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How to start a rocket engine

everydayastronaut.com

111–120 of 137 posts

Re: How to start a rocket engine

#111
post #2

I could watch stuff like this all day. Tim's stuff is so great. Easy to be jealous of, since being YouTuber seems easy, but to make quality content, it really can't be. And then he's going around the moon, it's really mind blowing to see the success he's had. His interviews with Musk are a treasure trove as well, whatever you think of Musk.

> whatever you think of Musk Musk is a clown but I'll give him one thing: he cares about technology. That's something that very few modern CEO in big tech have and probably gives him the edge in making his project successful.

> Musk is a clown but I'll give him one thing: he cares about technology.

His hot takes on software / software architecture have been disappointing[1], and made me question the validity of his assertions in domains I have no expertise in (rocketry, computer vision and manufacturing).

1. Also, he wants to remain in charge of "Servers and Software" at Twitter even after (if?) He steps down as CEO.

Re: How to start a rocket engine

#112

I'm surprised at the amount of people who enjoy EDA. I find him very irritating. Most people at my small space company find him extremely irritating. He is not a rocket scientist. He parrots silly buzzwords like "biomimickry" like a fanboy, not an engineer. He suggests things to Elon for how to do rockets that are just pants-on-head dumb. His blind fanboyism and arrogance irritate so many people who work in space. I'…

HN is mostly software devs, as someone in the bio sciences whenever I see comments about my field they're nearly always wrong unless another person in the field is commenting which isn't very often. It seems like software devs like to think they understand things when it's just barely surface level knowledge, I don't know why

I decided people are just having fun and it's nothing serious just water cooler chat and distraction before going back to work.

Subject: Something quantum mechanics.

Comment: "I'm not a physicist, but I think..." -- What do you think follows after such an opening? Exactly. It's fine though. I decided that the users decided that the site is at least 80% distraction and entertainment, and it still does so at a higher level than most others, so it's all good I think.

Re: How to start a rocket engine

#113

I'm surprised at the amount of people who enjoy EDA. I find him very irritating. Most people at my small space company find him extremely irritating. He is not a rocket scientist. He parrots silly buzzwords like "biomimickry" like a fanboy, not an engineer. He suggests things to Elon for how to do rockets that are just pants-on-head dumb. His blind fanboyism and arrogance irritate so many people who work in space. I'…

HN is mostly software devs, as someone in the bio sciences whenever I see comments about my field they're nearly always wrong unless another person in the field is commenting which isn't very often. It seems like software devs like to think they understand things when it's just barely surface level knowledge, I don't know why

I'm always surprised how quickly a thread than isn't software related nose-dives.

Me and my colleagues joke about the weekly HN thread of people misunderstanding some physics article, or posing a nonsensical solution to a "trivial issue within physics".

Re: How to start a rocket engine

#114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like this is a subtle jab pretty much nobody outside of serious aerospace enthusiasts is going to get. For those who don't know, right now there's sort of a competition for the 'next big thing' in rockets. Congress/Boeing/Lockheed have been working on the SLS or Space Launch System since 2011. It was expected to launch in 2016. It had its first trial launch in 2022, and is tens of billions of dollars over budg…

The SLS is mediocre but there are a few things to keep in mind: 1) NASA needs to keep in house rocketry expertise and the US government cannot rely on private companies 100% just for like NatSec reasons. 2) If NASA doesn't structure programs as pork barrel projects that make it difficult for small time senators to kill, they will constantly be nickle and dimed and have their budget slashed until their entire job is j…

1) The US government does rely on private companies 100%, SLS is built by Boeing, a private company. Being a private American company has very little issue when it comes to national security, just means you have them meet various requirements (eg only allowing US persons to work there and security clearance requirements).

2) Unfortunate that our system is so corrupt, but agreed. Fortunately there is also the Artemis approach of tying in so many international partners that it becomes a matter of national prestige.

3) I suggest looking up "The Falcon 9 Heavy may some day come about. It's on the drawing board right now. SLS is real.".

Re: How to start a rocket engine

#115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN is mostly software devs, as someone in the bio sciences whenever I see comments about my field they're nearly always wrong unless another person in the field is commenting which isn't very often. It seems like software devs like to think they understand things when it's just barely surface level knowledge, I don't know why

I decided people are just having fun and it's nothing serious just water cooler chat and distraction before going back to work. Subject: Something quantum mechanics. Comment: "I'm not a physicist, but I think..." -- What do you think follows after such an opening? Exactly. It's fine though. I decided that the users decided that the site is at least 80% distraction and entertainment, and it still does so at a higher l…

I think this is the good, level-headed approach.

I do wish there were active equivalents for beyond software development.

