Anyone for an astronomy thread?

[Moonlight Shadow]

Fucking hell, this was perfection...

[ursus arctos]

A bit after 38 minutes in this clip

No Saturn V, but still quite impressive.

[hobbes]

There's literally nothing less randian than a mars colony. the only way it will be able to survive is the sort of ultra high productivity communism that they have in star trek. People operating in the pursuit of individual freedom on mars will die very quickly.

Not to mention, chucking his entire fortune into driving the technology for solar tiles, house batteries, electric cars and big rockets is hardly a fuck you to his fellow man.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

A bit after 38 minutes in this clip

No Saturn V, but still quite impressive.

Saturn V cheated by having Walter Cronkite sit so close he had a sort of religious experience.

[San Bernardhinault]

From 45:30 to about 46:30 is where the real gold is, with the synchronised landing of the two boosters.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

So while there was plenty of footage of the first two boosters coming in to land, there was literally no word anywhere about what happened to the third booster which was supposed to land on the boat. Well, Apparently it hit the water travelling at a couple of hundred miles an hour, after two of the three engines didn't light to slow it down, the second time they fire the engines on the way down. It will be interesting to find out why that happened, because that's the first landing they didn't manage in about 20 attempts.

The weird thing is that all of the extra stuff they had lined up for this rocket has all been thrown out the window. They were supposed to be building a much more powerful upper stage, based on the new raptor engine, and they were supposed to "man rate" it, or certify it to carry humans, so they could for instance send astronauts around the moon in a dragon 2 capsule. But all of that is gone, and instead in two years they're going to be launching their giant shuttle (without the big rocket) and flying it around the atmosphere and landing it, Two fucking years! Now inevitably that's going to slip a bit, but that's a vanishingly small amount of time, for something that they don't even have a factory for yet.

Still, if they can manage this, they can probably eventually manage anything.

[Sam]

The twin booster landing looked properly like something out of a film, they came down so perfectly in unison.

Saturn V cheated by having Walter Cronkite sit so close he had a sort of religious experience.

'This plate glass window is shaking, and we're holding it with our hands ...'

Did no-one think to tell them that if a plate glass window is shaking violently it's probably a better idea to step away from it?

[Levin]

That was, indeed, amazing.

Is Branson still launching his high atmosphere plane by "the end of the year"?

[Anorak Smith]

Have to admit to being a little cynical about this exercise yesterday, but when I saw these landing I was genuinely awestruck, one of those moments in life where science fiction becomes fact right before your eyes.

[Snake Plissken]

[Moonlight Shadow]

Musk is also investing a lot into improving renewable energies generation and, very important, storage. I'm inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. His space program seems also motivated by more than just commercial purpose. It might not do much to alievate poverty but we do need this kind of vision too.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

The twin booster landing looked properly like something out of a film, they came down so perfectly in unison.



'This plate glass window is shaking, and we're holding it with our hands ...'

Did no-one think to tell them that if a plate glass window is shaking violently it's probably a better idea to step away from it?

The whole building was pulsing. They're way, way way too close. They should literally be miles away from where they're sitting, and ideally the building should be built out of concrete, rather than wood. They wanted the plate glass window to fall outward if at all possible. When Cronkite is talking, he's also struggling to breathe as the shock waves are smashing into the building, and he's vibrating like a tuning fork. If you've ever seen him talk about anything else, that clip sounds like the argentinian commentator as Maradona goes around shilton.

The other thing is that Blast mitigation technology was in its infancy. Most of the clouds you see surrounding the falcon Heavy before it launches are them spraying millions of litres of water everywhere, so it doesn't melt the pad, and tear it to pieces. they did the same for the Shuttle. To go back to Ursus's point, one of the many reasons that it's never going to be comparable to a saturn V launch, is that nothing man made is ever going to be as loud as a Saturn V again. Even a Saturn V.

Other reasons that this isn't going to be as impressive as the saturn V is that i There were plenty of people still alive in 1967 who remembered hearing about two eejits up in North Carolina, and their efforts to attach a lawn mower to a glider. Now here we were, less that 20 years into the jet airliner age, and 10 years after the first tiny american orbital satellite. Here was a rocket nearly as tall as the tallest church in America, and it was going to go into space. The future must have seemed limitless. Ursus is being unkind. there is never going to be anything as impressive as a Saturn V. at least until the first person walks through a solid wall. Everyone will be impressed at that. Until then the saturn V is basically the young Elvis of science shit.

