241–250 of 265 posts
I read this was a manufacturing pathfinder. Manufacturing and assembly of high strength hardened steel is near black art. Pathfinders do exactly what they say, they lead you through unknown territory to the outcome of the manufacturing journey you embarked on. Often things go boom, you find out why, add it to your corpus of black art knowledge, and keep pathfinding until you run out of budget / succeed / change missi…
What does pathfinder mean in the context of manufacturing?
The design engineer: "We know on paper how the product needs to function in terms of strength, weight, durability, etc"
The manufacturing engineer: "We've never made something like this before. I've got a couple ideas how we can bend/shape/form/machine/weld these materials into the shape, but I don't know how those bend/shape/form/machine/welding operations are going to affect the underlying physical properties of the material. I know on paper these operations should be OK, and we can inspect them as we go, but again we've never done them before, we most likely will overlook something or discovery something new, so let's try one of them and break it early before we get too far down a potentially bad path."
The test engineer: "Well it worked up until X point then failed, here's the data for you design engineer and you manufacturing engineer, better try something else".
Design engineer: "Shoot, what we thought we were manufacturing isn't actually what got manufactured. Hmmm, is it even possible to make the part we need? Or do we now need to redesign the part because it can't actually be made. Let's try another approach. And maybe it's smart to pursue a few of these in parallel to increase our overall chance of success"
Those 3 roles can be the same person or separate organizations of hundreds/thousands of people. Requirements documents, manufacturing/quality reports, test reports, inspection reports are the language of this technical interchange.
I read this was a manufacturing pathfinder. Manufacturing and assembly of high strength hardened steel is near black art. Pathfinders do exactly what they say, they lead you through unknown territory to the outcome of the manufacturing journey you embarked on. Often things go boom, you find out why, add it to your corpus of black art knowledge, and keep pathfinding until you run out of budget / succeed / change missi…
Why would they be using hardened steel for a pressure vessel that has to deal with vibrations? Also, someone on twitter said a horizontal weld failed. If this is true I'm surprised they didn't do two things: - tune their welding procedure by destructive testing with the same type of steel - and X-ray (or use another non-destructive method) the welds after assembly. Welding (including more interesting metals) is my ho…
I read this was a manufacturing pathfinder. Manufacturing and assembly of high strength hardened steel is near black art. Pathfinders do exactly what they say, they lead you through unknown territory to the outcome of the manufacturing journey you embarked on. Often things go boom, you find out why, add it to your corpus of black art knowledge, and keep pathfinding until you run out of budget / succeed / change missi…
I must admit that Elon has done some fairly impressive things, and I respect his hustle and innovation. With that said, the cult that surrounds his projects where people say things like "this is what success looks like" when a big metal thing blows up unexpectedly or robot car goes flying off an exit ramp is a never ending source of amusement.
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On the other hand, perfection looks like nothing ever blowing up while job always getting done.
That creates a very conservative mindset, unsuitable for innovation.
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For reference, the average human seems (from a very brief search) to swing an 8lb sledgehammer at ~25mph. So it's a bit like someone very, very strong (think strongman competitions) nailing the thing as hard as they can with a sledgehammer.
It would be a glancing blow, though. Bad, but not as bad as a blow striking orthogonal to the surface.
And that's why they are testing it.
Depends on what kind of test that was supposed to be. If they pumped it until it explodes it would be a kind of test (also called experiment) where it makes sense. If you design something with a margin of safety, then pump it to working pressure and it blows, then it means you made a mistake. If you made a mistake it shows you don't know what is necessary to design a rocket (yet). Seriously, they don't build skyscrap…
Perhaps a better analogy is carving a violin top. Skyscrapers and bridges can be overbuilt without destroying their utility, but a violin has to be as thin as possible without breaking if you want it to function well as a violin.
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They are supposed to begin personal cross continental flights on this thing in just a few years for a bit more than the cost of an economy coach plane ticket. A bit before that it is supposed to do a manned moon flyby in 2023.
Sources: New York to Shanghai slightly more than economy ticket by 4/2028: https://www.vox.com/2018/4/11/17227036/flight-spacex-gwynne-... Moon 2023: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/spacex-plans-to-f...
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It's somewhat impressive that the actual nuclear warhead didn't so much as leak. Which is what's supposed to happen but still you don't usually design something to withstand a botched missile launch capable of 'catapulting' a 740 ton door.
There wouldn't be much to 'leak'. The nuclear material in weapons is relatively safe to handle as long as you don't ingest it. It's the post-explosion fission products that are nasty. Also with nuclear weapons, as much engineering has gone into safety as into weapon design itself. It's astronomically improbable for a modern nuclear weapon to detonate prior to arming even if the explosive lens is set off. The reentry…
Not blowing up when you don't push the button doesn't have a name.
When they actually dropped a pair by accident from a B-52, both got very far into their ignition sequence before something failed. Questions were Asked, after. So it is probably better now. Here. Russia? Israel? India? No telling.
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It would be a glancing blow, though. Bad, but not as bad as a blow striking orthogonal to the surface.
It wasn't a glancing blow. It solidly struck a thrust mount and then bounced to pierce the tank. So while some energy was lost in the collision with the thrust mount (how elastic was it?) the blow that counted was dead-on.
Not far enough, though.