How familiar are you with Musk's work habits?
Eric Berger's <em>Liftoff</em> paints an excellent picture, but any number of news stories will tell you about Musk's work habits. Heck, we saw them on display with the manufacturing hell and scale up of the Model 3 over at Tesla in '18. There's also Musk's stated position that the window to colonize Mars and go multi-planetary is finite. Any number of things could derail efforts, including politics and the economy (as we've seen over the last eighteen months). Then you can take a look at SpaceX headlines and see how many lawsuits they have going on at any given time. Doesn't take a conspiracy to see that an awful lot of people are flinging bullshit at the wall to see what sticks.
​
In that environment, speed and success have been their best tactics for quite a while. Enough people want what they have that it might pull them through.
Not enough information to calculate. Where in the asteroid or comets orbit this impact occurs at and the direction and orbit of both the asteroid and the earth make a huge difference. Is the asteroid going to hit the earth dead center? glancing blow? that makes a big difference too. here is a simple momentum calculator you can use to play around with this. Set the impactor to 7500 m/s and the asteroid to 0 m/s (relative velocity) and your 100 ton impactor can slow down a 750,000 ton asteroid by 1 m/s. for comparison, a 1km dia asteroid weighs around 1.4 billion tons.
So I made this SpaceX app (100% free & no ads) called "Launch". Launch gives you every upcoming and past launch, vehicle information, Launch-/ and Ladingpad information, and much much more.
I would love it if you could check it out and maybe give a rating. Greetings Lennart :)
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.nucleon.launch
The Rocket Company had an interesting idea to allow orbital launches from inland locations, in there they built the first stage to fly vertical to lob the upper stage out of the atmosphere and then the first stage would shuttlecock its way back to the launchpad area while the upper stage had to do all of the sideways boosting instead of using the first stage to pick up a couple kilometers per second sideways like, say, a Falcon.
It'd require a built-up second stage and have efficiency losses, but the argument was that the real savings would come from having lots more launch locations, much lower recycling costs between launches, and so on. First stage failures have your wreckage confined to your launch complex and upper stage failures can have a huge flexibility in where the spacecraft comes down or, if it's something like the vehicle coming apart, the hypersonic re-entry tears it apart and it's essentially no different from a small aircraft accident by the time stuff hits the ground.
I'm not suggesting that's the plan here, but... just as a thought experiment, if the Starship is borderline SSTO on its own, then one that's lobbed vertically out of the atmosphere should be able to comfortably orbit with payload and then land like normal, just less payload than a standard downrange first stage course would provide. The first stage lands back at the launch complex for the next flight and...
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Again, not saying that's the plan here, but what an announcement THAT'D be at the 9/28 event....
Promise of Mars by Arc True
While the word Spacex is not in the book due to fear of trade mark lawyers, I've done my best to advocate for Elon's idea of a Mars colony. I’m strongly motivated by the Spacex vision of the future and this is my small way of advocating for it.
Available on Amazon at:
https://www.amazon.com/Promise-Mars-Arc-True/dp/B098VLPQ3S
I read the subreddit rules for merchandising posts. I think I'm doing what it said. Please let me know if I've done something wrong.
First 3 paragraphs of the novel:
Consider using LEDs to light a one-acre farm on Mars. Good solar panels have an efficiency of 22 percent, and great LEDs have an efficiency of 35 percent. With Mars' solar irradiance of 59 percent, you would need a minimum of 22 acres of solar panels for the plants to receive the same amount of light as on Earth.
For a small outpost, that is doable. But to feed Promise's population of 304,667, you would need 2,500 acres of greenhouse, which in turn would require you to build 55,000 acres of solar panels. That's 86 square miles, or a twentieth of all solar panels ever made. And that's for the lights alone. Luckily, no one farmed that way on Mars.
Having finished my count, I moved my hand down from where it blocked the sun's glare. I wrote "174 wheat plants per meter” in the top left corner of my notebook. Hmm. Well within normal. No decaying plant matter; no smell of rot. None of the cracks in the concrete floor had more than a two-millimeter gap. Where was all the oxygen going?
1.82m Starship ring-height, roll diameter looks about 3/4 of that = 1.365m, with hole about half of that = 2.0 m^3 = about 16.000 kg = $20,800,- ($1300/ton for 304 rolls on alibaba)
Not directly related to SpaceX, but pretty exciting news, it could really open up the solar system (thus makes Mars colonization easier, so not totally unrelated to SpaceX ;-) ). This drive is similar in effect to EMDrive, but is much less controversial and has much better theoretical foundation, it's also less well-known. To see a layman's explanation of this drive, see: https://boingboing.net/2014/11/24/the-quest-for-a-reactionless-s.html, there's also a book: Making Starships and Stargates: The Science of Interstellar Transport and Absurdly Benign Wormholes
NIAC is NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts, it's a program to provide small amount of funding for TRL 1 breakthrough technologies, this is the best part of NASA IMHO, really what NASA should be doing.
So it's me again. Just released a big update on my app LAUNCH. What's LAUNCH? It's a SpaceX app (100% free & no ads). LAUNCH gives you every upcoming and past launch, vehicle information, Launch-/ and Ladingpad information, and much much more. (NEW Starship & Super Heavy Progress...and much more)
I would love it if you could check it out and maybe give a rating. Greetings Lennart :)
Andorid: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.nucleon.launch
IOS: coming soon
If you want to support me: https://www.patreon.com/nucleoninteractive
(App is still 100% free without ads)
I mean Dragon with a Second stage is on the cover of Rocket Propulsion Elements in the eighth edition
and a F9 Dance Floor on the ninth
that's a kind of big one already
He's basically right, in that sending humans to Mars is a not a business proposition that will bring a financial return. He's wrong if he thinks that's what Musk expects from it.
