Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Bryan See on January 25, 2018, 11:35:45 am
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I've just read a news article on WIRED (https://www.wired.com/story/spacex-test-fires-its-falcon-heavy-rocket-for-the-first-time/) saying that SpaceX successfully test fired its long-awaited Falcon Heavy rocket. Does anyone hear this?
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Yes. Musk himself confirmed it. Launch is next week.
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I believe the report said that he hopes to launch as early as next week. It's not a done deal. That said, I am looking forward to it. I do doubt however, that he will be able to meet a claim me made about this time last year, that he will be able to send a crew into (I believe) a free-return trajectory pass around the moon, by the end of THIS year, using a Falcon Heavy and a human-rated Dragon capsule. It would be awesome if he could, but since the Dragon has yet to perform a crewed flight, and Musk himself indicated that this first Falcon Heavy launch is likely to be a spectacular (and hopefully non-destructive) failure. Be that as it may, I am still hopeful that that roaster can be recovered from its orbit some time in the distant future and brought back to Earth as a priceless antique.
My older brother got me on to following SpaceX. He kinda gave me the run-down of the various corporations competing for space access.
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First Dragon crewed flight is now scheduled for December 2018. It is safe to say that there will be no crewed flight around the Moon this year.
Next year is the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11. A very sad anniversary considering we have been stuck in low orbit since the end of Apollo. Dragon circumlunar flight should make it a lot better.
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WOW! Talk about your successful test. The only thing that didn't go absolutely to plan was the current unaccounted status of the core booster. Seeing those side boosters perform their simultaneous landing was just awesome though, and the live feeds of the Tessla with Starman in the driver seat with the rapidly receding Earth is just surreal. I believe the next hurdle is the relighting of the second stage after clearing the Van Allen belts.
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That was really cool to watch! I'm both amused and a little appalled at the shameless showboating with launching a CAR of all things, but at the same time, why not?
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Center core confirmed to have run out of fuel and crashed at 300-500mph about 100m away from the Of Course I Still Love You (which is the best name for a ship, ever). Sad, but absolutely acceptable, given that it was fitted with cheap, non-titanium stabilisation fins (SpaceX expected to lose it anyway). Meanwhile, the twin Little Falcon boosters landed perfectly.
Third burn has also been confirmed as successful, with the Tesla now cutting through Mars orbit and well into a high heliocentric orbit that will take it through the asteroid belt.
These apply, I think:
I feel utterly dwarfed by the fact that I am alive to experience what I hope to be a space age rennaissance. I have very high hopes.
As for why you'd launch a car of all things - because this is how you capture minds and hearts.
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As marketing stunts go, it's certainly effective.
But honestly, I would've wished for something a bit more aspirational? Put a radio on it, Sputnik style. Give some students the opportunity to fly hardware to Mars, powered by a Tesla battery. Do something that's more meaningful than a display of late-stage capitalism.
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I'd like to imagine the confusion if extraterestrial's first contact scenario was encountering a rocket carrying a car.
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I'm pretty sure that the intention was to **** with future generations if we ever lose our history. I still think they should have included a mock flux capacitor and a copy of Back to the Future on the entertainment system to really screw with them.
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Well if there IS an advanced intergalactic community watching us, I'm sure they are doing a lot of facepalms or tentaclepalms or whatever right now.
And if there are hostile aliens exterminating any signs of life in the galaxy that they can find a hint of, I'm sure they will double check if humanity is still there to exterminate ... after they stopped laughing ... when this Tesla swings by their civilisation in a couple of million years.
But as a fellow caveman, F*** yeah that was cool!!!!! :nod: ;7 :lol:
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(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DVY2Oo1XcAE7HIu.jpg)
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Whenever I read something like this, the same question pops up in my mind: How much tax money did this guy receive to show how awesome and effective his private company is? :rolleyes:
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THERE'S ALWAYS THIS OPINION. ALWAYS. IN EVERY GODDAMNED FORUM. JEEESH.
