Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Crew-9 Returns to Earth

spacex.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

491–500 of 712 posts

Re: Crew-9 Returns to Earth

#491

Post by timewizard »

pavon wrote: post #365
ta1243 wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not without spin gravity. Imagine 5 years of weightlessness then having to get out on foot.

Travel time to Mars is 3-9 months depending on how fast you travel, probably still to early to know where a Space X Starship trip would fall in that range. The 5 years is referencing Musk's latest optimistic prediction for when the first manned flight would occur. Still, re-adapting to gravity on arrival will be an issue.

> is 3-9 months depending on how fast you travel

That particular launch window only occurs once every two years. The Earth and Mars rotate around the Sun at different rates. During some periods Mars is on the other side of the Sun and essentially unreachable with our current level of delta-v.

> latest optimistic prediction

Will that be before or after fully self driving cars? Or electric semis? That drive themselves in road trains? Will those astronauts have neuralink chips in their heads?

> re-adapting to gravity on arrival will be an issue.

It's 1/3 gravity. Then again, you're on a ship with no free return abort trajectory available, I'd worry more about medical emergencies, crew temperament, and actual crimes being committed.

Re: Crew-9 Returns to Earth

#493

Post by nailer »

MostlyStable wrote: post #473
nailer wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Elections are one way of selecting government officials. Authoritarianism is a political philosophy that can be pursued no matter how one was selected. Yes, many/most authoritarians arise either not in democracies, or else in situations where the elections are mostly/entirely a sham, but that is not a requirement. You could, at least in principle, have an authoritarian surveillance state where the government watches…

[flagged]

Re: Crew-9 Returns to Earth

#494

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #375
ta1243 wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seemed to all start going wrong with "pedo guy". Before then Musk was doing great things at Tesla and SpaceX. After that he started getting more and more unhinged, leading through to buying twitter, then trying to get out of it, then doubling down.

If Elon recognized that he had the social skills of an NPC and had hired a PR team, we would probably all still adore him and likely he would still just be doing engineering company stuff. Take heed, if you have money, power, and poor social skills, hire people to manage it for you.

This is more a consequence of doing all the drugs.

Re: Crew-9 Returns to Earth

#495

Post by euroderf »

aorloff wrote: post #470
sepositus wrote: post #415

Incredible story with a great ending. This used to be an apex HN discussion. It's so sad to see it devolve into a partisan flame war.

The notion of "apex HN discussion" assumes a kind of fealty to performative feuilletonism that I'm just not yet willing to submit to.

"Fealty to Performative Feuilletonism" is a great name for an art-punk group.

Re: Crew-9 Returns to Earth

#497

Post by iancmceachern »

indoordin0saur wrote: post #322
Animats wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Today, being a NASA astronaut is kind of a dud job. There are about 50 active astronauts at the moment, and not very many flights for them. Peak was around 150, in the Shuttle era. With 135 Shuttle flights, with up to eight people aboard, most of them got a chance to go up, usually more than once. Not today. Another astronaut comments on what the Crew-9 people can expect: "The returning astronauts will "struggle to w…

Flights to Mars in about 5 years though! I can't imagine how amazing it would be to be one of the first geologists getting out on foot and exploring those canyons, mountains, lava tubes and caves...

The geologists needed for this are currently being fired and loosing their funding. Yes it would be cool, if we valued science, engineering and mutual progress as a soceity. We're rapidly going down the Total Recall / Biff Tanner timeline, so it won't be the fun version of Mars.

Re: Crew-9 Returns to Earth

#498

Post by fooker »

sjsdaiuasgdia wrote: post #293
acdha wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think trying to fit things into a dichotomy of puff/hit pieces is actually obscuring the truth here. Eric Berger is a space flight enthusiast and so he covered SpaceX positively when they were doing good work there, but now that Musk seems to be interested only in playing political games rather than running his companies, there isn’t much positive to report: it’s not a hit piece, just the truth many SpaceX fans did…

Fundamentally, it's the "reality has a liberal bias" problem. Accurate reporting is interpreted as a political act because it disagrees with the "alternative facts" being presented by the right wing.

Yes, reality does have a liberal bias.

If you can write a one sentence definition of liberalism, and examine policies from first principles, you might be surprised.

Re: Crew-9 Returns to Earth

#499

Post by mlyle »

ethbr1 wrote: post #472
mlyle wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a long gallop. > If people in government are benefited directly or indirectly by fraud, that's literally included in the definition of corruption. Yup, that endpoint is fine and can be agreed with. People in government having a job doing something you think isn't useful isn't corruption, though. And if a few percent of the money their program spends is wasted or benefits other people through fraud-- that's not c…

Moreover, where do people think corruption comes from? The human desire to be richer and the power to make it happen. Do people think Trump, Musk, and Thiel don't want to be richer? And worse, that the poorly-vetted people who have attached themselves to this administration don't? The idea that getting rid of fraud in a chaotic fashion is going to lead to less fraud is laughable, unless the assumption is also 'All of…

Musk has talked explicitly about unwinding portions of NASA and replacing it with SpaceX to "improve efficiency."

Which honestly should happen to some extent (I'm not a fan of SLS). But we shouldn't become beholden to one vendor, and it's sure looking a lot more like removing options for the future and competition than a play for efficiency.

And anyone doing this for their own companies in the past would be a textbook example of corruption.

Re: Crew-9 Returns to Earth

#500

Post by fooker »

kergonath wrote: post #432
davidguetta wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Just what those political reasons were never specified. But the basic message was clear: Biden, bad; Trump, good" Bullshit. Musk was clear that the reason was that they didn't want someone pro trump having success so close to the election.

> Musk was clear that the reason was that they didn't want someone pro trump having success so close to the election. This makes no sense whatsoever. The election was in November. If that was their calculation, they’d just have cosplayed astronaut-saving heroes before Trump had an opportunity to do so, between November and January. Musk is full of it, as usual. It is not the first time some astronauts stay in space l…

> find a single reason

You started this response by explicitly ignoring that reason.

> it never was controversial before

It was also never the case that the US was launching ~two rockets per week.

Post reply on HN