There is also an argument that NASA are doing the Columbus stage already. They've sent probes, established the presence of water, atmosphere etc. There are a lot fewer unknowns now, which gives SpaceX more confidence of success than if NASA hadn't done that.
Also, title is misleading. It's a clickbait repost of the Motley Fool article which has a more reasonable title.
Although he is making this sound exciting - "It's a beast" - these values are pretty standard for rocketry.
Atlas V, for example, has 61 km/h ground wind requirements
As for high altitudes, the speed is not as important as the change in speed (known as wind shear).
It's worth noting the aeronautical definition of attitude as well, meaning the orientation of the vehicle, for those who aren't familiar:
For leaning rockets like Thaicom 8, the robot will be quite literally adjusting the rocket's attitude.
Google says the Saturn V was 220 decibels, and starship has about twice as much thrust, but let’s just take that 220 figure to be generous and roll with it.
Throwing 220 decibels and 100 miles into this online calculator gives us a sound of 68 decibels at 100 miles away. That’s louder than someone talking right next to you is (60 dB). So you would literally have to raise your voice, almost shout, to talk to someone right next to you if a starship was launching 100 miles away.
If a starship only launched every now and then then people would probably be okay with it, but if you have dozens of flights a day like Elon wants, people will not be okay with it.
Apollo only lasted a week, so it's not a good example.
The closest example of a working crew vs volume problem is Navy ships, particularly nuclear submarines. A Virginia-class submarine has 130 crew for 6 months at a time, in a confined space (I can't find anything on it's total crew-space volume.)
r/spacex seems to have an obsession for cabins. Navy ships favor communal spaces over individual or two person cabins. I don't see why SpaceX would want to ignore 100 years of successful design for something that has never been tested.
> To start off with, unless they go the hydroponics route they need to create workable soil from the Martian surface which will be pretty difficult due to all the perchlorate in it which will need to be washed or neutralised somehow.
If Mars were to be radioactive or something, then use of soil would be problematic. All the other obstacles can be overcome by following the same route as life on Earth, just faster. Also:
What about Project West Ford, where the US launched millions of needles into LEO. Wouldn't this make them the largest satellite operator by count?
For those wondering, a satellite can be defined as: "An object launched into earth orbit [...]" (doesn't have to have electronics or solar panels)
If you've got the time, go read the book "Digital Apollo" (Amazon Link) which details a lot of the political and technical problems they had with early space development.
Basically astronauts came over from test pilots and they were very much against automatic controls and taking a back seat to computers. When engineers realised that they needed fly-by-wire at the very minimum to make spaceflight happen, there was much protesting from test pilots who still wanted to have manual actuation of control surfaces and attitude jets "just in case".
When they developed the Saturn V, even though it was obvious that the reaction speed of a human being was in no way going to cut it, it still took a huge amount of convincing for them to finally get the idea that the pilots were going to be just passengers until they reached orbit. A few of the pioneer astronauts (Glenn and Armstrong most notably) knew the deal and knew they needed computer assistance, but there were quite a few holdouts. Even Armstrong's "manual override of the computer" on Apollo 11 still resulted in him using fly-by-wire to make a landing - he was basically just directing the computer to "move over here a bit, and descend at this rate" and it did all the hard work of balancing the spacecraft on its one engine.
This undercurrent of manual control still existed in the Astronaut corps when the Shuttle came along and they still wanted a guy in the seat flicking switches.
Actually if you look at a close-up picture you can see that the grasshopper did actually have suspension: https://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/10/12/watch-spacexs-grasshopper-rocket-hover-to-new-high-of-2441-feet-before-relanding/
Some additional info, those of you from the US might not realise how ubiquitous GSM coverage is globally now. Take a look at the Open Signal maps and poke around some developing countries and you'll be surprised. Yes there are plenty of gaps, but mostly the people that live in those gaps of coverage couldn't afford even a $30 month data plan. Their entire income might be pretty close to $30 USD a month. Half the planets population lives on less than $2.50 a day (yes really) and 80% of the population lives on less than $10 a day (again yes really source below). They could maybe afford a $5 a month plan, but they still would have to buy a new phone or desktop satellite box to use starlink, out of the question.
You might say, ok but that leaves 20% of the global population approx 1.4 billion potential customers. Yes, except mostly those 1.4 billion live in urban or tourist areas that already have connectivity and very few of them need to be constantly connected no matter where they go. (even towns as small as 2000 people will have GSM coverage in my travelling experience)
Sources: GSM network coverage: https://opensignal.com/networks
Global income levels: http://www.globalissues.org/article/26/poverty-facts-and-stats
> u/EnergyIs Thanks for the insight.
Well, I shamelessly shanghaied a quality space author onto the thread (and apologize), but have few regrets.
Happy to explain. Probably the first thing I should do is point you to the Android app - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=uk.co.digitaltrust.marstime The app contains a glossary and links to other resources.
Unfortunately I've never produced an iPhone version, so explanations will follow shortly as soon as I login via a desktop.
