Big fucking rocket. No wonder Bezos is heading toward the first ever trillionaire

5/28/2020 8:26:33 AM

I was at Whole Foods a few months back and there was a mentally handicapped young man bagging groceries. A woman asked him if he liked his job and he responded that he liked working for Jeff Bezos. A short conversation about Bezos followed.

Except he referred to him as "space billionaire" every time. I often think of him with that term now.

[Edited on May 28, 2020 at 3:50 PM. Reason : .]

5/28/2020 3:48:36 PM

It could mean that he was way richer than billionaires. He's like watching those billionaires from the outer space.

[Edited on May 28, 2020 at 4:16 PM. Reason : ;]

5/28/2020 4:12:22 PM

It's a rare condition, this day and age, to read about motherfuckers flying into space. Godspeed!

5/29/2020 1:46:12 AM

Musk and Bezos try to put their names in the book of human history, to be the Columbus of the 21st century.

5/29/2020 8:10:55 AM

3:22PM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ww9FudKGUd8

5/30/2020 2:40:43 PM

USA! USA! USA! USA!

5/30/2020 3:40:44 PM

This should be just the beginning as Musk promised.

5/30/2020 4:10:21 PM

If Starship manages to work out, then amazing.

5/31/2020 1:31:30 AM

I am starting a space company called Weyland-Yutani. Who is with me?

5/31/2020 7:24:45 AM

Building better worlds

5/31/2020 7:48:32 AM

Doug bumped his head. MISSION FAILED. jk great job to all of those who took part.

6/1/2020 5:30:29 AM

^^^^ S/N 003 got crushed on the test pad and S/N 004 blew up Friday.

There might be something to commercial crew working because SpaceX were required to meet NASA testing standards, and then something like Starship which is totally private as far as I know being a boondoggle testing-wise. The same types of engineers are working on both so you'd think they're not cutting corners but it does not invite confidence that one gets crushed on the test pad and within 2 months you have the next one built, being tested, and it blows up catastrophically on the test pad. It demonstrates a higher rate of manufacturability resulting in lower percentage workmanship.

Maybe they're just writing these off as far as "let's see how far we can take this until it doesn't work". But that's not really an outer space testing philosophy, especially with the different qualifying levels of testing already established by NASA which can be demanding.

[Edited on June 1, 2020 at 7:25 AM. Reason : /]

6/1/2020 7:24:08 AM

NASA has blown up tons of rockets. It's part of a learning curve.

There is a montage of this from the Mercury and Apollo days in the documentary In The Shadow Of The Moon. Probably the best documentary I have ever seen. Highly recommend it if you haven't seen.

6/1/2020 8:19:48 AM

Yea part of it too is that SpaceX is doing this much more in the public eye at Boca Chica. Rocket testing to destruction isn't a new thing as pointed out above, but testing while multiple live YouTube streams are happening 24/7 where the entire world can watch and critique is a whole new thing. Also the rapid rate of testing and building that SpaceX is doing is quite unprecedented.

6/1/2020 8:49:33 AM

Also, SpaceX can afford to blow up more things in the public eye. If NASA does that sort of thing, we lose funding.

6/1/2020 10:01:12 AM

How did Doug bruise his head?

6/1/2020 11:09:52 AM

In the 1960s they didn't have near the level of computerized failure analysis we do now. We're supposed to be doing predictive failure.

There are 4 different levels of testing that I've learned in my year and a half working on space stuff as a mechanical. You overtest the snot out of the piece component and work your way down as you go up the assembly chain. It's a pretty standard NASA design path for something where once you launch failure is not an option. Starship is at full structural assembly I think and we've had 2 catastrophic failures on a test platform. Now perhaps SpaceX are not following that standard NASA design path, but then they're not only testing the Starship, they're also testing their own testing program, which is a very unorthodox thing to do, albeit that is SpaceX's M.O. The SpaceX commercial crew program never had the level of failure Starship has had just this calendar year, in part because they were a supplier that had to meet a customer's design and testing requirements and in part because they were in competition with Boeing to get out the door first. (I know they had issues. It wasn't to the level of what happened in consecutive months with Starship.)

