562

Post by pfannkuchen »

stctw wrote: post #406
amanaplanacanal wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firebombing whole cities in Europe and Japan is still a black mark in US history. It’s really hard for me to get “holier than thou” on other terror campaigns when I remember that.

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…

> where one side intends to conquer a continent or the world

I believe this view indicates you may have drunk a bit too much of the kool aid. Germany had zero ability to hold all of Europe longer term, let alone the entire world. This is a comic book tier view. Any end to the war would have had concessions and land transfers but there is no precedent to suggest that even France would have remained under Germany longer term if the Germans had won. Western Poland and bits of other nations, sure, but that is hardly an entire continent or world. The notion that they were a serious threat to occupy the US is hilarious and goes to show how effective the fear mongering propaganda was and continues to be to this day.

> The Allies did not initiate war and did not want war

England and France declared war on Germany, not the other way around. Arguably the whole thing could have been avoided if England and France hadn’t backed Poland, which would have likely caused Poland to negotiate on the original land bridge problem rather than dig their heels in. It’s eerily parallel to the situation with Ukraine today, in fact.

Re: Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico

#563

Post by panick21_ »

kemotep wrote: post #36

I am one of the people skeptical about Elon’s specific claims of Starships abilities specifically about his Mars ambitions. Today’s test, if the Starship reentry is as successful as the booster soft landing will be absolutely a great achievement and a 100% mission success. This demonstration keeps SpaceX on schedule for their part of the Artemis 3 mission. Keeping the mission parameters simpler (no “refueuling” or do…

I mean of course Mars colonization is crazy. Being skeptical is reasonable, even Musk himself is skeptical and gives it a low chance of success. But we know for sure we will not get there if we don't try.

That the ship in principle is capable of landing on Mars doesn't seem that crazy. They are designing with that in mind from the beginning. Again, that's difficult but very possible with current technology.

The more difficult problem would get to get the energy on Mars and the necessary water to do the chemical processing. But all of that of course is only even worth really investing in fully if you can get some significant payloads to the surface.

Re: Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico

#564

Post by panick21_ »

me_me_me wrote: post #156
kemotep wrote: post #36

I am one of the people skeptical about Elon’s specific claims of Starships abilities specifically about his Mars ambitions. Today’s test, if the Starship reentry is as successful as the booster soft landing will be absolutely a great achievement and a 100% mission success. This demonstration keeps SpaceX on schedule for their part of the Artemis 3 mission. Keeping the mission parameters simpler (no “refueuling” or do…

Anything Mars is pure BS. Just anything and everything. The one way trip to mars is orders of magnitude more complicated than moon. Keeping people from being riddled with cancer in 6months trip is not trivial. Landing and then what you plan a flag and die?

Maybe next time you could do some research before making a bunch of claims.

> The one way trip to mars is orders of magnitude more complicated than moon.

From an energy perspective its not that much more complex.

And from a living perspective, yes it is an order of magnitude, but guess what, the ship is also an order of magnitude bigger. Meaning that for a small crew you have enough space for training rooms, labs, living quarters and medical facilities and so on.

> Keeping people from being riddled with cancer in 6months trip is not trivial.

That's mostly wrong. The cosmic radiation isn't much of a problem.

The only issue is the solar radiation. And solar radiation is very low most of the time. That can be measured and if its detected, the crew can go into a radiation shelter for a while.

But its not like if they are exposed to solar radiation for a few minutes, they will grow cancers instantly.

> Landing and then what you plan a flag and die?

No. the plan is to send robotic ships first to deploy infrastructure. The atmosphere has useful stuff in it. And then you need to get water from the ice. With water and the atmosphere you can make rocket fuel and other useful materials, such as drinking water, plastics and so on.

Of course that requires development of methods to gather water and of course development of chemical or biological reactors to transform the material. We are pretty sure we can build that stuff technically speaking.

The other big issue is energy to run these processes. We either need a shit ton of solar or a deploy-able nuclear reactors.

Then you wait until the earth comes back around and fly back. And hopefully other people are arriving again. So you can continuously have an occupied base that you are building up over time.

The whole point of what SpaceX is trying to build is a railroad to Mars. The opposite of flags and footprints.

Re: Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico

#565

Post by panick21_ »

nialv7 wrote: post #365
cletus wrote: post #52

So I'm excited to see this tech develop but I wonder how much of a market there really is for super-heavy lifters. I can't wait to see a future version where they land the various stages rather than just dumping them into the sea. The first Falcon Heavy launch was super impressive. SpaceX already has the Falcon Heavy and there have only been a handful of launches, primarily military. I guess the argument is it'll ope…

> Won't someone make a fully reusable smaller launch vehicle that'll suit commercial needs? Rocket Lab is doing that.