Created using Blender (free 3D modelling software). I wrote some simple python to import the following data, calculate the circular orbits and then create and animate the satellites:
Altitude (km) | Inclination (degrees) | Num Sats | Orbit Planes |
---|---|---|---|
550 | 53 | 1584 | 72 |
1110 | 53.8 | 1600 | 32 |
1130 | 74 | 400 | 8 |
1275 | 81 | 375 | 5 |
1325 | 70 | 450 | 6 |
335.9 | 42 | 2493 | 2493 |
340.8 | 48 | 2478 | 2478 |
345.6 | 53 | 2547 | 2547 |
580 | 97.7 | 1500 | 25 |
539.7 | 85 | 1500 | 25 |
532 | 80 | 1500 | 25 |
524.7 | 75 | 1500 | 25 |
517.8 | 70 | 1500 | 25 |
498.8 | 53 | 4500 | 25 |
488.4 | 40 | 4500 | 25 |
482.8 | 30 | 4500 | 25 |
345.6 | 53 | 3000 | 25 |
334.4 | 50 | 3000 | 25 |
328.3 | 30 | 3000 | 25 |
> If SpaceX had been founded in Europe
they would never have gotten off the ground.
> Looking at the map, Spain looks like it has some barren areas suitable for a test site.
Or what about launching East from somewhere near Alicante. However, further downrange, we'd need to get to space before overflying some of the planetary hotspots. Maybe you could take a look at where we get above the 100km altitude.
>I know that Ariane launches from a former French colony, but I'm not sure if a truly private company could launch from there as well...
French Guiana a former colony ? As a French citizen, I'd better switch on the TV to learn the news.
Better check the Wikipedia article. Then for your question about a private launch site, why not ask that on r/Arianespace and come back here with the answer.
Ah ok, like this? I was imagining something that required a special tool to crimp the worm onto the band, and I know how expensive specialty crimpers can get. Sweet! Added to cart, thanks!
Hey! I'm Chechu. I'm the developer of SpaceX GO!, a cool SpaceX launch tracker. If there are legitimate interest, I might be able to add this feature to the app. The tricky part would be live speed & altitude. The app is available on the Play Store, and soon on the App Store. Let me know!
Hi SpaceX enthousiasts,
I've been working on an Android companion for a little while now which hits beta. It's build on r-spacex's API and is enriched with notifications/calendar event management etc. If you're not afraid of betas you might give this a go. Download the beta via Google Play here:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=nl.studionoorderlicht.spacex
I'd appreciate it if some folks could give it a try and post some feedback.Side note: dev on v1.1 will start soon enriching the app with more features.
Cheers!
Update 1.1.1: Lollipop (5.1) is now supported. It still contains some minor visual bugs. The notification system (which now rests on Oreo functionalities) will be extended in the future for 5.1 and higher.
Update 1.1.3: Notifications are now being supported on Android 5.1 and higher.
These books were recommended by Musk himself at one point or another except for the last one. I keep a running list here:
I completely forgot to add the project trello here!
As you can see the current plan to make the game fun and challenging is just that: errors in machines and faults in the manufacturing process so you can use different inspection and simulation machines to fix and prevent RUDs before the rocket launch. Of course you can't always find everything so there's always a possibility, if you don't pay enough attention, of a RUD on a launch or when testing at McGregor
> orbital outpost
Intriguing your "orbital outpost" moniker. It seems to be from space.com plus mentions on gaming sites where orbital outpost connotates "dungeon".
All in all, I'd prefer going to a lunar outpost... still wishing the best for the crew though.
A guy posted to this forum a few weeks ago that has created his own app "Launch" it's actively evolving and seems quite good. Plus he seems to respond to redit feedback and implement requested features.
Here is the link to his app on Google play https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.nucleon.launch
I will link the previous Reddit discussion if I can find it.
I thought it was going to take forever to find one when I went yesterday because that section had tons of different Hot Wheels all on different pegs with seemingly no organization. Luckily I was with my friend and she spotted it.
You might be better off finding one online. Here's an Amazon link to one that isn't horribly over priced. Good luck and happy hunting!
> How can it then after the docking, reconnect and then succesfully land back at earth? Or does it do that for some other mission and on the ISS docking, the Dragon just goes down by itself and lands in the sea?
Yes, as /u/Kang_54 explains, Dragon is the spacecraft that is launched towards the ISS by the Falcon rocket. Once it separates from stage 2, Dragon spends a day or so catching up with ISS, gradually adjusting to get closer and closer and matching the speed until "grabbed" by a robotic arm on the ISS.
After the mission, Dragon separates from ISS, the thrusters pushing it gently away, back towards the earth. Remember that because there are no other forces acting on it, once it starts moving, it keeps moving until a thruster in the opposite direction fires. It's reoriented so that the heatshield is facing in the direction of reentry, and eventually the atmosphere (even though it's very thin near the ISS) will start to slow Dragon down more and more.
The mobile game "Space Agency" is great for demonstrating all these principles. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nooleus.android.spaceagency&hl=en_GB
I have a hunch that most of the soot on the returned boosters is the result of incomplete combustion of some of the carbon atoms in RP-1, which contains long branching tree structures or rings of carbon atoms.
http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Cyclododecane
Almost all of these carbon atoms will be converted to CO2, but not 100%.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soot
The advantage of methane is that each molecule contains only one carbon atom, so far fewer chemical reactions are required to completely convert all of the carbon atoms to carbon dioxide gas. The soot buildup on Starship should be much less, and the result of methane combustion, not combustion of stainless steel.