[Snake Plissken]

The other thing is that Blast mitigation technology was in its infancy. Most of the clouds you see surrounding the falcon Heavy before it launches are them spraying millions of litres of water everywhere, so it doesn't melt the pad, and tear it to pieces. they did the same for the Shuttle. To go back to Ursus's point, one of the many reasons that it's never going to be comparable to a saturn V launch, is that nothing man made is ever going to be as loud as a Saturn V again. Even a Saturn V.

Nah, the water isn't there to prevent the pad melting, it's for sound deadening. The reflection of the sound waves would tear the stack apart.

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/s...on-system.html

This is why it "rains" after each launch. The flame trench directs the exhaust away and sideways out of the pad. Bits of the trench occasionally melt (STS-124) but that is due to repeated launches. If you look at launch images from Baikonaur, you will see dust kicked up and not steam.

[Various Artist]

Nah, the water isn't there to prevent the pad melting, it's for sound deadening. The reflection of the sound waves would tear the stack apart.

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/s...on-system.html

This is why it "rains" after each launch. The flame trench directs the exhaust away and sideways out of the pad. Bits of the trench occasionally melt (STS-124) but that is due to repeated launches. If you look at launch images from Baikonaur, you will see dust kicked up and not steam.

That's really interesting, Snake. So they don't bother with the same sort of sound deadening at Baikonur, then?

Just rewatched the video – that shot of the twin boosters airily plopping themselves back down upright onto the pads in unison, like it was the most normal thing in the world, really is awe-inspiring. When I first saw it yesterday I had no idea that such a thing was going to happen, nor indeed was possible, so it was startling to me as if I'd say dropped two pens off a skyscraper and they'd landed end-on. What a gorgeous bit of mechanical ballet in among all the sound and fury.

And seriously, I started taking screenshots from the video yesterday, it was so magnificently surreal:



They put a frigging car in space. That's kind of fantastic. And he had DON'T PANIC written on his dashboard in large, friendly letters. Douglas Adams would've been pretty proud.

[WOM]

When I first saw it yesterday I had no idea that such a thing was going to happen, nor indeed was possible

Come now. It's not exactly rocket sci....

[WOM]

Stupid question here, but where does all the money come from to fund this stuff? I mean, this is 'billion dollar' shit here, no?

[ursus arctos]

Funding details here.

[Snake Plissken]

That's really interesting, Snake. So they don't bother with the same sort of sound deadening at Baikonur, then?

No. They basically launch over a big pit, so the sound waves are deflected away.



They could use water but it is likely to freeze at somewhere like Baikonur which isn't going to be a problem in Florida. (Challenger excepted, of course.)

[WOM]

Funding details here.

Thanks for that.

Google's in there pretty deep.

[Ginger Yellow]

Not by Google's standards. All of the equity raised (including all the other investors) is about a month's profit for Google. Or, to put it another way, it's about as much as Microsoft paid for Minecraft.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Nah, the water isn't there to prevent the pad melting, it's for sound deadening. The reflection of the sound waves would tear the stack apart.

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/s...on-system.html

This is why it "rains" after each launch. The flame trench directs the exhaust away and sideways out of the pad. Bits of the trench occasionally melt (STS-124) but that is due to repeated launches. If you look at launch images from Baikonaur, you will see dust kicked up and not steam.

Gah, I should have been much clearer, coz that's what I meant by "tearing it apart," and the bit about nothing being as loud as the Saturn V was, even the Saturn V. The boiling off of the water helps to draw some of the heat away as well, but as you point out that's a bonus. The pad is going to become a real bottleneck for them. If they want to launch a shuttle to mars or the moon, they're going to have to have six launches and landings in a very short space of time, using a rocket 2.5 times as powerful, as the one on tuesday. That's going to require a really fucking robust launchpad.

