81–90 of 91 posts
"...kids today can now dream of one day walking on Mars." Hell, I dreamed of walking on Mars when I worked on the Apollo Project. I never dreamed that 2011 would come and we would never have even gone back to the moon. It makes me regret even more that I never made the trek to Florida to see a Saturn V launch.
Expand on this, please.
Richard Battin MIT lecture on the computer.
Tangentially, given the comments referencing Star Trek and SpaceX, I'd like to point out that SpaceX lost Scotty's ashes. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/science/space/03launchweb....
Ah, yes, the Senate Launch System. Looks rather like the more sensible DIRECT; I haven't looked closely at it yet, but from glancing at the Wikipedia entry the Feb 11 design shows it's already a boondoggle (as reported by people I trust) by using 5 segment SRBs, one of the fatal flaws of the Ares I (going from 4 to 5 segments results in thrust oscillations severe enough to kill the crew). And from what they're not sa…
I know a few people who know more than me about astro engineering who approve of these jumbo SRBs... but I still just don't buy that they're a good idea for human-rated launch systems. U.S. astronauts who are used to flying on the Space Shuttle and then ride a Soyuz up to orbit can't believe how incredibly smooth and peaceful liftoff is - because the propulsion system is just liquid kerosene - liquid oxygen. Launch s…
To my now somewhat hazy memory, except for the first few Mercury suborbital missions (which were done in a real hurry) the only manned space flight system to use SRBs is the Shuttle.
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I'm aware of the shuttles limitations and the politics behind them, but the Soyuz system isn't any safer. I'm just skeptical of this sudden "ZOMG DRAGONX SAFETY WILL BE AWESOME" assumption that so many pro-privatization types seem to have. Considering how many times their rockets have blown up already perhaps its best to be not drawing any conclusions thus far.
Whut? Soyuz has a better safety record.
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Sure, but something that can assemble things in space (as well as raw materials) is going to be heavy and if its heavy its going to need a heavy launcher. Fuel is heavy too. At the end of the day, you need a powerful rocket to do the heavy lifting. NASA doesn't want to turn into an agency that just gives seed money to SpaceX and wants its own heavy human-rated lifter and capsule. Not to mention, there's political wil…
The US has rather strict rules regarding transfers of rocket/missile technology. The only way SpaceX could get "bought by a foreign power" is with the express approval of the federal government.
The military works the EXACT SAME WAY. They bring design specs and ideas to contractors, do x amount of engineering themselves, and let the contractors do the dirty work. I don't understand why the military gets to design their own stuff but suddenly our civillian space program should just be a check writing machine to Elon Musk and friends.
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Whut? Soyuz has a better safety record.
Not by much. Seems like we've hit a limit of human engineering at least for the technology at that time. The idea that you can do loads better than NASA or the Russian program, safety wise, is a pretty big claim, especially considering that the Falcon series has blown up more than it hasn't.
No, it hasn't.
Falcon 1 has launched 5 times. The first three failed -- in likely-survivable ways. None just "blew up". The next two were successful.[1]
Falcon 9 has flown twice, both successful.[2]
7 launches, 4 successes, 3 survivable failures. Your statement is objectively false.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_1_launches
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_9#Launches_and_scheduled...
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The US has rather strict rules regarding transfers of rocket/missile technology. The only way SpaceX could get "bought by a foreign power" is with the express approval of the federal government.
Fine, how about they just become unprofitable after some accident or other event. Now the US has lost all its launch capabilities. Here comes the big bailouts. Why not just have NASA make its own rockets with private companies for certain tasks. I don't understand the rabid pro-privatization crowd's insistence that its one or the other. The military works the EXACT SAME WAY. They bring design specs and ideas to contr…
Nor is using the bloated, corrupt, horrifically inefficient military-industrial complex as your model for how spaceflight should be carried out.
For once, a government agency is handling this right. They're transparently paying set, commercially-appropriate amounts of money to contractors that have a good chance of success, in exchange for meeting specific, objectively-judged goals.
If something goes wrong, there are obvious fallbacks. Boeing/Lockheed and the ULA aren't going anywhere, the ESA has a good track record, and Soyuz is at least as reliable as the Shuttle ever was (and a hell of a lot cheaper).
If SpaceX fizzles out, it's not the end of the world, or even manned space travel, any more than NASA's twice-over criminal negligence with the Shuttle was.
If SpaceX and friends can reliably launch cargo and eventually humans into LEO, why can't NASA focus on what to put into space, rather than how to get there? I'm sure I don't understand the mechanics of it, but wouldn't it be possible to put up a few smaller cargo carriers containing fuel and pieces of a trans-mars ship and assemble it in orbit?
It's still much cheaper and easier in the long run to build one launcher big enough to do a straight shot from Earth to Mars or other target. You have all the assembly done on Earth and put all the lift capability into a single hyperbolic trajectory straight to the target, instead of doing on-orbit assembly (which we know how to do but is still outrageously harder) and devoting a lot of launch capability into putting…
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I worked at the MIT Instrumentation Lab on a compiler for the Apollo Guidance computer. The language was rather bizarre. Each line was encoded on 3 punched cards. One for the main expression, one for subscripts, and one for superscripts. I was pretty junior so my task was really at the front end processing compiler options and reading the input. The Lab was a really interesting place. Lots of high end 360's, which co…
That is really cool! What if the guidance computer operated with a bad parser? I imagine that could have been disastrous.
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Not by much. Seems like we've hit a limit of human engineering at least for the technology at that time. The idea that you can do loads better than NASA or the Russian program, safety wise, is a pretty big claim, especially considering that the Falcon series has blown up more than it hasn't.
> the Falcon series has blown up more than it hasn't. No, it hasn't. Falcon 1 has launched 5 times. The first three failed -- in likely-survivable ways. None just "blew up". The next two were successful.[1] Falcon 9 has flown twice, both successful.[2] 7 launches, 4 successes, 3 survivable failures. Your statement is objectively false. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_1_launches [2] http://en.wikipedia…
Look, its obvious that its too early to decide one way or another but thats a fucking rocky start to anyone who isn't a fanboy blinded by whatever allure SpaceX has.
Also the disagree downvotes make you look bad. HN is turning into reddit/digg. What a shame.