Theres lots of Creative Commons music out there. Knock yourself out!
Edit: Got that wrong. I thought OP wanted any music on top of an existing video.
> It seems low to me
It probably is low because Musk has said:
>The boost stage is about 70% of the cost of the rocket ... it's sort of on the order of $30 to $35 million dollars.
If you take $30 million and 70% as gold standard (I'm loathe to do that!) you get
S1 = $30 million
S2 = $6.9 million
Fairings = $6 million
Total = $42.9
The only thing is Musk tends to play fast and loose with numbers so it's very difficult to really have confidence in anything above because literally all the numbers came from him. There's lots of ways to reconcile them, but the confidence in that reconciliation...
You should try reproducing your work in Orbiter spacefight simulator http://orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/ It has extensive 3rd party addons and support for custom guidance programs.
After my experiences with it many years ago, before the advent of SpaceX, I found the SpaceX docking simulator to be gamified: much less realistic and far easier. It does not take into account the differing orbital velocities into account, for example; they truly do factor into the approach, and IIRC only become negligible during final approach.
No, unless music specifically is released with no copyright restrictions. Not going to happen. Personally, I like https://www.shutterstock.com/music/track/Bring-Us-Together/394538 and it's legal if you buy a license.
>The pair had dinner in about 2004, Musk said. “We talked about rocket architectures,” Musk later recalled. “It was very clear technically he was barking up the wrong tree, and I tried to give the best advice I could.… Some of the engine architectures they were pursuing were the wrong evolutionary path.” Some of the ideas that Bezos proposed, SpaceX had already been tested, Musk said. “Dude, we tried that and that turned out to be really dumb, so I’m telling you don’t do the dumb thing we did,” he recalled saying. “I actually did my best to give good advice, which he largely ignored.” -Space Barons book.
I doubt you're missing anything. The eBay dude probably buys the patches straight from the SpaceX store, and sells them on eBay for a nice markup.
We see the same thing in /r/soylent. Soylent is a meal in a bottle shake that sells direct from the manufacturer (or from Amazon) for about $34 per case of 12 bottles. People still resell it for $22 for 3 bottles. Note that on that second link, the product isn't sold by Amazon, it's sold by a 3rd party. The 3rd party just orders the first link, splits the 12-bottle case up into 4x 3-bottle packs, and sells the 3-packs individually, making $54 for each case they split and resell.
I have no idea why anyone would buy 3 bottles for $22 when you can buy 12 bottles for $34, but apparently some people do.
Hi u/Marston_vc
Agree, space is opening up in a manner which seems more like science fiction. If you're interested in how this might proceed and what it all means, I explore these topics in more detail in my book. If you're are a member of Amazon prime you should be able to read for free via kindle lending library, or alternatively using Kindle Unlimited.
Read Dennis Chamberland’s book on exploring space:
Departing Earth Forever: Book One - Warning and Promise: The Manual for Today's Colonists Preparing to Launch to Mars and our Moon Kindle Edition.
https://www.amazon.com/Departing-Earth-Forever-Colonists-Preparing-ebook/dp/B0B5NH4Z61/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1670681949&sr=8-1
Dr. Chamberland spent 30 years at NASA in the life sciences division as a biology Ph.D. and has studied the radiation issue extensively. See the chapter on radiation exposure in deep space.
Read Lift Off by Eric Berger and hear the answer coming from SpaceX employees themselves. That book helped me a lot to understand what makes SpaceX an outlier. Spoilers: it's hard to exclude the upper management..
https://www.amazon.com/Liftoff-Desperate-Early-Launched-SpaceX/dp/0062979973
That's a shame. It was cool that, for a while, we got to see neat commercial usage like this:
https://www.amazon.com/Rocket-Propulsion-Elements-George-Sutton/dp/0470080248
https://www.amazon.com/Rocket-Propulsion-Elements-George-Sutton/dp/1118753658
Planet Money (Economics podcast from NPR) had some conversations with Phil Brzytwa from SFI about how the ridesharing works. Episode SPACE 3: Rocket Shopping (December 9, 2017)
The benefits of SSTO's are rarely discussed. See this book for a detailed discussion:
Halfway to Anywhere: Achieving America's Destiny In Space Hardcover – October 1, 1996. https://www.amazon.com/Halfway-Anywhere-Achieving-Americas-Destiny/dp/0871318059
Don’t worry, it’s my personal mission to get the highest resolution video possible from Mars. We will give them GoPros and some Influencer training to fully vlog their experience and live stream on YouTube.
“Today’s video sponsor is NordVPN!”
Jokes aside one key piece of infra needed is Interplanetary Internet, there is a startup working on it but we might be able to inspire them a little bit to act faster.
The client Reddit doesn't want you to use knows how to automatically strip the injected slashes.
Play store link: Sync for reddit
If you really want an in-depth answer, read Elon Musk by Ashlee Vance.
Yea as with most people its not just one thing its the whole package that leads to the eccentric strangeness.
If you want a fair an accurate view of Elon Musk I would recommend reading the biography by Ashlee Vance. It paints a pretty good picture of the man and what its like to work and live with him.
I was definitely a fan boy and had built up Elon as this amazing guy in my head before reading the book. After reading the book I realized he’s kind of a dick. I definitely don't think i would enjoy hanging out with him in real life. I realized thats alright though. I can like the stuff Elon is doing like trying to get to Mars and SpaceX while simultaneously knowing he's an asshole that kind of lives in his own world.
