Oh crap, I just re-read TFS. They want to ban us from using their rockets? At first I thought they wanted to stop Russians from using US rockets. This is basically a reverse embargo!
Yes, this is the best possible outcome for SpaceX, since they've been wanting to launch those very same military payloads that ULA was monopolizing.
What I have heard of so far in terms of likely submerged human settlements is the Black Sea before the Mediterranean spilled into it (possibly the origin of the Noah story), and land to the east of England.
The US generally does a 3 hour time shift for east vs west with broadcast programming. When they announce times for shows, Eastern and Pacific have the same time, Central is an hour "earlier" (7-10 prime time vs 8-11), and Mountain doesn't even get mentioned (ha ha), so I don't even know whether they get east or west showings. And I don't know what they do about Arizona (no summer time). This goes back at least as far as the 1970s.
There have even been instances I have heard of in the past few years when a show was slightly modified between the east (Eastern/Central) and west (Pacific) showing, but I wouldn't have known if it weren't for the internet, so it's probably been happening for a long time. I think 30 Rock even did a live episode and did it twice so that the west coast showing would also be live.
We can't get both east and west broadcast network feeds (except maybe over C-band satellite) for broadcast because the local stations are generally independent from each other and thus have the rights in their own areas. Even when subscription satellite has local channels available, they go to great efforts to ensure that you are in-area before turning them on for you.
I suppose it's possible for a cable system to make both east and west feeds of a cable-only network available if they have the channels, but it's highly unlikely they'll have enough channels without digital.
I went with the 0 channels option for $0. As long as you take a few minutes to aim it in the right direction first, an antenna can give you lots of ATSC digital channels with perfect picture. Not so much sports these days, so those who are sports fans have my sympathy.
Of course even less people can get C-band than can put up a big stick antenna, thanks to zoning and homeowners associations and living in apartments. People in urban and suburban areas don't like being around satellite dishes that are big enough to take a bath in.
I think you missed the channel Z that basically nobody with an IQ over 80 watches, but ads sell well because the kind of people who watch it LOVE to mail order crap that would make Ron Popeil toss away in disgust. (Not to mention that it doesn't have any real programming from 1AM to 8AM and can sell a couple of hours of "sponsored programming".)
Since almost nobody wants to watch Z, no cable company in their right mind would waste an entire 6 MHz on it (not so bad now with digital where you can easily cram 10 channels of that crap with minimum bandwidth). But it's owned by the same company who makes channels A and B, and they like all the money they can get by selling ads on it. So they require every cable company that wants to show A or B to also make Z available to their customers.
Damn, I think I've just explained why cable companies are so hot to convert people to digital even when there isn't an FCC mandate. It's so they can distribute more crap channels to make the content providers happy. But it doesn't matter to me, because I watch stick. (as in antenna, meant to be a reference to "driving stick")
The stupidest thing TW ever did was drop me back in 2000 when I missed paying a bill. I had a year of basic cable after that provided as a free bennie of living in an apartment, then I bought a house and strapped a stick to its chimney. I even ripped the coax to the living room out of the ground from the utilities corner, and it was plenty long enough to reach the antenna. Too bad it didn't have the modern crimp connectors that make thrift store coax superior to what you can buy new.
Wrong. When you reach stage separation, most of the mass going up is now 1) burned first-stage fuel that has been burned and released as exhaust, and 2) that second stage that you just pushed off (with its fuel), which also has most of the momentum because it has most of the mass. Now you're an almost empty fuel tank with significantly less mass, plus some "safety margin" fuel. And as to concerns about the operational environment conditions, let's leave that to the real rocket scientists who are already designing for multiple use.
And if you can bring down the launch costs by an entire order of magnitude (SpaceX even thinks two orders of magnitude is possible), then you can afford to spend a little more money on insurance, until the insurance companies are comfortable with it.
You'd figure a guy with a name like Elon Musk would build a drone to simply grab the spent first stage out of the air and gently fly them back to the factory for evaluation & refurbishment.
And also build a giant trumpet to go wah WAAH waaaaaaah as it captures the stage.
How many actual engines has anyone actually tried to reuse, and how many of them have been recovered with actual soft landings so as to avoid G shock on landing or exposure to seawater, the two biggest reasons why an engine couldn't be reused?
The only ones I am aware of are SSME and maybe whatever the X37B uses, because aside from those, I am not aware of any other system has been capable of a soft landing of any stage containing a rocket engine, and certainly not with enough launches to make a difference. (I know someone wants to say "DC-X! DC-X!") And unlike SSME, the Merlin engines are designed to be simple and rugged.
