My qualifications: um, I really like looking at the stars at night?
Thatās what Iāve been waiting for, time to get serious about going to space now that theyāre gonna have bread!
Saturn V engines on display that Bezos scooped off from the ocean floor in 2013
Interesting article over on Ars about how SpaceX contract to launch satellites is 25% of what the military was being charged by UALā¦
Iām sure the military will continue to use UAL because of reasons lobbyists, bribes, campaign war chests
In case anyone wants to search NASAās huge image database (a lot of really incredible stuff)
SpaceX managed to complete its weekend double header of launches, with one in the Cape on Friday and another out Vandenburg just now.
Fridayās landing was probably the most difficult yet with Elon saying
Which I think translates into a really fast, hot re-entry and that the shock absorbers it the land struts almost broke.
It also only partly within the target circle.
Iāve suggested that adopt gymnastic scoring. Degree difficulty, precision of the landing, and bonus point for artistry.
Still, they have achieved something remarkable in the span of a couple of years theyāve made something that seemed impossible now seem routine.
Watching the webcast, I looked at the number folks in the office to watch in Sunday afternoon, and thought thatās a dedicated stuff, only to have the announcer say the crowd was small cause most folks drove the 180 miles up to Vandenberg to watch it live.
Someone pointed out that itās amazing heās got the tech to the level where we are criticising him for being partially outside the landing circle.
āDude, you canāt even launch a rocket into space, have it come back, and perform a perfect vertical landing in a circle thatās about the same size as the rocket. Garbage.ā
On a drone ship a 1/4 the size of an aircraft carrier, in high winds, and moderate seas.
Seriously, why is he even trying? Loser. #SAD
Sadly true for the military. But for NASA it is going to be increasingly hard to justify using UAL.
This Business Insider article has a very detailed guesstimate on the cost savings of reusability.
If they can reuse a booster 15 times the cost of Falcon 9 mission drops from $38 million to $7.2 million.
Customer cost doesnāt drop nearly that fast because they need to recoup their $1 billion dollar investment.
The article includes a handy Google Sheet.
I think spending a $1 billion to almost perfect landing 1st stage boosters, is one helluva of a great R&D investment.
Of course, Iām awe that total capital expenditure (Revenue+capital investment _ of SpaceX is still under $10 billion.
Where is the Elon Musk of health care in America? Just imagine if we could get a 10x decrease in health cost in this country hell, even 50% would be awesome.
Edited cause it needed to be.
Ok I gotta ask, are you typing in your phone or dictating text or something?
Posting while distracted. Thanks
Well, thatās good news. Iād hate to think child slaves made it to Mars while Iām stuck here.
Of course thatās what NASA is gonna say.
This probably ought to have gone in P and R, butā¦Ad Astra!
I understand that pictures werenāt a priority for the mission but I really wish they had put a better camera on that thing.
Iām not an expert but Iād think that Jupiter is pretty dark at such a long distance from sun. For a camera to capture that image, it must have been one heck of a camera. Probably the best of its kind, donāt you think?
It is a decidedly average camera, as space cameras go. The original Juno mission wasnāt even supposed to have a visible-light camera. NASA added it to the mission after they realized that awesome pictures of Jupiter make it much easier to sell the public on funding future planetary science missions. As I understand, they just picked one āoff the shelfā, as it were, using a camera which had been used on some previous spacecraft.
One cool thing about missing out of stuff for a while is the space thread had 30+ new posts!
I donāt know about the rest of you, but sourdough bread cooked in that oven with even better, bigger holey areas for whatever you spread to fill up? Yum! In all seriousness though, for a longer space mission something like that could be a huge boost to morale. The smell of fresh baked bread to cover the stale smell of metal and human sweat would be great.