Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy successfully launches

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

881–890 of 926 posts

Re: SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy successfully launches

#881

Post by rtkwe »

rhn_mk1 wrote: post #469
FLUX-YOU wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Watching the car orbit and the Earth's reflections in the windshield and paint and Starman's visor is sublime (sometimes goes to cameras of the engine/orbit overview) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBr2kKAHN6M e.g. https://i.imgur.com/Yu6gRar.jpg This is all I'm watching for the rest of the day https://imgur.com/oKWTAQk

What are the particles flying with different speeds when the camera points away from the Sun?

Link to a timestamp with what you're asking about please it's a 4 hour video...

Re: SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy successfully launches

#882

Post by rtkwe »

Klathmon wrote: post #148
peterwaller wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of the centre core, these are the last few moments before it is lost from the feed. Smoke can be seen... https://youtu.be/wbSwFU6tY1c?t=38m20s ... and then back to the presenters. As someone said to me, "That's their lying face!" :) Can't fault them for wanting to dwell on the positives though, was an amazing moment to watch. Edit: You can switch cameras on the above youtube video to the countdown net; you can clearl…

Can't fault them for sure, but it's strange for them. SpaceX tends to be very upfront with their failures, and tends to broadcast and in many cases re-upload video of their failures. Doubly so when the "failure" isn't part of the primary mission.

They do eventually come out with it but pretty much every failure they've had so far they've kind of glossed over it during the livestream then come back to it later during a separate press conference.

Re: SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy successfully launches

#883

Post by mcv »

ghostDancer wrote: post #94
djaychela wrote: post #16

That was like watching a sci fi film when the two cores landed.... I watched it with my mother (who is 80!), and she said it was as significant as the moon landing. Do we know the fate of the centre core yet?

Where i live it was 21:45 and i couldn't help but told my son that was on bed to come and see it, cause IMHO it's a significant moment for space exploration. He went to bed later than usual but has a nice story to tell tomorrow at school.

I watched last evening alone (my wife wasn't interested, sadly) and this morning again with the entire family.

Re: SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy successfully launches

#884

Post by CydeWeys »

ghostcluster wrote: post #729
CydeWeys wrote: post #586

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not harmless though, even if no harm was intended. My girlfriend is an engineer like me yet her experience in tech has been radically different than mine. She is constantly subjected to similar kinds of comments that imply that people like her don't fit in or belong, and it takes a real toll. It's a part of the reason why there's so few women in tech. I would never want to censor anyone. I'm just asking people t…

> It's a part of the reason why there's so few women in tech. I find this rhetoric overblown, as it doesn't match the results of serious inquiry into the topic. > Cross-cultural consistency of sex differences for four traits: extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism, and male-versus-female-typical occupational preferences. Men and women differed on all four traits. 200,000 participants from 53 nations. > Only sex pre…

It's a big leap to go from a few supposed differences in personality characteristics to concluding that tech should therefore be utterly dominated by men in a >4:1 ratio. Even assuming that there are real personality differences between men and women, and that these differences have an impact on the propensity to get into technical jobs, you'd still have to establish the magnitude of these effects. What if the "natural" effect is that the ratio of men to women in tech should be 1.3:1, and that the vast majority of the actual discrepancy is in fact caused by bias and discrimination?

Also, you're ignoring cultural factors. See this article: http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/stubborn-obstacle... There are and have been many societies in which women were much better represented in technical fields than they are today in the US. How do you explain that if it's all supposedly just innate biological differences? In the USSR a majority of engineers were women, and the reason for it was actually very logical: Men are stronger and are more suitable for physical labor, and women are thus more suitable for knowledge jobs.

And there are many character traits that men have on average more than women that make them worse engineers. A higher prevalence of mental illness, for starters. More of a tendency to be overly verbally combative and thus detrimental to team functioning. Less ability to focus on "boring" tasks and study, which is why you now see girls dominating boys in school performance at all levels, kindergarten through university.

Who is more "suited" to be an engineer is an entirely different discussion that is not even close to being resolved. What I was talking about was the very real fact that most women in tech experience gender-related discrimination that makes them feel unwelcome. That assuredly has a real effect and is on less shaky grounds than arguing from biological factors.

But I don't want to get drawn into this discussion because I really do have lots of work to get done today. Just refer to everything that was said in the wake of Damore -- I'm sure we wouldn't cover any new ground that wasn't already covered then.

