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Have a relative that’s been there and seen two launches, said it was unreal. Damn I was happy just going to see the Atlantis exhibition.

KTG17 wrote:
I am OK with this and if Elon wants to launch a school bus into space next I say go for it.

And yes, in the grand scheme of things this kind of stuff does great things for the US Space Industry. NASA can't do everything, and they def can't do it as economically. If private businesses can find a way to do it cheaper it works out for everyone.

Honestly, Elon is probably the right person to be doing this in the private sector.

Didn't he openly share his tech on his electric cars because it would foster competition?

He may be just another rich boy, but he is making the most of his position and doing good with it.

You know I don't know about his upbringing, but when I read he started Paypal and sold it got bookoo cash for it, I was already thinking he was brilliant. And Paypal was the second company he created and sold. So if he was a rich boy before that, he still certainly earned his wealth on his own.

I don't follow the guy, but I really appreciate what he is doing. I am an environmentalist, and despise what we are doing to this planet, and while we're going to have an issue getting rid of batteries some day, I would rather see us using those than burning gas for our cars. Not that I even drive an electric car now, but when they become more affordable in the long term I wouldn't mind. But he's got an great imagination and the drive to see some of those dreams come alive.

Some people might resent him, but then I have to ask what are they doing to change the world for the better?

 Kroem wrote:
Nice one, they only gave it even odds of getting off the launchpad so I'm glad it went so well.

We need to get on with space travel in England, can't let the Americans and the Russians have all the fun exploring Alien temples and wooing spacebabes without us!

If I remember correctly, Britain is the only country to have started a space program and got a working rocket up into space (the Black Arrow), only to suddenly cancel it all. Sad really.

KTG17 wrote:

 Skinnereal wrote:
China, India and Europe (the ESA) all have active space programmes. They don't get as much media coverage as Space X gets though.
[Edit: Also Japan, Russia and USA have the 6 national agencies]

Oh really? I hadn't been caught up on current events. Let me know when a rocket they launch returns to the launch area on its own.

Let me know when they put a guy on the moon too.

Completely missing my point bro.

SpaceX is not a national endeavour. Trying to use it as a chest thumping exercise to big up the USA just makes yourself look foolish. The ESA has currently been working on multiple projects such as Galileo (a new GPS satellite system), ATHENA (a new x-ray space observatory). You know, science and exploration.

Also, SpaceX hasn't put someone on the moon and the US national space agency currently doesn't have a launcher capable of doing so, unless it builds more Saturn Vs.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

SpaceX is not a national endeavour. Trying to use it as a chest thumping exercise to big up the USA just makes yourself look foolish.

No actually it doesn't. I am pointing out the things that can be accomplished in this country, aside from the BS that takes a lot of attention in the media and the division even found on this board. The fact you can't seem to read the opening comment show me that you yourself are foolish. And then you have to bring up the ESA's accomplishments to make yourself feel like you aren't left out. Ha.

And even if it was a national endeavor, I am not part of it and still wouldn't be chest thumping. Space X is an American company employing primarily Americans and accomplishing some kick-ass things and I am proud of them and envious of the work they get to be part of.

For what it’s worth, the launch also wasn’t 100% successful and ended up overshooting the trajectory. So the car will be floating somewhere else other than the planned orbit they were going for. Which is why there is a car floating up there, and not people or some other payload.

Of course with these kind of things even “failures” are still successful experiments and you still get lots of data to build on. A giant fireball would still have given SpaceX data to improve on.

But SpaceX successes belong to SpaceX, not to the USA.

 d-usa wrote:
For what it’s worth, the launch also wasn’t 100% successful and ended up overshooting the trajectory.

Well, yes and no. It overshot its trajectory, but only because of how the target was defined. The final burn was done as "burn outbound until it runs out of fuel", not targeting a specific course. So total fuel consumption was a bit less than expected, resulting in extra fuel left for the final burn and an "overshoot". If they'd been targeting a specific destination instead of just trying to throw it out into space they would have cut off the engine upon reaching the required velocity instead of just letting it run.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

KTG17 wrote:

 Skinnereal wrote:
China, India and Europe (the ESA) all have active space programmes. They don't get as much media coverage as Space X gets though.
[Edit: Also Japan, Russia and USA have the 6 national agencies]

Oh really? I hadn't been caught up on current events. Let me know when a rocket they launch returns to the launch area on its own.

