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calapine
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Reply #1330 on: July 11, 2019, 01:58:37 AM

Ah crap.

The Italian Vega launcher, which so far had a perfect record since it maiden flight in 2012 failed tonight.

After 1st stage separation the 2nd stage either didn't ignite or failed shortly after ignition.

I made a screenshot:



Short video outtake of the moment here: https://twitter.com/AuerSusan/status/1149215528155844608


For context, this is Vega:

« Last Edit: July 11, 2019, 02:14:55 AM by calapine »

Restoration is a perfectly valid school of magic!
Mandella
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Reply #1331 on: July 11, 2019, 09:18:58 AM

Space remains Hard.

Lots of space news this morning. The above mentioned launch anomaly during the fifteenth Vega mission, the shakeups at NASA, and Rapter #6 is finally in at Boca Chica(!).

Also lots of space news to distract me from getting anything else done this morning...
Mandella
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Reply #1332 on: July 13, 2019, 11:51:12 AM

Too cool not to share.



Exos Aerospace's SARGE is an attempt at a reusable small sat booster. I knew that they had had a launch attempt June 29th that didn't go well (engine gimbled out of control) , so I didn't bother to watch it. But what I wasn't thinking about was that this is the new world of recoverable boosters, and the return and recovery system worked near flawlessly. It's a parachute yes, but it's not a dumb drift where it may system, but instead an autonomously guided parafoil that is supposed to fly the booster back to a designated recovery area. Very neat if they can get it all to work reliably and cheaply enough to compete with disposables, but in any case they get to have the failed but undamaged booster back to go over and see exactly what went wrong.

The reason to bring it up now is that Exos just released the VR footage from the rocket. You get to watch the scrambled ascent and the much gentler descent in a steerable window (upper left arrows control the view) from the rocket itself.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qYF-0SwM94

Exterior view of bad launch and better landing courtesy of Chris Bergin NasaSpaceFlight.


https://twitter.com/NASASpaceflight/status/1145034562860453888

"Had a 'performance challenge' on the gimble."

Mandella
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Reply #1333 on: July 15, 2019, 02:38:01 PM

In a bit of a run, so without commentary here is the initial report of the SpaceX Dragon 2 static fire anomaly that blew the shit out of it.

I'll spoiler it since it's long.

Mandella
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Reply #1334 on: July 22, 2019, 09:25:44 AM




Shoutout to the launch of India's Chandrayaan-2, heading off to put a rover on the lunar surface to look for water, among other things.

It's interesting to note that Chandrayaan-1 (in 2008!?) dropped the impactor that gave the first good evidence of substantial water deposits near the poles of the moons. As such, India could be credited (or cursed, depending on your point of view) with starting the latest Moonrush craze.
01101010
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Reply #1335 on: July 23, 2019, 05:52:19 PM

So anyone get in on the free apollo rocket? You know... to have.

https://ascienceenthusiast.com/nasa-giving-away-apollo-era-saturn-rocket-anyone-wants/

Does any one know where the love of God goes...When the waves turn the minutes to hours? -G. Lightfoot
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Reply #1336 on: July 23, 2019, 06:55:29 PM

Speaking of Apollo and NASA.

Flight Director Chris Kraft has Died.

'Reality' is the only word in the language that should always be used in quotes.
Mandella
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Reply #1337 on: July 24, 2019, 01:40:41 PM

Speaking of Apollo and NASA.

Flight Director Chris Kraft has Died.

That was a very moving eulogy. I had no idea Eric Berger was a neighbor and friend of the man.

Also it's always good to hear of someone staying (relatively) hale and hearty up to near the end of life. He stayed a steely eyed missile man all the way.
« Last Edit: July 24, 2019, 01:43:40 PM by Mandella »
Mandella
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Reply #1338 on: July 24, 2019, 01:44:52 PM

So anyone get in on the free apollo rocket? You know... to have.

https://ascienceenthusiast.com/nasa-giving-away-apollo-era-saturn-rocket-anyone-wants/

They want a quarter million to transport it? Damn that's almost as bad as my local Home Depot.

I'm sure I could drag it home behind my F-150...
Mandella
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Reply #1339 on: August 09, 2019, 11:31:12 AM

So Rocket Lab has decided to go down the re-use path too. Rocket Lab, in case somebody is not familiar, launches small sats in the hundred kilo range and have been launching from New Zealand from what is arguably the most scenic launch pad ever.




One of the interesting things about the decision is that Peter Beck (head of Rocket Lab) isn't doing it so much to save money on the boosters (in fact, it might cost as much or more to refurb the used ones as to just make a new one) but to increase his cadence. It's still a lot quicker to refurb a used booster than to make a new one, and Beck is trying to get out ahead of the actually 130 some small sat launchers trying to break into the market.

