An Olympic Feat
Elon Musk did it again.
Todays launch of Spacex's new rocket, the most powerful in the world, was a complete success.
The two boosters, after separating from the main rocket, returned to earth and "stuck" the landing in an upright position, to be reused.
After reaching orbit, the capsule released, in a nod to the 1981 cult classic "Heavy Metal", a Roadster convertible with a space-suited dummy at the wheel. In the animated movie, the car was a Corvette that plunged into the atmosphere to land on the surface.
Ejected into orbit today was one of Musk's own Teslas that sported a sign on the dashboard that read "Don't Panic", in another nod, to the late Douglas Adams trilogy "Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy".
The car will be boosted into an eternal orbit near Mars.
The enormous new rocket will facilitate the colonization of Mars by first delivering materials and equipment to the surface, then actual colonists.
The industrialization of space has begun.
Comments
So is that the world's most expensive joke?
I have to admit, it's pretty good. But it's gonna be hard for him to beat "The Boring Company".
A lot of wanderers in the U.S. political desert recognize that all the duopoly has to offer is a choice of mirages. Come, let us trudge towards empty expanse of sand #1, littered with the bleached bones of Deaniacs and Hope and Changers.
-- lotlizard
How Cool!!
I love everything to do with space and I remember when we gathered around our old black and white tv to watch the moon landing. I was upset when we shutdown our space shuttle program. The media used to cover a lot more of the space programs.
[video:https://youtube.com/watch?v=_ly1vzVHMsc]
The liftoff and around 13:10 it shows the booster rockets landing. Very fun to see the return to space.
The Tesla Dummy
Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.
@snoopydawg The media used to cover a
The media used to cover a whole lot more than he said-she said and the weather (sigh)
Fake news!
Fake news!
It was all done in a secret television studio in the Nevada desert near Area 51.
They shot all the cameramen, then buried them out back, using the same shovel they used to bury the sharpshooters on the Grassy Knoll in Dallas in November 1963.
- Tony Wikrent
Nation Builder Books(nbbooks)
Mebane, NC 27302
2nbbooks@gmail.com
Privatizing NASA
...like every other government agency doesn't sound very smart to me.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_policy_of_the_Barack_Obama_administr...
So yeah turn over space research and exploration to the oligarchs.
I like you sd, I love the exploration. I was watching the launch that killed Christa McAuliffe in class with my kids when that mission exploded. That was weird. NASA was always helpful to me in the classroom. We had live chats with astronauts, one student though they found a meteor which we sent to one of NASA's labs - it was a giant clam fossil of mainly pyrite, they provided me with local remote sensing data of our region, and so on. The USGS is another agency which also helped me, but they are also suffering from cuts. Hell now that science itself is no longer acceptable to the federal gov't we're all in a mess. But What's new?
Well I'm going to blast off...have a good one!
“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
Industrial vs pure research
I would say that this is not a Bad Thing. Nasa is supposedly focused on pure research, but what SpaceX is doing is more like industrial research (which is my day job.). NASA explored reusable spacecraft with the shuttle program (mostly discovering what doesn’t work...) The big innovation SpaceX has developed is reusable boosters.
This is a Big Deal: Any time you reduce the cost of something by 5x like that you expand what we can do. Cheaper, larger weather satellites for example.
It’s the same thing as the ongoing incremental improvements in batteries. We’ve had electric cars about as long as ICEs, but the battery revolution had made them commercially viable.
Yes the government should invest in basic research, yes we need to focus that research on useful stuff (although that can be hard to predict - see “the internet”) and yes we need to get the payback invested in human needs. But I believe NASA should stick to cutting edge aerospace research (e.g. scramjets) and get out of the transportation business.
We can’t save the world by playing by the rules, because the rules have to be changed.
- Greta Thunberg
Electric cars are ancient
late 1800's-early 1900's.
The cheaper reusable system is good, but damn, using a launch for nothing but advertising?
advertising
It's known as a "shakedown cruise".
Musk has had some bad experiences using "maiden voyage" launches for business. So he adopted the idea of the shakedown cruise and used it for advertising. And, as it turned out, everything ran perfectly, so he'll see new business from this.
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
I guess the key word there
is "business", so it makes sense from the Muskian viewpoint. Respectfully, I still think it would be better to have some meat in the oyster. It wouldn't have cost more than an infinitesimal fraction of the shakedown launch cost, to add some instrumentation and telemetry to that chassis. I think of the economics as bytes of data per Newton of thrust, and quality as being a low-noise signal. But then again, what do I know? (grin) Maybe he did equip it, but I haven't heard anything.
That car does make an amazing image, and they played it with humor, so points for that.
@pindar's revenge
No, actually. A typical scientific satellite costs minimally $100 million or more. Something as big as a Tesla roadster would probably be a cool quarter billion bucks. Even if SpaceX had offered to launch something for free, nobody who knew anything about aerospace would have come forward with a payload. Not on the first launch of any booster, when you can reasonably expect a 50-50 chance of failure. There have been over 300 launches of Delta boosters, and there's still a five percent chance of launch failure. Sometimes boosters blow up; more often they fail to reach intended orbital parameters, rendering satellite launched useless or nearly so.
- Tony Wikrent
Nation Builder Books(nbbooks)
Mebane, NC 27302
2nbbooks@gmail.com
There's a difference between a dedicated,
custom-built satellite, and fitting instruments into or on his Roadster. Even a half-assed attempt would be laudable. The bandwidth of the live feeds from his camera could be used to send back data on, e.g., radiation density, solar wind detector, magnetometer, any one of dozens of already-designed detectors and tests that I'm not a physicist to be familiar with. I've read about students sending up tiny packages, mini-satellites, that would fit inside the car, or be released with the shell to follow the same orbit. We know a lot about low earth orbit, but that object is going into an orbit that's fairly unexplored, giving repeated shots at observations from various distances from the Sun. Any information at all would be a plus, since he plans to send people in that direction. Especially since he burned enough kerosene to heat a town.
