Yes, but given the number of folks who set out to disprove and ended up with thrust they can't explain, we're far from ready to say "no".
If you live in a Newtonian world, you're not going to accept that this could ever work. If you admit to the possibility that momentum could be quantized, you can't rule it out yet.
This is the part I have a hard time understanding about groundnuts. The title of the story is that they sold a flight on one of those, for somewhere north of 40 Million. And you're still telling yourself "'aint gonna happen".
AMSAT has been marketing cubesats with a proven radio link to colleges. Common, flight-proven infrasturucture, Phil Karn designed RF modem. You launch it and run your experiment, we get to make it a ham radio satellite.
Its name used to be "F9-023". My vote for a name would be "This one's for you, Dimitry Rogozin!", after the Russian minister of space and war who suggested that the U.S. use a trampoline to get its astronauts to ISS.
That should say perigee at 151 km. Oops. The point is that to the extent that the lifter can deliver the satellite to GTO, the on-board fuel of the satellite is saved for other activities. So, for this the payload is not the maximum the rocket can lift to LEO, and the remaining second-stage fuel is used for a second, in-orbit burn for going from LEO to the geostationary transfer orbit. The Falcon 9 first stage had enough remaining fuel to land successfully after this. They could have given it a bit higher kick if they'd operated the first stage as expendable.
The last Falcon launch brought JCSAT-16 to a supersynchronous orbit, very definitely not LEO, with the apogee at 36183 km and the apogee 151 km, and about 20 degrees inclination off of equatorial. The apogee was a bit higher than geostationary. The remaining load for on-board propulsion is to change the inclination (which is most economical to do with a burn at apogee) and to circularize the orbit (raise the perigee).
By giving the satellite a kick to high orbit, the Falcon 9 saves fuel on the satellite that will be used to maintain the orbit longer than would otherwise be possible.
I have always been highly skeptical of are their launch costs. I simply don't believe them.
If you are concerned about the "shear violence", I suggest you go to 1 Rocket Rd, Hawthorne, CA, cross-street is Crenshaw. Stand in front of the building. SpaceX has left a rocket right on the front lawn for you to look at, a first stage that returned from lifting the Dragon capsule to ISS. It got to 1/5 orbital velocity (the second stage does the rest), burned its rockets for about 2.5 minutes, was in the air for less than 10 minutes overall.
Regarding the economics, I think the main point is that there was not an incentive to lower cost until now. The USA had a single-source contract and the two former competitors formed a joint venture so that there would be no competition. Also, there was more subcontracting: for example most companies didn't make their own avionics and these came with tremendous markups, space-qualified fasteners were quoted at $10/screw in the '90's and are probably more now.
So, a vendor who actually tries to reduce prices can probably reduce them a great deal, simply because nobody else has tried very hard before. There would be a lot of low-hanging fruit.
I agree that Elon is way too self-indulgent. Forget about the simulation remark, hyperloop is either cynical in nature (meant to divert funds from real trains) or wildly underestimating the costs and safety issues.
However, I think you're wrong about the space junk issue. One of the problems right now is the lack of any way to economically de-orbit legacy space hardware in high orbits. You don't get that without economical access to space.
The reason that you spent that much money building the cargo has comparatively little to do with the cost of the launch and everything to do with the fact that you really don't get multiple chances to get it right
I think you need to go back to your initial assumption, which might not be true any longer. With lower $/kg to your selected orbit, replacing a satellite is economically possible and building a satellite with a much shorter projected lifetime is probably optimal because the alternative is for the operator to be stuck with 20-year-old technology in orbit (given 15-year design lifetimes and a 5-year design-to-launch cycle, which might be optimistic).
If you really run that sort of company, you need to be looking about what could happen if your assumptions are wrong. And not advertising the fact that you aren't doing that.
Remember when Rogozin said the U.S. should get its astronauts to ISS with a trampoline? He's singing a different tune now. SpaceX is currently operating at a very significantly lower cost than Russian rockets in terms of $/kg to the specified orbit. And that's in the expendable configuration. Given successful reuse by SpaceX, Russia probably won't have a place in the market.
There's a point to it, though. Would you rather fly a brand-new 737 that is going to do it's first take-off with you aboard, or leave that to Boeing's test pilot?
People need a certain amount of oxygen for their metabolism, you need to carry that much. CO2 effects the blood pH: too little and the body is too alkaline, too much and it's too acidic. So, you need to maintain a precise amount of CO2 and remove the rest. The scrubbers in the space shuttle were able to regenerate the CO2-absorbent material after use, so there was use of power but material wasn't consumed.