In other words, the sample size (of ONE) is too small to make any generalization from. As others have metioned, SpaceX certainly has been capable of stopping and restarting engines on test rigs enough times to know that they can handle 40-50 missions worth of wear and tear.
Also, "reduces the performance" is weasel words, since you failed to establish even roughly how much it reduces performance by. SpaceX simply increased the performance of their engines before starting to do the recovery project. So they can still launch as much now as they always have been. And there will always be some fuel left in the first stage anyhow to ensure launch success. If for some reason there's not enough left to land the stage (even with the drastically reduced fuel requirements to land an empty tank), it'll just fall into the water on the way back to the launchpad, and the only loss will be a tank and some rocket engines, not the customer's payload.
Besides, most payloads don't need the maximum amount of fuel anyhow. For the small percentage that need it, they can simply offer no discount for a no-recovery launch, or use engines that have had multiple launches already and won't need to be recovered.
How many actual engines has anyone actually tried to reuse, and how many of them have been recovered with actual soft landings so as to avoid G shock on landing or exposure to seawater, the two biggest reasons why an engine couldn't be reused?
The only ones I am aware of are SSME and maybe whatever the X37B uses, because aside from those, I am not aware of any other system has been capable of a soft landing of any stage containing a rocket engine, and certainly not with enough launches to make a difference. (I know someone wants to say "DC-X! DC-X!") And unlike SSME, the Merlin engines are designed to be simple and rugged.
In other words, the sample size (of ONE) is too small to make any generalization from. As others have metioned, SpaceX certainly has been capable of stopping and restarting engines on test rigs enough times to know that they can handle 40-50 missions worth of wear and tear.
Also, "reduces the performance" is weasel words, since you failed to establish even roughly how much it reduces performance by. SpaceX simply increased the performance of their engines before starting to do the recovery project. So they can still launch as much now as they always have been. And there will always be some fuel left in the first stage anyhow to ensure launch success. If for some reason there's not enough left to land the stage (even with the drastically reduced fuel requirements to land an empty tank), it'll just fall into the water on the way back to the launchpad, and the only loss will be a tank and some rocket engines, not the customer's payload. And all that is not to mention that most payloads won't need the maximum amount of fuel anyhow.
So then I guess it's good that they have been paying for it by themselves? Even the rockets themselves are just scrap metal once stage separation happens, so they're doing experiments on junk.
With the most recent launch, SpaceX was denied the opportunity to do more because both the FAA and the USAF folks at Cape Canaveral didn't really want that return stage going anywhere near the launch pad until SpaceX has proven they have control of the vehicle.
I don't think even SpaceX wanted it coming back anywhere near ground. The chance of breaking shit is just too high. I know I wouldn't feel confident about it until at least four or five successful low altitude hovers.
Add in the impact of salt water and you have some serious engineering challenges that may not be cost effective to solve.
Which is why their goal is for the rocket to land itself on a launchpad. They're only dropping them in the water until they're sure the rockets can land themselves properly on ground without crashing and breaking shit in the landing zone. Meanwhile, if they do manage a water recovery, they can still get a lot of data from taking a used engine apart.
I seriously hope you didn't think their plan was water recovery. Have you not noticed all those cool Grasshopper landing videos from SpaceX over the past year or so?
So, with the exception of SSME, how many of the engines that anyone has attempted to reuse, or even thought about reusing, have been recovered with soft landings? Even with a parachute, water landings tend to get seawater all over everything, and that stuff isn't exactly good for precision equipment. And of course parachute ground landings still hit the ground enough bend stuff inside.
This is the kind of stuff that someone needs to try all the way to completion before we dismiss it as stupid.
Microsoft didn't "launch" Powerpoint, they bought it. It was initially for the Mac, then MS bought it three years later when they first released MS Office.
Seriously, how can "skepticism grow" about something that had almost no basis for belief in the first place? It's more like "miniscule belief evaporates".
But it remains the case that many of C++'s features can be used on those types of devices, and smaller ones too, and that includes templates.
True. And I have done it. I even overrode operator new to allocate out of pre-allocated memory pools. And indeed, the type of stuff you put on such a thing doesn't usually have much need for templates. The one template I did use is a bitmap (as a collection of bools, not bitblt) class, with the number of bits as the only template parameter.
But you're certainly never going to running Java or anything else on those things.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh crap, I just re-read TFS. They want to ban us from using their rockets? At first I thought they wanted to stop Russians from using US rockets. This is basically a reverse embargo!
Yes, this is the best possible outcome for SpaceX, since they've been wanting to launch those very same military payloads that ULA was monopolizing.
It's a comon error; nothing too loose your shit over...
Your right, their's alot of things worse then that.