I can't see very much of that report that ursus put up. That Google money is development money for their satellite constellation plan. Sure it is supposed to provide cheap fast satellite internet access to the 4 billion people who don't have access to the internet, but primarily it's going to be moving huge amounts of data around. It's called Backhaul or something similar, and I don't understand it really. But essentially, Large tech Companies like google are going to be among the major customers for this thing, and since this requires the big shuttle, then a big shuttle we shall have.

[Sam]

The whole building was pulsing. They're way, way way too close. They should literally be miles away from where they're sitting, and ideally the building should be built out of concrete, rather than wood. They wanted the plate glass window to fall outward if at all possible. When Cronkite is talking, he's also struggling to breathe as the shock waves are smashing into the building, and he's vibrating like a tuning fork. If you've ever seen him talk about anything else, that clip sounds like the argentinian commentator as Maradona goes around shilton.

Haha, thanks for that. I was half joking really, but it still strikes me that I'd have been cowering on the other side of the room rather than walking up to the violently shaking plate glass window and pressing my hands against it.

Other reasons that this isn't going to be as impressive as the saturn V is that i There were plenty of people still alive in 1967 who remembered hearing about two eejits up in North Carolina, and their efforts to attach a lawn mower to a glider. Now here we were, less that 20 years into the jet airliner age, and 10 years after the first tiny american orbital satellite. Here was a rocket nearly as tall as the tallest church in America, and it was going to go into space. The future must have seemed limitless. Ursus is being unkind. there is never going to be anything as impressive as a Saturn V. at least until the first person walks through a solid wall. Everyone will be impressed at that. Until then the saturn V is basically the young Elvis of science shit.

And indeed. I've often mentioned my amazement at how quickly that technology advanced. Thousands of years trying to get something to stay off the ground under any sort of power, thousands of years of failing to do so. Then a few baby steps where people started to get the hang of it, and then some major breakthroughs. And once they'd managed to turn it into a halfway reliable process, someone pointed at the Moon and went, 'shall we go there, then?' and within, comparatively speaking, the blink of an eye, they'd done it. Orville Wright himself had been dead for twenty-one and a half years when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped onto the Moon. Everyone on this thread (and every regular poster on this entire board) can clearly remember things that happened to us twenty-one and a half years ago. That's only six years longer than I now am from my first visit to the country I now live in. I would love to live in a universe where Orville had lived to 98 or 99, so we could have had some quotes from him on the Moon landings. Assuming of course that watching them wouldn't have finished him off.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

There's something a little sad about all of these amazing achievements having come about as a result of one billionaire's whims or desires. I don't know why but it was somehow more meaningful when it was national governments leading the way when it came to space exploration. The idea of commercial spaceflight is so inherently disheartening - reducing one of the most amazing feats humankind has ever accomplished to profit and loss. Capitalism intruding into every sphere of human achievement.

Hmm, Elon musk isn't a billionaire who is also a space nut in his spare time. He's a space nut who became a billionaire, by being a really high achieving space nut. Making rockets and electric cars is actually what he does for a living. He's not really in it for the fame, he's not a very good public speaker, and doesn't seem to enjoy it. His speeches are a mess but This is the press conference he did after the launch yesterday. He is clearly exhausted, but very relaxed and happy. I'll put it to you this way, I can't imagine a richard Branson press conference like this. He hasn't just put his brand on a separate company, and mugged around at press conferences. It's pretty clear that he's actually the one in charge of building the rocket.

Since we're going back to the gilded age,I suppose that this isn't the same as Andrew Carnegie giving a load of money to a university for a telescope, to wipe away the shame of the Jonestown flood, or the Homestead slaughter. That's a lot better description of what Jeff Bezos is up to over at blue Origin. Musk is more like Brunel. In that this is actually what he does for a living, and I think that comes across in that interview.