Re: SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy successfully launches

#885

Post by nora4 »

tialaramex wrote: post #840
mamon wrote: post #796

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, so Musk is basically doing the job of the Chinese companies of the past: producing cheaper copy of other people's inventions. And yet, some call him "visionary" or "genius" :)

Quantity has a quality all of its own. And quantity is only achieved through this sort of further optimisation. It is much too easy to disparage an optimisation as unimportant compared to some hypothetical "original" idea of which it is a refinement, and we should not do this, especially to try to claim credit for people we know at the cost of those far away we've never heard of. The "original" inventions behind reco…

Very good points; I'm in general though space skeptic in the following sense. Human race as a whole always seeks more, bigger, further, faster as solution its problems. I don't think space is the solution to our earthly problems.

Maybe 1000 years from now, people look at us and say god damn it. I wish they had stayed there and learned how to live in earth well. We are now speared all over the place and we all hate hate each other; and just right now I hear Martian went ahead and annexed Venus and they also seem to be interfering in Andromeda elections.

Re: SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy successfully launches

#886

Post by gbrown »

jotm wrote: post #807
heurist wrote: post #544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I looked around my office expecting that someone else was watching and as stunned as I was. No one else was watching :(

I know right, it's like the Curiosity landing all over again - so impressive, no one seemed to care :D

Those first images were incredible.

Re: SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy successfully launches

#887

Post by losteric »

sah2ed wrote: post #710
losteric wrote: post #695

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's harmful about saying someone fits in? I use that as a filler statement after good interviews... if they performed well, they fit in. Does that offend people?

You might be eminently qualified to do the work but in reality no one works in isolation (unless you are Joe Hewitt [0]). So unless you can mind read, no one can say for sure if you will fit in with the existing culture to get the job done, a subtle aspect many people overlook. A good example of a qualified hire quitting just after six months is Chris Lattner who quit because "... Tesla isn't a good fit for me after…

That uncertainty is always a given... addressed in the first three words of "it looks like you'll fit in". I still don't see how that can be perceived as offensive or insulting.

Re: SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy successfully launches

#888

Post by gehsty »

ygra wrote: post #842
codeulike wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought the barge was a drone?

It has station-keeping thrusters to stay at precise GPS coordinates. But it can't move far under own power and is towed. The name ASDS is not really to be taken literally here.

It will likely be a proper dynamic positioning system so will more than likely use two independent reference systems for position, one could be a DGPS system the other could be as basic as a taughtwire....

Re: SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy successfully launches

#889

Post by jpitz »

votingprawn wrote: post #867
jpitz wrote: post #847

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The characterization is/was also propagated by people who actually refuelled them, so I'm somewhat unconvinced it is a myth.

I believe if you look for primary sources like pilots and ground handlers/mechanics you'll mostly find reference to small leaks (I think they were referred to as drips caught in cookie trays). I had a quick search and found the KC135 chap who says the refuelling was needed due to leaks, but without being rude to him I'm not sure he's really a qualified source for that information. It sounds more to me like 2+2=5. I'm…

My primary source is my father, who was a senior NCO responsible for fueling operations. It was his job to know.

Re: SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy successfully launches

#890

Post by ghostcluster »

CydeWeys wrote: post #884
ghostcluster wrote: post #729

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a part of the reason why there's so few women in tech. I find this rhetoric overblown, as it doesn't match the results of serious inquiry into the topic. > Cross-cultural consistency of sex differences for four traits: extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism, and male-versus-female-typical occupational preferences. Men and women differed on all four traits. 200,000 participants from 53 nations. > Only sex pre…

It's a big leap to go from a few supposed differences in personality characteristics to concluding that tech should therefore be utterly dominated by men in a >4:1 ratio. Even assuming that there are real personality differences between men and women, and that these differences have an impact on the propensity to get into technical jobs, you'd still have to establish the magnitude of these effects. What if the "natur…

This is an interesting study that addresses your distribution points directly.

> 3233 young and old adolescents representative of the population

> For the young adolescents, the observed difference in Mechanical Reasoning is equivalent to 10 IQ points, and this difference increases to 13 IQ points for the old adolescents.

> Beyond the observed small average sex difference in the general factor of intelligence (g), the boys' large advantage in mechanical reasoning (MR) must be strongly underscored. This sex difference is not explained by g, and therefore the probable contributions of what is measured by relevant subtests such as abstract reasoning (AR) or spatial relations (SR) can be excluded. The MR difference is still present with almost the same magnitude when the general factor of intelligence (g) is removed. It is also noteworthy that, for the old adolescents, more than half of the variance associated with numerical reasoning (NR) cannot be attributed to g. Thus, we suggest that mental processes captured by these psychological measures are behind the documented male advantage in STEM disciplines

http://atavisionary.com/study-index/intelligence-psychometri...

An observed standard deviation of sex difference in measures of mechanical reasoning at the average of the distribution.

Post reply on HN