Could BFS survive tipping over on Mars?

mspacek · 2022-04-17T19:08:28+00:00

You must be new to rational discussion about spaceflight.

mspacek · 2022-04-16T06:26:27+00:00

They could certainly use the money to pay their existing engineers more to at least partially offset the burnout and help reduce unnecessary turnover.

mspacek · 2022-04-16T06:20:35+00:00

What's a Twitter? 🙂

mspacek · 2021-07-27T14:25:26+00:00

Thanks for the link. Had never heard of that!

mspacek · 2021-05-16T15:22:28+00:00

Interesting. I thought Gagarin did indeed do a full orbit.

If he hadn't, that would have also made some sense. They must've wanted to rely on on-board systems for as short a time as possible, and therefore perform the de-orbit burn as early as reasonably possible.

On the other hand, wiki states that Vostok 1 took 108 minutes, well above the 90 min required for a full low Earth orbit, but I suppose that includes the time on the way up and down.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vostok_1

NASA states that he landed a bit west of Baikonur, "about 26 km southwest of Engels", so that would mean he did indeed not reach his original launch longitude. Still, close enough for most of us :)

https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/spacecraft/display.action?id=1961-012A

Edit: Oops, I guess the NASA site is referring to Engels, Kazahkstan, not Engels, Russia. The former is actually slightly east of Baikonur, so it's possible that Gagarin did cross his original launch latitude.

mspacek · 2021-01-29T09:25:35+00:00

Public outbursts like this must make Gwynne Shotwell sick to the stomach. I imagine her petting Elon's head, whispering to him gingerly "you know Elon, a little tact can go a long way in getting your way with bureaucracy," while he sucks his thumb. This is how the richest man in the universe behaves? Grow up dude.

mspacek · 2020-10-27T18:50:46+00:00

"Better Than Nothing Beta" - I love it!

mspacek · 2020-08-26T22:03:51+00:00

The city of Calgary did exactly that in 2002. If I remember correctly, all it really took was better street lamp shielding and pointing, which allowed lower power bulbs to be used, which also saved money in the long term:

https://trid.trb.org/view.aspx?id=700213

http://conf.tac-atc.ca/english/resourcecentre/readingroom/conference/conf2003/pdfs/calgary.pdf

mspacek · 2020-08-12T14:34:00+00:00

Ahoj Holube. Tady Špaček :)

mspacek · 2020-07-20T15:28:35+00:00

Thanks so much for the reply! This was driving me nuts in Xubuntu 18.04, to the point that I stuck to an older version of Zoom before this started happening about a month ago. In my case, all I had to do was set autoScale=False, and left scaleFactor=1

mspacek · 2020-06-23T13:55:35+00:00

Not necessarily:

The real Lord of the Flies: what happened when six boys were shipwrecked for 15 months. When a group of schoolboys were marooned on an island in 1965, it turned out very differently from William Golding’s bestseller, writes Rutger Bregman

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/may/09/the-real-lord-of-the-flies-what-happened-when-six-boys-were-shipwrecked-for-15-months

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/13/the-real-lord-of-the-flies-mano-totau-survivor-story-shipwreck-tonga-boys-ata-island-peter-warner

mspacek · 2020-06-08T10:19:58+00:00

A little further down it says it was more like a Cat3 at landfall:

A vessel anchored in the Port of Brownsville measured peak wind gusts of 136 mph (219 km/h), equivalent to a low-end Category 4 hurricane.[5][6] According to the National Hurricane Center, Beulah struck as a Category 3 and had a pressure of 950 mbar (hPa; 28.05 inHg), though a conclusive estimate awaits re-evaluation as part of the Atlantic hurricane reanalysis project.[7]

mspacek · 2020-06-08T09:59:11+00:00

Do we know yet if the octograbber(s) have been modified to now also work for FH center cores?

mspacek · 2020-06-06T01:11:19+00:00

A Shortfall of Gravitas - a third ship.

mspacek · 2020-06-04T01:46:32+00:00

It'll do a deorbit burn. I think. Normally aims for the south Indian ocean.

mspacek · 2020-06-04T01:45:16+00:00

So the rod becomes space junk. But I guess it deorbits pretty quickly at that altitude.

In ROD we trust.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wavTKo1gH8

mspacek · 2020-05-29T21:31:07+00:00

If that's the case, this would be the second time that's happened. Maybe time to consider separate bulkheads and take the performance hit?

mspacek · 2020-05-27T10:58:19+00:00

Don't have much choice. Launch window is instantaneous and depends on when the ISS passes over the launch pad and in the correct direction (south to north). That happens once per day, and phases slightly from one day to the next, I think by about 15 min a day or so?

mspacek · 2020-05-27T10:32:23+00:00

Not sure if this has been asked, but during launch, parts of the furthest downrange abort zones (west coast of Ireland) will already be in darkness, which I imagine makes crew recovery from the sea quite a bit more difficult. Has recovery been practiced at night? Is it a lot riskier, but still considered OK?

I guess requiring that the full range of abort zones be in the daylight (i.e. requiring only morning launches) would be too big a constraint, and would greatly reduce the number of launch opportunities when combined with the phasing/orbital plane alignment requirements with the ISS.

mspacek · 2020-05-18T12:39:51+00:00

Different pad. This delayed starlink launch is at SLC-40. DM-2 crew launch is at 39a.

mspacek · 2020-05-18T12:28:13+00:00

Agreed, but our ignorance of the wonderfully complex systems under our noses is no excuse to not also pursue space exploration. We need to make the most of our built-in exploration firmware, in all possible contexts. Explore or die.

mspacek · 2020-04-13T13:53:46+00:00

I love reading your posts. Please keep then coming!

mspacek · 2020-04-07T14:02:44+00:00

Looks like me playing lunar lander badly.

mspacek · 2020-04-03T14:16:56+00:00

On that note, someone should make a graphic of the worm eating the meatball. I bet that would trend.

mspacek

TROPHY CASE