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Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico

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Re: Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico

#621

Post by pdonis »

FredPret wrote: post #612
pdonis wrote: post #582

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your survey of the options is basically the one that the US government put out after the war to push back against criticism. However, historical scholarship since then has shown that it wasn't that simple. First, there is no evidence of any actual casualty estimates made during the war that were anywhere near as high as the ones you give in option 1. Those numbers were made up after the war. The wartime estimates wer…

First, the casualty estimates are just for US soldiers and is likely low. They fough against Japanese troops with a kill ratio of between 1:1 and 1:20 (in favor of the Marines) so it’s easy to extrapolate massive US casualties when fighting the then 80 million strong Japanese on home soil. I don’t know much about the second point, so you may be right. Third, you have to look at stats, not emotions. Battle deaths - in…

> Battle deaths - in absolute terms and per capita - dropped like a stone after 1945.

After rising like a rocket when WW II started. If you leave out WW I and WW II, it's not clear that post-1945 was more peaceful than pre-1914.

Re: Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico

#622

Post by czl »

lupusreal wrote: post #527
czl wrote: post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Allies did not initiate war and did not want war. An argument made that WW2 was continuation of WW1 and that WW1 was wanted by British leadership who were locked in an arms race with Germany that they could not sustain much longer and wanted a war with Germany while they were ahead so the assassination that triggered WW1 was the pretext tobstart WW1. If you disagree please try to answer why leaders are regularly as…

Listen, while I broadly agree with your grander point (Britain wanting a war with Germany and taking any excuse given for it) your argument for this is flatly moronic; the assassination of the archduke was not Britain's pretext for entering the war! That was Austria-Hungary's pretext for invading Serbia. Britain's pretext was the German invasion of Belgium. Read a fucking book.

While Britain's decision to enter World War I was indeed triggered by Germany's invasion of Belgium, it's important to consider the broader context. In the years leading up to the war, Britain had engaged in a naval arms race with Germany, driven by fears of Germany's growing military and economic power. British leaders, including Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey and First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill, viewed war with Germany as inevitable and believed it was better to fight sooner while Britain still held a naval advantage.

Britain's system of alliances, particularly the Entente Cordiale with France and Russia, made it likely that any conflict involving these powers would draw Britain into a larger war. When the July Crisis erupted following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, British leaders did little to prevent the escalation of tensions. Despite last-minute efforts by some, such as German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg's plea for British neutrality, Britain remained committed to its alliances and the belief that war with Germany was necessary.

It's worth noting that other European leaders, such as French President Raymond Poincaré and Russian Tsar Nicholas II, also played significant roles in the outbreak of the war. However, Britain's long-standing rivalry with Germany, its naval arms race, and its commitment to alliances that would likely trigger a larger conflict all contributed to its readiness to enter the war when the opportunity arose.

Re: Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico

#623

Post by a012 »

metadat wrote: post #495
bearjaws wrote: post #3

The rate of descent is absolutely astonishing, 8km -> 1km in 20 seconds, then just hovers above the water. Absolutely incredible work by the SpaceX team. Living in central Florida I cannot wait for the new launch facility to come online. We're going to have lines of spectators into the space coast like we did for the shuttle. If any of you are heading to Disney World you should stop by the NASA Kennedy Visitor Comple…

In case you want to watch from the time of liftoff: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFkqZF-Ss7o&t=6250s

The scene from the drone looks so unrealistic, it feels like in a video game or a sci-fi movie.

Re: Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico

#624

Post by everyone »

m463 wrote: post #575
JackFr wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/51/Saturn_v... Saturn V slight larger than Statue of Liberty. I never realized that.

Makes it look like the statue of liberty is pointer her thruster the wrong way.

She will not go to space today.

Re: Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico

#625

Post by AtlasBarfed »

panick21_ wrote: post #563
kemotep wrote: post #36

I am one of the people skeptical about Elon’s specific claims of Starships abilities specifically about his Mars ambitions. Today’s test, if the Starship reentry is as successful as the booster soft landing will be absolutely a great achievement and a 100% mission success. This demonstration keeps SpaceX on schedule for their part of the Artemis 3 mission. Keeping the mission parameters simpler (no “refueuling” or do…

I mean of course Mars colonization is crazy. Being skeptical is reasonable, even Musk himself is skeptical and gives it a low chance of success. But we know for sure we will not get there if we don't try. That the ship in principle is capable of landing on Mars doesn't seem that crazy. They are designing with that in mind from the beginning. Again, that's difficult but very possible with current technology. The more…

I still think:

Starship

Moon Base

Orion Pulse Nuclear ships launched from the Moon

Mars Base

Is the winning formula, because the Orion payloads are so huge and the transit time so greatly reduced.

Re: Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico

#627

Post by czl »

cubefox wrote: post #583
pixl97 wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean the old rocket landings threw away 90%+ of the rocket first. Minus the hot staging ring and some molten metal almost all of this rocket was present at both its landings.

I wonder how much earlier a rocket like Falcon 9 (with automatic landing of the lower stage) could realistically have been developed and built. In the 70s? 80s? 90s?

Rocket landing on the moon does not count? Luna 9 in 1966 was the first spacecraft to achieve a controlled soft landing on the Moon.

Re: Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico

#628

Post by GMoromisato »

notact wrote: post #217
pixl97 wrote: post #68

What the hell, half melted starship actually did the landing flip and hit the ocean slow!!! That was amazing!

Can someone explain why reentry must be so hellish? The energy gained during the rocket burn into orbit must be bled off during reentry, and that energy is enormous. However, why must reentry occur so quickly? It seems if the descent into the atmosphere was slower, the heat shield would be able to radiate the heat energy away more effectively, thus lowering skin temperatures, and significantly reducing the engineerin…

Not sure if you got an answer already, but the reason is gravity. Gravity pulls the ship down, so you have to move very quickly horizontally so that the curvature of the Earth starts falling away from you. For LEO that's something like 25,000 kph.

If you move slower, you are no longer in orbit and your trajectory will intersect the ground.

If you tried to slow down more gradually, your orbit would keep dropping until you suddenly hit the ground.

Think of it this way: orbital speed is the speed required for a ship to stay in orbit without thrust. If you had infinite thrust, you could land on the ground at any speed you wanted. But without thrust, you have to go from orbital speed to 0 in less than one orbit.

Re: Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico

#629

Post by aaronblohowiak »

schmidtleonard wrote: post #539
foobarian wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So thinking where the leverage is - is it like hydraulics where the input cross-section is a lot smaller than the output cross-section? That's kinda what the nozzle looks like.

Yes, but also the propellant explodes after being pumped in, so you pump in a tiny volume and exhaust an enormous volume.

You pump in a huge volume and exhaust an inconceivable volume

Re: Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico

#630

Post by FredPret »

pdonis wrote: post #618
FredPret wrote: post #608

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Point me to the rapes of Nanking the allies did. Or maybe just stop spreading Soviet propaganda.

> Point me to the rapes of Nanking the allies did. The Soviets were allies. Look up what they did in Germany at the end of WW II. And that's not even looking at all the other atrocities they had perpetrated before the war started, many of them on their own people. Also, the empire building I referred to on the part of the US, Britain, and other European countries took place well before WW II. That doesn't mean it can…

My point is that stopping all Axis aggression in WW2 was good for everyone. The West may have been imperfect but was orders of magnitude better.

You don’t have to convince me that the Soviets were evil. They were part of the Allies purely because Hitler put them there.

They then immediately started propagandizing the world to undermine the genuine contributions and general legitimacy of the West.

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