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    Anyone for an astronomy thread?

    I knew that the aerospace engineering sector was particularly badly treated in the US. but This just seems counter productive..

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      Anyone for an astronomy thread?

      Thanks to Hot Pepsi for The Expanse recommendation.

      Don't know how I missed hearing about it before. Watched 1st few episodes, now nearly finished the 1st novel.

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        Anyone for an astronomy thread?

        Still waiting for Netflix UK to air the bloody second season. June is the latest rumour.

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          Anyone for an astronomy thread?

          We're number eleven! Kiwis in space!

          Better not scroll down and read the whole story, it gets less impressive ...

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            Anyone for an astronomy thread?

            I'm not sure it does get less impressive. What they are doing is incredibly hard, and they are trying to do it on a relative shoestring. There's a lot of competition though in the microsatellite launch market. It will be interesting to see if the market develops to support it.

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              Anyone for an astronomy thread?

              Reading a bit more about this launch. If this had gotten into orbit, it would have been the first orbital launch from a private facility. There's a chance that they still will be the first. They're aiming at the $5 million to put your half tonne satellite into orbit tomorrow market. There are apparently an awful lot of people who are really interested in this market. There's no real reason why new Zealand couldn't become a major centre for launching polar satellites.

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                Anyone for an astronomy thread?

                The rocket took three minutes to reach space - outer space starts at 100km above the earth's surface - with a "great" first stage burn, stage separation, second stage ignition and fairing separation, but it didn't complete its planned mission
                ....
                He gave the flight a "10 our of 10" and a big party was planned tonight at the company's operations base near Auckland Airport.
                Um...

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                  Anyone for an astronomy thread?

                  heh, well apparently it achieved everything on its first flight that space-X achieved on their second flight. So I reckon that he's pretty happy. He's a glass four fifths full kind of guy.

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                    Anyone for an astronomy thread?

                    I mean, I totally get the celebration. I'd just be slightly less sure about giving it a 10/10.

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                      Anyone for an astronomy thread?

                      I don't fully understand how this is done, but it looks amazing.

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                        Anyone for an astronomy thread?

                        The NASA unmanned probe programme really does some amazing stuff. They've been working away steadily while huge fortunes have been pissed away on the Shuttle, and now the SLS> it's why all that political stuff surrounding NASA is so infuriating. NASA has no business, or interest in building a fucking giant rocket. This and the ISS is the sort of shit that they are really good at.

                        A recent example. The Nasa Inspector General has released a report revealing that there is no documentation to explain why a whole heap of decisions around the new rocket were made. The most puzzling was the construction at great expense of a new test stand to test all the components of the rocket, at Marshall Centre, in Huntsville alabama. Particularly when the components are build in michoud in New orleans, and NASA's main testing centre was 40 miles away. It means that every component makes this journey twice. Huntsville is a further 1200 miles away by barge, and it costs an extra $300,000 a trip.

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                          Anyone for an astronomy thread?

                          Why give one state's politicians pork when you can give it to two?

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                            Anyone for an astronomy thread?

                            Scott Manley builds the Saturn V

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                              Anyone for an astronomy thread?

                              I didn't realize Wingco was Scottish. he's hidden that well.

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                                So the latest space-X landing was a bit touch and go. This rocket went higher, and came back harder than any other landed rocket, and it nearly mangled the landing gear completely. (hence the major lean) They're launching again on sunday (not this rocket obviously)

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                                  It really is incredible isn't it? All my life (and a long time before) this has been said to be impossible, the realm of cartoons and pulp scifi.

                                  I think it's really difficult to grasp the scale of these things.

                                  https://twitter.com/hypercubexl/status/766750876664995840

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                                    Oh and the bit that's landing is as tall as the Arc de Triomphe.

                                    I have a friend who got the Apollo LEGO and it is so good.

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                                      They did warn beforehand that there was a really big chance that this one wasn't going to land successfully, and when the feed went out at the last second, with the rocket booster blasting huge up huge waves on one side of the barge, it didn't look promising. I look forward to the spectacle of them landing two of these things at the same time, if they ever get around to launching their Falcon Heavy.

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                                        Incredible. A shame it cuts at that point, but as Levin says, to be able to "accompany" a flight into space like that, and most of the way back down again, really is beyond belief. Sorry, trouble with YouTubes or I would link.

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                                          I have a friend who got the Apollo LEGO and it is so good.
                                          I'm so very tempted to buy it.Luckily it's out of stock at the moment so I can't give in to the temptation.

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                                            It's important to occasionally give into temptation GY, because if you don't it builds up and builds up and before you know it you're diving into an edinburgh pub toilet looking for your morphine suppository.

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                                              I accidentally bought one the other day. Won't get it until next month though as it's on back order. I fear they may have underestimated demand...

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                                                Originally posted by hobbes View Post
                                                I accidentally bought one the other day. Won't get it until next month though as it's on back order. I fear they may have underestimated demand...
                                                Really?

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                                                  Drink may have been taken.

