481–490 of 588 posts
I asked Claude Opus 4.8 to estimate the size of the explosion in kilotons of TNT, and it estimated the explosion at 0.18 kilotons of TNT (with an ~0.13–0.26 error range). For comparison, the N-1 rocket explosion was around 0.5 kilotons of TNT.
This is a crushing setback for Blue Origin. I feel for the engineers. They have been the underdogs for so long, but with the recent successful recovery of the New Glenn booster, it finally seemed like they had some bragging rights. Now they're looking at a year minimum before they get back to a regular launch rhythm. The question now is: What went wrong? If they're lucky, it's just a stupid mistake. Maybe an incorrec…
I worked at SpaceX at the time, and I cannot speak for the company, but I can tell you that approximately nobody inside SpaceX took the idea of a sniper seriously. There was a lot of internet talk about it, and it was one of hundreds of avenues that were explored, and ruled out basically as soon as it was explored. The very interesting part of the liquid oxygen failure (and this was published in the investigative fin…
Sounds like me during a troubleshooting call trying to think of the wildest crap possible based on current available information, even if I sound crazy, sometimes my crazy question hits the nail. Never shun someone for trying to think of any crazy thing, sometimes they hit the nail on the head.
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Jeff Bezos loves space exploration. He loves O'Neil's vision of orbital colonies, and he firmly believes that moving heavy industry to orbit will leave Earth better off. That's not a vanity project. The Washington Post, on the other hand, he purchased as a trophy. That's the vanity project.
Lots of Americans are only capable of this logic for now: billionaire bad
Hypothetical scenario - if the entire New Glenn rocket exploded up to highest point in under 4 seconds and if there was a passenger capsule on top with a SLS/Saturn size escape rocket, would it manage to escape in those 2-3 seconds? Would humans survive acceleration?
Neither Starship nor New Glenn has such a system, nor plans to add one.
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The modern version of "It must be a compiler bug!"
Compiler bugs are not as rare as they are quipped to be on forums. I mean, more rare for the quippers due to allocation of time.
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What would you say is Jeff Bezos' motivation behind it?
Oh you know, probably his clearly stated intentions of driving industry off-earth and into orbit. Is SpaceX also a vanity project? No, Musk actually wants to expand human civilization beyond one planetary sphere. Just because they're billionaires doesn't mean they're full of shit. In fact, in both of their cases, it means they're extremely driven by... real ambitions. So obvious.
Does he want to expand human civilization for the benefit of human civilization or does he want to be the man who made that expansion possible?
I can absolutely see real ambitions behind them, I just think these ambitions are driven by vanity (and other "vices")
Does anyone else find it surprising that rockets are a century old[1] and yet still seem to fail spectacularly with amazing regularity, often due to some small flaw? Is it just that they're still relatively niche machines and thus haven't benefited from mass manufacturing improvements? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Goddard_and_Rocket.jpg
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Neither Starship nor New Glenn has such a system, nor plans to add one.
If New Glenn ever launched people they’d build the escape system into the crew module, much as SpaceX does with Crew Dragon.
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Forgive my ignorance, but why would China being the next on the moon be such a bad thing? Aren't moon missions mostly just "look what I can do!" sorts of things?
China isn't looking at it just for bragging rights, but as a step towards the first moon base. Some see it as a race for the frontier and territorial claims.
I guess I am just not that bothered, because I don't assume American intentions are inherently better.
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Forgive my ignorance, but why would China being the next on the moon be such a bad thing? Aren't moon missions mostly just "look what I can do!" sorts of things?
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Any human space exploration is good. If it's a usa or a China rocket, landing on the moon, with humans in it, and safely returning, it's good.