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$96 3D-printed rocket that recalculates its mid-air trajectory using a $5 sensor

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Re: $96 3D-printed rocket that recalculates its mid-air trajectory using a $5 sensor

#351

Post by steve-atx-7600 »

infinitewars wrote: post #319
muyuu wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the people who are invading another country in a war of conquest, for instance you seem to believe we live in a world where there no longer are such wars of single-handed aggression we don't live in that world

> a war of conquest Israel invading Gaza is kind of proving the point? Those are American weapons bombing civilians.

Hamas turned Gaza into a terrorist military installation with tunnels and operatives under and within a heavily populated urban environment. Their civilians were heavily dependent on foreign aid, much of which was used to buy arms and construct the elaborate tunnel system used to stage the Oct attack. If they were in my back yard and I had power and military force, I’d try to minimize civilian casualties but I wouldn’t stop until all of said military infrastructure was completely dismantled. I would prioritize the safety of my own anrmed forces over Gazan civilian casualties. The ideology of those in charge of Gaza and Iran is dedicated to killing Jews and oppressing their own people. I’m not Muslim or Jewish. I just have empathy for Israelis having to live being terrorized constantly while they live in a society that values education, entrepreneurship and freedom. No Jews got into planes to kill Americans. No Jews go out and buy assault rifles and mass shoot American cities. I think there’s a mind virus rooted in Muslim cultures that damns them as well as anyone they are hell bent on terrorizing. Oh, and no Jews killed civilians just because they drew a cartoon of their God.

Re: $96 3D-printed rocket that recalculates its mid-air trajectory using a $5 sensor

#352

Post by philistine »

vidarh wrote: post #87
hrmtst93837 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

They should be sweating, because if the other side can fire 100 rockets for $10k that are close enough to not immediately and obviously be off target, and you don't know whether a more expensive one with actual explosives is hiding within that barrage, you now have 100 targets to try to intercept, and suddenly your costs have gone up dramatically while the other sides costs has barely moved.

It is warfare, not mere product delivery. The second you fire one of these you reveal your position, making you a target for immediate reprisal. You don't win wars by losing very fine soldiers on homemade close enough shots.

Re: $96 3D-printed rocket that recalculates its mid-air trajectory using a $5 sensor

#353

Post by philistine »

kdheiwns wrote: post #263
dgroshev wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100 rockets for $10k is not happening. The price floor is not dictated by the electronics (which did get cheaper), it's dictated by the rest of the system: propulsion, warheads, arming and safety, QA, traceability, climate and shelf life stability. Take a look at Raytheon's manufacturing line: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCCkVAHSzrc That's what it takes to have missiles that are nearly guaranteed to perform to sp…

If you think shelf life, QA, safety, blah blah blah matters when a rocket is 100 bucks, I have just three words: you will lose. The Ukraine war is being fought with a bunch of cheap toy style drones dropping grenades everywhere. The US got their bases blown to pieces across the Middle East by cheap drones that gently float through the air like a paper airplane in comparison to absolutely any missile. And let's not fo…

The vietcong had some incredible technology, courtesy of Russia. Their fighter planes were breaking the Air Force's back, thanks in large part to their far better doctrine. They had the fabled AK-47, the toy drone of its day.

Re: $96 3D-printed rocket that recalculates its mid-air trajectory using a $5 sensor

#354

Post by dcrazy »

hermitcrab wrote: post #214
whamlastxmas wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine part of it is also zero acceptance for failed launches. It needs to always work

Missiles definitely do not always work. I have seen film of a Sea Slug missile (with war head) falling over the side of a Royal Navy ship, without the motor firing properly. Apparently there was a void in the solid propellant.

And this is why various safety fuzes have been invented :)

Re: $96 3D-printed rocket that recalculates its mid-air trajectory using a $5 sensor

#355

Post by kdheiwns »

dgroshev wrote: post #272
kdheiwns wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think shelf life, QA, safety, blah blah blah matters when a rocket is 100 bucks, I have just three words: you will lose. The Ukraine war is being fought with a bunch of cheap toy style drones dropping grenades everywhere. The US got their bases blown to pieces across the Middle East by cheap drones that gently float through the air like a paper airplane in comparison to absolutely any missile. And let's not fo…

I'm just not sure what to even say when you're both so assertive and completely wrong. Please stop relying on twitter/reddit to inform your takes. The war in Ukraine is being fought with all tiers of systems, ranging from Zircons and PAC-3 on the high end to booby traps on the low end. All of them are essential, and shortcomings on any of the tiers is ruthlessly exploited by the other side. Saying that it's only the…

So now they're standardizing it, cool. Would Ukraine still be around if they had not fought defended themselves initially with cheap toy drones and waited until they had 4 years of QA, non-combat testing, verifying shelf life, etc etc?

The history of war is a nonstop story of armies who consider themselves advanced over investing in old strategies and technology, then being wiped out by a ragtag group of rebels with cheap tools and new techniques beyond the imagination of the "better" military. The natural process is the new tech works, then improves.