It was a test flight
Usually they just put blocks of cement in the payload. Musk was having fun (and using it as a marketing opportunity). Edit: He also said that he would be happy if it cleared the tower. Everything went so well that the original low expectations got forgotten.
As for the telemetry, I’m used to the fuzzy B&W NTSC signals from the Apollo days. I keep looking at the live feed from the car and thinking it’s prerecorded. Then the earth moves!
We can’t save the world by playing by the rules, because the rules have to be changed.
- Greta Thunberg
Blocks of cement?
Who does that? (serious question, it could be germane)
Actually, I can think of a useful experiment using blocks of cement, or any two chunks of mass. Tether two masses and start them revolving around their center of mass, in order to test the practicality of developing centrifugal "gravity" in that manner on a long mission -- one of the proposed methods for a planetary mission. Tethering is an easy way to get a large radius, without building very wide cylinders or tori. Very appropriate for a Mars mission. You could use the roadster and a smaller mass; I don't think the center of mass has to be equidistant (could be wrong, I'm no physicist). All you would need would be 2 masses, a cable, some jets with programmable controller, some strain gauges, and a camera. The only thing not off-the-shelf would be the cable. In any case it would be VERY useful to know the durability under space conditions of the tether cable, terrestrial simulation would not be comprehensive. You could Elon-gate the radius to test different levels of force (ducking). If it had blown up, no big loss. My point: there's always a way to piggyback knowledge-gathering.
I still want some meat in that oyster, it doesn't have to be a pearl.
Understand, I'm not anti-space or anti-tech or anti-applied-tech, just very very skeptical of billionaires with maybe fantasies of colonialism. I'd be happy to apologize to him if I'm wrong -- I'd be happy to be wrong -- but I keep thinking "British East India Company". The self-promotion of sending up his own car set off alarm bells. Mind you, I give him points for style, with Don't Panic and all, but hell, the SS had snappy uniforms (oops, I just lost the argument, what's that "law" about Nazis on the internet? (grin))
And here I am looking into affordability of a Tesla powerwall. Doncha just love irony?
My best friends used to build the booster rockets
for the space shuttle and we would party like you can probably imagine young and rich kids used to do. Then the Challenger exploded and the change to the demeanor of my friends was devastating. A lot of them became shells of who they were and eventually everyone started drifting apart.
My fiancé was put in charge of the redesign of the booster rockets and the stress almost caused a nervous breakdown. He quit Thiokal as did many of our friends and went to work in different industries.
Everyone at Thiokal who worked in the program knew that the shuttle launch should have been delayed because of the temperature. The head scientist went to NASA and told very clearly that the O rings could not work, but he was overruled. The rest is history and a sad one at that.
Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.
The Great Communicator
had decreed an afternoon speech about teacher in space. Couldn't disappoint him, could we. Lot of pressure from the top to go ahead. That was one of my first thoughts. Damn you, Reagan.
I'm sorry your friends and fiance were so damaged by this. We rarely think about how widely the pool of pain spreads around a catastrophe like this.
What is Thiokal called now?
Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.
what Thiokol is called now
source
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
Aw come on, this is entirely cool
NASA and our Gubmint wouldn't even think about doing something like this.
Live Long and Prosper.
Spaceman FTW!
Prof: Nancy! I’m going to Greece!
Nancy: And swim the English Channel?
Prof: No. No. To ancient Greece where burning Sapho stood beside the wine dark sea. Wa de do da! Nancy, I’ve invented a time machine!
Firesign Theater
Stop the War!
Is there life on Mars ...
Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.
About time! Most of us
boomers were expecting this damn near 30 years ago! But better late than never.
the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.
Did anyone else hear the crowd of onlookers chanting?
Waay cooler than a sporting event. I clapped at the booster relanding sticks.
Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.
Beats souper bowl commercials
for conspicuous display.
Much as I love the expansion into space, this display of EXPENSIVE whimsicality leaves me cold. One billio-bro's self-promotion. I can hear the gnashing of hard-working and underfunded scientists' teeth when they think of the instrument packages which could have gone up. I only hope they replaced the guts with instruments and telemetry.
Alright, I'm being a curmudgeon, maybe the promotion might help electric cars and we're closer to getting back into space and I can't help but like Don't Panic! and the soft landings are useful, but it worries me that the US space program is now privatized. He'll be contracting with the military. Mercs in space!
(edit -- not the place for a song fragment)
Shoulda been a '67 Chevy Malibu. Repo!
jeez, how cool - it freezes my mind -
how come I am feeling quite different about it than you do? Or is it that I don't get your sracasm in your comments? Why is that frigging rocket so important to you? It doesn't help to pay the rent, does it?
https://www.euronews.com/
cars in eternal orbit!
Thoreau- "thank God man cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as the earth".
Onward Pilgrims!
bygorry
But it's non- poluting electric.
There is that.
Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.
Space junk non-polluting? I don’t think so.
"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"
One thing that NEEDS to be said.
Prior US space launches were also private-sector adventures, with NASA buying hardware from private companies (made to NASA's specifications, of course), painting the US and NASA logos on it, and sending it up.
The difference with the SpaceX/Tesla launch is that the private company doing it this time wasn't a warmonger military contractor. SpaceX is a civilian company with principally civilian customers, doing peaceful civilian business for peaceful civilian aims.
It's high time and then some that the warmongering military contractors' monopoly on space was broken!!
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides