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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

#591

Post by cubefox »

sebzim4500 wrote: post #362
rtkwe wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really wish the camera housing had held up to get a complete video of the fin being eaten away. I wonder if any of the other cameras got good footage too because they stayed on the camera with the obliterated lens for a long time which makes me think the others also fair pretty poorly. There wasn't much to see on the fin cam after the housing broke until right at touch down.

I think the only other external camera was on the fin that disintegrated, so I wouldn't have high hopes. They will have had internal cameras pointed at the structure looking for hot spots, and presumably those will have been fine

"will have had", "will have been" - amazing construction

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

#592

Post by lsh123 »

cletus wrote: post #299
jwells89 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For one, Starship+Superheavy will enable launching of large objects like space telescopes without forcing object in question to be engineered with expensive, delicate, failure-prone folding mechanisms (like the James Webb Space Telescope was). Just build the thing as big as it needs to be and launch it in its final form (aside from minor folding bits like solar panels). It could have similar impact on other scientifi…

So JWST has (IIRC) a 6.5 meter mirror once deployed and yes, it was a challenge to develop that tech. Plus it added risk of failure. The Starship Super-heavy seems to have a max payload dimension of 9 meters. I imagine some buffer is required (ie it won't just allow a static 9 meter mirror) but I could be wrong. So that's larger but not that much larger. Remember the JWST was a huge step up from Hubble's 2.4 meter mi…

Since for telescope what matters is the surface size of the mirror (light collected is proportional to surface which is proportional to r^2), the 9m telescope is ~1.9x better than 6.5m one. This is a big difference. Not even counting the loses from a non perfect alignment of a folding mirror compared to a fixed one.

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

#593

Post by don_esteban »

indoordin0saur wrote: post #357
me_me_me wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Ramsar, Iran has similar levels of background radiation as being on the surface of Mars. And people live completely healthy long lives there. Chronic low-level radiation isn't nearly as bad as we once thought. It's acute high-level doses or consuming radioactive substances that you really need to worry about. Mars really won't be bad at all with some easily implemented mitigation measures.

There are different types of radiation and body's response to them are different. Elevated levels of simple gamma rays (and maybe also protons) are reasonably tolerated - the body has mechanisms to recover from that.

However, a steady dose of relativistic heavy nuclei is entirely different matter. Gun wound vs bulldozed over. Cells have mechanisms for repairing local damage, even in the cell nucleus. However, a fact heavy nucleus wrecks so much that the repair mechanisms have no chance - a cell that got hit simply dies (or, at least, is never going to be able to divide again). The damage is cumulative, does not get repaired.

In game parlance: Gammas reduces your HP (that can come back over time, if the hits do not occur too fast). Fast heavy nucleus reduces your max UP. You are doomed, given enough time.

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

#594

Post by dragonsky67 »

mathsmath wrote: post #360
cryptonector wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Failure of the tanks would undoubtedly have been catastrophic. Partial failure of a flight control surface proved survivable.

It's also worth noting part of the craft flew (intentionally) without heat tiles, and another part with thinner tiles. They're gathering a ton of data to make it robust! Many of these engineers built Falcon 9, and I have a pretty high degree of confidence they'll shake out the issues. SpaceX operates very differently from traditional aerospace, so we'll likely see many more issues come up before Starship is human rat…

I love that they are deliberately tempting failures with the no and thin tiles.

In a lot of ways they will learn far more from the heat shield burn through around the flap(s) than they would have if they had been "lucky" and it had all gone perfectly.

You during testing you want things to fail, that is the point of testing. If it's all successful you only learn that under those conditions your design works, but if it fails, you learn another way to not do things.

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

#595

Post by incompatible »

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…

WW2 became a world war when Britain and France declared war on Germany. Of course, they could have stood back and let the Nazi's carry out their plan of annexing Eastern Europe, but they drew the line at Poland.

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

#596

Post by me_me_me »

somenameforme wrote: post #383
me_me_me wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

1m3 of water weights a metric ton, do the astronauts stay in a broom closet for duration of the flight? You still need (literally) tons of water.

And every ton you take increases fuel cost.

Currently you need what 10-20 trips to fuel for moon. How many trips would you need to fuel trip to mars? You would need a fucking conveyor belt of starship to prep the mission. Who is going to pay for it? And why?

Just because the materials for shielding/tools are simple it doesnt make the solution simple.

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

#597

Post by cubefox »

thegrim33 wrote: post #175
me_me_me wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

"Keeping people from being riddled with cancer in 6months trip is not trivial." It's pretty trivial. Put mass in between you and space. It's already been researched to death and we have many years worth of data about the subject.

That helps with solar radiation, but interstellar radiation comes from all directions, so you would need an enormous amount of mass to shield the astronauts. Not really practical on a rocket that is very constrained in its payload.

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

#598

Post by computerdork »

avmich wrote: post #304

The 4th Starship test flight was absolutely great test, which really pushed the state of the art - both in general (after all, Starship 2nd stage is 1.5-2 times heavier - when empty - than a Space Shuttle returning from orbit) and specifically for developing the Starship as a robust launch system. Regarding return from orbital (and above) velocities - there was a flight ( https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/irdt-freg…

The Orion capsule (in 2022) used atmospheric bounce during reentry to cool off the craft:

https://www.livescience.com/orion-capsule-lands-in-ocean

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

#599

Post by SamBam »

robbiep wrote: post #578
lupusreal wrote: post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Listen, while I broadly agree with your grander point (Britain wanting a war with Germany and taking any excuse given for it) your argument for this is flatly moronic; the assassination of the archduke was not Britain's pretext for entering the war! That was Austria-Hungary's pretext for invading Serbia. Britain's pretext was the German invasion of Belgium. Read a fucking book.

The chamberlain government would like to disagree with wanting a war with Germany

WWI, not WWII. But I agree with the larger point that Britain was not looking to start a war, and was absolutely not the cause of the war.

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

#600

Post by cubefox »

panick21_ wrote: post #565
nialv7 wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

And Stoke Space is pursuing a very ambitious design. I expect funding will be a major problem for them.
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