Let me know when they put a guy on the moon too.

Completely missing my point bro.

SpaceX is not a national endeavour. Trying to use it as a chest thumping exercise to big up the USA just makes yourself look foolish. The ESA has currently been working on multiple projects such as Galileo (a new GPS satellite system), ATHENA (a new x-ray space observatory). You know, science and exploration.

Also, SpaceX hasn't put someone on the moon and the US national space agency currently doesn't have a launcher capable of doing so, unless it builds more Saturn Vs.

Likely better. With modern advances in metal, fuels, materials and computers a new set could be more powerful than before not limited by what was available at the time when forst built.

A new class could even maybe carry us to Mars or a class based off the Saturn V.

So the math was wrong, which can be a huge issue. What if they couldn’t have remotely shut off the engine? Now humans would be floating forever rather than making it to their destination. Yes there are contingencies that “may” be able to correct the mistake, but that doesn’t change the fact that they made the mistake and that the car is floating in a different place than expected.

It’s a “failure” because it’s not where they expected it to be. It’s a “success” because they still got data out of it and will continue to get data while the car is slowly getting destroyed out there.

I hope they put Space grade conditioner and protectant on that dash!

 Future War Cultist wrote:

 Kroem wrote:
Nice one, they only gave it even odds of getting off the launchpad so I'm glad it went so well.

We need to get on with space travel in England, can't let the Americans and the Russians have all the fun exploring Alien temples and wooing spacebabes without us!

If I remember correctly, Britain is the only country to have started a space program and got a working rocket up into space (the Black Arrow), only to suddenly cancel it all. Sad really.

We shut down a lot of project in order to buy US versions of the same thing - some better, some inferior. Some of its related to a small country trying to do stuff rather than a continent and others for political reasons.

KTG17 wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

SpaceX is not a national endeavour. Trying to use it as a chest thumping exercise to big up the USA just makes yourself look foolish.

No actually it doesn't. I am pointing out the things that can be accomplished in this country, aside from the BS that takes a lot of attention in the media and the division even found on this board.

But you have no evidence that it was accomplished thanks to anything unique in the US.

The fact you can't seem to read the opening comment show me that you yourself are foolish. And then you have to bring up the ESA's accomplishments to make yourself feel like you aren't left out. Ha.

You were the one who had to bring up the moon landings to try and defend your view of the US space industry in an attempt to belittle others. For reference, that was almost 50 years ago. You could have brought up Juno and New Horizons, instead.

And even if it was a national endeavor, I am not part of it and still wouldn't be chest thumping. Space X is an American company employing primarily Americans and accomplishing some kick-ass things and I am proud of them and envious of the work they get to be part of.

If you aren't part of it then stop using "we" as if you are.

KTG17 wrote:

You know, as divided as this country can get, and despite the problems it has, and the criticism of it from outside this country, I look at this and just think, "Man, who else is doing sh!t like this?" No one. Those Space X employees have every right to be as excited as they are. Really cutting edge stuff. Amazing. And the balls to send a car into space. Awesome.

We still got it. Best years still yet to come.

This does nothing to deflect the criticism of your country. Nobody is criticising your country as one where private companies cannot launch rockets. And, as pointed out, other countries are doing gak like this. China is developing its own space program with the aim of landing on the Moon. The Falcon Heavy does not have the payload capacity to reach the moon (it's LEO max payload is less than half that of the Saturn V, for reference). The Chinese are on track to launch an automated sample return mission to the moon soon, which will be followed by manned missions with the intent of establishing permanent lunar bases.

As for reusable spacecraft, that is one of the future goals of the Indian Space agency. It has already completed preliminary flight tests on a demonstration reusable spaceplane.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

But you have no evidence that it was accomplished thanks to anything unique in the US.

WHAT?!?!

You were the one who had to bring up the moon landings to try and defend your view of the US space industry in an attempt to belittle others. For reference, that was almost 50 years ago. You could have brought up Juno and New Horizons, instead.

Exactly, because another euro was knocking this accomplishment by stating other countries have space programs too. Big deal. The man on the moon happened 50 years ago and we're still the only ones that have done it. So then the others do, it will tell me they have caught up.

If you aren't part of it then stop using "we" as if you are.