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I'm not questioning THAT they're spending money for space exploration - they could spend times more for that IMO - but how. I don't see why they need some zillionaires to do that. He came were the NASA was already decades ago, but the US government cut their spending.
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But honestly, I would've wished for something a bit more aspirational? Put a radio on it, Sputnik style. Give some students the opportunity to fly hardware to Mars, powered by a Tesla battery. Do something that's more meaningful than a display of late-stage capitalism.
It is an electric car. I can hardly imagine a more meaningful thing to launch when the threat of climate change is looming over the world..
It is not actually going to Mars, just to an orbit that intersects Mars orbit. To go to Mars they would have to wait for a proper launch window.
late-stage capitalism
:rolleyes:
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Whenever I read something like this, the same question pops up in my mind: How much tax money did this guy receive to show how awesome and effective his private company is? :rolleyes:
$ several billion, they were mostly payments for ISS resupply flights, and quite inexpensive at that. SpaceX certainly wouldnt be where it is today without public money, however it is very much a mutually beneficial relationship so far.
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It is, admittedly, better then the Tesla falling back onto earth.
That would be terminal-stage capitalism.
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The car has overshot the Mars orbit and is on its way to the asteroid belt.
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I'm pretty sure that the intention was to **** with future generations if we ever lose our history. I still think they should have included a mock flux capacitor and a copy of Back to the Future on the entertainment system to really screw with them.
That put me in mind of something that happened on Apollo 17 (that I recall seeing in the "From the Earth to the Moon" mini-series). After returning from the surface of the Moon to the Command Module, the lander crew were about to come aboard, but the Command Module pilot denied them entry until they had taken off their space suits, because they were covered in moon dust and he didn't want it dirtying up his recently cleaned spacecraft. The Lander crew then slipped off their space suits... completely, and prepped for their lunar escape burn, in the nude. As they were about to fire the engine, one of the astronauts jokingly commented that if by some horrible sequence of events the fire sequence failed and they died, some future space archeologists coming across their craft would be VERY confused as to NASA and its space objectives.
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Damn, people are missing the hell out of the point of this whole process. The idea was to launch a new rocket that had never been tested before. When you do that, you add a payload to simulate mission conditions. The odds of the rocket failing were estimated at 50:50 before it went up. Nobody is going to put a meaningful payload on that rocket with those odds.
Moreover, as I understand it, they needed this test flight to work out the bugs to make the next flight more accurate, more able to be precisely guided. So even The E's idea of student projects where the cost of failure is likely to be minimal (although I honestly doubt that you could put anything like the kind of weight they wanted into the rocket made up of meaningful payloads without spending at least in the tens or hundreds of thousands), the chance of them getting where they needed to go is extremely slim. They couldn't even put the car where they wanted. And on top of all that, if the mission failed and the rocket did blow up, the stories would he made worse by the loss of the payload, no matter what it was, but especially if it was a bunch of scientific stuff (student or not).
Musk didn't get hit by a wave of hubris and desire for publicity and choose to send his car up instead of a proper, scientifically meaningful payload. He did it instead of a payload of cinder blocks or sand bags or something. Sure, it was a publicity stunt, but the net outcome, in pretty much every meaningful way I can think of is exactly as it would otherwise have been (given the risk a version of everyone involved) had he not launched a car but instead launched sand bags, except a tonne more people know that it happened.
As far as why tax payers are supporting SpaceX (or any of the other private launch companies), it's because that's what governments should do. Help support innovative, high risk companies in areas where VC is hard to come by. Use taxpayer funds as seed capital and recoup that capital later (either through direct conventional investment or, as in this case, lower launch costs down the line for government satellites). Consider the alternative: The US government gives no money to SpaceX at all (I've heard that they actually supported the Falcon Heavy to the tune of around $1bn). The company continues, on Musk's Paypal money and whatever VC he can attract. It takes, say, five years longer to get to where they are now. In that time, the US government launches three satellites a year at $380 million per launch for $5.7 billion. Had they had these $90 million dollar launches, the cost would be $1.35 billion. Even with the billion dollars of support, it's still cheaper. Even with another three billion dollars of support given to other companies who don't succeed, it's still cheaper.