The second thing is that Space X are just a space trucking Company, whose job is to carry X kg from the ground to some point in space for money. If Space-X build a shuttle that goes to the moon or mars, it will be NASA or ESA or JAXA or ISRO or Roscosmos (US, EU, Japan, India, Russia) astronauts that get off and play golf on the surface. SpaceX are there to get you and your stuff there, and back again for a fixed fee. The Whole point of Space-X is to allow the building of a self sustaining city on Mars, by pushing the cost of transporting a kilo to the surface of mars down from $1 million ( This is how you spend a billion on landing a one tonne rover on mars ) to landing a couple of hundred tonnes for a cost that can mostly be expressed in thousands of tonnes of Methane. They've decided to approach the problem like engineers, and break down the cost reduction into a series of achievable steps, and every step they make allows them to cut the cost of flying things into Earth Orbit, and generate more cash, to fund the development of the next stage.

The first step was to build a really cheap rocket by doing everything themselves, (this immediately cuts the cost by well over a half,) this allowed them to charge half as much as everyone else. the next step was to mass produce it, then make it much more powerful, then teach it how to land, then how to make it reusable, then attach three of them together to make a really powerful rocket. The essential point is that everything that gets them nearer to mars pushes down their costs, and allows them to make money to pay for the next phase of development. The thing is that this is all happening really fast, and it's snowballing. It took ten years for Space-X to go from their first orbital launch that could carry a tonne to orbit, to landing those two boosters, and he's talking about the mars ship flying around the atmosphere in less than 2 years. with the launch of the falcon heavy the cost of launching a kilo to space has fallen by 80% in a decade. As he says in the press conference, the only way for it to get cheaper is to build it an awful lot bigger.

But I think the third thing to remember is that this isn't really as much of a change as you imagine. NASA have never really built or designed a rocket. They get large military industrial complex companies to do it for them. This isn't NASA's fault, this is because they are reliant on Senators for money, and that really fucks things up for them, but that requires a much longer post. But i'll give you a sneak preview, this way is a lot better.

[Snake Plissken]

The only thing that I will say in NASAs favour is that SpaceX is allowed to fail and doesn't carry human beings. These are two options not open to NASA. The Shuttle had three main computers and each one of them had completely different software written by three different companies to the same exact specification. The software would be tested and the companies would be given a sheet of paper with "PASS" or "FAIL" on it. If it said FAIL, the company were not told why it had failed. This produces very safe systems at a hideous cost.

SpaceX are very good at setting expections much lower. When it does go wrong, they are a) very open and b) go "hey, this stuff is tricky". But the most important thing is that when it does go wrong, they haven't killed anybody. It will be interesting to see how the company react should that horrible day ever come to pass.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Hmm, Space-X is allowed fail to a certain degree. SpaceX is allowed to fail doing something new, after they've done what they were supposed to. If a Space-X rocket blows up on the pad because a problem with helium containers like in 2016, or if it blows up mid flight like in 2015 because of a faulty spar bought from an outside supplier, then SpaceX has to shut down for several months until they find out what the problem is, and then fix it to make sure the same problem never happens again. They can't fly during these periods, and that costs them a lot of money. Even though they landed the first two boosters in the most recent flight, they lost the centre core and that was their first unsuccessful landing since they started getting them right. They'll be crawling all over the ignition systems of all their rockets to make sure that whatever went wrong there doesn't happen again, because the whole point of the Falcon heavy is that you get all three parts back.

The other thing is that they are going to be flying people soon, and for that to happen, they have to stop fucking around with the rocket, and settle down on a final version, and fly it seven times without accident. The capsule they are designing to carry people is in large part delayed because the safety requirements are so far above the ones used on the shuttle, but also Space-X are being made meet higher standards, and do more testing than Boeing who are making the other capsule. to be honest that's fair enough. The Last thing Space-X want is to kill a bunch of astronauts. That would be a disaster. The Shuttle flew with a statistically calculated loss of crew of 1 flight in 90. It turned out to be a bit higher than that (Because they flew challenger outside of normal operating limits) but SpaceX are required to show a loss of crew in one flight in 270. which is again fair enough, it's not 1977.

As Far as I was aware the Shuttle originally had 5 computers with 64k each. The point of having five computers is that at any one time, one of them could have its answer changed by a stray piece of cosmic radiation. So they kept having the computers check in with each other and compare answers and if one of them was out, it was discarded and restarted. That's basically the way the computers work on the cargo dragon capsule, and how they will work on the dragon 2. The computers now are a bit more powerful mind you. I can't really follow half of this, but it seems seriously old school.