Earlier quoted context omitted.
Please don't ruin it ;-)
The Pan Am brand has passed through at least one or two low-cost regional airlines.
Yeah, but we don’t need a Make PanAm Great Again thing.
Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico
811–820 of 899 posts
Re: Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico
#812Earlier quoted context omitted.
No atmosphere would be much easier. There's enough energy in a Tesla battery to for the Tesla to reach escape velocity. If you could simply drive at max acceleration (and the car didn't fall apart, and the tires continued to have grip, and a million other reasons why this is impossible) eventually you'd reach escape velocity and still have some percentage left. In a more realistic sense, a long railgun type system wo…
Seems challenging to get decelerated by a rail gun, coil gun or such at the destination. You get one chance to get caught by it otherwise you crash and die.
Use a giant spring! When you land, aim for the spring, and charge it for the next launch!
Re: Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico
#813Earlier quoted context omitted.
Literally the only condition was that the emperor was preserved.
I think that was the condition they tacked onto the unconditional surrender xD I imagine there were more before that.
The last conditional surrender before atom bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that was the only condition. There were previous conditional surrenders. They wanted to drop those bombs though.
Re: Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico
#814Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
I think a century or longer ago, they wouldn't care. It was already pretty easy to fall off a horse and die.
I can't find the details now bit in the early 19th century an MP introduced a bill to parliament to make it illegal for trains to go over 30mph because in his opinion it would be impossible to breath at that speed.
Re: Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico
#815Earlier quoted context omitted.
Getting human rated for launching seems feasible. Getting it human rated for landing on Earth seems infeasible.
> Getting it human rated for landing on Earth seems infeasible. Why? For NASA, human-rating - for either Earth launch or Earth re-entry - requires a very detailed engineering analysis of probability of loss-of-crew (LOC), and then NASA has some maximum LOC probability they allow (for NASA Commercial Crew, both launch and landing it is 1-in-500, which is 0.2%-for whole of mission it is 1-in-270). That analysis is base…
> However, they don’t actually have to land it 500 times - all they need is an engineering analysis
That very analysis will include the fact that they have no launch abort system like normal capsule based systems and that the belly flop landing is much more dangerous than landing a capsule. Space Shuttle memories may come to mind. So the only realistic way to get the 1 in 500 confidence would probably be to really land hundreds of times for unmanned missions and not mess up even once. Granted, they may eventually get there, but I estimate this would take about two decades, if Falcon 9 is any indication.
Re: Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico
#816Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Incredible demo of great service. If you can get reliable video from space, it makes wifi on a commercial plane look like cakewalk. What will viasat stockholders think now?
As long as they stay sane and reliable they will have nothing to worry about. Internet connectivity is too important to rely on service that can be taken away without notice by one irrational angry tweet or xhit or whatever they’re called now.
Re: Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico
#817Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Western Poland and bits of other nations, sure You say that as if it is meaningless. How about just not invading your neighbors?
“The entire world” down to “half of Poland” may be the theoretically largest goalpost move possible (on Earth, anyway).
How about "don't invade your neighbors" to "half of Poland" itself being an absurd goalpost move? The default is to _not_ invade.
Re: Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico
#818Earlier 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'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.
This is funny because this flight once against demonstrated the unexpected, bleeding edge of live coverage of a launch. Nobody else even tries to make their cameras or network work on reentry. The camera we are discussing certainly had shielding because it survived reentry. The live view was blocked by buildup and cracking of the camera lens, not camera failure.
Why would you expect this? It's literally the bleeding edge.
Re: Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico
#819Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> To get the system human rated, they may have to fly tens or even hundreds of flawless cargo missions first. Each lunar flight implies four launches and three landings on Earth, so the numbers should build up rather quickly.
It's much more per lunar flight, but there are very few of those flights. About three over the next two decades.
Re: Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico
#820Earlier 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…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hirohito_surrender_broadcast
The emperor directly mentions the atomic bomb in his address; "Moreover, the enemy has begun to employ a new and most cruel bomb, the power of which to do damage is, indeed, incalculable, taking the toll of many innocent lives. Should we continue to fight, not only would it result in an ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation, but also it would lead to the total extinction of human civilization."
He only tacitly mentions the battle situation; "But now the war has lasted for nearly four years. Despite the best that has been done by everyone – the gallant fighting of the military and naval forces, the diligence and assiduity of our servants of the state, and the devoted service of our one hundred million people – the war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan's advantage, while the general trends of the world have all turned against her interest."