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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

#631

Post by FredPret »

pdonis wrote: post #621
FredPret wrote: post #612

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, the casualty estimates are just for US soldiers and is likely low. They fough against Japanese troops with a kill ratio of between 1:1 and 1:20 (in favor of the Marines) so it’s easy to extrapolate massive US casualties when fighting the then 80 million strong Japanese on home soil. I don’t know much about the second point, so you may be right. Third, you have to look at stats, not emotions. Battle deaths - in…

> Battle deaths - in absolute terms and per capita - dropped like a stone after 1945. After rising like a rocket when WW II started. If you leave out WW I and WW II, it's not clear that post-1945 was more peaceful than pre-1914.

My original and subsequent posts were that the nuke made the world safer. Post-1945 battle deaths dropped to near-zero by comparison to pre-1945.

Even one battle death is too many but having them go down overall is very good.

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

#632

Post by RecycledEle »

hot_gril wrote: post #520
api wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve said for a while that we won’t be ready for the real space age until you can have a rusty pickup in space. What I mean by that is that we have it down well enough that the tech exceeds tolerances and can degrade gracefully. You see this in some sci-fi where there are rust bucket old ships that work.

We also won't be ready for the sci-fi-style space age in real life unless there's a use case for it. Imagine Star Wars except there's no life on any reachable planets, what would they even do with their spaceships? And Star Trek doesn't have "good old rust-bucket" ships in it, but the whole premise of it is that they found a way to move faster than the speed of light.

> a use case for it

Here are a few likely use cases: * in-space science * in-space R&D * in-space industry * mining small rocks (asteroids) in space * space-based power * military applications

Long-term, we may see terraforming planets and minor planets.

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

#634

Post by bamboozled »

openmarmot wrote: post #83
pixl97 wrote: post #68

What the hell, half melted starship actually did the landing flip and hit the ocean slow!!! That was amazing!

yeah that was absolutely incredible to watch. Starships fin was melting away like the terminator robot in the smelting pot but it still did its job. Absolutely excited about the future of humanity and spaceflight!

same

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

#635

Post by czl »

SamBam wrote: post #599
robbiep wrote: post #578

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Before World War I, Britain observed Germany's rapid rise and perceived it as a threat to its own global dominance. This situation is a classic example of the Thucydides trap, named after the ancient Greek historian who noted that when a rising power threatens to displace an existing great power, war becomes more likely. In this case, Germany's growing industrial and military strength was seen as a direct challenge to Britain's hegemony.

Germany, on the other hand, wanted to emerge as a stronger power than Britain while avoiding direct conflict. German leaders pleaded with Britain to remain neutral and not declare war on Germany. However, from the British perspective, war with Germany was deemed necessary to suppress its increasing power and maintain Britain's position on the world stage.

British leaders may not have actively sought to start a war, but they believed that confronting Germany was crucial to protect their national interests. See my reply to sibling comment with more details.

Today there is a similar situation with China being the rising power and America seeking to suppress it.

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

#636

Post by cryptonector »

cubefox wrote: post #587
mathsmath wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Getting it human rated is likely much harder than reusing the upper stage a couple of times. The difficulty is that Starship has 1) no launch abort system, and 2) the belly flop landing is much more dangerous than conventional and proven capsule based landing. To get the system human rated, they may have to fly tens or even hundreds of flawless cargo missions first.

Getting human rated for launching seems feasible. Getting it human rated for landing on Earth seems infeasible.

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

#637

Post by TaylorAlexander »

jstanley wrote: post #375
tim333 wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

It reminds me of the old photos of builders eating their lunch atop half-finished skyscrapers. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunch_atop_a_Skyscraper

They also did an homage to that in Westworld Season 3!

https://www.postapocalypticmedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2022...

Via: https://www.postapocalypticmedia.com/westworld-season-4-film...

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

#638

Post by wewtyflakes »

pfannkuchen wrote: post #562
stctw wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 longe…

> Western Poland and bits of other nations, sure

You say that as if it is meaningless. How about just not invading your neighbors?

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

#639

Post by parasense »

vl wrote: post #359
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…

What is even more impressive to me is that they were able to quite reliably stream all this through Starlink. This shows how mature and usable Starlink is. The fact that you can have live internet connection on re-entering space ship - truly the future is here.

Not to down play StarLink, but actually... this amazing impressive reliable video stream is capable from any orbiting satelite. What's different here is that Starship is so massively huge, something like several meters in diameter, like maybe 7~9 meters, or something like that. Anyhoo, that the interference from the plasma envelope... does not fully envelope the whole rocket. There is a bunch of surface on the backside of the rocket not subject to the plasma, which is something liek fire made of electrons stripped from their atomic nuclus, and so causes elctromagnetic effects. Since the plasma doesn't go all around, any satelite can communicate, not just Starlink.

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

#640

Post by mr_toad »

dylan604 wrote: post #501
bee_rider wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m probably missing something important here, but isn’t this true of most things that de-orbit into an atmosphere?

not missing anything, but it's just one of those things about how fast orbital speeds are. yes, i know orbital speeds are around 17,000 mph. this is just another example of just how fast that is. a lot of people might be familiar with falling objects speeding up to get to terminal velocity which is kind of a speed limit for normal things. for de-orbiting spacecraft, this is just another milestone of slow speeds to ac…

The boosters never achieve close to orbital velocity though, less than half if my memory is correct.
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