The Astronomy Thread

Ukerric

Ukerric

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Sadre Spinegnawer said:
Elon reminds me of Yellow Boy from Sin City. Smart guy, clearly, and driven, but something is just off about the guy, imo.
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I've said once that he'll be the Howard Hugues of the 21st. The right combination of wealthy, technical-savvy, goal-obsessed... and the touch of crazy that makes you into a legend rather than a famous individual.
 
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Sadre Spinegnawer

Sadre Spinegnawer

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Excellent way of putting it. No parent would say, "Hey! Be like Howard Hughes!" to their kid. But I would want my kid to definitely learn about him. Kinda like Mike Tyson.













* no, I am not gonna say "Kinda like Michael Jackson."
 
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Gavinmad

Gavinmad

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Ukerric said:
Yea, imagine going out of the way to get Boeing to shape up their bid, failing... and getting fired over that.
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I mean it's all speculation, but it can be argued that there was merit to helping make Boeing's proposal more competitive if his motivation was purely the success of Artemis and not a conflict of interest.
 
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Break

Break

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Tuco said:
This is pretty cool. As a layman I always thought it made sense to make a ridiculously oversized plane that could yeet a rocket into low earth orbit. Musk isn't' the authority on all things aeronautical but even after reading his comments I'm curious as to why you can't make a plane big enough to launch a Falcon 9 rocket.
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My layman engineering advice would be to build a short-distance hydraulic slingshot for launching. Like on takeoff, something attempts to lift the rocket a few feet or so. AFAIK rockets end up wasting a shitload of fuel during the first few seconds of takeoff and if you had a hydraulic arm give the rocket a "lift" for a few feet I bet it would save a few dozen tons of fuel.

Imagine a rocket weights 100 tons. Then there's a hydraulic lift applied to the rocket producing 90 tons of force, not enough to lift but enough to make it much easier for the rocket to go from 0 to 10 MPH.
 
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Gavinmad

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Break said:
My layman engineering advice would be to build a short-distance hydraulic slingshot for launching. Like on takeoff, something attempts to lift the rocket a few feet or so. AFAIK rockets end up wasting a shitload of fuel during the first few seconds of takeoff and if you had a hydraulic arm give the rocket a "lift" for a few feet I bet it would save a few dozen tons of fuel.

Imagine a rocket weights 100 tons. Then there's a hydraulic lift applied to the rocket producing 90 tons of force, not enough to lift but enough to make it much easier for the rocket to go from 0 to 10 MPH.
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Fuel isn't being wasted (or spent inefficiently, relatively speaking), liftoff is just a slow affair because of how heavy rockets are. You wouldn't gain any appreciable amount of overall delta V and would risk destabilizing the rocket.

As for using planes as the first stage of a rocket launch, well that's literally all you're doing is using a different first stage. Virgin Orbit's LauncherOne is only 30 tons, and that's presumably about the biggest load a 747 can mount. Ask Stratolaunch about what kind of an engineering nightmare building an airframe to lift a larger payload is.
 
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Tuco

Tuco

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Gavinmad said:
Virgin Orbit's LauncherOne is only 30 tons, and that's presumably about the biggest load a 747 can mount. Ask Stratolaunch about what kind of an engineering nightmare building an airframe to lift a larger payload is.
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I was thinking about that problem when i saw this vid and learned what dynamic soaring was in the following vid (tldr: wind differentials are mad sploitz)



The amount of g forces those things pull is huge, trying to scale it up to larger vehicles would run into the same problems everything else does, including building a really big airplane to life a falcon9
 
Break

Break

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Gavinmad said:
Fuel isn't being wasted (or spent inefficiently, relatively speaking), liftoff is just a slow affair because of how heavy rockets are. You wouldn't gain any appreciable amount of overall delta V and would risk destabilizing the rocket.
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Does this mean I failed the interview and I need to claim sexual harassment now?!
 
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Gavinmad

Gavinmad

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Break said:
Does this mean I failed the interview and I need to claim sexual harassment now?!
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Well if the interview was at NASA nobody would believe you because there isn't a single testicle in the agency.
 
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meStevo

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No live stream for today's test, which so far is still a go. Updates will be posted at Virgin Orbit (@Virgin_Orbit) | Twitter

1590422612120.png
 
Gavinmad

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I'm guessing they don't want to live stream a failure, which is the most likely outcome of the first test.
 
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Cybsled

Cybsled

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SpaceX did have some pretty big balls live streaming everything, even the failures. I think it does help you appreciate the successes more

Virgin is probably concerned because they're still playing catch-up and a public failure could further erode confidence that they can succeed.
 
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Gavinmad

Gavinmad

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Virgin is also aiming pretty low atm, Cosmic Girl/LauncherOne will never be capable of doing anything more than putting small satellites into orbit.
 
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