51–60 of 219 posts
> "This is not just twice as difficult as any typical Mars mission; it's twice squared" So, four times as difficult?
Or, by "twice squared" they mean to say "It has been squared ... twice". That would be 16x, which is probably more in line with the total deltaV requirements.
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Tangential to the topic of this post, but how have you found brilliant? I’ve been considering it but don’t know if it’s worth adding another subscription to my monthly spend when I could presumably get a lot of the same knowledge from YouTube (albeit in a less structured way). Any thoughts?
Plus: Brilliant’s computer science courses cover slightly more than my actual software engineering degree from Aberystwyth university, and their maths courses cover more than I did at A-level. The various introductions to matrices (in different contexts each time), are better than the introduction I had in my A-levels (with a good teacher!), and I would say they are of comparable goodness to 3blue1brown. Only, all of…
Question for the experts: what are the tests and analysis that we cannot do via a rover-based lab and hence need to send the samples to Earth? Asking out of curiosity (pun not intended!).
There have been plenty or Martian meteors found in Antarctica, and no doubt many more if we redoubled our efforts to find them. Many once claimed to have found evidence of life in these rocks already. Some of us are even old enough to remember President Clinton's speech on the subject. (That isn't a deepfake video. The US president really did talk about the discovery of life on mars.)
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You agree with what I said, but the sentiment with which I said it wasn't positive enough, so now you've gotta jump in to defend SpaceX? That marketing scheme sure does work. It's no surprise that the best-funded company produces the best results, but it would be interesting to find out if a more honest company could produce better results with equal funding.
No, I’m saying everyone else is more guilty of the same sins . Generally with more money behind them, too.
Given the sin in question is "lying", I'm pretty sure that's just not true. Can you give another example of a space corporation with such a consistent strategy of very publicly overpromising to win contracts and investment?
> Generally with more money behind them, too.
I'm not sure who you're referring to. NASA might have more funding, but if you subtract what they turn over to SpaceX I'm not sure that counts. Other aerospace companies have other obligations in the aero part of aerospace, so funds devoted to those obligations are not particularly relevant either.
> The joint American-European project is expected to cost billions and take just over a decade to implement. I'm 99% sure that if SpaceX's starship takes off, it will fly to Mars and back within a few years. But still, competition is good.
Define "a few years" and I'll bet you it won't, with whatever odds you want.
The article mentions a "football sized package". Hope there is no confusion between American and European football.
> The joint American-European project is expected to cost billions and take just over a decade to implement. I'm 99% sure that if SpaceX's starship takes off, it will fly to Mars and back within a few years. But still, competition is good.
I don't think even Musk, master of the dubious marketing promise, has claimed that; the first ones would be one-way jobs AIUI.
SpaceX Starship is planned for 2024, and with a cargo capacity in the hundreds of tons. Even if it gets delayed by four or five years it will be able to bring back samples before this is is even launched. NASA’s plans seem very slow in comparison.
And Full-Self-Driving will be available in the summer of 2015, and a cross country autonomous drive will happen in 2017, and this year we'll have 1,000,000 autonomous Robotaxis on the streets. Let's go!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You agree with what I said, but the sentiment with which I said it wasn't positive enough, so now you've gotta jump in to defend SpaceX? That marketing scheme sure does work. It's no surprise that the best-funded company produces the best results, but it would be interesting to find out if a more honest company could produce better results with equal funding.
No, I’m saying everyone else is more guilty of the same sins . Generally with more money behind them, too.
Some commercial satellite companies, including SpaceX, use ion drives for station keeping, but this has been around for about 50 years.
Currently, Airbus is probably in about as good a position to build something like this as anyone. They certainly have far more experience than SpaceX.