271–280 of 455 posts
SpaceX just posted this video of the last test. It's one of the most inspiring things I've ever seen. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hI9HQfCAw64
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I find the experience of watching these SpaceX videos very emotional. There's something really inspiring both from an "exploring the universe" perspective and also just from the human side of all of the effort that went into them. The first video that really got to me was when they landed multiple boosters. This one as well, especially seeing the rocket take off with every booster firing when compared with the first…
This kind of thing is why I got into engineering in the first place. There's so much more to it than money.
Can someone give me sources for how to debunk this? https://youtu.be/75a49S4RTRU?si=dcGFgcIWNz3nDwxw For me, it’s compelling but I’m no expert. Anyone got any background that can prove this guy is wrong?
I think he is probably right, if you think of Starship has a government-paid program to produce a moon lander. The Starship program has blown though the NASA money to produce the basic version (but not yet the additional money agreed for a more advanced design), but has yet to deliver on any of their contracted goals. So by its own contract, it is just about to be over-budget, behind schedule, and thus a failed proje…
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I think it's a cool achievement, but for some perspective NASA first did a vertical rocket ship landing without chopsticks decades ago. And the whole point of this thing was to do that on the moon, which is never going to happen at this rate.
NASA Landed on the moon in the 60s with an abacus. SpaceX can’t get out of low Earth orbit.
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This video has such a "what if" quality about it. I had to keep reminding myself it's all 100% real. That, and the falling booster ~really looks like a cigarette butt.
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It's like the US in a decade. (I have been to both and would rather spend a week in Cape Town than Chicago for example)
Really? Cape town has a homicide rate of: 63.00 per 100,000 Compared to Chicago: 29.60 And similar crime and violent crime rates.
But yeah, comments like the above are bizarre. Moving to SA is relatively easy, I lived there myself. If it's so great as some foreigners online seem to think, why don't they give it a try? Why do educated people and skilled workers generally move in the opposite direction and leave?
Of course, there's stuff like this:
https://www.news24.com/news24/southafrica/news/american-tour...
https://www.iol.co.za/capeargus/news/witnesses-testify-in-ca...
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/doctor-murde...
https://www.iol.co.za/capeargus/news/american-tourist-stabbe...
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I think the economics of space are are much more likely to be transformed by something like https://www.longshotspace.com/ . Rockets are complex, still costly, and polluting.
The problem with space guns is you can't just yeet rocks into orbit. Any orbit that starts at the surface returns to the surface. So you still need a disposable rocket and avionics and fuel in every payload to change the orbit once out of the atmosphere. Only now the rocket needs to survive being literally shot out of a gun and then traveling at orbital velocity in atmosphere. That puts a pretty high floor on the cos…
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Is there such a need for a heavy launch rocket to launch routinely?
SpaceX already launches multiple times per month just to maintain Starlink. That will be much cheaper with Starship while enabling larger and more capable satellites. In fact, it's likely that one of the reasons SpaceX built Starlink is to create their own customer (and spur competitors) to plausibly use a significant fraction of Starship's capabilities. None existed at the time. In the near term the biggest reason t…
Require, or just make comfortable? Saturn V had the lift capacity of "only" a couple of Falcon Heavies, but was enough to carry astronauts, a car, a lunar lander with enough fuel to take off, and a command module.
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Is there such a need for a heavy launch rocket to launch routinely?
Needs tend to develop once the means are there. 200 years ago, there was no need to use electricity. 100 years ago, there was no need to use a programming language. 30 years ago, there was no need for gigabit wireless Internet.
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Not into space things and while this is cool i wonder what the great significance of this is? I see lots signaling how great this is and it's lost on me.
Consider ocean-going freight transportation: the container ships and the containers, the port facilities and the cranes. Now imagine that you were able to witness the very first round-trip sailing of such a container ship between two newly constructed still-experimental-and-heretofore-unproven ports. That'd be pretty cool right? The dawn of a new era in global trade. This is that, for space. (Booster as container shi…
Why is there a port here? Because of the unusual tidal pattern? Deep water? No. People. The other reasons are reasons to put the port here maybe in particular rather than a few miles in either direction, but the people are why there's a port. In 1024 there were thousands of people, today perhaps closer to half a million depending on how you count.
There are no people on Luna, and no people on Mars. Visiting these barren rocks is like going up Everest.
This damp rock is where our species was born and it's where it will die. It's not much, but its ours, and there's nothing like it within any plausible travel distance.