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SpaceshipTwo crashes shortly after Mojave test flight

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Re: SpaceshipTwo crashes shortly after Mojave test flight

#211

Post by ceejayoz »

termain wrote: post #204
marze wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"2. Like the sort used on Antares?" I think Paul McCartney was about 23 years old when the engines powering that Antares launch vehicle were fabricated in Russia in their race against the Americans to the moon. An antique liquid/liquid vs an inadequately qualified hybrid: no winners.

I think they're a little newer than that, but that's a good point. Still, I'm not sure either engine was inadequately qualified. I'm not sure what constitutes adequate qualification, though. Both engines were ground tested at least some. And in Virgin's case, this flight was one of tests.

> I think they're a little newer than that, but that's a good point.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NK-33 says the AJ-26 engines are from the 1960s and 1970s.

Re: SpaceshipTwo crashes shortly after Mojave test flight

#212

Post by noselasd »

atlantic wrote: post #95
revscat wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are getting downvoted, but I actually agree with you. Space travel is awesome, but so is living, and right now we are not living in a way that is sustainable over the short term. Space travel is, for me, an anachronistic hold-over from people who grew up with Heinlein, Asimov, etc., but is not something that is realistic given the environmental situation. Realistically, any vehicle that is dependent upon currentl…

Thanks. I expected the downvotes. But it breaks my heart that we have such a beautiful planet and we treat it like a trash heap, all the while dreaming of Mars and whatnot. Let's put our own house in order before we go off travelling.

"we" ? There's no we. There's just various groups of people. If one such group of Those same < 10 000 people probably doesn't know nor have the ability to fix all the problems on Earth, but they might be able to get to Mars.

Re: SpaceshipTwo crashes shortly after Mojave test flight

#213

Post by ninjaplease »

stcredzero wrote: post #207
ninjaplease wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you a professional quote maker?

It is a nice sounding quote, though it may have factual problems until you get to programs with large numbers of iterations. Speaking of which, your username was coined by a traditional drummer/singer friend of mine. Do you know her?

It is not a nice quote, it's douchey, reductionist, and mostly nonsense. What on earth does "costs are fixed" mean? I also did not realize there was an inverse relationship between "blood" and "treasure". Are we pirates?

In case you aren't trolling me, my snark was a reference to http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/in-this-moment-i-am-euphoric

I don't know your friend, but my username is pretty stupid, so if she wants to take credit for it she's 100% welcome.

Re: SpaceshipTwo crashes shortly after Mojave test flight

#214

Post by yongjik »

ceejayoz wrote: post #83
revscat wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are getting downvoted, but I actually agree with you. Space travel is awesome, but so is living, and right now we are not living in a way that is sustainable over the short term. Space travel is, for me, an anachronistic hold-over from people who grew up with Heinlein, Asimov, etc., but is not something that is realistic given the environmental situation. Realistically, any vehicle that is dependent upon currentl…

> Space travel is awesome, but so is living, and right now we are not living in a way that is sustainable over the short term. Space travel is fundamental to the human species living sustainably in the long term. Correcting greenhouse gasses doesn't help us if the next day we find a planet-killer asteroid is a few weeks away.

I don't think you fully appreciate just how difficult space travel is, especially the kind of space travel where you found a colony that will sustain itself after the Earth is hit by an asteroid. The required scale of technology/economy comfortably puts it in "at least several centuries from now, if we're incredibly lucky and/or devoted".

In this regard, the comment about CO2 is actually much more pertinent than it seems at first. If we manage to screw up the climate in this century (which seems very likely these days), inundating every coastal cities in the world, "sustainable space colony" will have to wait a bit longer. Much longer. If you're worried that an asteroid might hit us 500 years from now, you might want to rethink your priority.

Advancing chemical rockets now is important, but compared to the scale of space colony, it feels somewhat like producing better vacuum tubes to make sure (say) the US is the first to create strong AI. Any sane 50s US leader would have understood that "trying not to have a nuclear war with Soviet" is a much more important goal anyway: you can't fund AI research if your country is a radioactive wasteland.

Re: SpaceshipTwo crashes shortly after Mojave test flight

#215

Post by termain »

marze wrote: post #195
termain wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The most stupid thing they've done is stay with an experimental rubber/nitrous hybrid engine this whole time, instead of switching to liquid/liquid engine, a well proven technology." 1. They didn't stay with rubber/nitrous. 2. Like the sort used on Antares? "Seeing only the first paragraph, I already know that some rubber in the hybrid engine detached blocking the nozzle and causing the whole engine to explode." But…

"1. They didn't stay with rubber/nitrous." This you believe so strongly because a news story stated it? Wait for the accident report. It will say "rubber".

Aviation Week reported it back in May. So, yes. I'll keep an eye out for the accident report.

http://m.aviationweek.com/space/new-fuel-boost-spaceshiptwo

Re: SpaceshipTwo crashes shortly after Mojave test flight

#216

Post by htormey »

I am really sad to hear about this crash. In case anyone is interested in the technology behind SpaceshipTwo here is a brilliant documentary about Burt Rutan, Scaled Composites and the development of SpaceshipOne:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wz8wlcUPz90

The documentary includes a very touching interview with a test pilot.

Re: SpaceshipTwo crashes shortly after Mojave test flight

#217

Post by termain »

learc83 wrote: post #206
fnordfnordfnord wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>there's no need not in this day and age to have test pilots. Good point. What does the FAA say about unmanned rocket powered flight tests?

Not sure, but SpaceX has performed plenty of them.

Not so much over the US, though.

Re: SpaceshipTwo crashes shortly after Mojave test flight

#218

Post by codewritinfool »

tdicola wrote: post #89
DanBC wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apollo program, which was well managed and had no in-flight failures that resulted in loss of life The flaws in Apollo One were so severe the three crew died on the launchpad. Describing that tragedy as "no in-flight deaths" is accurate but misses some important information. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_1

Not to mention there were certainly other problems with Apollo like mission 13, or 11 barely landing before running out of fuel (computer problem forced Armstrong to take manual control and find a new landing spot at the last minute). Ultimately though Apollo was just too big and expensive a program to maintain, for better or worse.

Not exactly. The computer worked as designed. If they hadn't left the docking radar on, it would not have had any 1201 or 1202 alarms. A bunch of big rocks is why Armstrong took over.

Re: SpaceshipTwo crashes shortly after Mojave test flight

#220

Post by codewritinfool »

neurotech1 wrote: post #191
kashkhan wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there's no need not in this day and age to have test pilots. If they use computers, they can debug the engine in flight conditions by running maybe ten times as many test flights. Delays of months between flights are dangerous. Until you have a 1000-10,000 flights to build up operational data and envelope, this is a death trap causing unnecessary deaths.

Your forgetting the countless times that a test pilot has saved the aircraft/spacecraft from destruction. If it was unmanned and flown by computer, it would have been a fireball. At least one shuttle flight would have been lost if the crew didn't fly manually to correct for a malfunction. STS-4 PIO'd on landing and would have crashed if auto-stabilization wasn't overridden by the pilot.

The last of the ALT drops did this (with Fred Haise as PIC, IIRC), as did STS-3 back in 1982 at White Sands. I'm not familiar with the STS-4 incident at all. Do you have any links?
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