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Manned Space Flight......Yippee!!!


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Makes me think of the Mercury capsule I've seen up close and walked around.  It looks like it is built the same way as a tiny shed with corrugated metal.  Nothing much inside except a couple of levers that throw rods that help point little rockets to maneuver thing around manually.  Very very small inside.

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17 hours ago, flyboy0681 said:

Interesting contrast between the SpaceX' Dragon technology and Boeing's Starliner. I guess Boeing is either stuck in their old ways or didn't get the memo that touchscreens are here to stay.

 

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Bet that guarded switch costs almost as much as a Mooney electric trim switch :)

 

 

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On the Netflix show Space Force there was an utterly hysterical joke about a button cover. What impressed me most about SpaceX wasn't getting the space craft into orbit.  NASA has been doing that for a half century.  What really impresses the heck out of me was the two booster rockets landing in formation from space.  That is definitely something new.

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26 minutes ago, MooneyMitch said:

Super cool this is............

 

Interesting how to SpaceX aesthetics are important but to NASA aesthetics not only took a back seat, it wasn't even considered. If it wasn't functional, then it had no place in the spacecraft. The only aesthetically pleasing piece of machinery that NASA had was the Saturn V rocket itself, that was pure eye candy.

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An aspect of Musk I truly enjoy...... his creations are amazing, and they are aesthetically pleasing ( to me anyway).   

And he gives his creations very cool names.....Tesla, Dragon, Statship, Starman, Falcon, Raptor, Merlin, Kestrel, SpaceX...... :D

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FWIW, rockets have been vertical landing for quite a while, long before Paypal existed or Musk had mastered self-hype PR.    In engineering it's a classic inverted pendulum problem which is often taught in graduate control theory.

Personally I'm a little sad that we make such a big deal about freshening up old ideas and getting back into a business we did decades ago and others have continued to do for a long time.   It used to be we reserved such admiration for genuinely new or innovative accomplishments.

Yes, I'm grumpy.

The Delta Clipper was also autonomous.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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@EricJ, the big innovation isn't in the rocket tech itself (though there's a lot there), but in how it got here...  "Old Space" for years denied it was possible to build a booster that could be propulsively landed for reuse, right up until SpaceX proved they could do it repeatedly.  Too much money was at stake for them to say otherwise (cost+ contracts and Congressionally-supported division of labor [read: "jobs programs"]).

We can really thank the Columbia Accident Investigation Board and the Augustine Commission for the major innovation that lead to SpaceX being able to create the Falcon 9 reusable booster system: Allowing private companies to develop and own the hardware (prior to that, NASA owned the hardware, even though the contractor was the developer and the only one that could build it).  And THAT is a Very Big Dealtm.

As far as SpaceX itself, the engineers there have done some very smart and innovative things.  Landing the rocket isn't really one of them so much as the result of a lot of other, equally important, innovations.  It's not every day that someone creates a new orbital-class medium-lift booster that can land itself and be reused a few weeks later...  We can poke fun at the guy that funded it initially over beers sometime, but I have nothing but respect for everyone else there.

Blue Origin hasn't actually done anything useful, so I don't really consider them at this point.  Sure, the BE-4 engine looks interesting, but they haven't yet completed developing it and are still a good ways away from flying it (probably on ULA's Vulcan initially, rather than their own New Glenn).  In other words, wake me up when they actually do something worth talking about.  And don't get me started on their financier...

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Related to the rocket landing on the barge, I always wondered why the video signal was lost just at the moment that it was about to land. I had always thought it was censored in case it didn't make it, but recently learned that the vibration from the retro-rockets hitting the barge is so intense that the satellite signal carrying the video loses its line of sight tracking momentarily.

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12 minutes ago, flyboy0681 said:

Related to the rocket landing on the barge, I always wondered why the video signal was lost just at the moment that it was about to land. I had always thought it was censored in case it didn't make it, but recently learned that the vibration from the retro-rockets hitting the barge is so intense that the satellite signal carrying the video loses its line of sight tracking momentarily.

They apparently have fixed that as of the last launch.  The live stream shows the landing in all its "glory". :)

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Speaking of Columbia, this an enjoyable read.  It’s not deeply technical, yet provides some very interesting details.

The beauty of the book is the story of humanity coming together.  I had no idea of this vast effort by so many.

My brief description doesn’t do the book justice.

I read the book almost non-stop.  

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Honestly, I have no idea, though it was their other droneship (Just Read The Instructions) that caught Starlink 7's booster.  If one searches the interwebs carefully enough, one can probably find pictures of both droneships in port this weekend and can compare...  Most likely the satellite dish was moved to a better location and its mount "improved" to handle the shock waves and vibration better.

And can I just say the naming of the droneships is about the most awesome thing ever?  Someone read Banks' Culture series, it would appear...

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Just now, afward said:

Honestly, I have no idea, though it was their other droneship (Just Read The Instructions) that caught Starlink 7's booster.  If one searches the interwebs carefully enough, one can probably find pictures of both droneships in port this weekend and can compare...  Most likely the satellite dish was moved to a better location and its mount "improved" to handle the shock waves and vibration better.

And can I just say the naming of the droneships is about the most awesome thing ever?  Someone read Banks' Culture series, it would appear...

I will admit that their naming conventions are, well, unconventional.

 

 

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4 minutes ago, flyboy0681 said:

I will admit that their naming conventions are, well, unconventional.

 

 

Remember, an organization’s character comes from the top on down! :)   

Nothing is impossible....... if it doesn’t already exist, we’ll create it!  

That is what I gleaned from the young lady that gave us the SpaceX rocket factory tour in Hawthorne, CA.  She was referencing her boss.

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5 minutes ago, MooneyMitch said:

Remember, an organizations character comes from the top on down! :)

Ever noticed the naming convention for Tesla models?  Roadster...  Cybertruck... Models S, 3, X, Y...  (apparently Ford already trademarked "Model E").  Just sayin'

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7 minutes ago, MooneyMitch said:

Nothing is impossible....... if it doesn’t already exist, we’ll create it!  

That is what I gleaned from the young lady that gave us the SpaceX rocket factory tour in Hawthorne, CA.  She was referencing her boss.

I see that a _lot_ in the software development world.  And that really makes sense, when you think about it: By definition, developers create new things constantly.  Having any other attitude is just a recipe for not being able to do the job.  That's not to say a wise developer won't caution against expensive solutions...

In any case, SpaceX is a software company that happens to build rockets and related hardware.  And that turns out to work pretty well.

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29 minutes ago, afward said:

I see that a _lot_ in the software development world.  And that really makes sense, when you think about it: By definition, developers create new things constantly.  Having any other attitude is just a recipe for not being able to do the job.  That's not to say a wise developer won't caution against expensive solutions...

In any case, SpaceX is a software company that happens to build rockets and related hardware.  And that turns out to work pretty well.

Yep, got America back in the manned space flight business !  And how 'bout them there electric horseless buggies!!

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3 hours ago, afward said:

@EricJ, the big innovation isn't in the rocket tech itself (though there's a lot there), but in how it got here...  "Old Space" for years denied it was possible to build a booster that could be propulsively landed for reuse, right up until SpaceX proved they could do it repeatedly.  Too much money was at stake for them to say otherwise (cost+ contracts and Congressionally-supported division of labor [read: "jobs programs"]).

That doesn't really jive with the history, though.   NASA funded DC-X (Delta Clipper) and then improved on the technology, in the 1990s.   There were a lot of other, practical barriers, like funding, that were big influences.   When private money got more involved, that was a big enabler.

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