While the "figure skater" argument is interesting, I had noticed that the spin was almost gone before the legs came out. I think I figured out another reason the spin slowed down.
The stuck grid fin was causing the spin because it was making air go sideways. But once the vertical speed decreased, that effect went away, making it easier to stop the spin. Then you can see the flame of the center engine gimbal around. There may also have been some cold thrust off-camera. Not that the legs didn't help slow it down, but the spin is almost gone just before the legs open up.
Something that the other replies to your post haven't mentioned is that parachutes are damned hard to control, while a propulsive landing has very good control authority. You can't land the rocket upright when it's floating around like a feather. Have you ever watched a feather drop? It's only good at all for a water landing, and those are right out because sea water is bad for a re-usable spacecraft.
* Reserve fuel is cheap (compared to the cost of the rocket it's spare change), and it needs to have some anyhow
* The empty rocket is very light (even one engine can't throttle down enough to maintain a hover)
* Parachutes are extra weight that isn't needed except when landing. And they're a lot of extra weight. Also, there has been a limit to man-rated space landing parachutes in that only one company has been making all of them since the 1960s. Crew Dragon will be the first to use a new manufacturer, and there is some concern about their process simply because they're new at it.
* It's not a man rated landing, so the objective isn't to keep humans alive, it's to keep the rocket from breaking
* And as someone else mentioned, the parachute would put different loads on the frame than during launch, so the whole can would have to be stronger and thus heavier. I'm sure you've crushed a few aluminum soda cans. It's the same thing scaled up, except it's more like a 50cm+ tall soda can, with rocks in the bottom.
I think the thing that bugs me most is that years after they quickly decided that parachutes were a really dumb idea, we still have naive people suggesting the "obvious" idea that they should use parachutes, as though nobody else was smart enough to consider it. It's not like you can't google for "why doesn't spacex use parachutes" and get a bunch of good answers.
When I have mod points, I enjoy finding a "0, Troll" post that I think was unfairly modded down, because I can give it an Underrated mod and change it to "1, Troll". Often that's actually a fair description of the post, where they're sort of half-trolling, but they make a good point.
Unfortunately, the (very) rare time I've found a "1, Troll" post to give a second Underrated mod, it doesn't go to "2, Troll", which is sad. I think it just makes the description disappear. Also, if there's any non-Underrated mod, that description wins out.
Back in the early 2Ks, I got a Sony Wega "HD-Ready" 4:3 CRT (that weighed about 80 kilos), and a separate HD tuner. It wasn't long before I got tired of the TV switching scan modes all the time, especially between wide and 4:3, so in the end I set the tuner to always output 480p. It was still a good picture with a rock-solid DVD-quality 480p as opposed to a snowy NTSC 480i.
You may or may not know that there is already talk of replacing the current ATSC standard with a new and incompatible one. Current 8VSB channels would be ghettoized into legacy transmitters, presumably at lower bandwidth than now. The only good thing about it for me is that I mostly watch recordings from my MythTV system, and I can just swap out the tuner cards, though it may also need a newer version of Linux to support them.
That is meaningless without the distance at which you can see the difference. Of course you can see the difference at a few inches, or even at desk distance (2-3 feet), but can you see the difference at couch distance (6-10 feet)? Don't worry, as your eyes age, you will understand.
I know you're joking, but cars that old don't have the modern pedal arrangement. Unless the thief has experience with driving that model of antique car, it's an even better anti-theft system than having a manual transmission.
Not only can't they fly "a few times a year", but as I understand it, they wouldn't even have the capability to build more than two per year without some serious investment in manufacturing capacity.
That's actually why this is a non-starter. On the other hand, I think it could work as a reality show, with local competitions to select the final contestants. They're also cheap to produce, so those who are saying profits should somehow fund NASA could have it right there. Right? Remember 'The Right Stuff'? That was almost a reality show right there!