The Ashlee Vance biography if you are interested.
https://www.amazon.com/Elon-Musk-SpaceX-Fantastic-Future/dp/006230125X
Made a Mirror for you: https://smallpdf.com/result#r=90f104e14201e2131df65151e2628096&t=share-document
Still available for me. There are spaces in the URL, so I wonder if you browser has a problem with that
Maybe can. my favorite part is that it sends you live notifications when the launch is near. Announces Elon's important tweets. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ilyasgnnndmr.spacex.elonmusk
So I made this SpaceX app (100% free & no ads) called "Project Starship".
It brings you the latest news on the starship project in Boca Chica and the Cape.
With the help of clear diagrams, images, and statistics you get an impression of the progress of individual prototypes. Road closures and other updates are always up to date.
I would love it if you could check it out and maybe give a rating. Greetings Lennart :)
Android:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nucleon.tankwatcher
Is there going to be an IOS version?
I have planned one, but in order to publish the app on IOS, I’d have to pay 99$ per year. Because I want the app to be free, it's not in my budget at the moment.
If you want to help me out, you can donate here:
https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted\_button\_id=MY2UTDA8FN3M4
Anybody who is interested in this question should go read
Safe is not an option by Rand Simberg
The problem we have right now is that Space Exploration is for some reason considered to be a realm where there can be no deaths. This is honestly NASA's fault as they have perpetuated the idea that space can be safe and that we cannot let people die there.
This is at odds to numerous other activities; people regularly die skiing, mountain climbing, hang gliding, skydiving, and it's something that we accept as a society. People die at work all the time; lumberjacks, commercial fisherman, police officers, firefighters, and of course members of the military participate in high risk jobs and we are okay with that societally. And of course about 38,000 people die in the US per year in car accidents, and we accept that.
When somebody dies in space, it will be big news simply because news is about rare events and people rarely die in space.
Any my guess is that it will be high profile for a few days and then will fade away. Even if there is negligence by some parties - as there certainly was with NASA in Challenger and Columbia - it will fade away though there will likely be legal proceedings.
Anybody who flies in the near term on a commercial flight falls under the FAA's "informed consent" approach. The launch company needs to share the risks with the person flying and that is really all that is required.
> but the enthusiasm in the title sounded to me a bit on the dangerous side.
same reaction here. I immediately thought of Abigail Harrison and Alyssa Carson who may well turn out to be on the wrong track, at least for becoming an astronaut and possibly for having a fulfilled life with some kind of stability. Setting an excessively high target in early years could lead to frustration later on.
Reading The Making of The Atomic Bomb which describes how in the frantic effort to scale up enough uranium enrichment capacity before the end of the war, a $100M (1942 dollars) factory was built and 4,000 workers hired to manufacture acres of extremely fine porous mesh before the technology was ready. A better method of making the mesh was discovered but which needed different manufacturing, and the hard decision was made to scrap and retool the factory. They kept the workers entertained for a month playing chess, games, and lectures.
So when the objective is all that matters, sunk costs are no object.
> Eerie to see it rising above buildings, and then landing behind them
In fact it was filmed in China j/k.
Not trying to laugh aside that country's carelessness with public safety, but we need to be careful when drawing conclusions from youtube footage from an iphone. I mean, if not having looked at the map, you wouldn't know this was South Padré island, some twelve km away
https://www.google.fr/maps/place/Suntide+II+Condominium+Association/@26.0614247,-97.2406324,12z/
> *u/SoManyTimesBefore * I mean, it really won’t make that much difference probably. At least not for the viewers.
Watched from the viewing complex at South Padré island, it should be no further than a passenger jet, so an actual improvement. Whatever happens, from engine cutoff, it really would need binoculars due to the lack of a contrail almost to landing.
https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=13/26.0357/-97.1684
see also a NSF forum page on launch viewing.
For the spectacular moment you may have to await Superheavy testing with outward and return jets.
> Note his wording, “hopefully southern Canada”. In other words, they do not have regulatory approval yet to operate in Canada.
What if an inhabitant of say, Cornwall, Montreal signs up for Starlnk from a friend's address in Buffalo?
Taking this further, a Starlink subscriber living on a boat in the USA could moor anywhere around the Great lakes without paying attention to the border.
TL;DR Any lack of operator authorization will have so many workarounds it looks likely to be ignored.
It’s no different to landing on the ground, it just needs to stop 50m up. The chopsticks have around 50m of movement left (the height of a starship). Free fall velocity from 50m up is over 100km/h. So if you could match that speed at near the top then even a booster travelling at 100km/h could be braked at 1 additional G before hitting the deck. Except like you say, dynamic forces.
So, the contact speed is the deciding factor, we don’t yet know how fast the chopsticks can move but I don’t think they can ever exceed 1G down since held up by cables. If they can fall at 1G and we can brake starship at 1G then we have half the height to do either.
So worst case scenario, booster coming in too hot and engines fail before we hit the chopsticks. So what happens if you release the brakes just a split second before the booster hits the chopsticks. You have a 100T of metal chopsticks trying to free fall, you could match the free fall speed with the winch motors, you then have 25m of distance to free fall them up to max speed, according to a calculator that’s 80km/h and takes 2.5 seconds. Booster then just touches the chopsticks at that speed. Then we have another 25m to brake from 80km/h to zero and that assumes the booster engines shutoff when we touched and we are dealing with full mass, in reality the engines will still be firing and we are dealing with a far far less mass.
