For whatever it’s worth, I came here to post exactly this video. I use Veritasium regularly in physics and astronomy classes I teach because the explanations are crystal clear and the visuals are wonderfully done - if it’s not something I can do a proper job of in the room it’s almost always Derek I end up turning to.
And here’s a video not only of an actual expert on something, but also someone who doesn’t do acritical sponsored exclusives, and then hides it, in case you don’t like supporting that. YMMV.
Matt_W
5157
He says it the very first thing in the video. It shows up in the chyron right at the beginning. And the ad is at the end of the video when all you have to do to skip it is stop watching. (That’s what I did.) So I don’t think it qualifies as hidden. It’s a paid ad, so I don’t expect critical analysis. It is true that Derek isn’t an expert on this subject, but his Ph.D specifically on physics education, with an emphasis on multimedia presentation. There’s a reason he has 12 million subscribers. I will say though that for this kind of thing my favorite Youtube talking head is Matt O’Dowd of PBS Spacetime who is an actual physicist, but they do paid ads too.
I will check out your video though. I’m always down for more science subscribes.
Not on this one, the one on self-driving cars.
I may be too angry about how much legitimacy the production values gives to a particular source (it’s not necessarily their fault), but he’s been technically wrong a few times as well.
On Waymo, sorry man; at best, blind as a bat.
Looks like we in the U.S. may be actually getting our redundant access to space working:
They still need to do their crewed test mission, and they do have some issues to work on, but it’s working well enough and a lot better than last time. Key thing is, a $5 billion investment in Boeing may work out now, and instead of the decade of having zero native ways to get to LEO, we’ll have 2.
I never doubted that Starliner could be made to work, but I think the bigger question is will it be at all cost competitive with SpaceX. If NASA keeps up the fixed-price contract stuff, and I sincerely believe they should for things like launches where there’s a growing private sector industry, then Boeing might be in trouble. I think it would be quite the challenge for them to try and stay profitable while being price-competitive with SpaceX and not cutting so many corners that they start killing astronauts with failed launches.
If you look up right now you will see remnants of a comet that was seem breaking up in 1995 burning up in our atmosphere; a brand new meteor shower (I think they will be called Herculid Tau) and quite spectacular. I was seeing a meteor every minute or so on average, and many are really bright, 0 magnitude or better. Once I could see three go at the same time.
(Updated for accuracy)
Actually Tau Herculid is an established meteor shower associated with the comet; this was a burst of activity that was predicted, associated with debris from the breakup in 95.
orald
5164
Clouded up here in southern Maine so no views of the Tau Herculids for us. Glad you got to see it @antlers, hope others got to see them, too
CraigM
5165
So that’s what I was seeing on my walk last night. I saw a few meteors, but wasn’t sure if it was isolated or an event.
Did you hear an Orson Welles voiceover in the background?
The Everyday Astronaut is back with a lengthy highly technical interview with Elon at Starbase, down in Texas. I had to Google Ullage gases and COPV, as well as brush up on my long-forgotten chemistry when the discussion turned to Stoichiometric ratio. Fortunately, my Kerbal experience allowed me follow the discussion on ISP and TWR.
TL:DR Starship has thrust to weight ratio of 1.4-1.5 which means it going to zoom off the launch tower
Unlike a non-reusable rocket, fuel/propulsion costs are of considerable importance to fully reusable rocket Elon is optimizing Starship for the lowest cost to Orbit, Lunar surface or Mars.
Currently, it cost about $1 billion to send a ton of payload (e,g, a rover) to Mars. For a Mars colony to be successful that needs to drop to $100,000 per ton a 10,000x decrease.
Part 2 of the interview if more chill, and far less technical than part 1. You don’t need to watch part 1.
He talks more about his insane idea of trying to catch a 200 foot and 200+ ton rocket with a giant clamp as it lands. All this to eliminate the need for landing legs.
Elon describes odds as there is a non-zero chance it will be successful. He just hopes it doesn’t take out the landing tower, cause that sucker is expensive and hard to build.
The quotes of the interview. “SpaceX specializes in converting the impossible to late.” Which, I think shows a lot of self-awareness and why despite the dumb things Elon says I still admire the man.
They then ride up to the top 450’ landing tower, for some stunning views of the area and a far more philosophical and chill Elon talks about the bigger mission.
One hopes the chopsticks will evolve to act as a catapult in the future.
I am sure they have alternative, crazy ideas if this proves too hard to do.
My friend who’s been designing battery packs for Tesla for dozen years, says that Elon’s motto for the Model 3, was not to one wasted millimeter or one extra gram. He was serious. If he saw a thumb-size space in the design, he push why can’t there be another cell there, and then they’d argue thermodynamics and material science. Sometimes Elon would win, they’d make use of the space, and sometimes my friend and his engineering team would win and they won’t have to redesign it.
Weight on rockets is way more critical than on cars, and landing legs add drag on the way up, stability problems on re-entry, and weigh a ton (probably literally on the Starship)
I think even more than landing gear weight, the chopsticks are for turnaround time. If the rocket lands in a crane on the launch tower, much quicker to relaunch than if it lands on legs on a pad, where you then have to put it on a crane and mount it on a launch tower. Chopsticks are Elon looking ahead to when the booster lands and they launch it again as soon as they can fuel it up.
It’s going to take like 8 booster launches to support one Artemis, so the whole process has to be designed for efficiency.
This podcast is an interview with Peter Beck of Rocket Lab, talking about building rockets to go interesting places like the Moon and Venus. Mostly about smaller rockets to make going to space more efficient.
The best thing about this is the casual use of ‘Location: SpaceX Stargate Location’ which feels like it’s straight out of 80s SF.