But we have to preserve the "natural state" of the forest by stopping those pesky natural fires that happen all the time! Also, backfires and controlled burns are scaaaaaaary!
(I am 99% positive that was actually Leonard Nimoy they got to declare "Damage Repaired, Captain!" when you managed to tag a starbase before you could go boom)
That Nimoy voice sample was in the arcade version. The TI chip supported custom samples (B-17 Bomber on Intellivision famously had a custom startup voice), so they probably used the same recording. That's also impressive since a lot of home conversions never had access to the original game assets. (ColecoVision games in particular rented an arcade machine as the "reference".) I wouldn't be surprised to find that the arcade version used the TI chip too, since voice samples were enormous back then unless you had that sort of compression.
As long as those political calls don't use randomized caller ID numbers and can be properly blocked with a block list, I really don't have a problem with it.
GPS absolute position isn't good, but that's because of localized variances in reception. But as I understand it, the relative position is good enough to detect a 2cm movement, and it has been used for devices to detect seismic fault movement. You may not know exactly where you are, but you can know that you moved a little bit, and how far.
That was so far from left field that I had to use google to be sure I was remembering correctly. Too bad he wasn't able to set off that super earthquake. I guess he didn't die from that fall after all, there's still hope!
I just caught up on thedailywtf.com and my brain is still having trouble dealing with the "design" of those MPEG timestamps. As for time as a double, I know that's in OS X, and it probably came from NeXT.
When it is time to change out the CPU there is a newer RAM type.
And probably a new CPU socket type too, since the newer RAM probably isn't just the same wires only a little faster. And then there's the TDP, which is limited in such a small device. RAM keeps a consistent interface over a much longer time than CPU generations. I am much more annoyed over soldered down SSD than CPU.
An opportunity to prove they're not complete morons who not only don't understand their product, but their customer.
The first rule to understanding your customer is to correctly identify your customer. The "customer" is not the one viewing the ad, nor the one who inserts some includes in their web site so that the ad can be displayed in exchange for pennies. The customer is the one who is paying you money, the one who created and paid for the ad to be shoved in front of eyeballs. The companies that shove the ads around have identified their customer, and their product. The product is YOU. (everywhere, not just in Soviet Russia)
This. Because the outsourced ads are generally horrible and annoying. But very few places bother to run their own ad server anymore, since you have to make an effort to get the ads from somewhere.
Often I find that if I block another chunk of something, it blocks their blocking detector from loading. After all, web monkeys rarely even have the ability to write good and robust code, they just link in some crap from another web site.
I make every attempt to block the player applet every time I find a site pushing auto-play video at me (including the "click to see more" type that still plays silent video) with no way to disable the auto-play function. Doubly so for the ones that have "pop-out" video when you scroll it off the window. If they are so insecure in their self worth that they think they need to annoy you to get seen, then they weren't worth watching. The few times I actually might want to see something, I can open the page in my alternate browser.
There are plenty of terminals, it's just that 5% or so of them have tape over the chip slot or a note to swipe the stripe (though without such catchy wording). If there is fraud when the chip is not used, the cost is now on the business, but if they think it's not bad enough, there is still nothing to force them to make the chip slot work, 3 1/2 years later.
I don't even remember where I was, but I have once encountered a place that had chip-reader gas pumps. Instead of insert/remove, I had to leave the card in for long enough to authorize the transaction, then (I think) remove it before pumping gas. The amount of sale would be determined after you finish pumping, so the chip would just be a less-insecure equivalent of swiping a card to unlock a gas pump with a second transaction to finalize the sale, and not a single transaction.
It is possible that this was a pilot test site to shake the bugs out of adding chip readers to almost every gas pump in the US. That's going to be a major undertaking, even if it takes "only" five minutes to replace each one.
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While the "figure skater" argument is interesting, I had noticed that the spin was almost gone before the legs came out. I think I figured out another reason the spin slowed down.
