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Crew Dragon Docks with ISS

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Re: Crew Dragon Docks with ISS

#231

Post by skissane »

adventured wrote: post #137
manquer wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In direct investments perhaps yes, but like all things it is bit more complicated, it can be cheaper in each generation, you can leverage existing talent and their experience from before . In theory a new entrant could achieve similar feats with lesser money . For example rocket lab is doing pretty well for their size with some real innovation based out of New Zealand! Extremely likely part of their staff would come…

> For example rocket lab is doing pretty well for their size with some real innovation based out of New Zealand! Rocket Lab isn't out of New Zealand, that's a popular underdog myth at this point. They're an American company, funded overwhelmingly by big US venture capital, that built their current technology primarily in the US. The initial low scale efforts for Rocket Lab originated out of New Zealand, with sounding…

I think Australia has a serious problem with national underinvestment in space. (I think the same is probably true of New Zealand as well, although I don't know as much about it, and at least with RocketLab launches New Zealand is somewhat ahead of Australia in that area.)

Australia has only had its own Space Agency since mid-2018, and its budget is minuscule (less than 10 million AUD a year.) I think Australia should aim to spend a similar percentage of GDP on civilian (non-military/non-intelligence) government space spending as the US does. Given the US economy is about 13-14 times bigger than Australia's, this would suggest ASA's annual budget ought to be around 1/13th or 1/14th of NASA's annual budget, which would be at least 100 times bigger than ASA's budget is currently. It really is an investment in the future of the country, ensuring that it doesn't get left behind.

Re: Crew Dragon Docks with ISS

#232

Post by macintux »

yellowapple wrote: post #221
redis_mlc wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost no science is done on the ISS. Most of the time, energy and money spent on the ISS is to just keep the people alive. But HN is consistent in admiring rocket launches without considering how pointless they are. Bread and circuses. Nothing's changed since the gladiator days, have they?

> Almost no science is done on the ISS. The very presence of people on the ISS is "science". The whole point of the ISS is to investigate the effects of long-term space habitation on humans. Plus, the ISS itself is an experiment, demonstrating the feasibility of in-orbit assembly of complex human-habitable structures from individually-launched-and-deployed modules (on a scale far greater than its predecessor Mir). Th…

Could be worse, there was a flat earther commenting here about the fake SpaceX launch last week.

Re: Crew Dragon Docks with ISS

#234

Post by Dylan16807 »

plorg wrote: post #124
dnautics wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Iirc the computers are connected by commodity cat 6e Ethernet.

Do you mean ethernet as the link layer? I ask because I've encountered a number of systems where CAN bus is operated over a cat 6e physical layer.

I can't tell you the answer, but I can definitely say that "cat 6e" is imprecise at best because that's a misnomer rather than an actual standard.

Re: Crew Dragon Docks with ISS

#235

Post by GuB-42 »

simonh wrote: post #172
computerex wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whilst I agree with the general sentiment, the Space Shuttle was the single most capable spacecraft that has ever flown. You are not being fair in measuring it simply on the basis of how much mass it could put in Orbit.

It was an amazing vehicle and highly capable in some way, but severely constrained in others. The main problem is it was almost completely useless for any missions or activities beyond LEO. In theory you could use it to put up a small boost stage for a light interplanetary probe, but its cargo capacity was a bit small for that, and there’s just no point using a whole shuttle to do it. Now that we have Falcon 9 and He…

My understanding is that Falcon rockets are not optimal beyond LEO.

They can do it of course, Falcon Heavy could launch a car in the general direction of Mars. But they are limited by their use of kerosene in their 2nd stage and its low specific impulse compared to hydrogen.

BFR and it's Raptor engines are better suited for that purpose. But we don't have a BFR yet.