A $100 rocket can easily turn the tide in war. Thinking that means that these $100 rockets will stay as they are and never change is absolutely not the point. Users will continue to refine them while keeping them affordable.

And if you're in a country that's being bombed nonstop, frankly, losing a few soldiers or having launch failures is meaningless. Having one successful missile out of 20 still has more benefit than 0 missile launch attempts and just waiting around for some "better" tech.

And while Japan ultimately lost, they effectively used kamikaze attacks where the pilot dies by design in order to terrorize and slow down an invasion. If they told every soldier to just stay on land and hold a gun, it a land invasion would've been more likely and more messy. And by consequence, since the Japanese were so willing to give their life to defend themselves and attempting so would just mean massive deaths on both sides, America avoided invading the mainland entirely and realized just firebombing every inch of the country would be a much cheaper technique that was impossible to defend from. And firebombing worked because it was dropping very cheap and ridiculously large numbers of bombs.

Re: $96 3D-printed rocket that recalculates its mid-air trajectory using a $5 sensor

#356

Post by jacquesm »

koshergweilo wrote: post #340
jacquesm wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are but the Ukrainians are making some serious inroads into the effectiveness of those drones and if they keep that up for a little while longer they will have near perfect ability to shoot them down. Essentially they've built hunter-killer drones that are sent off in the general direction of Shahed that then either succeed or fail in their mission. That success rate has been very steadily climbing over the last…

Ah that puts into context some of the headlines I've seen about Ukraine making arms deals with other countries. https://english.kyodonews.net/articles/-/72301 It is very odd to see the defense industry live up to its name for once

Ukraine has been incredibly restrained given the atrocities perpetrated on them. To the point that during the Kursk incursion the residents preferred the Ukrainians over their own countryfolk.

Re: $96 3D-printed rocket that recalculates its mid-air trajectory using a $5 sensor

#357

Post by awesomeMilou »

nine-one-two wrote: post #132

Check out his code. It’s a joke. His control loop is a naive proportional response that doesnt even account for error let alone interpolate trajectory. Look at rocket.txt and launcher.tx. Especially the “fusion” function. lol. Stay in school kid.

I like to put down peoples achievements to cope too sometimes, though usually not by insulting their code. This kid is likely only able to do what they're doing because their Mom and Dad can afford to buy them the tools (mainly a 3D printer and lots of powertools and other stuff) to live out their hobby like this. I didn't have that as a teen.

But fuck me dude, even with that, he built a manpad in his garage. Like even if his code is ass, that requires drive!

Re: $96 3D-printed rocket that recalculates its mid-air trajectory using a $5 sensor

#360

Post by littlestymaar »

dgroshev wrote: post #288
littlestymaar wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So much this. Reliability and durability only matters because the thing costs a million dollar a piece. When you have stuff with a mere 5-digits price tag or less, you simply don't care if half of them miss their mark or doesn't fire 10% of the time.

Half of munitions missing means doubling the logistical burden of delivering the munitions to where they need to be employed. The trucks/plains/ships that carry your munitions need to be fuelled and protected, too, so the expense is super-linear, especially when it's a distant war and not a war fought on the country's own soil, like in Ukraine. Cheap munitions sometimes explode before they are launched, killing crews…

> Half of munitions missing means doubling the logistical burden of delivering the munitions to where they need to be employed

It means doubling the transport capacity, but not doubling the burden. A bunch of crates carrying 155mm shell (cheap munitions) is much easier logistically than a PAC-3 missile for the same weight.

> Cheap munitions sometimes explode before they are launched, killing crews and destroying platforms.

Ill designed/manufactured munitions do, but it's not proportional to cost (again, a 155mm shell is a cheap munition even though it's being manufactured and designed in a way to reduce the kind of risk you're talking about).

> Cheap munitions mean that CAS is a roulette. You waited for ten minutes for a support fire mission? Sorry, wait for ten more, whatever we launched has failed.

That's not how it works. You'd launch two at the same time to take the possibility of failure into account (in fact we already do that with expensive anti-air missiles).

> Or maybe you're dead because the munition has hit you instead

Every munition can do a blue on blue strike, we mitigate those through engagement rules, which are calibrated by weapon types.

> Cheap munitions can pin you down. Those cheap FPV drones that are supposedly cheaper than Javelins require dedicated immobile units to launch and guide to targets.

They don't "require" it, it's how they are being employed today in Ukraine. Notice that javelins have pretty much disappeared from the Ukrainian battlefield so it's really not a good comparison.

> Cheap munitions are either very expensive or impossible. There's no cheap anti-ballistic missile

And it's fine to use an expensive weapon for that reason. Nobody is saying no to all expensive weapons (nukes ain't cheap either).

> no cheap missile that can sink a warship in the Taiwan strait when launched[] from Guam. > []: alright alright an LRASM would need to be flown closer by an F-35 but the point still stands

A Magura isn't a missile, but it has shown its capability of completely shutting down the Black Sea Fleet.

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