Right now demand is pretty high for small sats, but not that high. The more he can lock up a guaranteed packed manifest for the next few years the better.

The recovery and capture system is interesting too, as it's planned to be parachute and helicopter grab. Instead of the frankly crappy computer animation Beck showed, the below is a vid of an actual capture system demonstrated by Lockheed a couple of years ago.

Lockheed is a major investor in Rocket Lab, by the way.

https://youtu.be/3LhBG-J7PDU


Here is the whole fifteen minute presentation, if interested:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joONWIGtcdY

And while we're on the subject of parachute recovery systems, here is the second in a row fairing catch from SpaceX's Ms. Tree.



Video:

https://twitter.com/i/status/1158968745227780096
calapine
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Reply #1340 on: August 10, 2019, 09:15:34 AM

Looks like the ExoMars rover launch could be pushed back to 2022.

The first test of the parachute systems had issues involving tearing of the chutes.

Now a 2nd test in Sweden failed as well , destroying the lander model.

Restoration is a perfectly valid school of magic!
Mandella
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Reply #1341 on: August 10, 2019, 09:25:14 AM

Weird how parachutes are such an issue for everybody, even though we've been trusting human life to them for ages.

I'm not even being sarcastic. Both SpaceX and Boeing have had significant setbacks due to issues with their chutes on the Commercial Crew programs too.

And of course the infamous length of development time for Orion's descent system -- although that one might just be pork bloat.

But yeah getting a parachute to correctly deploy from a re-entering booster might be a little harder for Rocket Lab than they are thinking.
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Reply #1342 on: August 10, 2019, 03:06:07 PM

What's the failure rate on basic parachutes in combat (e.g., stressful) conditions, I wonder? It's one thing to do parachutes in civilian, recreational contexts with highly controlled conditions, but I wonder a bit at how often WWII paratroopers etc. hit the ground intact and able to carry on their mission (let alone hit the ground where they were supposed to). Parachutes seem to me a bit like a technology that has some intrinsic chaos/unpredictability built into them. At least in an atmosphere and our gravity.
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Reply #1343 on: August 10, 2019, 03:30:24 PM

Combat drops are relatively easy. The parachutes open mechanically as soon as the object leaves the plane. The chutes are heavy and precision landing is not particularly important.

Chutes for space ships are a bit difficult. The chutes need to open at precise points involving faster objects while requieing lighter chutes
calapine
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Reply #1344 on: August 10, 2019, 05:12:31 PM

Quite a lot faster. For example the Schiaparelli parachute deployed at a speed of 1730 km/h. That's 1075 freedom miles per hour.  Oh ho ho ho. Reallllly?

Here is the sequence:



As you can see not quite trivial.
« Last Edit: August 10, 2019, 05:17:19 PM by calapine »

Restoration is a perfectly valid school of magic!
calapine
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Reply #1345 on: August 10, 2019, 05:58:18 PM

Anyways, the mission analyst for ExoMars gave some pretty candid answers once detailing what he thinks is going wrong with the programme. As it was just posted comment-replies in his own personal blog, and over two years ago, it took me while to find it again. Will translate them for you tomorrow.

Restoration is a perfectly valid school of magic!
Polysorbate80
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Reply #1346 on: August 12, 2019, 09:34:51 AM


As you can see not quite trivial.

Particularly when in some cases, small parachutes are needed to help the larger ones deploy.  Mah 'chute needs a 'chute!

“Why the fuck would you ... ?” is like 80% of the conversation with Poly — Chimpy
Brolan
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Reply #1347 on: August 12, 2019, 06:21:58 PM

I remember reading on the Apollo project they were working on the parachutes for years but never to got to what the chief engineer considered "done".   He wasn't even sure if the chutes would open on the first Apollo mission.
Mandella
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Reply #1348 on: August 13, 2019, 07:34:45 PM

Happy Lunar Transfer Trajectory Day for Chandrayaan-2!!

Everything proceeding well toward Lunar capture orbit on the 20th, with the landing still scheduled for Sept 7th.





https://www.isro.gov.in/update/14-aug-2019/chandrayaan-2-successfully-enters-lunar-transfer-trajectory
Surlyboi
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Reply #1349 on: August 13, 2019, 09:56:12 PM

Sagittarius A, the supermassive at the center of the galaxy got a lot brighter recently.

Quote
A UCLA astronomer at the Keck Telescope, astrophysicist Tuan Do, Deputy Director of the Galactic Center Group, reports that in the space of two hours, the brightness of black hole the heart of our galaxy usually a passive flickering object about twenty-five thousand light years from Earth, has increased 75-fold – the brightest it has been since scientists first started studying it more than 20 years ago.


