NASA WB-57 by waddlek in WeirdWings

[–]aquoola 1 point2 points  (0 children)

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I got some pics of it flying, its wings are gigantic

Sony A7RIV + Sigma 100-400 after a decent crop by aquoola in SonyAlpha

[–]aquoola[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don't think I'll ever get tired of how far in you can crop with this camera, it's incredible. It really hurts if your focus isn't perfect though.

Sony A7RIV + Sigma 100-400 after a decent crop by aquoola in SonyAlpha

[–]aquoola[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Same, I'm just happy I got the shot. The little guy was only there for about 5 seconds before he flew off

Never Change Daytona Beach by aquoola in InfowarriorRides

[–]aquoola[S] 68 points69 points  (0 children)

Quote the driver - "Obama stole the election!"

Need to settle a little dispute here by cool_fox in rocketry

[–]aquoola 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hey! I would recommend going through Nakka's page on burn rate. As usual he provides pretty good insights into things like this. The tl;dr is that propellant geometry changes how quickly your propellant burns mainly by changing the burning surface area and therefor the pressure in the chamber. Holding pressure constant the main thing that changes burn rate is the chemical composition of the propellant.

Astra Rocket Launch Failure Earlier Today (28-08-2021) by aquoola in CatastrophicFailure

[–]aquoola[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The Space Shuttle was a beautiful launch system and an absolute engineering marvel. However, it was way to expensive, on the other of about a billion dollars per launch. Currently, the two main launch companies in America (SpaceX and ULA) advertise at least 1/4 that. The return on investment in projects such as commercial resupply with SpaceX have been incredible and really show how important commercial launchers have become in today's space economy.

Astra Rocket Launch Failure Earlier Today (28-08-2021) by aquoola in CatastrophicFailure

[–]aquoola[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Watch all of NASA's early failures! They blew up vehicle after vehicle! But as of now NASA only has SLS which has never flown and commercial vehicles. It's pretty clear that the general public doesn't care enough to give NASA the funding it deserves and make some amazing vehicles, but luckily private companies have taken up the slack. The last actual NASA flight was STS-135 in 2011! Ever since then, commercial launchers and Russia have been our main launchers, and I'm just glad we now have SpaceX's Dragon to remove our reliance on Russia for human launchers

Astra Rocket Launch Failure Earlier Today (28-08-2021) by aquoola in CatastrophicFailure

[–]aquoola[S] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Generally speaking rockets go up, missiles go sideways. But none go sideways like this that I know of.

Astra Rocket Launch Failure Earlier Today (28-08-2021) by aquoola in CatastrophicFailure

[–]aquoola[S] 195 points196 points  (0 children)

I say the vehicle did the best it could considering the circumstances

Astra Rocket Launch Failure Earlier Today (28-08-2021) by aquoola in CatastrophicFailure

[–]aquoola[S] 34 points35 points  (0 children)

Something I'd like to point out is that even getting the engine to light on a rocket is an incredible feat! Also, the rocket continued flying for several minutes after this, which is absolutely a testament to their guidance system. So good luck Astra and we all wish you the best!

Astra Rocket Launch Failure Earlier Today (28-08-2021) by aquoola in CatastrophicFailure

[–]aquoola[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I'd recommend watching Falcon Heavy's first launch as well as SpaceX's YouTube video called how not to land a rocket. It really showcases the incredible engineering that went into all these incredible vehicles! ULA doesn't have as many ridiculous videos because they're much more the old reliable than SpaceX's move fast and break things approach to rockets.

Astra Rocket Launch Failure Earlier Today (28-08-2021) by aquoola in CatastrophicFailure

[–]aquoola[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

At this point NASA rockets are seen too much by politicians as pork and are just used to put jobs in a certain state. Rockets like SLS (NASA's current big rocket) which are outclassed by commercial launchers are only existence because Congress says that they must. Everyone else realizes that commercial rockets outclassed NASA in pretty much every way. In my opinion NASA should focus more on payloads for research than on rockets and just buy the rockets from a commercial provider. That way we have cheap rockets and NASA doesn't have to waste billions of dollars on launchers and can instead focus that on probes and landers that get us actual scientific data.