What I have heard of so far in terms of likely submerged human settlements is the Black Sea before the Mediterranean spilled into it (possibly the origin of the Noah story), and land to the east of England.
grumpycat.jpg
Maybe someone made a zeppelin out of it.
Beats isn't just headphones. And that's probably what Apple was really after. Now they can stream with artificially inflated bass!
Fox cancels Almost Human
Fox also canceled Alien Nation, so I'm hardly surprised. Over two decades later, and Fox is still cancelling SF shows.
The US generally does a 3 hour time shift for east vs west with broadcast programming. When they announce times for shows, Eastern and Pacific have the same time, Central is an hour "earlier" (7-10 prime time vs 8-11), and Mountain doesn't even get mentioned (ha ha), so I don't even know whether they get east or west showings. And I don't know what they do about Arizona (no summer time). This goes back at least as far as the 1970s.
There have even been instances I have heard of in the past few years when a show was slightly modified between the east (Eastern/Central) and west (Pacific) showing, but I wouldn't have known if it weren't for the internet, so it's probably been happening for a long time. I think 30 Rock even did a live episode and did it twice so that the west coast showing would also be live.
We can't get both east and west broadcast network feeds (except maybe over C-band satellite) for broadcast because the local stations are generally independent from each other and thus have the rights in their own areas. Even when subscription satellite has local channels available, they go to great efforts to ensure that you are in-area before turning them on for you.
I suppose it's possible for a cable system to make both east and west feeds of a cable-only network available if they have the channels, but it's highly unlikely they'll have enough channels without digital.
And fear of anything electrical keeping them from putting up a good antenna.
I went with the 0 channels option for $0. As long as you take a few minutes to aim it in the right direction first, an antenna can give you lots of ATSC digital channels with perfect picture. Not so much sports these days, so those who are sports fans have my sympathy.
Of course even less people can get C-band than can put up a big stick antenna, thanks to zoning and homeowners associations and living in apartments. People in urban and suburban areas don't like being around satellite dishes that are big enough to take a bath in.
I think you missed the channel Z that basically nobody with an IQ over 80 watches, but ads sell well because the kind of people who watch it LOVE to mail order crap that would make Ron Popeil toss away in disgust. (Not to mention that it doesn't have any real programming from 1AM to 8AM and can sell a couple of hours of "sponsored programming".)
Since almost nobody wants to watch Z, no cable company in their right mind would waste an entire 6 MHz on it (not so bad now with digital where you can easily cram 10 channels of that crap with minimum bandwidth). But it's owned by the same company who makes channels A and B, and they like all the money they can get by selling ads on it. So they require every cable company that wants to show A or B to also make Z available to their customers.
Damn, I think I've just explained why cable companies are so hot to convert people to digital even when there isn't an FCC mandate. It's so they can distribute more crap channels to make the content providers happy. But it doesn't matter to me, because I watch stick. (as in antenna, meant to be a reference to "driving stick")
The stupidest thing TW ever did was drop me back in 2000 when I missed paying a bill. I had a year of basic cable after that provided as a free bennie of living in an apartment, then I bought a house and strapped a stick to its chimney. I even ripped the coax to the living room out of the ground from the utilities corner, and it was plenty long enough to reach the antenna. Too bad it didn't have the modern crimp connectors that make thrift store coax superior to what you can buy new.
You seem to be forgetting the 9001 pound gorilla of live sports.
a LOT of extra fuel
Wrong. When you reach stage separation, most of the mass going up is now 1) burned first-stage fuel that has been burned and released as exhaust, and 2) that second stage that you just pushed off (with its fuel), which also has most of the momentum because it has most of the mass. Now you're an almost empty fuel tank with significantly less mass, plus some "safety margin" fuel. And as to concerns about the operational environment conditions, let's leave that to the real rocket scientists who are already designing for multiple use.
And if you can bring down the launch costs by an entire order of magnitude (SpaceX even thinks two orders of magnitude is possible), then you can afford to spend a little more money on insurance, until the insurance companies are comfortable with it.
You'd figure a guy with a name like Elon Musk would build a drone to simply grab the spent first stage out of the air and gently fly them back to the factory for evaluation & refurbishment.
And also build a giant trumpet to go wah WAAH waaaaaaah as it captures the stage.
Great way not to answer my main question:
How many actual engines has anyone actually tried to reuse, and how many of them have been recovered with actual soft landings so as to avoid G shock on landing or exposure to seawater, the two biggest reasons why an engine couldn't be reused?
The only ones I am aware of are SSME and maybe whatever the X37B uses, because aside from those, I am not aware of any other system has been capable of a soft landing of any stage containing a rocket engine, and certainly not with enough launches to make a difference. (I know someone wants to say "DC-X! DC-X!") And unlike SSME, the Merlin engines are designed to be simple and rugged.
In other words, the sample size (of ONE) is too small to make any generalization from. As others have metioned, SpaceX certainly has been capable of stopping and restarting engines on test rigs enough times to know that they can handle 40-50 missions worth of wear and tear.
Also, "reduces the performance" is weasel words, since you failed to establish even roughly how much it reduces performance by. SpaceX simply increased the performance of their engines before starting to do the recovery project. So they can still launch as much now as they always have been. And there will always be some fuel left in the first stage anyhow to ensure launch success. If for some reason there's not enough left to land the stage (even with the drastically reduced fuel requirements to land an empty tank), it'll just fall into the water on the way back to the launchpad, and the only loss will be a tank and some rocket engines, not the customer's payload.
Besides, most payloads don't need the maximum amount of fuel anyhow. For the small percentage that need it, they can simply offer no discount for a no-recovery launch, or use engines that have had multiple launches already and won't need to be recovered.
Great way not to answer my main question:
How many actual engines has anyone actually tried to reuse, and how many of them have been recovered with actual soft landings so as to avoid G shock on landing or exposure to seawater, the two biggest reasons why an engine couldn't be reused?
The only ones I am aware of are SSME and maybe whatever the X37B uses, because aside from those, I am not aware of any other system has been capable of a soft landing of any stage containing a rocket engine, and certainly not with enough launches to make a difference. (I know someone wants to say "DC-X! DC-X!") And unlike SSME, the Merlin engines are designed to be simple and rugged.
In other words, the sample size (of ONE) is too small to make any generalization from. As others have metioned, SpaceX certainly has been capable of stopping and restarting engines on test rigs enough times to know that they can handle 40-50 missions worth of wear and tear.
Also, "reduces the performance" is weasel words, since you failed to establish even roughly how much it reduces performance by. SpaceX simply increased the performance of their engines before starting to do the recovery project. So they can still launch as much now as they always have been. And there will always be some fuel left in the first stage anyhow to ensure launch success. If for some reason there's not enough left to land the stage (even with the drastically reduced fuel requirements to land an empty tank), it'll just fall into the water on the way back to the launchpad, and the only loss will be a tank and some rocket engines, not the customer's payload. And all that is not to mention that most payloads won't need the maximum amount of fuel anyhow.
So then I guess it's good that they have been paying for it by themselves? Even the rockets themselves are just scrap metal once stage separation happens, so they're doing experiments on junk.
With the most recent launch, SpaceX was denied the opportunity to do more because both the FAA and the USAF folks at Cape Canaveral didn't really want that return stage going anywhere near the launch pad until SpaceX has proven they have control of the vehicle.
I don't think even SpaceX wanted it coming back anywhere near ground. The chance of breaking shit is just too high. I know I wouldn't feel confident about it until at least four or five successful low altitude hovers.
Add in the impact of salt water and you have some serious engineering challenges that may not be cost effective to solve.
Which is why their goal is for the rocket to land itself on a launchpad. They're only dropping them in the water until they're sure the rockets can land themselves properly on ground without crashing and breaking shit in the landing zone. Meanwhile, if they do manage a water recovery, they can still get a lot of data from taking a used engine apart.
I seriously hope you didn't think their plan was water recovery. Have you not noticed all those cool Grasshopper landing videos from SpaceX over the past year or so?
So, with the exception of SSME, how many of the engines that anyone has attempted to reuse, or even thought about reusing, have been recovered with soft landings? Even with a parachute, water landings tend to get seawater all over everything, and that stuff isn't exactly good for precision equipment. And of course parachute ground landings still hit the ground enough bend stuff inside.
This is the kind of stuff that someone needs to try all the way to completion before we dismiss it as stupid.
Microsoft didn't "launch" Powerpoint, they bought it. It was initially for the Mac, then MS bought it three years later when they first released MS Office.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M...
Seriously, how can "skepticism grow" about something that had almost no basis for belief in the first place? It's more like "miniscule belief evaporates".
But did he work on the A4?
But it remains the case that many of C++'s features can be used on those types of devices, and smaller ones too, and that includes templates.
True. And I have done it. I even overrode operator new to allocate out of pre-allocated memory pools. And indeed, the type of stuff you put on such a thing doesn't usually have much need for templates. The one template I did use is a bitmap (as a collection of bools, not bitblt) class, with the number of bits as the only template parameter.
But you're certainly never going to running Java or anything else on those things.
Well, at some point someone thought it was a good idea. But there was the little problem that ARM intentionally has not released all the necessary documentation.