81–90 of 151 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think Musk said he just made up the original 50% odds.
the original, yes. now they've got experience and say they've got 80% odds for landing one first stage by the end of the year.
https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/58808257418390323...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
the original, yes. now they've got experience and say they've got 80% odds for landing one first stage by the end of the year.
How can that make sense? Until they actually get a successful landing they can't be sure they don't have a problem that causes a failure 100% of the time.
Could someone explain why it's (apparently) so much harder to land on a barge than it is to dock with the ISS?
IANARS (I am not a rocket scientist). My guess is that it primarily an issue of time. When you are trying to dock with the ISS, you are effectivly in a 0g environment, so you can take as much time as you want. This means that you can cancel out your relative velocity at a safe distance and crawl your way towards the ISS at whatever speed you like. When you try to land on a barge, you essentially need to do a suicide…
one second means 10m/s impact; that sounds like quite a lot for a freaking rocket. can you by any chance remember were did you get that from?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If it's successful I hope they'll show a quick replay for stage 1. Probably reasons why they don't want to show it live...
From what I understand, the reason they don't show it live is because they don't have enough bandwidth to transmit live video from the barge. They get a frame every second or two, and lots of telemetry, but not video.
All things considered I'd still call what happened today a good sign.
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You guys regularly fire some portion (3% to 5%) of your employees every year yes? I love what you're doing and I'd love to be part of it, but the press doesn't make it out like a great place to be an employee. It makes sense I guess, given the risk involved in launching rockets, but this kind of work environment is probably not for everyone. http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-spacex-employees-lawsu...
Being fired for low performance is okay — if you feel you're continually perform poorly, you should start to look for another job well ahead of this moment. California is not a particularly saturated market for software developers. Not following the legally required procedure is bad, though.
The problem is that companies following the "fire at least 10% every year in every department" Jack Welch philosophy tend to let some good people go. It's a management philosophy that just assumes that there's no such thing as a really good team, full of worthwhile players.
Its an attitude that works better in professional sports, where hyper-competitiveness is more often an asset than a liability. The knock-on effects of a bunch of coworkers trying to outdo one another to make the cut seem as though they'd make for a crappy work environment, which I believe is what VieElm was talking about.
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From what I understand, the reason they don't show it live is because they don't have enough bandwidth to transmit live video from the barge. They get a frame every second or two, and lots of telemetry, but not video.
Thank you, that makes sense. All things considered I'd still call what happened today a good sign.
If this was some pure R&D project, today's events would probably be a major setback. But SpaceX still made a healthy profit on this launch even with the bang at the end. That's the genius of their approach, and it's why I think they'll succeed where others have failed.
Could someone explain why it's (apparently) so much harder to land on a barge than it is to dock with the ISS?
The 9 Merlin engines are designed to life the fueled and loaded rocket into space, and it's hard to design these engines for a wide range of thrusts - meaning big penalties in weight, performance, efficiency, etc. Thus, when you're dealing with just the first stage, nearly empty of fuel, even minimum thrust from one engine will accelerate it up pretty hard. It can't hover because of this, so they have to take the rocket falling down with considerable velocity and fire the engine at exactly the right time so that when it passes through zero vertical velocity, it's on top of the barge with no lateral velocity either, and then shut it off at exactly that moment.
Then fuel is a whole 'nother factor. There isn't much of it at landing time, and it probably still makes up a lot of the weight of the stage. So you also have to handle the weight constantly decreasing and any motion of the fuel, and not run out before your landing burn.
You need a huge amount of precise control, and your only tools for the job are a vastly over-powered rocket engine, a stage body not exactly designed for stable aerodynamic flight, and some teeny little hydraulic fins. It's gotta be a minor miracle that they can hit the barge at all, and not with some massive destroy-everything velocity.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You guys regularly fire some portion (3% to 5%) of your employees every year yes? I love what you're doing and I'd love to be part of it, but the press doesn't make it out like a great place to be an employee. It makes sense I guess, given the risk involved in launching rockets, but this kind of work environment is probably not for everyone. http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-spacex-employees-lawsu...
Being fired for low performance is okay — if you feel you're continually perform poorly, you should start to look for another job well ahead of this moment. California is not a particularly saturated market for software developers. Not following the legally required procedure is bad, though.
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2012/07/microsoft-downfall-em...