Rocket lab is not building a fully reusable vehicle.

The only company building a fully reusable vehicle are SpaceX and Stoke Space.

Re: Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico

#566

Post by panick21_ »

cletus wrote: post #133
lazysheepherd wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Payloads are designed according to available spacecraft capabilities. When this thing flies, market will form around it in no time.

I'm skeptical because satellites, like pretty much any technology, tend to get smaller over time. I remember reading about how it was profitable for someone to buy up 4 geostationary slots and replace 4 satellites with 1 that was probably smaller than any of the 4 (because geostationary slots can be incredibly valuable). There are large bespoke payloads (eg JWST) but these are inherently so expensive anyway the launc…

> tend to get smaller over time

That's not accurate. In fact, currently the industry is going in the opposite direction.

The new space revolution start with cube sats and have now grown bigger. Starlink is the best example. Their v1 sats were small, v1.5 are bigger and v2 are even bigger.

There is lots of investment into bigger buses currently. K2 for example.

Re: Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico

#567

Post by magicalhippo »

ActorNightly wrote: post #514
magicalhippo wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried what you said in the most realistic simulator we have, Kerbal Space Program, assuming like you that a gentler approach would be better. And I learned that no, that most certainly is not better. What you need to protect is on the inside of the heat shield. Heat conduction is based on temperature difference and time[1] and the conduction of the material[2]. Since the heat shield tiles have a very low thermal co…

What happens if you do a geostationary deorbit? I.e straight down.

How would you do that?

Keep in mind that the object orbiting is already falling. Orbiting earth is literally "falling around the earth", compared to "falling down to earth" which we are more familiar with from throwing rocks and whatnot.

So to go "straight down" either it would need to orbit the sun (instead of the earth) and have its orbit intersect that of the earth, like the meteors we're worried about, or it would need to do a very strong deceleration burn.

Re: Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico

#568

Post by FredPret »

pdonis wrote: post #561
FredPret wrote: post #541

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conditional surrender would have been completely unacceptable given that they were the aggressor and had a million troops in China, and wanted to hold on to their conquests after the war. Even after the first nuke they didn't surrender. It took the emperor speaking up - for the first time ever - after the second nuke, and even then the military junta tried to stop it. Your points about the Communists stand, but keep…

> Even after the first nuke they didn't surrender. It took the emperor speaking up - for the first time ever - after the second nuke, and even then the military junta tried to stop it. All this is true, but it's also true that the nukes weren't the only factor involved. A good case can be made that it was actually the Soviet invasion of Manchuria, which started at midnight local time on the same morning that Nagasaki…

This is an excellent point. This is why it was necessary to beat the Germans first - so the Russians could invade or at least threaten Japan.

Even so, a land conquest of Japan would have cost vast numbers of lives - far more than the nukes.

When people die one by one in war, the emotional impact is blunted. But when a million die in one bomb, it seems much worse, even if the overall body count is lower.

Re: Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico

#569

Post by dumpsterdiver »

somenameforme wrote: post #344
bearjaws wrote: post #3

The rate of descent is absolutely astonishing, 8km -> 1km in 20 seconds, then just hovers above the water. Absolutely incredible work by the SpaceX team. Living in central Florida I cannot wait for the new launch facility to come online. We're going to have lines of spectators into the space coast like we did for the shuttle. If any of you are heading to Disney World you should stop by the NASA Kennedy Visitor Comple…

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…

Not to mention the sight itself is much less notable than the sky-tearing pressure waves you experience when you’re on-site. As soon as those engines fire up it’s very obvious why it’s so much different from watching it on a screen - the sound. The sound is so immense that it almost acts as a sort of audio silhouette that reveals the curvature of the earth if you listen closely enough.

Re: Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico

#570

Post by vitiral »

cletus wrote: post #52

So I'm excited to see this tech develop but I wonder how much of a market there really is for super-heavy lifters. I can't wait to see a future version where they land the various stages rather than just dumping them into the sea. The first Falcon Heavy launch was super impressive. SpaceX already has the Falcon Heavy and there have only been a handful of launches, primarily military. I guess the argument is it'll ope…

Why build the transcontinental railroad when there's hardly a market for it?

- dude on the internet in the early 1800s

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