The stuck grid fin was causing the spin because it was making air go sideways. But once the vertical speed decreased, that effect went away, making it easier to stop the spin. Then you can see the flame of the center engine gimbal around. There may also have been some cold thrust off-camera. Not that the legs didn't help slow it down, but the spin is almost gone just before the legs open up.
Something that the other replies to your post haven't mentioned is that parachutes are damned hard to control, while a propulsive landing has very good control authority. You can't land the rocket upright when it's floating around like a feather. Have you ever watched a feather drop? It's only good at all for a water landing, and those are right out because sea water is bad for a re-usable spacecraft.
* Reserve fuel is cheap (compared to the cost of the rocket it's spare change), and it needs to have some anyhow
* The empty rocket is very light (even one engine can't throttle down enough to maintain a hover)
* Parachutes are extra weight that isn't needed except when landing. And they're a lot of extra weight. Also, there has been a limit to man-rated space landing parachutes in that only one company has been making all of them since the 1960s. Crew Dragon will be the first to use a new manufacturer, and there is some concern about their process simply because they're new at it.
* It's not a man rated landing, so the objective isn't to keep humans alive, it's to keep the rocket from breaking
* And as someone else mentioned, the parachute would put different loads on the frame than during launch, so the whole can would have to be stronger and thus heavier. I'm sure you've crushed a few aluminum soda cans. It's the same thing scaled up, except it's more like a 50cm+ tall soda can, with rocks in the bottom.
I think the thing that bugs me most is that years after they quickly decided that parachutes were a really dumb idea, we still have naive people suggesting the "obvious" idea that they should use parachutes, as though nobody else was smart enough to consider it. It's not like you can't google for "why doesn't spacex use parachutes" and get a bunch of good answers.
Because this is over a period of ~15 billion years where photons are constantly created and destroyed, not an instant snapshot of the universe.
When I have mod points, I enjoy finding a "0, Troll" post that I think was unfairly modded down, because I can give it an Underrated mod and change it to "1, Troll". Often that's actually a fair description of the post, where they're sort of half-trolling, but they make a good point.
Unfortunately, the (very) rare time I've found a "1, Troll" post to give a second Underrated mod, it doesn't go to "2, Troll", which is sad. I think it just makes the description disappear. Also, if there's any non-Underrated mod, that description wins out.
If you had been here for even a few months, you would know that Slashdot editors don't.
Back in the early 2Ks, I got a Sony Wega "HD-Ready" 4:3 CRT (that weighed about 80 kilos), and a separate HD tuner. It wasn't long before I got tired of the TV switching scan modes all the time, especially between wide and 4:3, so in the end I set the tuner to always output 480p. It was still a good picture with a rock-solid DVD-quality 480p as opposed to a snowy NTSC 480i.
You may or may not know that there is already talk of replacing the current ATSC standard with a new and incompatible one. Current 8VSB channels would be ghettoized into legacy transmitters, presumably at lower bandwidth than now. The only good thing about it for me is that I mostly watch recordings from my MythTV system, and I can just swap out the tuner cards, though it may also need a newer version of Linux to support them.
That is meaningless without the distance at which you can see the difference. Of course you can see the difference at a few inches, or even at desk distance (2-3 feet), but can you see the difference at couch distance (6-10 feet)? Don't worry, as your eyes age, you will understand.
I know you're joking, but cars that old don't have the modern pedal arrangement. Unless the thief has experience with driving that model of antique car, it's an even better anti-theft system than having a manual transmission.
Not only can't they fly "a few times a year", but as I understand it, they wouldn't even have the capability to build more than two per year without some serious investment in manufacturing capacity.
That's actually why this is a non-starter. On the other hand, I think it could work as a reality show, with local competitions to select the final contestants. They're also cheap to produce, so those who are saying profits should somehow fund NASA could have it right there. Right? Remember 'The Right Stuff'? That was almost a reality show right there!