Tuned in, immediately get to watch cringey Ubisoft talking head offering her deepest sympathies to the families impacted by the Orlando shooting while flanked by a man in a giraffe suit and some sort of "horrifically garish neon costumes through the ages" exhibit or something.  We need to stop this fucking planet right now and sort some shit out. -Kail
Cyrrex
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Reply #1350 on: August 14, 2019, 04:45:06 AM

Yeah, but did it STAY bright?

Because it either means that a) our shit is about to get exploded or B) the invasion has finally begun.

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Shannow
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Reply #1351 on: August 14, 2019, 07:00:03 AM

Sagittarius A, the supermassive at the center of the galaxy got a lot brighter recently.

Quote
A UCLA astronomer at the Keck Telescope, astrophysicist Tuan Do, Deputy Director of the Galactic Center Group, reports that in the space of two hours, the brightness of black hole the heart of our galaxy usually a passive flickering object about twenty-five thousand light years from Earth, has increased 75-fold – the brightest it has been since scientists first started studying it more than 20 years ago.


Welp, it was a good run.

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Reply #1352 on: August 14, 2019, 07:45:05 AM

So they detected this flash, but how long did it take to get here?

Does any one know where the love of God goes...When the waves turn the minutes to hours? -G. Lightfoot
Surlyboi
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Reply #1353 on: August 14, 2019, 08:22:10 AM

Well, considering SagA is about 25k light years from here, I’d say we’ve got time.

Tuned in, immediately get to watch cringey Ubisoft talking head offering her deepest sympathies to the families impacted by the Orlando shooting while flanked by a man in a giraffe suit and some sort of "horrifically garish neon costumes through the ages" exhibit or something.  We need to stop this fucking planet right now and sort some shit out. -Kail
Mandella
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Reply #1354 on: August 14, 2019, 09:56:46 AM

Well, considering SagA is about 25k light years from here, I’d say we’ve got time.

Not necessarily!  awesome, for real

Since the light just got here (at the speed of light of course) it is possible there could be a nasty batch of particulate radiation following just behind it at somewhat slower speeds. Maybe just a couple of years behind at this range.

That said, 75 times isn't *that* bad, and there is probably nothing to worry about...

 ACK!


Speaking of science fiction, wasn't it Niven's Known Space series that had the galactic core as having blown up about twenty thousand years ago, and various of the galactic civilizations were in the process of moving their shit out and away from the "slowly" expanding interstellar blast wave?
Surlyboi
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Reply #1355 on: August 14, 2019, 10:25:41 AM

The closest we've seen to something like that is the possible gamma ray burst that may have caused the Silurian/Ordovician mass extinction and the one that may have caused a significant rise in the amount of carbon 14 found in trees around the year 774. The former was probably less than 8,000 LY away and the latter estimated at 12k. While we may be looking at the "muzzle flash" of a supermassive's gamma ray burst, I'm not sure we're directly in the line of fire. This is all conjecture, of course. But hell, if I'm wrong, the end would be relatively quick, I'd imagine.

That said, yeah in known space there was a chain reaction of supernovae and star collapses that was going to destroy everything eventually.

Tuned in, immediately get to watch cringey Ubisoft talking head offering her deepest sympathies to the families impacted by the Orlando shooting while flanked by a man in a giraffe suit and some sort of "horrifically garish neon costumes through the ages" exhibit or something.  We need to stop this fucking planet right now and sort some shit out. -Kail
Mandella
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Reply #1356 on: August 14, 2019, 02:48:25 PM

Looks like Dreamchaser is going to be launching on ULA's Vulcan.




https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2019/08/cargo-dream-chaser-solidifies-ula-deal-vulcan/

Also of interest, apparently Sierra Nevada went ahead and developed a life support system on their own dime (they got screwed out of a Commercial Crew contract), so that in an emergency it could be used to ferry crew back down from the ISS if necessary.

I really want to see this bird fly, and I hope that ULA can get them up there.

Edit to add: First demo launch is on the Atlas V, the Vulcan launches will be to service the ISS.
« Last Edit: August 14, 2019, 03:02:16 PM by Mandella »
Goumindong
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Reply #1357 on: August 17, 2019, 02:42:32 PM

Well, considering SagA is about 25k light years from here, I’d say we’ve got time.

Not necessarily!  awesome, for real

Since the light just got here (at the speed of light of course) it is possible there could be a nasty batch of particulate radiation following just behind it at somewhat slower speeds. Maybe just a couple of years behind at this range.

That said, 75 times isn't *that* bad, and there is probably nothing to worry about...

 ACK!


Speaking of science fiction, wasn't it Niven's Known Space series that had the galactic core as having blown up about twenty thousand years ago, and various of the galactic civilizations were in the process of moving their shit out and away from the "slowly" expanding interstellar blast wave?

