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SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy successfully launches

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Re: SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy successfully launches

#391

Post by randyrand »

ColanR wrote: post #330
CydeWeys wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're showing your biases here. The other people on the livestream are also rocket scientists. They aren't PR people. They just happen to be younger, or women, or of color. So you might want to re-evaluate what you think a rocket scientist "looks like", because your notion is outdated. Sorry to call you out like this, but these kinds of prejudices about who is the "correct" kind of person for tech jobs are harmful a…

> They just happen to be younger, or women, or of color. Maybe parent was referring to their mannerisms, rather than their appearance. It's not fair to jump to the assumption that parent was showing a bias against any of those variations in the human species.

Assuming that the "offender" was talking about race and gender is so ironically racist and sexist. Makes me chuckle.

Re: SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy successfully launches

#392

Post by [deleted] »

pertymcpert wrote: post #381
repsilat wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some places do "blind" reference checks, where they contact people you've worked with themselves (through Linkedin or similar.) The idea being that the references you provide are likely to be more positive than representative.

That seems open to abuse.

[deleted]

Re: SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy successfully launches

#393

Post by DaiPlusPlus »

shepardrtc wrote: post #368
electricslpnsld wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they gave me a job offer but withdrew it after I got badmouthed by a reference Why in the world would someone agree to be a reference and then bad mouth afterwards? Some folks...

Someone asked me to be a reference, I said no, they still put me as a reference anyway. I was not happy. Didn't badmouth him, but I also didn't say anything good about him. And when asked if I would hire him where I worked, I said no.

I asked permission from all of my references beforehand. Two were coworkers and the last was my previous team lead. I knew all of them had positive opinions regarding my work.

The problem was BlueOrigin’s reference-questionnaire. One of my references shared it with me afterwards. It’s a stock template - except pretty much all the questions seem contrived to find reasons not to hire someone. One of the questions was along the lines of “On a percentage scale where would you rank [candidate] relative to other people you have worked with?” (Which is s problem if you’re a relatively poor player in a high-performing team). Another was (almost verbatim) “Please provide a reason why we should not hire [candidate]?” (As opposed to “Can you think of a reason?” - I was surprised that the question straight-up assumes there is a reason).

BlueOrigin’s cooldown period is 2 years which is long for Seattle, when you consider SpaceX’s is 1 year and Google can be 6 months. My recruiter at BlueOrigin did tell me to re-apply though and gave me his card. I’ll think about it.

In the interests of honesty - I will say that I am not a model employee and I do have productivity problems - I’m sure that my references gave honest answers with good intentions and I accept that I’m probably not BlueOrigin-material: I have punctuality problems, I’ll spend half a day procrastinating then working late until 1am to make up for it, and I stilll often go on code refactoring crusades without telling anyone. Sometimes I think I wouldn’t even hire me anyway :)

Re: SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy successfully launches

#394

Post by eunoia »

webXL wrote: post #252
pulkitanand wrote: post #152

They lost the center core: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-B_tWbjFIGI&t=2307 But 2/3 is impressive! Seeing the simultaneous landings had me in tears!

Was there anything special about the center core other than boosting longer and needing to land out at sea? Seems like they've landed plenty out at sea, but not while landing two on land. I thought this was impressive: "With a total of 27 first-stage engines, Falcon Heavy has engine-out capability that no other launch vehicle can match—under most payload scenarios, it can sustain more than one unplanned engine shutdo…

Here are some really rough numbers derived from pausing the live stream.

Falcon Heavy Side Booster Separation - 61km, 6,881 km/hr

Falcon Heavy Core 1st Stage Separation - 92.5km, 9,474 km/hr

Also a link to screen caps of speeds/altitudes of previous Falcon 9 separations

http://www.planetary.org/multimedia/space-images/charts/falc...

Re: SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy successfully launches

#395

Post by dudus »

Can someone explain to me why are we sending a Tesla to Mars? I mean other than shits and giggles, is there any value in having it there? I assume putting stuff in the space is expensive and I wonder if that effort couldn't have gone to something more useful like a robot to look for water or whatever.

Re: SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy successfully launches

#396

Post by zanedb »

dudus wrote: post #395

Can someone explain to me why are we sending a Tesla to Mars? I mean other than shits and giggles, is there any value in having it there? I assume putting stuff in the space is expensive and I wonder if that effort couldn't have gone to something more useful like a robot to look for water or whatever.

> other than shits and giggles, is there any value in having it there?

Nope.

Re: SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy successfully launches

#397

Post by adventured »

janoc wrote: post #387
alangibson wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This definitely feels incredibly significant. The Soviet Union tried and failed 4 or 5 times to launch a rocket with this many engines, but now we're able to nail it on the first try aaaand land the boosters.

Well, but to be fair to the Soviets, they had to do it with really "stone age" electronics and technology and not knowing the many things we know today. I am pretty sure that SpaceX was able to achieve what they did today also because they studied the Soviet N1 rocket and learned from what the engineers at that time had to figure out from scratch. The other thing is that the N1 Moon rocket was a very different design…

I don't see how that's much of a credit boost to the Soviet failures the parent is referencing. The Apollo program had the same constraints of lacking modern electronics and not knowing many of the things we know today.

Re: SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy successfully launches

#398

Post by mattnewport »

BozeWolf wrote: post #288
stanlarroque wrote: post #185

It was awesome. The synchronized landing of both boosters was emotional . Might be a naive thought, but for a few minutes, you forget everything else. There were millions of people from every nation live-watching the broadcast and everyone was cheering and hoping for the best. The world seemed at peace during that moment and this is what I love about space exploration and all these great human achievements.

I sort of was hoping for a big bang. Am I the only one? Landing these things will become the standard. mmillion dollar fireworks will not. Anyways, still very impressed.

Some men just want to watch the world burn.

Re: SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy successfully launches

#399

Post by mullen »

dudus wrote: post #395

Can someone explain to me why are we sending a Tesla to Mars? I mean other than shits and giggles, is there any value in having it there? I assume putting stuff in the space is expensive and I wonder if that effort couldn't have gone to something more useful like a robot to look for water or whatever.

This was a test flight so they could send anything they wanted, so they did.

Re: SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy successfully launches

#400

Post by stevekenney318 »

wlll wrote: post #358
aphextron wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can confirm this was the greatest thing I've ever witnessed in my life. https://youtu.be/AGPH_i0ZlyM?t=56

Is it just me, or are those both the same landing pad but with different cameras?

they sure looked like the same landing pad to me ... and the videos of 'each booster' all the way down seemed to be from the same booster to me.
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