Re: Crew Dragon Docks with ISS

#236

Post by vikramkr »

hansoolo wrote: post #193
djhworld wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Few reasons, it's been 9 years since the last crewed spacecraft took off from American soil. Second reason is this is the first time the spacecraft has been built and run by a commercial company (spacex)

For me (as a European) it is mainly exceptional because of the SpaceX effort. It just appeared to me as if it was something America was proud of, because they invented space flight or something, which they didn't. It's just never "celebrated" anywhere when the Russians fly to space over and over.

It's an awesome example of american capitalism giving us back the ability to put people in space. It's the first steps to true commercialization of spaceflight, with travel driven by tourism, colonization, resource extraction, amd R&D, which is a much more sustainable way to maintain space exploration. And probably most importantly, everything else sucks right now. Coronavirus, widespread protests and race riots. We need a win, and this is a pretty solid one.

Re: Crew Dragon Docks with ISS

#237

Post by [deleted] »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #234
plorg wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you mean ethernet as the link layer? I ask because I've encountered a number of systems where CAN bus is operated over a cat 6e physical layer.

I can't tell you the answer, but I can definitely say that "cat 6e" is imprecise at best because that's a misnomer rather than an actual standard.

[deleted]

Re: Crew Dragon Docks with ISS

#238

Post by vikramkr »

_ah wrote: post #200

I am so excited by this achievement, and offer hearty congratulations to SpaceX and NASA. That said, I think that everyone anticipating a dramatic reduction in orbital cost needs to temper their enthusiasm a bit. UAL was expensive, as many other have previously noted, because it was a political jobs program. The existence of UAL gave the necessary cover for Musk & Co to envision radically more efficient designs. Howe…

I think you mean ULA? And yes the plan is commercial launch. NASA is one customer of many and spacex is one supplier of many. NASA's been pretty explicit about not wanting to be the primary customer of rockets, and that they want a robust ecosystem of commercial and sovereign interests making up the market. And spacex has it's own plans for providing internet etc. It's pretty explicitly viewed as a failure of this program by NASA if space is not successfully commercialized and if nasa maintains its dominance as a purchaser of launch contracts.

Re: Crew Dragon Docks with ISS

#239

Post by redis_mlc »

yellowapple wrote: post #221
redis_mlc wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost no science is done on the ISS. Most of the time, energy and money spent on the ISS is to just keep the people alive. But HN is consistent in admiring rocket launches without considering how pointless they are. Bread and circuses. Nothing's changed since the gladiator days, have they?

> Almost no science is done on the ISS. The very presence of people on the ISS is "science". The whole point of the ISS is to investigate the effects of long-term space habitation on humans. Plus, the ISS itself is an experiment, demonstrating the feasibility of in-orbit assembly of complex human-habitable structures from individually-launched-and-deployed modules (on a scale far greater than its predecessor Mir). Th…

No, the Hubble and WMAP are some of the most-cited experiments, and ISS the least.

The ISS orbits at only 250 miles, barely into LEO.

The wikipedia article has a long list of experiments, but the question is, "Do they actually contribute anything?"

Can you name one scientific result from an ISS experiment? I can't.

> the effects of long-term space habitation on humans.

Humans aren't colonizing anything in space. You've read too many scifi books.

Re: Crew Dragon Docks with ISS

#240

Post by dingaling »

acheron9383 wrote: post #188
paulryanrogers wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn't Space X also benefit from NASA launch facilities? I imagine their payroll also includes quite a few NASA trained people too. They certainly aren't doing rocket science from scratch or in a vacuum. Not too say this isn't a big deal. Just that it's not all Elon and his wunderkind.

Yeah of course, SpaceX would be stupid to not use the resources NASA will make available for them. Honestly, NASA would probably much rather be out of the business of building rockets, so they can focus on the next generation of space experiments. The less money NASA has to spend on hauling stuff into space, the more they can spend on what they put up there.

> NASA would probably much rather be out of the business of building rockets

NASA has never been in the business of building tickets. Mercury went up on Army's Redstone, Gemini on Air Force Titan. Routine launches are on ICBM-derived Atlas and Titan.

Boeing and Douglas built Saturn V, Rockwell built the shuttle orbiter.

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