6/1/2020 1:07:19 PM

^^ he bumped it coming through the hatch to the ISS

6/1/2020 3:09:44 PM

The editor of Nasa Spaceflight's comment on the Starship explosion I thought was funny.

Quote :

"And to the mainstream media pinging me for "give us the rights to that footage" - No. You only care when there's a boom. And I bet you'd want to make dramatic associations. Blanket no answer."

6/2/2020 6:00:46 AM

Elon could be a super villain leading the world to a wrong direction. More and more UFOs have been found lately.

6/2/2020 9:22:27 AM

^^ What? Why would NASA have the rights to the footage to begin with? And if they did, I was under the impression that all footage of NASA belong in the public domain?

6/2/2020 10:54:02 AM

Nasaspaceflight.com is a private news site. It's not ran by NASA.

6/2/2020 10:47:15 PM

I love that sight. I've spoken with the owner and he gave me perpetual free premium membership. it has been over a decade now, before the last shuttle mission!

6/7/2020 2:37:26 PM

Quote :

"Mars 2033 is not going to happen. In order to launch for Mars in 2033 we'd have to have some significant risk reduction on key technologies in about the next 2 years which just isn't feasible given the current budget and missions that are already planned."

Remember the first man landing on the moon was 50 yrs ago already. Given another 13 yrs from now on, Mars 2033 should be fairly easy. It's just about fundings, not techniques, imo. Musk requests roughly $100B from the government.

6/23/2020 11:36:46 AM

We stopped seriously looking into interplanetary spacecraft in 1972 when Apollo 17 returned to earth. Ever since then, everything has been in orbit of earth, so the moon landings don't really come in to play there. Even if they did, it doesn't change the fact that we don't have the budget or the resources for the amount of risk reduction that is necessary. The technology readiness level is just too low for a manned mission that early.

[Edited on June 23, 2020 at 2:04 PM. Reason : ]

6/23/2020 2:03:42 PM

Dealing with the pandemic this year probably already spends the budget for the next decade.

[Edited on June 23, 2020 at 2:16 PM. Reason : ;]

6/23/2020 2:15:52 PM

^^What do you think of the Starlink project by SpaceX btw? It's gonna revolutionize the global internet? Fibers or any ground network connections are gonna be abandoned in the future?

6/23/2020 3:10:23 PM

Ambitious to say the least but not outside the realm of plausibility. I honestly welcome any competition to Comcast so I really do hope they get it working properly. I don't know if it will globally revolutionize internet access, but the technology that it leads to may. It could definitely help with internet in rural areas where no other options exist.

6/23/2020 3:48:11 PM

Not just Comcast, also AT&T, Google, Time Warner, etc.

6/23/2020 3:56:04 PM

Yes the 3rd world is gonna benefit from starlink the most where they don’t have any internet freedom—-Africa, communist countries, mid-east. Only 10 percent of the world population has that if the statistics is correct. It’s like WiFi without boundaries.

6/23/2020 5:37:24 PM

I'm a little skeptical the likes of the Chinese government are just going to shrug their shoulders and willingly lose their power over their residents' internet access. It's a nonzero possibility they shoot the thing down as a broad threat to national security.

6/26/2020 4:39:53 PM

Quote :

"Dealing with the pandemic this year probably already spends the budget for the next decade."

You can apply that to everything federal, state, and local government.

NASA is going to have to prioritize what they want and some items are going to be on the chopping block.

As far as Mars 2033, I used to be a little more skeptical of the Space Station than I am, but I can also see a "we recognize we are nowhere near ready, so while we wait, let's test the human body for extended space durations on the Space Station" plan that has taken place. Artemis as a program for example makes sense to more establish the Moon if using it as a jumping off point. It also provides a test cycle for a manned capsule which for the first time since 1972 went beyond low earth orbit. 2033 is too quick then to use lessons learned from Artemis and Orion to have them implemented in a capsule going to Mars designed, built, tested, and launched. Sorry, space flight is not easy.

[Edited on June 26, 2020 at 4:48 PM. Reason : /]

6/26/2020 4:43:30 PM

I'm all for exploration and thnk we should be colonizing mars robotically for now. My bigger aspirations would be further exploration of the moons of Saturn and Jupiter including a rover onto and into Europa.what is the current argument for sending a man all the way to mars just to come back and check a box? Seems like a ridiculous opportunity (sic) cost.

7/4/2020 3:50:09 AM

Because it's next.

7/4/2020 12:20:22 PM

^^The understanding of long term human survival in space and on a different planet is vital if we ever want to leave Earth beyond low earth orbit. We have to start somewhere. The amount of technology that came out of going to the moon alone was incredible. Going to Mars would be tenfold.

7/6/2020 11:37:04 AM

Quote :

"It's a nonzero possibility they shoot the thing down as a broad threat to national security."

They're going to shoot down several thousand satellites the size of a mini-fridge?

7/6/2020 3:51:29 PM

Anti-satellite warfare is absolutely going to be a thing in the future. It's why of all the crazy things Trump has done, the Space Force really isn't one of them. Satellites are too important to the modern functioning of states. They control GPS, communications - both civil and military. I know as of 5 to 6 years ago a Russian satellite strayed from its assigned position in the sky and got "dangerously close" (this being space that was 10 to 15 kilometers) to a private satellite. Russians said the satellite screwed up and got back control of it. Going theory is they were trying to do a feasibility test of to see if they could navigate a satellite close to another one.

7/7/2020 8:17:50 AM

https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/17/world/mars-ingenuity-helicopter-scn/index.html

Quote :

" (CNN)When NASA's Perseverance rover launches at the end of this month, an experiment named Ingenuity will be safely tucked beneath the rover for the seven-month journey. Ingenuity will be the first helicopter to attempt flight on another planet"

7/17/2020 11:34:29 AM

Probably the greatest technology race in human history

7/20/2020 8:56:45 AM

Quote :

"I'm a little skeptical the likes of the Chinese government are just going to shrug their shoulders and willingly lose their power over their residents' internet access. It's a nonzero possibility they shoot the thing down as a broad threat to national security."

Yes, Starlink is a great threat to their Great Firewall. But they probably have nothing to do about it.

7/20/2020 7:46:58 PM

They can’t do anything about it.

7/20/2020 11:07:45 PM

First Crew-1 mission is about to liftoff at 7:26 pm!

https://youtu.be/bnChQbxLkkI

11/15/2020 7:12:31 PM

Forgot about this thread when TWW was in lockdown. Launch went very well and is a major milestone in manned spaceflight. I have a handful of coworkers that were working launch control/operations for this and they all got to breathe a sigh of relief. Looking forward to more successful flights.

11/17/2020 3:13:09 PM

Arecibo Observatory being demolished
https://www.theverge.com/2020/11/19/21575025/arecibo-observatory-puerto-rico-decommission-structural-collapse-cable-break
RIP

11/19/2020 12:26:49 PM

Starship test flight in 2 minutes!

https://youtu.be/nf83yzzme2I

12/8/2020 5:32:32 PM

What happened? I was a little late joining the feed, but it's just sitting there.

12/8/2020 5:39:50 PM

Abort at 1.2 seconds! Apparently they started to light the engines and one of them threw up a fault.

12/8/2020 5:40:40 PM

Thanks. Better than blowing it up!

12/8/2020 5:41:25 PM

Well, it still blowed up, but at least it went for a little jaunt first.

Christina Koch from NCSU named in astronaut selection for possible moon missions. That would be pretty cool.

12/10/2020 7:46:32 AM