Oh no, now I am owning it. Since your simple brain doesn't understand generalizations, I might as well.



Please, keep complaining.

 d-usa wrote:
So the math was wrong, which can be a huge issue.

Not necessarily. Everything in engineering has margins for error, however slight, and even the best simulation can't predict with 100% accuracy how things are going to go. That's why the test launch didn't carry a real payload. From what I've seen the outcome was "hey, we did better than our low-end prediction", not "wtf, how did this happen". To put some arbitrary fake numbers on it, they had an expected fuel level of 5% +/- 0.5% before starting the final burn, for a possible range of 4.5% to 5.5%. If 4% is the fuel required for the delta-V of a Mars orbit trajectory then the mission is a success if your "use all the fuel no matter where it puts us" burn exceeds the delta-V of a Mars orbit trajectory, regardless of whether it exceeds it by 0.5% or 1.5%.

What if they couldn’t have remotely shut off the engine? Now humans would be floating forever rather than making it to their destination.

What if? What if the rocket just exploded on the pad? Then the humans would be floating forever, in the afterlife. It didn't happen that way, and it would be utter lunacy to design a manned rocket with no ability to take local control over the engine or adjust the course at a later point. You're talking about a catastrophic failure in a critical system that almost certainly has multiple redundant backups for exactly that reason.

Also, a manned flight is always going to be carrying extra fuel (and a satellite launch probably is as well) in case fuel consumption is slightly higher than expected. You're never going to calculate out exactly how much fuel you need and then depend on running out at exactly the right time for any situation where accuracy matters.

Yes there are contingencies that “may” be able to correct the mistake, but that doesn’t change the fact that they made the mistake and that the car is floating in a different place than expected.

Only because they didn't bother trying to do better. When your plan is "let's kind of send it off over there-ish" it's not a mistake when you end up over there-ish instead of a different there-ish. They deliberately went with a plan that had a degree of uncertainty in it because they cared more about exhausting the entire fuel supply than aiming for a specific trajectory target. There's no "may" about it when you're talking about the result of a deliberate mission choice where the alternative is well understood and easy to implement.

Its amazing we live in a time where only one company shoots a car into space, lands 2 of 3 boosters on landing pads, and people want to knock it.

Standards are pretty high these days. Especially since everyone is doing it.

A rocket in space to make America look great, canceled out by a guy on a forum making America look small.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Peregrine wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
So the math was wrong, which can be a huge issue.

Not necessarily. Everything in engineering has margins for error, however slight, and even the best simulation can't predict with 100% accuracy how things are going to go. That's why the test launch didn't carry a real payload. From what I've seen the outcome was "hey, we did better than our low-end prediction", not "wtf, how did this happen". To put some arbitrary fake numbers on it, they had an expected fuel level of 5% +/- 0.5% before starting the final burn, for a possible range of 4.5% to 5.5%. If 4% is the fuel required for the delta-V of a Mars orbit trajectory then the mission is a success if your "use all the fuel no matter where it puts us" burn exceeds the delta-V of a Mars orbit trajectory, regardless of whether it exceeds it by 0.5% or 1.5%.

What if they couldn’t have remotely shut off the engine? Now humans would be floating forever rather than making it to their destination.

What if? What if the rocket just exploded on the pad? Then the humans would be floating forever, in the afterlife. It didn't happen that way, and it would be utter lunacy to design a manned rocket with no ability to take local control over the engine or adjust the course at a later point. You're talking about a catastrophic failure in a critical system that almost certainly has multiple redundant backups for exactly that reason.

Also, a manned flight is always going to be carrying extra fuel (and a satellite launch probably is as well) in case fuel consumption is slightly higher than expected. You're never going to calculate out exactly how much fuel you need and then depend on running out at exactly the right time for any situation where accuracy matters.

Yes there are contingencies that “may” be able to correct the mistake, but that doesn’t change the fact that they made the mistake and that the car is floating in a different place than expected.

Only because they didn't bother trying to do better. When your plan is "let's kind of send it off over there-ish" it's not a mistake when you end up over there-ish instead of a different there-ish. They deliberately went with a plan that had a degree of uncertainty in it because they cared more about exhausting the entire fuel supply than aiming for a specific trajectory target. There's no "may" about it when you're talking about the result of a deliberate mission choice where the alternative is well understood and easy to implement.

