191–200 of 264 posts
Wonder if the boat didn't stray into the restricted area yesterday, things would have been different? I know we might never know but I did wonder if the draining and refueling the fuel caused an anomaly somewhere and lead to this? Such a big loss for us.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"If you're failing, you're doing something right." I didn't think people said this and meant it. If you succeed, it means you've done the critical things right. If you're failing, it means that you didn't do something right. Or several somethings. Yeah, you can learn from it and do better, and that's great - but that doesn't mean it's a success. It's a failure and - in some cases - a chance to do better the next time…
Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm. -Winston Churchill Personally I think he meant that eventual success is often achieve by applying this strategy.
http://www.iyqk.com/v/very-expensive-fireworks-compilation-o...
More discussion on spacex reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/2km5vq/ot_orbitals_a...
Reddit thread is interesting. Pulled this off there... wow https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zl12dXYcUTo
Heartwarming to see how positive and forward-looking the responses here are. Certainly more positive than the responses towards India's (successful) Mars mission.
Using 50 year old Russian engines was a risky move on Orbital's part, but in fairness the NK-33's are a pretty amazing piece of technology. The US has still yet to build anything matching its performance: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NK-33 297 seconds of Isp is huge. The Saturn V's F1 engine only had 263 seconds. And the closest we've come since to that level of performance in a Lox/RP-1 engine is the Merlin 1D which…
"The US has still yet to build anything matching its performance" The Space Shuttle Main Engines had an Isp of 452s and 500,000 lb of thrust, easily the most efficient rocket engines ever built.
hydrolox engines have vastly superior Isp but come with their own set of limitations.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What exactly was he wrong about?
Well, if you can take 80% as a success rate at a quarter the cost per launch due to re-using old parts, and build that into your business model somehow (insurance, assurance, whatever and however it might be done), then maybe it can be viable as opposed to using new materials and expensive innovation to get a more reliable result at a higher cost. I'm not arguing for that business strategy; I think it would not be su…
More discussion on spacex reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/2km5vq/ot_orbitals_a...