Space - Spacex, NASA, Rocket Lab
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Caught this on radio
10 minute interview with the founder of a Kiwi (although he's originally from Siberia) space start-up who have developed the worlds first all electric space propulsion motor. The size of a gift box for a bottle of wine.
Will propel a craft, protect its passengers from solar radiation and enable the manufacture of craft in space - all through the application of superconducting magnetic fields.
Did a test flight on Space X last year and has global patents. All from an office in Parnell.
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I'm amazed there is not substantial media coverage. To me this is really significant- the first major launch and effectively land (ie get to ground level at close to zero speed) for something of this size. I don't see a lot of interest from most media.
NZZP's prediction: in years to come we'll look back on this as a major milestone, like landing the first Falcon9 rocket.
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@nzzp Well you see Musk was Time magazine person of the year before he bought twitter and went all right wing, and anyone centrist or right can't do anything good in the eyes of the media.
If he had blue hair and endorsed Joe Biden the coverage would be through the roof...
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@Windows97 said in Space - Spacex, NASA, Rocket Lab:
@nzzp Well you see Musk was Time magazine person of the year before he bought twitter and went all right wing, and anyone centrist or right can't do anything good in the eyes of the media.
If he had blue hair and endorsed Joe Biden the coverage would be through the roof...
he's a dick. But what SpaceX have done is frankly incredible. To be doing this four flights in is ridiculous.
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Millions were live streaming it on X last night, and it's been all over the feed today. I saw one comparison saying more people watched the live stream than CNN in the past month. Even it it's an exaggeration, it speaks to the way people get news these days.
I did enjoy that even the NY Times had to report positively, there was just no negatives.
The fact that they achieved all their milestones, but did it with a flap melting, and din't explode is incredible and speaks to the design choices paying off. Missing heat shield tiles are no longer a death sentence.
I couldn't believe what I was seeing last night, the flap was still bloody working after being melted by plasma!
Flight 5 is going to try to catch the Booster with the launch tower, that's going to be awesome. Three or so more flights before they will try to catch the ship.
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@Kirwan said in Space - Spacex, NASA, Rocket Lab:
the flap was still bloody working after being melted by plasma!
I thought so too - but there is now a school of thought that it was just flapping around uncontrolled.
I have no idea which is right. But whatever happened it didn't matter - they belly flopped to slow down, survived 15 minutes of plasma (!) and then flipped and landed.
Chapeau, as the French say.
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@Kirwan said in Space - Spacex, NASA, Rocket Lab:
Elon time caveats aside, if he can this think to land on Mars and the Moon we are truely living in the future. The second version of Starship in extendable mode will take 200 tonnes to orbit. Just the implications for science alone is incredible.
Now he just has to invent a warp drive....