Thinking about it, lift points on starship are not at the top so there might only be 40m of chopstick overhead, not sure.
There was actually a concept for a Chinese solar telescope using a thin annular mirror.
Its a relatively normal phrase, meaning that change needs to come whether the obstacle likes it or not, and even if that obstacle does everything possible to prevent it. It's never read literally.
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/over-my-dead-body
I think the Discovery One from 2001: A Space Odyssey is a pretty good example of how a spaceship with nuclear propulsion and power might look.
As you described, the radioactive engine is placed as far away as possible from the command module where the humans live.
It’s considered to be quite realistic by aerospace engineers, except for the lack of large radiators to get rid of all the heat from the reactor.
Originally, it was supposed to feature enormous wing-like radiators, but Stanley Kubrick thought it would confuse audiences, making them think the “wings” were for atmospheric flight. Personally, I think that was a mistake, but it’s still an awesome looking spaceship.
Here’s an article that features some early production art that shows what it might have looked like had Kubrick decided to go with the more realistic version:
http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Discovery_One
Thanks to Elon Musk’s vision and the brilliance of SpaceX’s engineers, I might just get to see something like this for real in my lifetime! (I’m 42, BTW.)
> A floating platform can be made essentially immune to wave motion with semi submersible style construction.
Indeed, oil rigs don't move with the swell. Plus I do like the idea of something like Boris Island, with not only BFR landing, but also runways and swift loop transport to the city CBD. You could view it as a hub for the local continent - off the BFR, straight into a 737 and a flight to your local airport.
http://ee24.com/media/cache/2b/25/2b258f680a861af0d24df09459a26bac.jpg
> I'm still team boat though. Loop tunnels eventually might be interesting but that's a massive extra expense.
Maybe, but I'd be researching it now - I've a feeling that there are speed of implementation, and speed of permitting, advantages to be had. I have something like this for laying submarine pipe, but on a larger scale.
and the safety culture of the supposedly swashbuckling SpaceX that is better than the public image from its early days:
This concern has been raised before, albeit regarding day vs. night construction in Florida. Below is a copy of my reply. The location may be different, but the temperatures in question are similar enough that the end result is basically the same.
>(Imperial units warning) I don't know if you've ever been to Florida, but the temps there don't really vary much from day to day. Looking over the past month, daytime highs only fluctuated by 6°F, same with the lows. The coefficient of thermal expansion of 304 stainless is 17.3e-6 in/in°F. As long as they made them all during the day, the most fluctuation you'd see from the widest daytime temp swing is 1/8", circumferentially. Even over the widest day to night swing (21°F), you're only looking at barely over 3/8" circumferentially.
>
>It just doesn't matter that much. You're going to see more variation from the heating caused by welding, and reducing the number of weld joints down to 1 will drastically improve that.
The defect we're looking at here seems more likely to be caused by warping from weld heating with the two seams located so close to one another. Being near the top of the stack, I would guess that this area was welded after the decision not to fly Mk1. In addition, where it was done so close to the date of the presentation, it's likely they made the decision to hurry this area along to hit the deadline. These two factors, in my opinion, led to this being a likely point of failure. This section was welded on right about the same time as the "big push", where activity seemed to pick up dramatically as they rushed to have the showpiece done on time.
4 PM Eastern, 30 August 2019:
https://www.wunderground.com/hurricane/atlantic/2019/hurricane-dorian?map=forecast
Cat 3. Path still uncertain after the Bahamas.
"The models have not been very consistent from run to run in terms of the timing of the northward turn".
Midday on Friday, 30 August 2019.
Things may be looking better for Cocoa, FL? The path has shifted south a bit, and a slowdown means that the stronger wind from the right-front quadrant would be less important. But a possibility is that it'll go slow after landfall, and make a right turn and go slowly up the coast, causing a long period of wind, rain, flood damage, and storm surge damage to the general area. And steering currents are expected to be light, causing more uncertainty in the path. And intensity is always something of a crapshoot.
https://www.wunderground.com/hurricane/atlantic/2019/hurricane-dorian?map=forecast (The Storm Discussion tab shows the National Hurricane Center Miami FL detailed discussion.)
https://www.wunderground.com/cat6/Dangerous-Hurricane-Dorian-Slowly-Intensifying
New updates at 11 PM EDT.
https://www.wunderground.com/hurricane/atlantic/2019/hurricane-dorian?map=forecast, Storm Details tab. I don't see a change in forecast: the ensemble still looks like someone dropped a plate of spaghetti.
Late Thursday, 29 August 2019:
https://www.wunderground.com/cat6/Dorian-Potentially-Historic-Labor-Day-Hurricane-Florida
"It will most likely reach the Florida coast on Monday or Tuesday as a potentially devastating major hurricane, although the near- and post-landfall outlook is still cloaked in uncertainty."
Current landfall prediction from the National Hurricane Center is Vero Beach, FL, 65 miles south of Kennedy Space Center. But that puts KSC on the right (stronger) side of the advancing hurricane, so it's not as good news as we'd like. And different models have wildly different landfall predictions.
"It’s worth noting that in NOAA records going back to 1851, no major hurricane (Category 3 or stronger) has made landfall on Florida’s entire Atlantic coast north of Stuart [100 miles south of Kennedy Space Center], where Frances arrived in 2004. This weather.com article has more on why major hurricanes seem to avoid the central and northern Florida coast. Needless to say, any major hurricane striking this stretch of coastline head on would be unprecedented."