If it was a gamma ray burst we would never see it coming. They travel at the speed of light. So we would be dead already.

If its particulate radiation traveling at 99% c and it doesnt get absorbed by all the stuff in the way we would have about 250 years
Mandella
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Reply #1358 on: August 27, 2019, 03:37:58 PM

Just another water tower in Texas...

https://youtu.be/bYb3bfA6_sQ?t=1861

 DRILLING AND MANLINESS
« Last Edit: August 27, 2019, 03:41:53 PM by Mandella »
Teleku
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Reply #1359 on: August 28, 2019, 07:23:38 AM

I still have major reservations about them apparently putting all their eggs into the BFG basket, as I think its overly ambitious even for SpaceX.

But god damn is it still fun to watch them test out Musk's insane ideas.

"My great-grandfather did not travel across four thousand miles of the Atlantic Ocean to see this nation overrun by immigrants.  He did it because he killed a man back in Ireland. That's the rumor."
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Mandella
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Reply #1360 on: August 28, 2019, 09:56:50 AM

I still have major reservations about them apparently putting all their eggs into the BFG basket, as I think its overly ambitious even for SpaceX.

But god damn is it still fun to watch them test out Musk's insane ideas.

I wouldn't worry to much about Starship/BFG. As far as I can tell it is mostly financed by private investors with very little leverage from the SpaceX side. If it falls flat (ha ha) they can just keep going with the old reliable F9 family. Reuse seems to be working out, and between the Falcon 9 basic and Falcon Heavy they can lift pretty much anything that needs lifting.

What could blow up for them is Starlink, and not because it is a bad idea, but because it may be too good. They are going to have serious competition in that business, and not just from the moribund old space industries that it was not that hard to disrupt, but from some very modern and serious players. If Bezos decides to loss lead (and you know he will) with his project Kuiper he could make it very hard for anybody else to make any money at all on their constellations. But one way or the other in the next few years we are going to have real choices in Low Earth Orbit Low Latency (LEOLL?) internet providers who may well be in a cutthroat price war, so yay us.*

But back to Starship for a minute, one potential goldmine that tends to be overlooked in all the stainless steel flash of Elon's future Mars plans is the Raptor engine. World's first production Full Flow Staged Combustion Methane engine with igniter start and restart. If they can churn these things out as cheaply and keep them running as reliably as they have with the Merlin 1D it may well be worth the whole Starship program (and the Air Force thinks so to the tune of $40 million to help develop it) just to have that engine.

*Okay, no one knows if anybody is planning to sell direct to consumers yet, so maybe not that yay us.
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Reply #1361 on: August 28, 2019, 10:30:34 AM

Yeah, we'll see.  I guess they can just lean on iterations of F9 and FH at this point to maintain them for decades, but all development resources seems geared specifically at the BFG at this point.  And it just seems to good to be true.......  But as you say, lots of good tech can come out of it regardless.

As for Bezos, I'd love to see him jump in as a competitor  to even be a threat to Starlink.  However they have been way behind SpaceX from the get go, and don't seem to be gaining any ground.  Hope they get some break through, but I still think its going to be a long time before they do anything commercially viable.

"My great-grandfather did not travel across four thousand miles of the Atlantic Ocean to see this nation overrun by immigrants.  He did it because he killed a man back in Ireland. That's the rumor."
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Abagadro
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Reply #1362 on: August 28, 2019, 07:50:39 PM

Amazon's new grain silo delivery program is pretty sweet though.


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Mandella
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Reply #1363 on: August 29, 2019, 10:09:27 AM


As for Bezos, I'd love to see him jump in as a competitor  to even be a threat to Starlink.  However they have been way behind SpaceX from the get go, and don't seem to be gaining any ground.  Hope they get some break through, but I still think its going to be a long time before they do anything commercially viable.

I'd agree with you, but, Bezos. They do seem to be so far behind that the rabbit is going to have to nap for a Rip van Winkle time for them to catch up, but I just have trouble seeing Bezos throwing money into a lost cause. He seems pretty confident that Blue Origin is going to bust New Glenn out of the gate fully formed and functional, and maybe they will. But even if so from what I'm reading Kuiper is going to take ten years to get fully lofted, while SpaceX is yeeting sixty sats at a time out of mostly reused F9s.

Interestingly, the Kuiper dev leads are the same folks Elon fired earlier this year from Starlink for reportedly going too slow.
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Reply #1364 on: September 03, 2019, 09:34:34 PM

So ESA had to do an emergency course change on one of their satellites because SpaceX's magical "it is going to be the bestest internets ever" satellites was on a collision course with it.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/09/spacex-satellite-was-on-collision-course-until-esa-satellite-was-re-routed/

'Reality' is the only word in the language that should always be used in quotes.
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