261–270 of 839 posts
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Agree with it being an achievement. And watching the first stage land was amazing. But chemical engines can get us only to the asteroid belt.
And 116 years ago an engine could only fly us from the top of a hill to the bottom. Don’t underestimate how quickly technology can change what’s possible :)
And there is the problem that we have stalled quite a bit in engine development.
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I understand it runs Chromium code and that the UI is written in Javascript. https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/9243/what-computer...
Wait wait, you’re telling me there’s Javascript floating around in space (not including web traffic being sent through satellites)?
I'm surprised how I almost ended up tearing up and was close to crying while watching this. Saying this as someone who is not a huge NASA or space enthusiast. I did study physics, and I'm more into science than the average person though.
I made my wife and kids sit and watch it with me. Oddly enough, I think the first time they landed the rocket booster felt more significant to me. SpaceX launches have made space flight ordinary in a way that is pretty remarkable.
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There are two rows of physical buttons below the touch screens along with a large manual abort lever. The physical buttons are used for manual docking.
And it’s painted black against black backdrop when the decision to pull it happens in milliseconds level. :facepalm: This is what a Martin Baker ejection handle looks like: https://c8.alamy.com/comp/BJTDWG/martin-baker-ejection-seat-... With all due respect to all the engineers that work at SpaceX, the UI of the cockpit has regressed to the point of pure marketing. Same with the suit design, looks like an awful low b…
If something doesn’t work, SpaceX will fix it. You really don’t give their engineers enough credit.
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Kliper is a relatively modern design, which, while admittedly not produced in metal, used much more benign components for RCS. And Kliper also doesn't have a separate service module. One can always say "but Klipper is a paper spacecraft". Of course, nothing is perfect. Buran can be brought as an example, and arguments against that could be broght up - "oh, it's too old". The point still stands - it's possible to not…
Paper spacecraft can do anything. Buran was designed for the same mission lengths as the Shuttle, on the order of a few weeks at most, not half a year or more. For long mission durations, storable hypergolics are the way to go for now. We don't have good flight time on anything else, and we need that for something we're putting crew on.
Soyuz is a counterexample which flies for decades. Lockheed's engineers working on orbital fuel storage (Advanced Cryogenic Evolved Stage) will also point that it's not a law of physics.
I'm glad that the space age has been rekindled. I wish Europe would do something similar.
Thinking of Europe, I have a feeling that it's just surreal that this launch is happening in America at the same time with the events in Minneapolis
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No, there's room for them to get "up" and take their suits off. Eating is no problem, the food is basically MREs. There is a toilet.
>> they could have anything that doesn't create crumbs Would you get a reference to M&Ms? I know SpaceShip1 was 16 years ago now. How time flies.
It is hard to convey how "sustainable" this feels to me. For the first time, humans have gone into orbit in a spacecraft that was designed from the ground up to be a commercial venture. All of the NASA missions prior to this have an ambience of "uneconomical but useful". Even the shuttle, which was supposed to be this cost effective space truck, turned out to be not even close. And the last thing I'm feeling is the a…
>> into orbit in a spacecraft that was designed from the ground up to be a commercial venture. If we are talking pure commercial travel, it is a vehicle without a destination. The ISS is definitely not a commercial project. There are lots of reasons for the ISS to exist, and they have changed over time, but it has never been a money-making venture. While the dragons certainly do come in under budget, they are a more…
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>> into orbit in a spacecraft that was designed from the ground up to be a commercial venture. If we are talking pure commercial travel, it is a vehicle without a destination. The ISS is definitely not a commercial project. There are lots of reasons for the ISS to exist, and they have changed over time, but it has never been a money-making venture. While the dragons certainly do come in under budget, they are a more…
You just need to look further. You get access to rare materials that can be immensely valuable. Read https://www.amazon.com/Case-Space-Revolution-Spaceflight-Pos... Also with that short term outlook you wouldn’t have many things. The Internet was not initially commercial. It was designed to provide communications in the event of a nuclear attack. Yet here we are now and we have reaped immense benefits from that inves…
Are you invested in spaceflight then? I don't see it being very obvious at all. Yes, some precious metals can be recovered in large quantities but they aren't intrinsically valuable. These materials are used in things like catalysts, batteries and chemical processes where we could also invest to remove the dependence on them.