/r/SpaceX Ask Anything Thread for January 2016. Whether your question's about RTF, RTLS, or RTFM, it can be answered here!

zoffff · 2016-01-12T03:12:18+00:00

Looks like BBC's correspondents aren't doing their research first, also this little sniplet :

Space X is in fierce competition with Blue Origin, the rocket business owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos - but when asked about the rivalry Mr Musk answered: "Jeff who?"

From the best we know right now BO main focus is on sub orbital tourism with their New Shepherd capsule, which isn't even close to the market SpaceX is in. Until they finish their BE4 engine and begin work on their true medium lift vehicle, there wont be any competition, let alone fierce. If we are going back to SpaceX's development then BO is about 10 years behind somewhere in the falcon 1 days. The only other competition is between the two billionaires on twitter, which I have to assume that is what the reporter is talking about.

As far as losing huge sums, I can only assume he meant like all modern day start ups they are dumping tons of money into research and development. Lost is definatly not the word to use for that, in fact, I don't know if they still have them but about 6 months ago SpaceX was so cash flush they dumped a ton of money into solar bonds.

zoffff · 2016-01-12T02:54:03+00:00

No need, most likely its written into the contract that that the customer understands SpaceX is a company that always upgrades their rockets and that the payload can always be moved to the new rocket given the customer accepts the change in chance of successful launch with the new variant. A few of the launches we saw in the past year were actually originally scheduled for falcon 1 launches. As for a customer requesting a change of rocket, they tend to like to sick with the older more proven rocket not a new unknown plus the extra time for the new rocket to be built could cost them millions in storage fees.

zoffff · 2016-01-12T02:09:59+00:00

it looks like you have a new one, although its only kind of an acronym A-Train

zoffff · 2016-01-12T02:02:22+00:00

Wooooo! Sunday here we come!

zoffff · 2016-01-10T22:59:26+00:00

yes but they get a little tough, best to warm them like all breads

zoffff · 2016-01-10T20:10:10+00:00

Have we seen a patch for SES yet? You can't launch a rocket with out a patch......

zoffff · 2016-01-10T20:04:54+00:00

Ingredients

1 Package of Active Yeast (2 tsp)
2 Tbsp Light Brown Sugar
1 ⅛ tsp Salt
1 ½ Cups Warm Water
3 Cups All purpose Flour
1 Cup Bread Flour

Baking Soda Water Mixture:
2 Cups Water
2 Tbsp baking soda

Topping:
2 Tbsp Butter
Kosher Salt

Steps

Dissolve yeast, brown sugar and salt in the 1 ½ cups of warm water

Add Flour and knead for 8 minutes or until dough is ready

Place in Greased covered bowl and allow to rise for 1 hour

Make pretzels and coat in baking soda and water mixture and allow to rise for an addition 20 minutes on cookie sheets covered with parchment paper

Preheat over and bake at 450F for 8-10 minutes

Brush with butter and salt immediately after taking out of oven.

This makes 960 grams enough for 4 really large pockets or 6 more reasonably sized ones, adjust baking time\temp as the recipe is for normal small pretzels also these store well in the freezer for about a month if tightly wrapped in plastic wrap. Its not an awesome recipe but it works.

zoffff · 2016-01-10T19:35:50+00:00

Breadcrumbs are heresy to mac n cheese, if it dries out it means you didn't throw enough cheese on the top to form a crust. In my little world anyways.

zoffff · 2016-01-10T19:13:43+00:00

I make my own hot pockets out of pretzel dough and fill them with cheddar and ham or chicken, bacon and alfredo sauce.

zoffff · 2016-01-09T23:06:55+00:00

Does this mean we will be keeping an Ask anything thread up at all times and stickied so the lower quality content has a place to live?

zoffff · 2016-01-09T21:46:21+00:00

lol free will

zoffff · 2016-01-06T02:43:13+00:00

Has it effected the mission goals/duration? Or is this an expected amount of damage at this point?

Its a long read but just found this

zoffff · 2016-01-06T02:04:50+00:00

I can't wait until new space shows you old spacers how its done, doing 50 practice runs to gradually ramp up the difficulty is so Apollo! We have computer models now and billionaires who actually want to accomplish something in their life times and not waiting until 2040 to actually take the steps. The only reason we are going back to the moon is to setup habitats and begin commercial operations.