And that's the key here, why it matters so much: This is all so, so much cheaper than any other system in the history of rocketry, partly thanks to SpaceX's self contained production model, but mostly due to reusability. And reusable tickets are game changers - definitely not simply where NASA and similar agencies were decades ago. There's much more to this than just the power od the rockets, remember.
Don't misunderstand: I'm no capitalist apologist who thinks the private sector is perfect and the public incompetent. Government space programs have done amazing things that could not have been done by the private sector. But what I am is an economic realist. When the numbers stack up - and they do in this case - it would be nonsensical to ignore them.
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(I've heard that they actually supported the Falcon Heavy to the tune of around $1bn).
Not true. You may be thinking of Falcon 9 reusable development cost, which was $1 billion.
http://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-reusable-rocket-launch-costs-profits-2017-6
Falcon Heavy development cost was only around half a billion, and it was paid out of SpaceX pocket. SpaceX does have contracts with the government for Falcon 9 ISS resupply and also future Falcon Heavy contracts with DoD, so you could say that some of that money did originally come from the government. But not directly.
And yes, the numbers definitely add up in favor of SpaceX. And this is even before the benefits of rapid reusability and high launch rate are fully realized (which should happen with Falcon 9 block 5). Exciting times ahead!
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It is, admittedly, better then the Tesla falling back onto earth.
That would be terminal-stage capitalism.
(https://media1.tenor.com/images/8dd2f5811711a610e6ad24a7d36ac79d/tenor.gif)
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I saw this launch in person. It was cool. :)
But honestly, I would've wished for something a bit more aspirational? Put a radio on it, Sputnik style. Give some students the opportunity to fly hardware to Mars, powered by a Tesla battery. Do something that's more meaningful than a display of late-stage capitalism.
According to Lori Garver (https://twitter.com/Lori_Garver/status/961786032046952449), SpaceX offered a free launch to NASA, the Air Force, and others before going with the Tesla.
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I saw this launch in person. It was cool. :)
But honestly, I would've wished for something a bit more aspirational? Put a radio on it, Sputnik style. Give some students the opportunity to fly hardware to Mars, powered by a Tesla battery. Do something that's more meaningful than a display of late-stage capitalism.
According to Lori Garver (https://twitter.com/Lori_Garver/status/961786032046952449), SpaceX offered a free launch to NASA, the Air Force, and others before going with the Tesla.
So none of those thought it was gonna fly, eh? ;-)
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...late-stage capitalism.
You know the best thing to come out of the anti-capitalist spirit?
The songs.
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I'm just curious about what happened to the car's red paint. Normally I would expect the sun to have bleached it with radiation, but from what I understand- metallic paint's pigments are pretty tough, and usually it's oxygen that destroys them first. (And there's none of that in space)
Then again, there is a LOT of ultraviolet radiation hitting it.
Sooo. . . .
bets anyone? :confused: :p
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I'm just curious about what happened to the car's red paint. Normally I would expect the sun to have bleached it with radiation, but from what I understand- metallic paint's pigments are pretty tough, and usually it's oxygen that destroys them first. (And there's none of that in space)
Then again, there is a LOT of ultraviolet radiation hitting it.
Sooo. . . .
bets anyone? :confused: :p
I think they would plan for it, but we'll see... :)
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I'm just curious about what happened to the car's red paint. Normally I would expect the sun to have bleached it with radiation, but from what I understand- metallic paint's pigments are pretty tough, and usually it's oxygen that destroys them first. (And there's none of that in space)
Then again, there is a LOT of ultraviolet radiation hitting it.
Sooo. . . .
bets anyone? :confused: :p
I think they would plan for it, but we'll see... :)
THIS JUST IN: https://twitter.com/dAArkEnergy/status/966075201153916929
SPECTROSCOPY RESULTS ARE IN! AND:
IT'S STILL RED! MYSTERY SOLVED.
we can go home now. :D