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                                                    So aside from the Eclipse. which is being covered elsewhere, there have been a number of notable events in the "world of space". A big AMOS satellite in Geostationary orbit has decided to stop working, and is now in the process of disintegrating most enthusiastically. The satellite itself was 13 years old, and was only supposed to function for another two years, but this sort of thing is a real problem, particularly given the number of dead satellites and bits and bobs floating up there. Hopefully this is going to encourage govts to put the tidying up of space further up the agenda. If we're to avoid Kessler Syndrome we have to start sending dead satellites to a fiery death in the upper atmosphere.

                                                    President Trump signed another executive order, and reconstituted the National space Council under VP Pence. The idea was to co-ordinate all aspects of space policy across the various people who have input in space (NASA, FAA, Air Force, etc) People were wondering if this was going to set the ground for great progress, and a co-ordinated approach to the challenges of regulating and funding the development of human activity in space. Of course this administration being this administration, the National Space Council is made up exclusively of traditional vested interests, and has representatives from the companies that would have been sending people to the NSC in the days of Apollo. I think one of the requirements for being on this council is that your company was involved in the Shuttle programme.

                                                    Then again it can't really have come as that much of a surprise, given that Elon Musk has already done the advisory council thing, and legged it over the Paris protocol, so presumably he's on some WH enemies list. And Jeff Bezos is fighting an open war with Donald Trump. Trump writes incoherent angry tweets from the toilet about the Guardian of Amazon, and unpaid imaginary internet taxes. Jeff Bezos prints 10 pages of White house leaks in the Washington post. I can't imagine that he was going to be included in any photo op with the glorious leader.

                                                    But to a certain extent Jeff Bezos, simply doesn't care. He's basically the richest man in the world, so he has options. For instance his company Blue Origin has nearly finished development of their brand new BE-4 engine, which is going to be a huge, powerful engine, that crucially isn't made in Russia. ULA (boeing+ lockheed Martin) are developing a new rocket, and have paid Blue origin $2 billion to be able to use these engines in their new rocket. The problem with this is that if ULA buy rocket engines from Blue Origin, then Rocketdyne (the people who made the space shuttle engines, and make the engines for the Delta IV, and the SLS) are going to be utterly fucked. So they have been trying to use their extensive political connections to force ULA to use an engine that they're starting to think about developing instead. That engine would require an awful lot of Govt money to develop, and it would be at the very least 2 years behind. But Rocketdyne in a last desperate throw of the dice have decided to move all of their operations to one factory in Alabama, putting all their eggs in that politically powerful basket. They promise hundreds of jobs in Huntsville if they get the contract.

                                                    So Bezos announced that he would build a factory to build 30 of his engines in Huntsville, if he gets the contract for the ULA engines. This puts the Alabama space mafia in a bit of a bind. On the one hand, rocketdyne are a long term client company, and they have been taking care of Richard shelby and jeff sessions for a very long time. they have promised a lot of jobs, but they are reliant on receiving substantial amounts of government money for, well, everything. They can help them, but it would be very difficult, and it would piss off Jeff Bezos.

                                                    As long as Blue Origin are selling rocket engines to ULA, they have no interest in driving them out of business, so forcing ULA to use the AR-1, would have the effect of keeping rocketdyne alive for a little while but would ultimately cost Huntsville a Blue Origin factory with about 400 jobs, and then the ULA factory, and with it Rocketdyne. Suddenly you're looking at the loss of thousands of jobs, in a cascading shit storm. I suppose it's the sort of thing you can do if you're the richest man in the world. Offer politicians a free factory and associated jobs if they rule in your favour, and threaten to burn their local economy to the ground if they don't. So ultimately this leads to a situation where when Rocketdyne speak to Shelby, they call him sir, but when Shelby talks to Bezos, it's the other way around.

                                                    Meanwhile Senator Shelby used some committee meeting to put on a fine display of cartoon baddy senator. He was tearing into the NASA administrative head over the delays to the human part of the ISS supply programme. (Space-X mostly but also Boeing) Asking if the NASA head could promise that it wouldn't cost more money or there wouldn't be any more delays. It was then very gently pointed out that this is a fixed price contract, so there won't be any more money, but it may take time. He then turned around and insisted that the SLS, which is being built by his client companies be given even more money and time. It's actually extraordinary to see just how brazen and naked some of this stuff is. If a politician in Ireland or even the UK were to be so openly and brazenly inconsistent they would be absolutely savaged. He then also basically said that only NASA had any business doing things outside of low earth orbit.

                                                    He should be careful what he wishes for. The First SLS flight is penciled in for 2019, and they're going to send an unmanned Orion capsule around the moon and back, in preparation for a recreation of Apollo 8 three years later. But they're having such horrendous problems building the SLS that it could well be even later than that. On the other hand, Space-X are going to be finished their Space-taxi capsule (Dragon 2) that Shelby was complaining about in the next year. And after they've tested it, and used it to send people to the ISS, the next thing on their agenda is to send it around the moon, in preparation for flying tourists. It is going to be very difficult to maintain the narrative that only NASA, and their traditional client companies can operate outside LEO, if Space-X are sending people around the moon, and landing these capsules on the surface of Mars.

                                                    oh and Space-X are having another launch at some point today, it's not going to land though, but it's the second launch in nine days from the same pad, which is an insanely quick turnaround.

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