meStevo
I think your wife's a bigfoot gus.
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The Astronomy Thread
- Thread starter Araxen
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meStevo
I think your wife's a bigfoot gus.
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Mars is very organized.
A couple of the wheels have some pretty big gashes in them.
Raw images here: Raw Images - Mars Science Laboratory
A couple of the wheels have some pretty big gashes in them.
Raw images here: Raw Images - Mars Science Laboratory
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meStevo
I think your wife's a bigfoot gus.
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Trumps NASA budget: Trump's 2018 NASA Budget Request Would Scrap Asteroid Redirect Mission
Cancels multiple climate-related projects, funds 2020 Mars rover, Europa Clipper and the Orion program.
Cancels multiple climate-related projects, funds 2020 Mars rover, Europa Clipper and the Orion program.
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I believe they launch satellites and do aerial surveys specifically related to climate research.
Well, they used to do that. Probably not anymore.
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Ukerric
Bearded Ape
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They do "Earth Sience", basically every form of observation of Earth from space. Archaeology, all kinds of survey... and climate stuff as well. The Earth Science was gutted because it's easy to convert credits from one line to another, and do some climate science using gravity measurement satellites.
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Pops
Avatar of War Slayer
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Mudcrush Durtfeet
Hungry Ogre
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Next 28th is as far as I can tell when SpaceX will be launching a recovered first stage. Fingers crossed.
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Palum
what Suineg set it to
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They only did the ground test on a refurbished unit so far right?
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Ukerric
Bearded Ape
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Yes. They've been shopping around for a first customer to provide a full demo, most of them wanted heavy discounts for being the first to reuse.
The same thing is going for their Dragon capsule. Until recently, the contract with NASA for the ISS resupplies required a non-refurbished capsule for each launch. Which is why they're going to launch one to Mars soon: it will have been fully paid for by NASA.
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Tuco
I got Tuco'd!
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The fact that there are no humans involved and that the design of re-usable rockets dramatically reduces cost adds a certain amount of... levity, to relatively high chance of disaster with these systems.
Instead of it being a national tragedy, if a rocket blows up we'll get a funny tweet from Musk about unplanned rapid disassembly and march onward. It's kind of funny.
Instead of it being a national tragedy, if a rocket blows up we'll get a funny tweet from Musk about unplanned rapid disassembly and march onward. It's kind of funny.
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khorum
Murder Apologist
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SES actually tweeted about using the first reused rocket launch when the first Falcon-9 landed successfully a couple years ago. They've been in price negotiations since then.
After all the refurbishment and testing the SES-10 launch is only at a 10% discount off the normal cost of a falcon9 launch. Presumably that'll go down as soon as their pipeline for refurbishing the rockets gets better.
Even bigger news is the fact that SpaceX has now taken A SECOND USAF contract from ULA. Previously ULA managed to twist enough arms in the pentagon to keep SpaceX out of the lucrative DOD contracts but this year ULA is having some trouble getting new engines for their Atlas boosters. The engines are russian lol
After all the refurbishment and testing the SES-10 launch is only at a 10% discount off the normal cost of a falcon9 launch. Presumably that'll go down as soon as their pipeline for refurbishing the rockets gets better.
Even bigger news is the fact that SpaceX has now taken A SECOND USAF contract from ULA. Previously ULA managed to twist enough arms in the pentagon to keep SpaceX out of the lucrative DOD contracts but this year ULA is having some trouble getting new engines for their Atlas boosters. The engines are russian lol
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Mudcrush Durtfeet
Hungry Ogre
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SpaceX is developing a new version of Falcon 9, I suspect that they're using the information learned from the recovered first stages to further optimize the rocket. I know they said it will be more efficient (more payload?).
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khorum
Murder Apologist
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They've been using a new version of the Falcon9 since the one that exploded on the platform. The most recent launch of the Falcon9 for the Echostar GTO insertion was the last expendable rocket launch for SpaceX since future high payload flights will be on the Falcon Heavy.
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Kiroy
Marine Biologist
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Wasnt there tinfoil someone shot it? I assume nothing came of that.
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khorum
Murder Apologist
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haha yeah SpaceX actually managed to get the Air Force to force ULA to give them access to their rooftop since it had good range and LOS to the launch site. They didn't find anything tho.
Although the real tinfoil is why SpaceX managed to win two Air Force contracts shortly after that!
Maybe they found something and instead of going public and destroying ULA (which is a consortium of publicly traded companies like Lockheed, Boeing, Raytheon etc) Musk cannily horse-traded his way into the ultra-lucrative DOD launch contracting scene. Something that ULA has been cockblocking for years.
Although the real tinfoil is why SpaceX managed to win two Air Force contracts shortly after that!
Maybe they found something and instead of going public and destroying ULA (which is a consortium of publicly traded companies like Lockheed, Boeing, Raytheon etc) Musk cannily horse-traded his way into the ultra-lucrative DOD launch contracting scene. Something that ULA has been cockblocking for years.
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Mudcrush Durtfeet
Hungry Ogre
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I was not referring to the type last being used, but to the block 5 version which iis scheduled to be first used in the 3rd or 4th quarter of this year. It is stated to be intended to have significantly improved performance and ease of reusability.
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Ukerric
Bearded Ape
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Yea. The analysis was that the fueling technique used could cause some extra stress on the tanks, so they changed the way they load the fuel to avoid that.
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