But we have to preserve the "natural state" of the forest by stopping those pesky natural fires that happen all the time! Also, backfires and controlled burns are scaaaaaaary!
(I am 99% positive that was actually Leonard Nimoy they got to declare "Damage Repaired, Captain!" when you managed to tag a starbase before you could go boom)
That Nimoy voice sample was in the arcade version. The TI chip supported custom samples (B-17 Bomber on Intellivision famously had a custom startup voice), so they probably used the same recording. That's also impressive since a lot of home conversions never had access to the original game assets. (ColecoVision games in particular rented an arcade machine as the "reference".) I wouldn't be surprised to find that the arcade version used the TI chip too, since voice samples were enormous back then unless you had that sort of compression.
As long as those political calls don't use randomized caller ID numbers and can be properly blocked with a block list, I really don't have a problem with it.
GPS absolute position isn't good, but that's because of localized variances in reception. But as I understand it, the relative position is good enough to detect a 2cm movement, and it has been used for devices to detect seismic fault movement. You may not know exactly where you are, but you can know that you moved a little bit, and how far.
That was so far from left field that I had to use google to be sure I was remembering correctly. Too bad he wasn't able to set off that super earthquake. I guess he didn't die from that fall after all, there's still hope!
I just caught up on thedailywtf.com and my brain is still having trouble dealing with the "design" of those MPEG timestamps. As for time as a double, I know that's in OS X, and it probably came from NeXT.
Since it's not going to be stored on a single hard drive, "in the SAN" is probably even more correct, with the change of only a single letter.
When it is time to change out the CPU there is a newer RAM type.
And probably a new CPU socket type too, since the newer RAM probably isn't just the same wires only a little faster. And then there's the TDP, which is limited in such a small device. RAM keeps a consistent interface over a much longer time than CPU generations. I am much more annoyed over soldered down SSD than CPU.
An opportunity to prove they're not complete morons who not only don't understand their product, but their customer.
The first rule to understanding your customer is to correctly identify your customer. The "customer" is not the one viewing the ad, nor the one who inserts some includes in their web site so that the ad can be displayed in exchange for pennies. The customer is the one who is paying you money, the one who created and paid for the ad to be shoved in front of eyeballs. The companies that shove the ads around have identified their customer, and their product. The product is YOU. (everywhere, not just in Soviet Russia)
This. Because the outsourced ads are generally horrible and annoying. But very few places bother to run their own ad server anymore, since you have to make an effort to get the ads from somewhere.
Often I find that if I block another chunk of something, it blocks their blocking detector from loading. After all, web monkeys rarely even have the ability to write good and robust code, they just link in some crap from another web site.
I make every attempt to block the player applet every time I find a site pushing auto-play video at me (including the "click to see more" type that still plays silent video) with no way to disable the auto-play function. Doubly so for the ones that have "pop-out" video when you scroll it off the window. If they are so insecure in their self worth that they think they need to annoy you to get seen, then they weren't worth watching. The few times I actually might want to see something, I can open the page in my alternate browser.
There are plenty of terminals, it's just that 5% or so of them have tape over the chip slot or a note to swipe the stripe (though without such catchy wording). If there is fraud when the chip is not used, the cost is now on the business, but if they think it's not bad enough, there is still nothing to force them to make the chip slot work, 3 1/2 years later.
I don't even remember where I was, but I have once encountered a place that had chip-reader gas pumps. Instead of insert/remove, I had to leave the card in for long enough to authorize the transaction, then (I think) remove it before pumping gas. The amount of sale would be determined after you finish pumping, so the chip would just be a less-insecure equivalent of swiping a card to unlock a gas pump with a second transaction to finalize the sale, and not a single transaction.
It is possible that this was a pilot test site to shake the bugs out of adding chip readers to almost every gas pump in the US. That's going to be a major undertaking, even if it takes "only" five minutes to replace each one.