The thread for space cadets!

[Thorgalaeg]

This meme is very true:

View attachment 521785

Who is she?

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Gwynne Shotwell, the power behind the throne at SpaceX

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I have no idea what Bridenstine is up to but he's talking about Falcon Heavy supporting EM-1 again after dismissing it. All I can figure is he is finding he needs even more leverage over Boeing to help them make the correct course of action to get SLS going.

NASA said the Indian ASAT test increased space junk collision risks to the ISS by 44%.


Lots of older aerospace folks decry CubeSats for their potential to become space junk but just one ASAT test puts out more space junk than all the hundreds of CubeSats ever will.

 

[Berzerker]

that really pisses me off, we dump our trash in the ocean and now we're doing it in space on purpose

we need a ship like in Moonraker going around gobbling up debris

 

[r16]

industry thread kind of thing . America stops F-35 for New Turkey , but keeps training on . It's not a spat on S-400s , on which New Turkey is tasked with industrial espionage and a way to kick us out of NATO . Be a man about it and vote , ı promise ı will not veto it . What's more those who will be employed in S-400 batteries by New Turkey are obviously not those who will need cover from the mighty US air power . And it's nothing about Russia's geopolitic interests or a more basic need for their defence industry , but merely the 2.5 billion US dollars and the cut for Kremlin . Yeah , allright , that cut will be taken from the Russians and paid to Syrians as Putin's War Compensation for failing to win the war since 2016 . Which means there's no more interest in the PAKFA , just like S-400 follow ons and Russia will also be declared an enemy in full . The decision has been made to fight , we will not soak up attacks and go out at once . Means Tactical Aviation people talk about 80-90% in the first week as they would have to relocate under fire but the Allied Airpower is headed for smelters , those who survive , short of the ones in museums and on plinths . Shanahan is working is on wrong assumptions , that we would have any interest as both F-16 modernisation and F-35 and Patriot sales have suddenly found a nice soft spot ; and oh my , as we have failed to place early orders , we will have to wait until 2024 for the SAMs . Yeah , for all its proto-21st Century frills , a 71 Phantom is hard pressed to fight an ICBM ...

 

[uppi]

I have no idea what Bridenstine is up to but he's talking about Falcon Heavy supporting EM-1 again after dismissing it. All I can figure is he is finding he needs even more leverage over Boeing to help them make the correct course of action to get SLS going.

He is probably trying to walk the fine line between having a credible threat to threaten Boeing and the threat being too credible so that he would actually have to implement it.

NASA said the Indian ASAT test increased space junk collision risks to the ISS by 44%.

All this talk of the US creating a Space Force might have just encouraged India to do whatever they want, consequences be damned.

 

[Michkov]

that really pisses me off, we dump our trash in the ocean and now we're doing it in space on purpose

we need a ship like in Moonraker going around gobbling up debris

This isn't a new development. One of the first military space missions was the deployment of a cloud of copper needles in Earth orbit. Humans have been cluttering up near space ever since they went orbital. They've been aware of the dangers for a long time too, go look up Kessler syndrome if you dont need sleep tonight.

 

[Imaus]

that really pisses me off, we dump our trash in the ocean and now we're doing it in space on purpose

we need a ship like in Moonraker going around gobbling up debris

Laser brooms are better. Ground side arrays of lasers that basically just push the debris into higher or lower orbits, causing graveyarding or burn up in time.

A ship, like in Moonraker or Planetes, can easily just cause more debris and is more expensive, comparatively.

 

[Berzerker]

a cloud of copper needles?

I'll have to google that

Project West Ford, a bunch of copper needles to aid in global communications.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

We're they sent up as RF reflectors?

 

[Berzerker]

At the height of the Cold War, all international communications were either sent through undersea cables or bounced off the natural ionosphere. The United States Military was concerned that the Soviets might cut those cables, forcing the unpredictable ionosphere to be the only means of communication with overseas forces.[1] So, a ring of 480,000,000[3] copper dipole antennas (1.78 cm long needles, 25.4μm [1961] / 17.8μm [1963] in diameter)[4][5] was placed in orbit to facilitate global radio communication. - wiki

Apparently they were meant to strengthen the ionosphere so we could bounce our messages around the globe

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Boeing's Starliner's first flight has been delayed from May until this summer. Undoubtedly they will be asking NASA for more money as a result.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Beresheet executed a successful lunar capture manuever with support from NASA's DSN. Go SpaceIL!

