731–740 of 1001 posts
I was watching a youtube stream with tens of thousands of viewers and 20 seconds before launch it switched to an AI generated video of Elon on stage talking about his "crypto currency program". It was so well executed and generated, it nearly felt real. The violent anger I felt and still feel for scammers has ruined my day.
My wife asked "Why is this a big deal?", so I gave her a link to Handmer's 2021 explanation: https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2021/10/28/starship-is-st... She's not an enthusiast; she's got an impression from SciFi that going to mars shouldn't be that hard.
That seems like way too long an article for a non-enthusiast.
she got me a while back with ink solvents. Monks may have been more illuminated making those pretty manuscripts than we appreciated.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can speculate ... I think the primary reason would be that landing legs are heavy, and it wastes performance to carry them. If your landing mechanism is mostly on the ground, you get that performance back. Secondary reasons might include that it's simpler to get the booster right back to the pad. Once things have settled into an operational cadence, it's likely feasible to lower and lock the booster onto the stool,…
It's worth noting that at least 1 Falcon 9 core probably got trashed not from the landing, but from rough seas - so cutting out the ground logistics chain adds resiliency.
I'm just so happy to see this level of progress. This another big step for opening up space. To think that one day this will be considered normal. 150 Metric tons sent on a fully reusable rocket. Thats like a 747 to space.
So, reusable is supposed to reduce the cost. But the space shuttle was reusable and it has been shutdown because it was too expensive. What is the differences between the two?
The shuttle would have been much, much, cheaper per launch if it had flown more often. The expected costs for the shuttle included a range based on how often it flew which turned out to be reasonably accurate. They were much worse at predicting which end of the range they would be flying in. At the rate they ended up flying they had the extra costs of reusability without any of the benefits.
Starship is ludicrously expensive, but still much cheaper than even the best case for the Shuttle, and it has a guaranteed source of launches to help it benefit from resuability.
Nothing could have prepared me for how that catch looked. I was sure the rocket was careening into the tower at the last second before it straightened out. The control algorithms must be incredible for the landing system to work within those small tolerances.
MIMO and nonlinear control theories are probably some of the hardest topics in all of engineering. SpaceX control system also has to compensate for the fuel moving inside their rockets so the control algorithms probably involve some kind of fast numerical fluid simulation. Another interesting thing SpaceX is doing is to use consumer-grade chips in triple redundancy configurations instead of using $100,000+ radiation-…
Well, that makes perfect sense considering that both the spaceport infrastructure, and the booster need to do their calculation on the ground level instead of the highly radiated environment that is space. However, for the rockets themselves, which happen to reach that harsh environment, they may use more resilient and expensive hardware in the future, after passing over the current "let it splash in the Indian Ocean" development and testing phases.
Speaking as a non-American. SpaceX just made one of the most significant technological leaps in the last decade. This is obviously hugely significant in many ways, including retaining the US military edge. Yet the US administration hasn't congratulated SpaceX. Incredible.
There has been some kind of beef between Elon Musk and the Biden administration even before Musk's public right-wing turn. For example Biden has given speeches praising US EV vehicle manufacturers and not mentioning Tesla but mentioning all their competitors.
Why can only Elon do stuff like this and not BlueOrigin or the hundreds of other aerospace startups? Does he just have a 1/100000000 combination of intelligence, tenacity, and directionality that can't be matched by anyone, even those trying to emulate him as closely as possible?
Why do we think its Elon 'doing' this? Just curious, since it could just as well be that its the engineers and other leaders who could be the differentiator.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because the rocket weighs a small fraction of what it did at launch, specifically because it only has 2-3% fuel left. Fuel is the vast majority of the vehicle weight at launch, kind of like an empty vs full can of soda.
Yeah, but even without fuel the booster weighs 200 tons. It's pretty wild to have 200 tons of steel incoming at supersonic speed, then nailing a gentle pinpoint landing like that !
People on earth are experiencing the Jetsons and the Flinstones at the same time
Maybe 'the Jetsons' and 'the Flintstones' aren't as far apart as we think, us being people who like to think we are witnessing 'the Jetsons' now. Maybe that is just a relevant distinction.
Maybe those two descriptors are much closer than they would appear to some outside observers. Maybe it's really just 'Flintstones part 1;' and 'Flintstones part 2', right now.
Or...
Our 'Flintstones' was already 'Jetsons' compared to everything else in this observable universe, which winds up mostly being just peat bogs on Dagobah, comparatively, and we're just inching out the icing on the cake at this point.
Who knows.
Nothing could have prepared me for how that catch looked. I was sure the rocket was careening into the tower at the last second before it straightened out. The control algorithms must be incredible for the landing system to work within those small tolerances.
When Musk first proposed this, I thought he was crazy. It seemed like something a school boy would draw up. Now I think this will become routine and forgettable after a few more successes. Is there a word for that - something out of fiction becoming mundane?
"Is there a word for that - something out of fiction becoming mundane?"
Musking?