SEE why I've kept pointing out that the average risk of hurricanes at Cocoa was low?!
Midday on Thursday, 29 August 2019:
Aaaand now it's forecast for category 4 130-mph winds, though at least the current track is farther south from Cape Canaveral ... from model consensus, though the HWRF model has it still hitting the Cape, and if it does an eyewall replacement cycle, it'll tend to grow.
https://www.wunderground.com/hurricane/atlantic/2019/hurricane-dorian?map=forecast
https://www.wunderground.com/cat6/Category-1-Hurricane-Dorian-Expected-be-Cat-4-Sunday
> It would not be a shock to see some north-versus-south “windshield wiper” back-and-forthing on these landfall projections for another day or so, until Dorian undergoes the expected westward bend in its track. Now is an excellent time to keep in mind that the average 5-day track error over the past five years of NHC forecasts is around 200 miles. With this in mind, the entire Southeast U.S. coast—especially from South Florida to South Carolina—needs to stay abreast of Dorian’s evolution. People along the northern Gulf Coast should also be aware that there is a chance of a Gulf Coast landfall from Dorian next week.
Most recent updates (11 PM EDT 28 August 2019):
https://www.wunderground.com/hurricane/atlantic/2019/hurricane-dorian?map=forecast
Still forecast for cat 3 landfall at Cape Canaveral on Sunday night / Monday morning.
"Users are reminded not to focus on the exact forecast track, as the average 5-day track error is around 200 miles." From the 5 PM EDT 28 Aug 2019 update here (storm details tab)
I agree, the track and intensity are very uncertain, the storm still has a long way to go. However, estimates seem to be getting worse for the intensity. Now at possible category 3 landfall.
https://www.wunderground.com/hurricane/atlantic/2019/tropical-storm-dorian?map=forecast
To expand on /u/Gwaerandir's reply, https://www.wunderground.com/hurricane/atlantic/2019/tropical-storm-dorian
If you read today's discussion, currently under https://www.wunderground.com/cat6/Dorian-Growing-More-Organized-it-Heads-Puerto-Rico, says that there's a substantial amount of uncertainty in both track and intensity.
Tracks vary from south Florida to north Florida, based on the exact model. But the consensus track at the moment points right at Starship Mk. 2.
Bad news again!
https://www.wunderground.com/cat6/Now-Heading-Windward-Islands-Dorian-Could-Reach-Puerto-Rico-Hurricane discusses the current prognosis. Models of tropical storm intensity are less accurate than track, so it being a tropical depression when approaching Miami is less comforting that one could hope. The track aiming just a bit more north and it's aimed at ... Cocoa ...
So yeah, keep an eye on this.
https://www.wunderground.com/cat6/Dorian-Heading-toward-Lesser-Antilles?cm_ven=cat6-widget, August 25, 2019, 1:40 PM EDT:
> The 0Z Sunday suite of ensemble runs from the GFS and European models is distinctly bearish on Dorian’s future. About 90-95% of the GFS and European runs keep Dorian as a weak tropical storm and kill it off in the northeast Caribbean. If Dorian somehow beats these very long odds and makes it past the northeast Caribbean without being torn to shreds by the Greater Antilles, it could conceivably move onward to affect the U.S. more than a week from now, but the chances of that appear slim.
If you don't want to pay in advance for (or pirate) a 3D software like Cinema 4D, 3ds max or Maya to play around with 3D modeling and rendering, just get the latest Blender version, it is free and open source. In the current 2.80 release, it is much more user friendly than ever before (but still a huge, complex piece of software).
Yes, but a quick search doesn't turn up what I remember, sorry. It was something about the space of possible control inputs being searched; it was described as "convex" or something similar, and it wasn't until a paper in the last 20 years that any real progress had been made in that area. More than that would be pretty wild guessing, but I'll have another search.
edit: seems like it must have been this paper I was thinking of? I'm sure I read (or heard?) a good explanation of why it was particularly important, but I can't find it, sorry.
Not only that, SpaceX engineer Lars Blackmore's paper on the programming concepts for retropropulsive booster landings is publicly available: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Lossless-Convexification-of-Nonconvex-Control-Bound-Açikmese-Carson/9209221aa6936426627bcd39b4ad0604940a51f9?p2df
This reminds me of how an American engineer named Denys Overholser at Lockheed Skunk Works read Russian researcher Pyotr Ufimsev's paper on radar wave diffraction to come up with a way to design the F-117A stealth fighter's shape. I bet Lars Blackmore's paper has been studied by some Russian engineers working on their reusable rocket program.
So, the exhaust flow sorta is too. OP said
> the Raptor Vacuum nozzle extension is just small enough so that ...
What this is going to look like, is a channel of exhaust coming out of the nozzle, and then immediately contracting.
[site with picture](https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Dual-Diverging-Annular-Rocket-Nozzle-(-Focusing-and-Soi/6864ccd5a236192e1e723db632fe73df4dbf6e0e/figure/3).
What you're getting at is that when you make the nozzle sufficiently big, the exhaust stops overexpanding, because the atmosphere intrudes into the nozzle. And you're right; at that point the exhaust isn't really over-expanded anymore. But the exhaust coming off this test stand, will be.
> you would need a ramp
A miniquad can be under 50kg to be be manhandled by two people, or even alone. If you really want a larger version, then adding a ramp to the back of a SPMT would be about a day's work to assemble and fix.