DSN = deep space network, a system of massive ground stations

 

[Samson]

Not content with bombing most places on earth, we are now bombing OUTER SPACE:

The Japanese Hayabusa-2 spacecraft is thought to have detonated an explosive charge on the asteroid it is exploring.
Its mission is to create an artificial crater on the asteroid Ryugu.
If this is successful, it will later return to gather samples of the asteroid, which could help scientists understand how Earth was formed in the early Solar System.
The explosive device, called the Small Carry-on Impactor (SCI), was deployed by the Hayabusa-2 on Friday. The SCI is a 14kg conical container attached to the Hayabusa-2 and packed with plastic explosive.
It was intended to punch a 10m-wide hole in the asteroid upon impact.
The SCI on Friday successfully separated from the Hayabusa-2 at an altitude of 500m above the surface of Ryugu.
In the meantime, the Hayabusa-2 manoeuvred itself to hide away on the other side of the asteroid, shielding the spacecraft from any flying debris.
If the detonation is successful, images of the moment it happened should have been captured by a small camera called DCAM3 that was deployed by the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (Jaxa) probe.​

Actually I think this is quite cool. Make a crater in the surface of a C-type asteroid to see the building blocks of the solar system, unchanged by 5 billion years of radiation.

 

[Berzerker]

does a beresheet in space?

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Planning isn't unique to capitalism at all. The point of my post was to point out that there are reasons why central planning fails> One is that the central planning enthusiasts are mostly unskilled or incompetent in how to plan. Another big one is that they put the political agenda above the planning success and the conflicts cause failures. Most bureaucrats don't want to do the hard work to create large scale central plans and most ideologues want quick solutions that meet ideological needs. Those two items alone pretty much doom the Marxists to planning failures.

In a capitalist environment the profit motive will usually override political motivation and creates an atmosphere where good planning can take place. At the building, factory, community level great plans are written and completed. This happens because of the narrow focus As you scale up into public private partnerships are regional development plans it gets harder because there are more players and more conflicting agendas.

Now, there are excellent large projects being done by governments, for example, fast trains in China, Japan, Europe etc. China in this instance is our Communist example, but the need for the fast train project is the growth in private business there. There would be no need for those trains if China had not been building a western style economy for the past 20 years. The success of the Chinese economy and it growth is tied directly to its role in supporting and imitating western capitalism. In some areas, the centralized power of of the state has enabled very fast development because there is no discussion or exchange of ideas among those affected by the project. They succeed by throwing money and labor at the project to force a quick outcome. They have big successes and big failures, but their planning process is actually terrible to non existent.

They are throwing state resources and funding at new rocket and satellite manufacturers. They are not shy in stating they want to emulate SpaceX et al's recent successes. There is somewhere around a dozen new rocket start ups that receive aid in the form of analytical services, talent connections and seed-round capital injections. The most prominent of these companies have been given surplus ICBM motors to incorporate them into their designs. Out of those, the most ambitious even state that the solid motors are a technical dead end and are just helping them get experience with launching rockets. Their 'real' designs are much closer to what SpaceX is already flying.

 

[Imaus]

Speaking of SpaceX, Starhopper, a prototype for Spaceship (which seems to have replaced the BFR/IPT?) had a test fire today, hopped while tethered, didn't explode, and used the raptor engine.

It seems SpaceX will make the BattleCruiser of Korolev's fears and NASA's hops actually fly in one piece. I earnestly wish and hope for SSTO to expand, if not become the norm. Maybe Delta Clipper and Phoenix will actually fly, one day.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Starship won't go all the way to orbit without the booster. It can do suborbital hops but it can't make it to orbit on Earth. Mars is a different story though, it could do SSTO (single stage to orbit) there.

 

[Imaus]

Starship won't go all the way to orbit without the booster. It can do suborbital hops but it can't make it to orbit on Earth. Mars is a different story though, it could do SSTO (single stage to orbit) there.

Well, that's fine; it's sort of a shuttle in that regard, isn't it? A plan also forms around this: Launch a spaceship in parts, attach to ship, burn off down the like. Sort of like later Von Braun plans.

If one can conquer Earth well enough, most of the rest of the terrestrial system objects are in reach, save, probably, Mercury.

 

[Birdjaguar]

They are throwing state resources and funding at new rocket and satellite manufacturers. They are not shy in stating they want to emulate SpaceX et al's recent successes. There is somewhere around a dozen new rocket start ups that receive aid in the form of analytical services, talent connections and seed-round capital injections. The most prominent of these companies have been given surplus ICBM motors to incorporate them into their designs. Out of those, the most ambitious even state that the solid motors are a technical dead end and are just helping them get experience with launching rockets. Their 'real' designs are much closer to what SpaceX is already flying.

Does China need propulsion engineers?