While I'm super excited about the future of space tourism, I dread a "Hindenburg" catastrophe that stops the whole idea for a generation.
The red warning light on Richard Branson’s space flight
71–80 of 269 posts
Re: The red warning light on Richard Branson’s space flight
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn’t that the principle of football and space conquest: Giving plebs something to dream about, so we can shove them with ads and admiration for absurd ideas (like nationalism or love for any idea, maybe sovietism, patriotism, Richardbrandsonism, or for the belief that we’re in together pushing for a better world).
> Giving plebs something to dream about To be honest I don't think the current "pleb" generations dream about space conquest anymore (I'm part of that "pleb", of course), people have gotten accustomed to the idea that everything relatively close up there is either very dark of very cold or both, so why all the fuss about some piece of rock located in those dark and cold places? Unless we discover some new laws of phy…
Maybe not the plebs but the Musk fans are typically well to do white collar professionals that do dream of space and all that jazz. They don't have the problems of real plebs so they still actually care.
Re: The red warning light on Richard Branson’s space flight
#73Brilliant well written article. Not without bias, but you can see through the words on the page and into the immense pressure that team at Virgin Galactic must have been under to get their boss into space and to beat Bezos, all for the inflated ego of one man. Branson did put his life on the line to achieve that accolade though, which was a gutsy move.
It seems humans need a sense of competition to make progress towards any goal beyond the day-to-day. If I have to choose between this and nuclear-armed superpowers intimidating each other with super-accurate rockets - I'll take the billionaires. To be honest I think it's awesome. We need people who are able and willing to push for something beyond the everyday, and it doesn't really matter why they're doing it.
> it doesn't really matter why they're doing it.
I disagree with that. Why they are doing what they are doing is very important.
Elon is a set of flaws walking on two legs but his plans make sense: Humanity has all their eggs in one basket by being a single planet species. To change that we need to make space travel much, much cheaper than it was. To do that we need reusable and economical spacecrafts. He works alongside this plan.
Branson made people build him the adult version of a coin operated mall kiddie ride. You give it money and it shakes you around and later you can tell people that you are now an astronaut.
Two people, both have a ton of money and both used some of their wealth to assemble a team to build a spacecraft. The difference between them is the “why” they did this.
One if suceeds has changed the history of humankind. If he fails at the grand goal misserably he still made a vastly succesfull space company.
The other if he succeeds has a funfair ride with bragging rights. Meh.
The why is all that matters, because it affects the how and the what fundamentally.
Re: The red warning light on Richard Branson’s space flight
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh dang, for real? That's super weak if true! Also, no wonder they have hundreds of episodes... I'd be curious if you have any links/etc. on the subject to share!
It still amazes me that anyone still believes that the pictures they see on TV are in any way real. 100% of content on TV is fake. I used to say except the news, but now I'm not even able to trust that. If it's a commercial, definitely fake. If it's a TV show, 100% fake. Games shows shoot 5 episodes in a day, so when they say "last week's winner" it was last hour's.
sports!
Re: The red warning light on Richard Branson’s space flight
#75Brilliant well written article. Not without bias, but you can see through the words on the page and into the immense pressure that team at Virgin Galactic must have been under to get their boss into space and to beat Bezos, all for the inflated ego of one man. Branson did put his life on the line to achieve that accolade though, which was a gutsy move.
There are other flaws too. Like pretending to bike to the spaceport on the day of, but it was actually filmed the week before and when called out, they said, oops, you're right, sorry! It's like when Guy Fiery in his hot rod. He pretends he rolls up to the place in his 70s hot rod, but actually it's just rolled out of the truck that lugs it around from location to location and he opens the door, sits, gets filmed get…
They didn't say "oops, you're right, sorry". They said they "regret the error", as though they didn't intend to mislead people. And it's not like Guy Fieri; as far as I'm aware, he doesn't generally pretend it's live.
Re: The red warning light on Richard Branson’s space flight
#76> “I don’t know how we didn’t lose the vehicle and kill three people,” Todd Ericson, a retired Air Force Colonel and Virgin Galactic’s then vice-president of safety and test, told me in a 2020 interview.
I'm pretty impressed by this guy. Not only did he quit his VP job when he saw these safety problems, but he went around giving interviews about them. It strikes me that very few people would have done the same.
Re: The red warning light on Richard Branson’s space flight
#77I didn't get why the orange or red light is scary. Because it could mean landing in the desert when you are a glider?
It's a glider, but a glider capable of mach 3 flight. So, approach speeds will be much faster than a typical glider. Probably higher speed than an airliner. That would be dangerous to land off field.
Also, it could mean the vehicle is exposed to aerodynamic conditions it is not designed for, operating outside of the flight envelope.
Re: The red warning light on Richard Branson’s space flight
#78I recommend Schmidle’s recent book “Test Gods” if you are interested in Virgin Galactic and test piloting. Schmidle is not an engineer and I would have enjoyed a deeper dive into Virgin Galactic’s design choices, but it is a great book about (among other things) the tensions that emerge when a complex technical project is overseen from a distance by utterly nontechnical, PR-oriented upper management. The company’s co…
SpaceShipTwo (and SpaceShipOne) are fascinating to me because they're so _not_ general purpose vehicles, yet are sold and in most cases perceived as such.
SS1 was conceived by one of the most creative designers in aviation as a point solution for the X-Prize contest - the minimal design/implementation to precisely solve that problem in the most cost effective way possible (as detailed in "Test Gods").
This cobbled together, even borderline, solution was reimplemented as a revenue producing, passenger joyride vehicle, without a lot of (apparent) deep understanding of the real problem and the quirks of their existing "solution".
Pretty much, SS2 is Branson and droogs saying, "SS1 is great, just blow it up and start printing money".
Re: The red warning light on Richard Branson’s space flight
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
Violating airspace regulations isn't gutsy. It's irresponsible and selfish. It puts others at risk.
Life is risk, sometimes with other people's lives in the balance. Violating their airspace, in this context, was absolutely gutsy, and dangerous, and stupid, but all of them have massive balls and my respect.
Do people driving 150mph on the freeway deserve to get respect and have others comment about size of their balls?
Re: The red warning light on Richard Branson’s space flight
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
Life is risk, sometimes with other people's lives in the balance. Violating their airspace, in this context, was absolutely gutsy, and dangerous, and stupid, but all of them have massive balls and my respect.
What about that is deserving of respect? Edit: This was an honest question, and I was hoping for an answer that would help me to understand. It's a shame that this is getting downvoted rather than someone enlightening me.
Anyone can win if they are allowed to break the rules. You get my respect by completing the mission within the rules.