181–190 of 360 posts
I seriously do not understand why moon or mars landing structures aren’t some kind of dodecahedron. It can always correct itself after landing and then “unpack” itself. Someone tell me why we’re not doing this.
IMO, it’s probably just easier to have a few long pole extend so your base is absolutely enormous, no? Then again, I’m just some internet nerd lol.
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Which gives me great amusement about the current human spaceflight plan to land upright Starship on the moon, and lower astronauts from the top of what is effectively a tower-like 13-story building (52.1m without landing legs, at 9m tube width) using some kind of elevator solution. To put things into perspective, this is roughly the same height as the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and with landing legs extended probably abo…
I wonder what height you can safely jump from onto the moons surface?
That’s based on impact speed.
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Once upon a time a bunch of nerds failed 3 times in a row while launching small rockets from an atoll. Some 20 years later they are now 13k+ nerds, they're launching every other day, land their boosters and are slowly becoming an ISP with a rocket launching side business. Space is hard. There's nothing "embarrassing" in controlled landing on the freakin Moon with a shoestring budget, even if the landers fell over. Re…
> Once upon a time a bunch of nerds failed 3 times in a row while launching small rockets from an atoll Once upon a time most planes crashed. Then the state of the art advanced. If IM can’t publish a convincing root-cause analysis for why their landers keep tipping over while their competitors’ don’t, they shouldn’t get new contracts and existing ones should be revisited.
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You are likely aware of the English language's feature of multiple adjectives (that are modifying the same noun) needing to appear in a certain order to sound "correct". So for example "yellow big balloon" sounds wrong but "big yellow balloon" sounds right. This is because SIZE is supposed to come before COLOR in standard English phrases. In this case, "robotic" and "private" could be similar enough in category to be…
“Private” isn’t describing the spacecraft per se , but the ownership of the spacecraft. “Privately-owned robotic spacecraft” is the “full” phrase, of which we elide part of the adjective.[0] Here, “privately-owned” is ORIGIN in that list, which puts it before TYPE. [0] “Privately owned”, while on its own an adverb and verb, is functioning as a singular adjective in the larger phrase. Edit: Previously said “funded”, n…
I seriously do not understand why moon or mars landing structures aren’t some kind of dodecahedron. It can always correct itself after landing and then “unpack” itself. Someone tell me why we’re not doing this.
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> Make sure your robotic lunar lander has a low center of gravity. Hmm. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starship_HLS
Humans - and the mostly empty space they require - up top. Fuel, engines, and water will be at the bottom. (For practical examples, look at the F9 first stage, or the Starship prototypes they've already tested.)
It's so easy to design vehicles that can't roll over on their backs and die like a turtle. All you need to do is use large wagon-wheels and put the cargo/payload near the axles of it, where it doesn't extend above the top of the wheel. Then the device can continue to work as well upside down as right-side-up. In other words, it has no such thing as upside down. There are lots of robots like this now, where if they ge…
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The order of adjectives in English is usually: opinion, size, age or shape, colour, origin, material, purpose It is sometimes difficult to classify adjectives this way, but "private" is probably opinion and "robotic" is probably purpose, so you are correct, "private robotic spacecraft" is probably correct. The problem with English, of course, is that you can figure out what someone means, even if they jumble all thei…
CGEL gives this order: Evaluative > general property > age > color > provenance > manufacture > type [There's plenty of elaboration on what kinds of descriptors fit into each category. For example, artisanally handcrafted goes in the "manufacture" category, and the label "manufacture" makes sense for it, but the label "material" doesn't.] CGEL also correctly notes that this order only applies when all descriptors are…
Is probably either Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language from 1985 or The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language from 2002.
I have no idea which.