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SpaceshipTwo crashes shortly after Mojave test flight

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Re: SpaceshipTwo crashes shortly after Mojave test flight

#221

Post by robryk »

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.

According to wikipedia, it was STS-3 that had (autoopilot-induced) oscillations during landing. The description on Wikipedia seems to imply that they were expected (the autopilot was being tested) and that the dangerous condition was due to the autopilot being left partially engaged after the test.

Re: SpaceshipTwo crashes shortly after Mojave test flight

#222

Post by sib »

JshWright wrote: post #54
JanSolo wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are right. Hybrid engines are not looking like the safe & reliable middle-ground between solid & liquid engines that they were made out to be.

"The best of both worlds" has an often overlooked twin sibling.. "The worst of both worlds"

"The only thing in the middle of the road is yellow lines and dead armadillos."

Re: SpaceshipTwo crashes shortly after Mojave test flight

#223

Post by seanflyon »

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.

Pilots can make manual correction remotely. It might not be optimal, but that is better than risking lives on the first flight of a new engine design.

Re: SpaceshipTwo crashes shortly after Mojave test flight

#224

Post by colordrops »

ghostunit wrote: post #202
mixmax wrote: post #23

What this weeks events show us is that space travel is hard. Really hard. Most systems operate in extreme conditions, sometimes bordering on the improbable. Thousands, sometimes millions of horsepower in an engine smaller than a car, cryogenic liquids at -200 degrees celsius cooling a nozzle that is 3000 degrees celsius 5 millimeters away, heatshields designed to absorb obscene amounts of heat, the list just goes on…

I find this dogma of "Eventually we will conquer space and make it accessible to all mankind" dangerous in the extreme to the actual, all-too-present predicaments we have here on real Earth such as climate change, environment devastation, fossil fuels/minerals/water depletion and the accelerating destruction of the web of life that makes possible your even being able to breathe. You are all prey to the "religion of p…

While we are off topic, this post is a fine example of "concern trolling".

Re: SpaceshipTwo crashes shortly after Mojave test flight

#225

Post by PavlovsCat »

ceejayoz wrote: post #149
atlantic wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we can't even save our own home world, there is every reason to believe that we will do damage elsewhere. That being the case, best to stay home until we grow up a bit.

I rather suspect fossil fuel usage, deforestation, etc. won't be an issue on Mars.

That's great; but Mars, and even the solar system, is not "the universe".

Re: SpaceshipTwo crashes shortly after Mojave test flight

#226

Post by seanflyon »

revscat wrote: post #94
ceejayoz wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

While true, it is also not as direct of a threat. CO2 is affecting us now , whereas asteroids, etc., are (thankfully) only possibilities. Serious ones, to be certain, but not immediately threatening. CO2 is a direct and immediate threat.

CO2 is a very real threat and we should be doing more about it. That said, the threat is neither direct nor immediate.

Re: SpaceshipTwo crashes shortly after Mojave test flight

#227

Post by zepolud »

cstross wrote: post #209
CamperBob2 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ethically speaking, sending non-sentient foreign organisms to an unknown planet that might already be inhabited falls somewhere between spamming and attempted genocide. No, thanks. I prefer to believe that this task is what our intelligence is for .

I completely agree with you on the spamming point. But disagree on the intelligence side ... Bacterial colonization is a useful argument for interrogating the "we must colonize spaaaace!" folks' intentions. I mean, why exactly must we colonize space? "Before the sun leaves the main sequence of the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram/the Earth is hit by a comet or irradiated by a GRB" is a meaningless argument. These events h…

Apart from the usual Manifest Destiny IN SPACE! crap, recently I've been a bit shocked to realize that there might actually be a point in trying to go to remote and harsh places.

The Antarctic being a barren wasteland makes it an attractive breeding ground for penguins precisely because it's so inhospitable to anything alive, penguins included. As long as penguins suck less at living in a barren wasteland than their predators it's a net benefit for them to be there, despite the hardships of the environment.

If we assume there is a group of humans that feel existentially threatened by other humans so much that odds of surviving in an irradiated subterranean Mars colony beat the odds of being exterminated here on Earth, it would be a perfectly rational choice for them to try and move somewhere out of reach.

There are lots of potential scenarios why such groups might come into existence, and not all of them involve outright genocide. For example, a group could form just as a result of concerned citizens wanting to go to some place very, very remote once kids start playing Pokemon with their newfangled RNA synthesizers.

Re: SpaceshipTwo crashes shortly after Mojave test flight

#228

Post by larrys »

fidotron wrote: post #186
dennisgorelik wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it cheaper to pay by adding extra complexity into legal contracts, extra labels, and extra training across organization vs just paying up for fixing the consequences of an outlier accident?

The point is beyond an unintuitively small size outliers become practical inevitabilities. This isn't black swan stuff either, but just simple percentages. If you're a small company you generally get to deal with each and every case, and do risk assessment up front on an individual basis. When you're big you're doing enough jobs to standardise those assessments (getting the economies of scale going), processes, and a…

"when the supporting bureaucracy has lost track with reality"

That's really the key point actually. Things become self perpetuating without anyone even questioning if they are still even necessary.

That said most people don't read contracts (at least most consumers) so in a sense and in certain situations it pays to stuff as many things in there as possible.

What's interesting is how many risky situations you enter into with potential liability where you don't sign a contract.

For example nobody signs a contract to eat a meal at a restaurant. You don't sign away your right to sue if the food is bad or if the meal isn't delivered on time. The car company that sells you a car doesn't require you to sign a contract with them the dealer of course has a sales contract which is different. Car company is big enough to not really have to go that route. They know they don't need a contract to protect against the little things and with a big thing it doesn't matter.

Otoh an electrician just quoted a job to me for under $800. And he sends me this long involved contract (that no doubt he copied from another electrician) which really isn't necessary for this type of job.

I remember when a developer I hired to do work started many years ago. It was a $60k job. Long and involved contract. Ended up signing it (needed the work had no choice). Well we are still doing business 12 years later. But it evolved into a handshake. Nothing in the contract says he has to take my call at 11:00pm on a Saturday night but last weekend he did just that. He and his team finished the repair by Monday morning. I told him to take his wife and family to dinner and we'd pay the bill. Not required but I was really appreciative of the effort. He thanked me and told me it was his job to make sure things were working but he appreciated very much.

Re: SpaceshipTwo crashes shortly after Mojave test flight

#229

Post by csours »

smacktoward wrote: post #64
JshWright wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The best of both worlds" has an often overlooked twin sibling.. "The worst of both worlds"

Or as it's sometimes formulated, "the sports car-slash-dump truck problem." In other words, you can build a great sports car, or a great dump truck. But there's no way to build a great sports car that is also a great dump truck.

Maybe not, but you can always pivot[1]!

http://spectrum.ieee.org/view-from-the-valley/transportation...

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