Re: How to start a rocket engine

#116
post #102
post #2

I could watch stuff like this all day. Tim's stuff is so great. Easy to be jealous of, since being YouTuber seems easy, but to make quality content, it really can't be. And then he's going around the moon, it's really mind blowing to see the success he's had. His interviews with Musk are a treasure trove as well, whatever you think of Musk.

Did anybody else feel like the musk interview got really awkward towards the end? It seemed like he became really bored of it and just shut down.

Tim was trying to be too knowledgeable and not letting Musk shine enough.

I would be surprised if Musk gives him another interview any time soon.

Re: How to start a rocket engine

#117
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His audience is fanboys, not aerospace engineers. So it makes perfect sense. He may be a fanboy but that fanboyism got him a trip to the moon.

> His audience is fanboys SpaceX fans?

You can't be in the space industry or even a tangentially related aerospace sector and not be a fan of SpaceX. It's continuously been 10 years ahead of the rest of the industry. The entire industry did nothing but tread water for 50 years after Apollo despite massive technology and manufacturing advances. The space shuttle was one giant deadly 30 year step backwards.

SpaceX has an effective monopoly on low cost launches for a reason. The closest company to it in terms of low cost capability is Blue Origin which hasn't even been to orbit yet. No one but ULA or Roscosmos is close in terms of reliable either. The Space Industry would still be launching single use overpriced rockets to LEO without SpaceX revolutionizing it.

Re: How to start a rocket engine

#118
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

INT_MAX is usually 2147483648, which means a "power" figure in Watt can handle anything from a laptop CPU to a Chernobyl power plant. FLT_MAX and _MIN are e+38 and e-38 so couple digits over and under(within 32bit precision). Have you actually had that kind of unit confusion in metric, or inferring from your experience with Imperial system? It kind of just seems to reinforce suggestion that Imperial system having bun…

INT_MAX is assuming every variable is using a 32 bit integer which is not always the case. In my experience with flight control systems controls systems were focused on using the smallest variable necessary for a given variable. We had many variables that were only 8 or 16 bits. The processing overhead wasn't really the driving factor for smaller variables it was typically interface bandwidth which can be very limite…

So 32767 m/s is like not much short of twice the Solar system escape velocity…

Re: How to start a rocket engine

#119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like this is a subtle jab pretty much nobody outside of serious aerospace enthusiasts is going to get. For those who don't know, right now there's sort of a competition for the 'next big thing' in rockets. Congress/Boeing/Lockheed have been working on the SLS or Space Launch System since 2011. It was expected to launch in 2016. It had its first trial launch in 2022, and is tens of billions of dollars over budg…

The SLS is mediocre but there are a few things to keep in mind: 1) NASA needs to keep in house rocketry expertise and the US government cannot rely on private companies 100% just for like NatSec reasons. 2) If NASA doesn't structure programs as pork barrel projects that make it difficult for small time senators to kill, they will constantly be nickle and dimed and have their budget slashed until their entire job is j…

> NASA needs to keep in house rocketry expertise and the US government cannot rely on private companies 100% just for like NatSec reasons

Do they? Most national security work in space is under NRO and USSF, not NASA; neither of them build their own rockets but instead rely on commercial vendors.

The Army doesn't build its own rifles or tanks, the Air Force doesn't build their own fighters and bombers, and the Navy doesn't build their own ships. Operations is different from designing equipment; the only time it makes sense for the same organization to do both is when that organization is so far out on the cutting edge of innovation that they have to do both. (Ironically it's SpaceX that is in this position with regard to Starlink.)

NASA was in this position during the Apollo era. They aren't in this position anymore. It should have been a hint as early as the Shuttle era when they went and designed the Shuttle as (among other things) a satellite launch platform, only for commercial vendors to provide unmanned rockets as satellite launch platforms instead. As it stands now, NASA carries out a lot of scientific missions that don't have an immediate commercial application, which is a good thing for them to do but doesn't require them to design their own rockets.

Furthermore, it's not even fair to describe SLS as "in-house", since it's built by Boeing and Boeing is bidding the system for their own commercial contracts now. At that point it's just a question of which private company the government can rely on.

Re: How to start a rocket engine

#120
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whenever he drops a new video, I just look for the "Here's how Veritasium was wrong" videos to get the real story.

It’s pretty rough because those ‘you’re wrong’ videos are actually just as wrong as he was. The main issue is that these complicated topics are difficult to describe properly is a 20 min English video that has to be edited to be interesting. How electricity propagates is really complicated topic involving 3D vector calculus, for the EM waves. Most people don’t do electronic circuits by evaluating the vector field, th…

Can you link to a 100% correct explanation?

Can be in any format.

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