> I'm envisioning the interior of a c.1900 private railway car, but a lot bigger.
the Pullman carriage. A cuboid is a non-optimal pressure vessel. I'd prefer a <em>Space Odyssey</em> 1:1 replica to be named "Discovery Two".
I would argue that more and more websites are using static content.
You should have a look at the very aptly named IPFS. It is the perfect solution for this problem and thankfully is already very much underway and growing quickly.
edit: found a good article about it from geekwire made a new post on this subreddit, I thought it deserved it based mostly on the images I hadn't seen before.
On Open Street Map, everything seems okay, no confusing name changes. Compare.
https://www.google.com/maps/@25.9907567,-97.1832433,847a,35y,358.71h,4.69t/data=!3m1!1e3
> It may not be very long until they prove reliability high enough to fly over Cuba
IIUC, the initial objective of the Boca Chica site was a good slingshot effect overflying the strait to the North of Cuba. So the overfly is not a criteria.
> if they launch prograde from anywhere in Israel, an S1 will be dropped on another country to the east.
>> u/TeslaK20 I would do something similar to DARPA's cancelled plan to launch satellites from an F-15
Air launch, foreign launch location... nobody's mentioned sealaunch so far. I always thought Israel, having easy see access would be a good candidate to build a group of floating islands way out in the Mediterranean at a respectful distance from all neighbors. You'd need about 500km from your own coastline and there seems to be enough room. From the little I know of scripture, it would make a good fit four your culture, and would also have a lot of applications outside space activities: fishing, marine science, space colony prototyping, and even tourism.
> the Shavit rocket is overpriced and underpowered, and it can only send spacecraft into retrograde orbits because it has to stage over the Mediterranean and not over Iraq.
so why not launch from Alacante, Spain...
It's Lato, freely available on Google Fonts. (Recognised by the round bowls and straight ascenders & descenders on a "6" and "9", combined with a "1" having a foot)
I seemed to recall Elon had mentioned 50 miles for MECO but I'm now doubting my recollection since Elon rarely uses miles in this sort of context.
But bear in mind that at MECO the rocket will be going at Mach 10, and at those speeds the faintest atmosphere can generate significant resistance. I just ran it with an online calculator (https://www.omnicalculator.com/physics/drag-equation) and it gave me close to one ton of force. That should be enough to settle the fuel, assuming the calculator is accurate at these pressures.
Well, I'm only saying, I wonder how long it would take to reach orbital velocity as the result of free fall without the benefit of an atmosphere to slow you down. Bearing in mind, I realize, it's not the right direction for orbit - so this is a bit silly.
I was just trying to pick a speed I knew you would need heating tiles at. You'd need heating tiles a lot sooner than that, but I don't even know how to begin to figure out when that was.
Ok, that being said -- what height do you fall straight towards earth at 27000kph?
This freefall calculator calculates the height to be 2600miles at 6.3m/s². 6.3m/s² is based on a dirty averaging of the gravity at 2600 miles and 100 miles above earth - though I realize the drop of isn't linear - but this should work for my purposes.
My assumption was that Starship is already built strong enough to buffet the atmosphere and slow down at orbital speeds.
OTOH, I realized way before I started writing this much detail, what you were probably saying is that Starship is planning to approach at a VERY, very different angle, and therefore will bleed off speed in a much thinner atmosphere and less resistance, thus lowering the structural strength requirements as well as spending more time slowing down.
I mean, in the "straight down model", they are speeding along at 4 miles per second. When it starts hitting significant atmosphere at 60-80 miles up (guessing) -- that's not much time to really stop, implosion/structural failure is almost certain.
Air launch saves drag losses, and some gravity losses during the vertical ascent phase. You still get gravity losses until you achieve sufficient horizontal velocity.
Air launched Starship still needs somewhere around 8500 m/s dv to make orbit, which is more than it has available when carrying a payload, or likely even with no payload.
An easy way to verify this yourself is to look at the kinetic energy at seperation using an online calc. 120 ton Starship + 30 tons landing fuel + 100 tons payload (250 tons) + 1200 tons of propellant = 1420 tons total Starship mass.
At Super Heavy separation (~2500 m/s) the 1420 ton Starship has 4,437,500 MJ of kinetic energy.
At air launch separation (236 m/s), it has 40,000 MJ of kinetic energy.
So Super Heavy imparts over 100x as much kinetic energy than an air launch. Both are releasing in the thinner atmosphere, so release velocity is the key factor. Starship simple can't make orbit with a payload without the extra energy supplied by Super Heavy.
Not that easy.
This paper explains Lossless Convexification of Nonconvex Control Bound and Pointing Constraints of the Soft Landing Optimal Control Problem
This branch of the discussion sounds a bit personal regarding the people involved, but IIRC, sperm, ova and ovicytes are all cells, not tissues. When freezing a tissue, ice crystals puncture the cells which shows up if you freeze lettuce or raspberries. Thawing does damage too. When freezing individual cells you can replace unwanted water with other chemicals.
I know nothing of the subject, but if you want to take this further, you could use the search term cryobiology
> Next up; putting a chip in your spine. /s?
Next up; putting a chip in your spine :)
Anyone (like me) working in building trades has heard horror stories of strong and fit people having a work accident and being in a wheelchair or bedridden for life. I'm sure you'll agree that any kind of hope for these people is something quite wonderful.