Space - Spacex, NASA, Rocket Lab
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@Tim said in Space - Spacex, NASA, Rocket Lab:
How about an extreme project to use the Sun's gravitational lensing to image extra-solar planets with 10 to 25km surface resolution.
Gravity telescope to image exoplanets
A futuristic technique conceptualized by Stanford scientists could enable astronomical imaging far more advanced than any present today.
That's amazeballs
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@nzzp What's that plume emittance from the booster after it separates from starship and descends to earth.
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@NTA said in Space - Spacex, NASA, Rocket Lab:
@Kirwan said in Space - Spacex, NASA, Rocket Lab:
Really? Just eyeballing between the two, one has a tolerance of tens of metres landing on a big concrete circle.
Would be good to understand what the tolerance is for the catch setup - there must be far more going on in physics terms.
Land vertically: don't melt surface, be vertical enough or you'll fall over and explode, probably. That's if you don't catch fire.
Caught by tower: got to be vertical enough AND at the right speed AND not too close to one arm or the other AND not suffer catastrophic damage from the arms themselves AND the tower has to stand up to the weight AND the arms have to "fire" at the right time because too early OR too late is a journey to Destination Fucked.
I think the vertical bit was the amazing part to begin with - putting a rocket in reverse, almost - which is why it is probably less amazing now. I reckon it is still pretty tricky tho.
The arms hardly make contact with the starship as it's caught. Bloody amazing.
Anyone who's done computer programming can see that each program iteration is a relentless improvement on the previous versions. This thing is going to get better and better. Wow. -
@Kirwan said in Space - Spacex, NASA, Rocket Lab:
@Kiwiwomble said in Space - Spacex, NASA, Rocket Lab:
@voodoo i think because a lot (most?) people just dont understand how big an achievement it is, i know my first thought was land on the pad seemed more impressive
Really? Just eyeballing between the two, one has a tolerance of tens of metres landing on a big concrete circle.
Catching it on the tower obviously requires more accuracy.
The more I think about it, the stranger that sentence is. When else have we seen something the size of a building be caught out of the air?
We’ve all seen things land before.
too each their own and as a say i have read what everyone has been saying so so realise how impressive it is but yeah, at first glance a reusable booster returning to earth and landing perfectly vertically was truly amazing to me, maybe my amazement gauge was just recalibrated after seeing that so seeing something very similar happen but without the need to balance to the same degree didn;t seem as crazy
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@BerniesCorner said in Space - Spacex, NASA, Rocket Lab:
@nzzp What's that plume emittance from the booster after it separates from starship and descends to earth.
presume you mean this?
I don't know! But guessing (in the Fern way), I presume it's water vapour from slowing down (aerobraking)
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yeah. We need to find out.
I'm fascinated by the whole thing.
Apparently it's fine margins of getting this reuseability rocket thing working as the earth's gravity is so strong. Liftoff from the Moon and Mars is a piece of piss in comparison. -
When's Musk's green hydrogen car coming. Possible game changer for all.
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@BerniesCorner said in Space - Spacex, NASA, Rocket Lab:
When's Musk's green hydrogen car coming. Possible game changer for all.
honestly I can't see it. Hydrogen is a slippery bastard of a gas- it escapes containment way too easily (and has a tendency to explode).
I can see methane extracted from atmospheric carbon being a thing, but I'm optimistic.
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@BerniesCorner said in Space - Spacex, NASA, Rocket Lab:
Apparently it's fine margins of getting this reuseability rocket thing working as the earth's gravity is so strong
if gravity was 2% stronger we couldn't get to orbit with chemical reactions (ie rockets). It's nuts.
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@nzzp said in Space - Spacex, NASA, Rocket Lab:
@BerniesCorner said in Space - Spacex, NASA, Rocket Lab:
Apparently it's fine margins of getting this reuseability rocket thing working as the earth's gravity is so strong
if gravity was 2% stronger we couldn't get to orbit with chemical reactions (ie rockets). It's nuts.
really? thats mad, this planet really is this crazily unlikely goldilocks sweet spot
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@Kiwiwomble said in Space - Spacex, NASA, Rocket Lab:
@nzzp said in Space - Spacex, NASA, Rocket Lab:
@BerniesCorner said in Space - Spacex, NASA, Rocket Lab:
Apparently it's fine margins of getting this reuseability rocket thing working as the earth's gravity is so strong
if gravity was 2% stronger we couldn't get to orbit with chemical reactions (ie rockets). It's nuts.
really? thats mad, this planet really is this crazily unlikely goldilocks sweet spot
and it's dying
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@BerniesCorner said in Space - Spacex, NASA, Rocket Lab:
@Kiwiwomble said in Space - Spacex, NASA, Rocket Lab:
@nzzp said in Space - Spacex, NASA, Rocket Lab:
@BerniesCorner said in Space - Spacex, NASA, Rocket Lab:
Apparently it's fine margins of getting this reuseability rocket thing working as the earth's gravity is so strong
if gravity was 2% stronger we couldn't get to orbit with chemical reactions (ie rockets). It's nuts.
really? thats mad, this planet really is this crazily unlikely goldilocks sweet spot
and it's dying
Nah. Planet will be fine, once it gets rid of what's killing it (us).
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@nzzp said in Space - Spacex, NASA, Rocket Lab:
@BerniesCorner said in Space - Spacex, NASA, Rocket Lab:
@nzzp What's that plume emittance from the booster after it separates from starship and descends to earth.
presume you mean this?
I don't know! But guessing (in the Fern way), I presume it's water vapour from slowing down (aerobraking)
It's a rapid change in pressure cooling the humid air from where they air launching from. So yep, condensed water vapour.
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@BerniesCorner said in Space - Spacex, NASA, Rocket Lab:
When's Musk's green hydrogen car coming. Possible game changer for all.
Well Musk calls Fuel Cells "Fool Cells", so not very likely.
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Images of Jupiter from the Juno probe:
JunoCam : Processing - Mission Juno
Download raw imagery from JunoCam and upload your processed imagery to the gallery!
North Pole at Minimum Emission Angle
The image is reprojected according to a preliminary geometrical camera model, cleaned from some of the camera artifacts, approximately illumination adjusted with a 3rd degree polynomial BRDF over the cosines of the incidence and emission angle on the basis of PJ50 images, linearized to radiometric values, white-balanced with linear factors (0.629;1.0;3.65) for (R;G;B) on the basis of inbound PJ63 JunoCam images, and displayed with gamma=2 with respect to the square root of radiometric values.
Resolution is 30 pixels per degrees in an equidistant cylindrical system centered to the camera at image stop time, with an axis parallel to Juno's spin axis. The rendered field of view is 60x180 degrees.
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No idea what Rocket Lab are up to here, but didn't they get some US military contracts?
Rocket Lab launches mystery mission on company's 12th launch of 2024 (video)
Liftoff of the mission, which was for a "confidential commercial customer," took place at 5:56 a.m. ET on Tuesday (Nov. 5).
I saw Peter Beck's heli (an Airbus) at my local airfield yesterday. One of the guys spoke to him and he was visiting the Sail GP facility that they purchased recently (it's just down the road from the airfield). Apparently some new fin components or something being designed / built there. Quite cool having all that on my doorstep, should see what jobs they have going...they might need a mail boy or something...