Beyond this, you need to control temperature and humidity. The other requirements than atmosphere for crew survival are that you water, feed and shelter the crew, maintain orientation, and maintain a G-force envelope that doesn't injure the crew.
Yes, but their candidate for Commercial Crew is the CST-100. Which looks like a modernization and upscaling of the Apollo CM. And they left it to Sierra Nevada to propose a space plane.
There's no denying that the x-37b is impressive. Sierra Nevada might have a good idea, but I'm dubious about the progress and readiness of Dream Chaser. Boeing? I don't understand your point about Boeing.
Tee hee!
Back in the day, one of the points I made to the old farts was that I had passed the 20 WPM exam and had my K6BP call to show for it, but refused to use the code on the air until the requirement was gone. Nobody spat at me or punched me out, the worst that ever happened was a poor behaving slim using my call and a postcard from the ARRL observer who thouht it was me.
WSPR tells you when communication paths are open between two points at a specific frequency and S/N ratio. This is useful but does not span the extent of research that HAARP is directed to. One of the most interesting things about HAARP is that it can incite the formation of radio-reflective regions in the ionosphere. That takes a lot of power.
Anyone who wants wings would have to prove that the vehicle weight would be lower with the wings than the engines and fuel for a precision vertical landing. There is no advantage to landing at a runway when you can land on what is effectively a helipad.
Actually, the thing that Dyson is famous for inventing was invented long ago. See the Wikipedia explanation of the technology. They cite a 1945 patent, but coal-burning facilities appear to have installed similar devices much earlier than that.
NASA announced it as Baja California without the comma. Mr. Dean doesn't usually get stuff wrong that way, he's a credible reporter on space missions. Maybe an editor or proofreader got it wrong. I sent him an email.
The significance of this is Elon Musk, who is the self-driving Uber of dot.com billionaires and is the hero of our times.
Well, I knew Steve Jobs well enough, and have met a few civilian astronauts and a bunch of other rich people. None of the others seem to have done so much for the long-term future of the human race as Musk has in leading the path to more affordable spaceflight.
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Yes, but given the number of folks who set out to disprove and ended up with thrust they can't explain, we're far from ready to say "no".
If you live in a Newtonian world, you're not going to accept that this could ever work. If you admit to the possibility that momentum could be quantized, you can't rule it out yet.
This is the part I have a hard time understanding about groundnuts. The title of the story is that they sold a flight on one of those, for somewhere north of 40 Million. And you're still telling yourself "'aint gonna happen".
AMSAT has been marketing cubesats with a proven radio link to colleges. Common, flight-proven infrasturucture, Phil Karn designed RF modem. You launch it and run your experiment, we get to make it a ham radio satellite.
Its name used to be "F9-023". My vote for a name would be "This one's for you, Dimitry Rogozin!", after the Russian minister of space and war who suggested that the U.S. use a trampoline to get its astronauts to ISS.
That should say perigee at 151 km. Oops. The point is that to the extent that the lifter can deliver the satellite to GTO, the on-board fuel of the satellite is saved for other activities. So, for this the payload is not the maximum the rocket can lift to LEO, and the remaining second-stage fuel is used for a second, in-orbit burn for going from LEO to the geostationary transfer orbit. The Falcon 9 first stage had enough remaining fuel to land successfully after this. They could have given it a bit higher kick if they'd operated the first stage as expendable.
The last Falcon launch brought JCSAT-16 to a supersynchronous orbit, very definitely not LEO, with the apogee at 36183 km and the apogee 151 km, and about 20 degrees inclination off of equatorial. The apogee was a bit higher than geostationary. The remaining load for on-board propulsion is to change the inclination (which is most economical to do with a burn at apogee) and to circularize the orbit (raise the perigee).
By giving the satellite a kick to high orbit, the Falcon 9 saves fuel on the satellite that will be used to maintain the orbit longer than would otherwise be possible.
If you are concerned about the "shear violence", I suggest you go to 1 Rocket Rd, Hawthorne, CA, cross-street is Crenshaw. Stand in front of the building. SpaceX has left a rocket right on the front lawn for you to look at, a first stage that returned from lifting the Dragon capsule to ISS. It got to 1/5 orbital velocity (the second stage does the rest), burned its rockets for about 2.5 minutes, was in the air for less than 10 minutes overall.
Regarding the economics, I think the main point is that there was not an incentive to lower cost until now. The USA had a single-source contract and the two former competitors formed a joint venture so that there would be no competition. Also, there was more subcontracting: for example most companies didn't make their own avionics and these came with tremendous markups, space-qualified fasteners were quoted at $10/screw in the '90's and are probably more now.
So, a vendor who actually tries to reduce prices can probably reduce them a great deal, simply because nobody else has tried very hard before. There would be a lot of low-hanging fruit.
I agree that Elon is way too self-indulgent. Forget about the simulation remark, hyperloop is either cynical in nature (meant to divert funds from real trains) or wildly underestimating the costs and safety issues.
However, I think you're wrong about the space junk issue. One of the problems right now is the lack of any way to economically de-orbit legacy space hardware in high orbits. You don't get that without economical access to space.
I think you need to go back to your initial assumption, which might not be true any longer. With lower $/kg to your selected orbit, replacing a satellite is economically possible and building a satellite with a much shorter projected lifetime is probably optimal because the alternative is for the operator to be stuck with 20-year-old technology in orbit (given 15-year design lifetimes and a 5-year design-to-launch cycle, which might be optimistic).
If you really run that sort of company, you need to be looking about what could happen if your assumptions are wrong. And not advertising the fact that you aren't doing that.
Remember when Rogozin said the U.S. should get its astronauts to ISS with a trampoline? He's singing a different tune now. SpaceX is currently operating at a very significantly lower cost than Russian rockets in terms of $/kg to the specified orbit. And that's in the expendable configuration. Given successful reuse by SpaceX, Russia probably won't have a place in the market.
There's a point to it, though. Would you rather fly a brand-new 737 that is going to do it's first take-off with you aboard, or leave that to Boeing's test pilot?
People need a certain amount of oxygen for their metabolism, you need to carry that much. CO2 effects the blood pH: too little and the body is too alkaline, too much and it's too acidic. So, you need to maintain a precise amount of CO2 and remove the rest. The scrubbers in the space shuttle were able to regenerate the CO2-absorbent material after use, so there was use of power but material wasn't consumed.
Beyond this, you need to control temperature and humidity. The other requirements than atmosphere for crew survival are that you water, feed and shelter the crew, maintain orientation, and maintain a G-force envelope that doesn't injure the crew.
Yes, but their candidate for Commercial Crew is the CST-100. Which looks like a modernization and upscaling of the Apollo CM. And they left it to Sierra Nevada to propose a space plane.
There's no denying that the x-37b is impressive. Sierra Nevada might have a good idea, but I'm dubious about the progress and readiness of Dream Chaser. Boeing? I don't understand your point about Boeing.
You missed his sarcasm :-)
Tee hee! Back in the day, one of the points I made to the old farts was that I had passed the 20 WPM exam and had my K6BP call to show for it, but refused to use the code on the air until the requirement was gone. Nobody spat at me or punched me out, the worst that ever happened was a poor behaving slim using my call and a postcard from the ARRL observer who thouht it was me.
We could also use risk management metrics to make the case against spaceplanes. The shuttle had too many criticality 1 components, etc.
WSPR tells you when communication paths are open between two points at a specific frequency and S/N ratio. This is useful but does not span the extent of research that HAARP is directed to. One of the most interesting things about HAARP is that it can incite the formation of radio-reflective regions in the ionosphere. That takes a lot of power.
Anyone who wants wings would have to prove that the vehicle weight would be lower with the wings than the engines and fuel for a precision vertical landing. There is no advantage to landing at a runway when you can land on what is effectively a helipad.
Oops. What was I thinking? I'd still take the Tesla over a Stingray :-)
Actually, the p85d weighs a tad below 5000 lbs while the stingray weighs about 3300 lbs. This isn't 50% more than your car.
Actually, the thing that Dyson is famous for inventing was invented long ago. See the Wikipedia explanation of the technology. They cite a 1945 patent, but coal-burning facilities appear to have installed similar devices much earlier than that.
Think of it as evolution in action.
NASA announced it as Baja California without the comma. Mr. Dean doesn't usually get stuff wrong that way, he's a credible reporter on space missions. Maybe an editor or proofreader got it wrong. I sent him an email.
Well, I knew Steve Jobs well enough, and have met a few civilian astronauts and a bunch of other rich people. None of the others seem to have done so much for the long-term future of the human race as Musk has in leading the path to more affordable spaceflight.