llamacoffee @ llamacoffee @lemmy.world

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971

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151

Joined

2 yr. ago

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Not just Eric Berger: https://spacenews.com/nasa-watchdog-finds-quality-control-problems-with-boeing-sls-work/

I'm pretty sure it's because increased solar activity causes Earth's atmosphere to expand and reach further into space, causing more drag higher up. I think we saw some newly-starlink satellites have to deal with this some time ago!

Possible Cygnus Issue

Cygnus NG-21: Mission control just alerted the ISS crew to a possible issue with the Cygnus cargo ship: "Just to let you guys know, good comm with Cygnus, we're going to have solar array deploy in about an hour. The first two burns were not performed by Cygnus, so they're re-assessing what's the current state of the burn plan. We're hoping to still keep Tuesday (for capture by ISS), but we'll re-assess once we figure out what went wrong with the first two burns."

Performance stats of previous versions:

Raptor 1 (sea level variant)

Thrust: 185tf

Specific impulse: 350s

Engine mass: 2080kg

Engine + vehicle-side commodities and hardware mass: 3630kg

Raptor 2 (sea level variant)

Thrust: 230tf

Specific impulse: 347s

Engine mass: 1630kg

Engine + vehicle-side commodities and hardware mass: 2875kg

Raptor 3 is designed for rapid reuse, eliminating the need for engine heatshields while continuing to increase performance and manufacturability

This is awesome! Can't wait to try it out. Over the years I've seen various tools, some of them paid, and of very different quality levels.

Usually I would revert to just manual data entry by making life easier for myself and just looking at every 5 seconds or so. Usually works well enough, but I am always left wanting to see the finer details.

Looking forward to testing this out :)

Not a fan of Musk myself, but I'm not quite sure what you mean?

Hands down one of the coolest shots I've ever seen!

https://arstechnica.com/?p=2039292

To be absolutely clear, this is not irrefutable evidence of past life on Mars, when the red planet was more amenable to water-based life billions of years ago. But discovering these colored spots on this rock is darn intriguing and has Mars scientists bubbling with excitement.

Interesting comment from Jared Isaacman: https://x.com/rookisaacman/status/1815801469532266841

Its a good article, a few thoughts:

• I don't like monopolies, but why the sudden unease? The government buys all of its refueling tankers from Boeing, all of the main battle tanks from General Dynamics, all the aircraft carriers from Newport News shipbuilding, all of our air-to-air missiles from Raytheon. The government buys fighter jets from a duopoly that often provides reciprocal work-shares making them a monopoly. Historically, the government had no problem buying launch services from ULA and in fact had to be sued to prevent a continuation of that practice.
• If SpaceX acts like a monopolist, then they will increase prices to levels that naturally stimulate more competition or risk antitrust actions. However, If SpaceX does not act like a monopolist and the government is getting the best product for the lowest price through open competitions, then what is the problem? As tax payers, we should want the best product/service for the lowest price and delivered as quickly as possible. We probably should not punish the few companies that are actually exceeding expectations.

I would love to see the government breaking up the monopolies that actually harm the competitiveness of the nation by failing to innovative and consistently come in over-budget and behind schedule and therefor have an allergy to fixed price contracting.

So cool! I really want to see one close up someday.

https://arstechnica.com/?p=2036700

That's just an illusion! It's extremely far away. The launch site is a few km from the nearest public road, and about 10km from the closest town, and I'm viewing it from a few hundred km!

I bet the editor just felt it was better to cut around for the sizzle reel. For the tip-over, I wonder if the booster went kaboom when it hit the water and they want to emphasize the success rather than what could be perceived as a failure. So you're right, maybe brand image. Maybe one day they'll finally release the footage!

I think they were more open when they were developing Falcon 9. Based on all these amazing test flights, the engineers still have that magic SpaceX culture, but perhaps the media department has become more corporate.

Thanks!! Yep, lots of planes flying around, going to San Francisco and San Jose!

I love that they showed more of the booster landing footage, but I still wish we could see it hit the water and tip over!

Pretty sad that the coolest part of the whole video is what user effi on the NSF forum spotted:

Even in the Raptor room behind the Mega bay they watch NSF :D .A Screenshot from 46:14:

https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=60962.0;attach=2294746;image

I would also like to see more collaboration, and there are many nuanced reasons why the US would rather not. Just one of them is that this launch resulted in this:

https://x.com/CNSpaceflight/status/1804542638034661522

I can't imagine being one of the scientists designing and cheering on this mission and then realizing my country's funds caused that scene. Thank goodness the US doesn't drop empty stages (containing extremely dangerous chemicals in this case) on populated areas, this kind of behavior cannot be tolerated.

NSF Video Apologies for the X links!

Flight 4 ended with Starship igniting its three center Raptor engines and executing the first flip maneuver and landing burn since our suborbital campaign, followed by a soft splashdown of the ship in the Indian Ocean one hour and six minutes after launch.

I still can't believe that happened! Gives me so much confidence on their in-space propellant storage too, for some reason.

Let's go!!