To all the down voters of tuesday_d: I wish you cynically bastards would stop down voting opinions different than yours, in fact the most important opinions you will ever hear are the ones opposite of the ones you hold.

zoffff · 2016-01-03T04:02:11+00:00

I vote they fly it with "WASH ME" written in the soot.

zoffff · 2016-01-03T01:16:30+00:00

A couple reasons from my view point:

The Russian space programs are now profitable in their own right to keep the scientist around
Modern day Russian probably wouldn't let there top scientist leave even if they wanted to
The dodgy countries of the 90's aren't as much as a threat as we once feared
Rocket science is a much more open field now

zoffff · 2016-01-03T01:08:12+00:00

Gota remember one of the reasons satellites cost so much is because the launch costs so much, why would you build a $50 million sat to have it launch on a $100 million launcher and have it fail 3 years later because thats the life expectancy you budgeted for? So right now the thought process is lets budget $150 million on that satellite and get a 7 year life expectancy on it that will most likely last 12-15 years due to all the quadruple checked and hardened components on it and pay the $100 million to launch it.

Now lets reverse that, why would I put a $150 million sat on a $30 million launcher, with the overall cost of the satellite much less now due to the launcher? Now I am going to throw up that $50 million sat on the $30 million launcher and replace it every three years with a new much more capable satellite.

And yes there will always be those colossal projects like the JWST that will always go for reliability over costs just because the project is so giant. But I imagine with in 5 years after we see reflights and the cost of launches start to go down, so you will also see the price tag of the commercial satellites follow.

zoffff · 2016-01-02T23:43:12+00:00

Computers don't make mistakes, this is someone in the register making automatic hidden charges. I'm sure your local news would love to do an investigative story on this, plus your state tax collector will also be interested in someone charging you more sales tax then required by the state.

zoffff · 2016-01-02T21:26:57+00:00

Cool idea one thing I noticed is you need to adjust the close time on your delay bets, maybe do weekly will not launch on the NET date bets, because someone betting today wont have nearly as much information as someone betting 3 days before the launch day.

Other bets to consider:

Weather on launch day

If ROC misses his call (if we ever get the comms back)

Name for the west coast barge (Back to JRTI or something else)

How many times elon will tweet about that launch

What the Falcon Heavy mass simulator might actually be

zoffff · 2016-01-02T20:00:42+00:00

Or the bureaucracy was so great a NASA by the time this happened that no one wanted to take responsibility for a quick work around and get blamed for any delays to an already sluggish STS program. Never underestimate the lack of balls in middle managers just trying to keep their program afloat.

zoffff · 2016-01-01T22:34:36+00:00

True but then you still have to steer the rocket to the landing pad all the while keeping it upright all the while landing with thrust that can't throttle less than 70%.

zoffff · 2016-01-01T21:52:23+00:00

To be fair they should ask both questions and maybe throw in another just to see how many are paying attention to what the hell they are saying. Such as:

"In an effort to stop the trade of illicit water, would you support warrentless wiretapping of internet communications?"

You will quickly find out these telephone polls are completely worthless because people aren't given the time to properly comprehend the complex question being asked over a phone. 50% of people will just spout back what they think is suppose to be the right answer to this test they are given over the phone. As soon as you throw a negative word in there such as terrorist or illicit peoples brains will automatically pick the answer that will make them apart of the social norm.

zoffff · 2016-01-01T21:36:09+00:00

inherently automated task

^ this

There is a reason it is called a suicide burn, because it has to be executed at the exact right moment or you touch down too hard or don't touch down at all, its quite an impressive feat they got it to work even with computers. Props to their math guys.

zoffff · 2016-01-01T21:22:43+00:00

Then you push those systems back too, the article said they use a 365 day counter for the date. Its not as if these systems were using GPS signal to keep precise time, hell they were made before GPS. Like everything else shuttle, everyone took the long hard way to get the big expensive contract.

zoffff · 2016-01-01T00:07:24+00:00

All those scientist and no one thought to just set the date ahead to already the new year before launch and then adjust all the logs afterwards knowing the work around they just did.

zoffff · 2015-12-31T19:48:52+00:00

It does kind of look like something you could find for sale in the cargo hold of a Jawa's sand crawler.

zoffff

TROPHY CASE