The goal was X, X didn’t happen. Simple stuff really.

As for the rest, it’s almost like I acknowledged that anything is success in a science sense, and even a fireball on the launch pad would be good science. Heck, it wouldn’t have been the first fireball on the launch pad for Musk, and he would have learned a ton of stuff from it. Admitting that they didn’t have 100% success with the planned parameters isn’t going to kill anyone. And all of the world can use the science from overshooting the target to help improve the next launch.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:
This does nothing to deflect the criticism of your country. Nobody is criticising your country as one where private companies cannot launch rockets. And, as pointed out, other countries are doing gak like this. China is developing its own space program with the aim of landing on the Moon. The Falcon Heavy does not have the payload capacity to reach the moon (it's LEO max payload is less than half that of the Saturn V, for reference). The Chinese are on track to launch an automated sample return mission to the moon soon, which will be followed by manned missions with the intent of establishing permanent lunar bases.

As for reusable spacecraft, that is one of the future goals of the Indian Space agency. It has already completed preliminary flight tests on a demonstration reusable spaceplane.

Are you following this thread? The topic of this thread is Space X launching a car into space and having the boosters return to earth. No, I don't see anyone else doing that, and bringing up general examples of what other countries are doing, some of which the US did some 50 years ago, doesn't mean that they are doing the same thing.

Yes, everything everyone is doing is impressive to some degree. I am more impressed with this. Don't care you aren't, and you aren't going to change my mind.

KTG17 wrote:
Its amazing we live in a time where only one company shoots a car into space, lands 2 of 3 boosters on landing pads, and people want to knock it.

Standards are pretty high these days. Especially since everyone is doing it.

Nobody here was ever knocking the achievement of the SpaceX engineers. We were knocking your assertion that their accomplishment was somehow evidence that the USA was super special and doing things others aren't.

The rest of the world is already aware of how good SpaceX is. We use their rockets to launch satellites.

And hey, at least we in Europe built our high energy particle accelerator, the USA cancelled its attempt to build a supercollider

 A Town Called Malus wrote:
Nobody here was ever knocking the achievement of the SpaceX engineers. We were knocking your assertion that their accomplishment was somehow evidence that the USA was

Fine, I am an American, in America, Space X is American, employing Americans, launching rockets in America into space. Yes. I take that as a source of pride. Like you prob do about 4pm tea time.

The environment here in this country, through whatever means you wish to list, allows for some awesome things to happen. I am proud to be part of that environment. So kiss it.

http://www.iflscience.com/space/heres-a-list-of-every-upcoming-space-mission-for-the-next-twenty-years-and-some-of-them-are-unbelievably-awesome/

We can celebrate all things space and science without making it a nationalistic chest thumbing contest.

We could, but I chose to specify the USA's, because of this specific launch. For some reason, peeps have to knock it down and talk about others.

This event was awesome, and that's that.

 d-usa wrote:
The goal was X, X didn’t happen. Simple stuff really.

No, the goal was X and X happened. The goal was to burn the entire remaining supply of fuel onboard, regardless of where it sent the rocket, to evaluate that part of the design. I guarantee you that the engineers actually running the mission were well aware that they were aiming "somewhere roughly in the general direction of Mars-ish" and had no particular trajectory in mind, and the whole "Mars orbit"* thing was just the short version for the publicity material. Few people want to sit through an explanation of test parameters or minimum delta-V goals or whatever, so the publicity guy says "send it to Mars". Meanwhile the engineers involved have a good understanding of exactly what unknown variables they are testing for and what the outcomes could be, and have exactly zero concern for meeting the over-simplified promises of the publicity guy.

*Technically "intersecting Mars orbit, because we don't actually want it going to Mars", but close enough.

As for the rest, it’s almost like I acknowledged that anything is success in a science sense, and even a fireball on the launch pad would be good science. Heck, it wouldn’t have been the first fireball on the launch pad for Musk, and he would have learned a ton of stuff from it. Admitting that they didn’t have 100% success with the planned parameters isn’t going to kill anyone. And all of the world can use the science from overshooting the target to help improve the next launch.

It's not just a success in the sense that data was obtained, it's a success in that the mission was executed according to the plan (with the exception of the failed restart on the center core). When the plan is a deliberate choice for an inaccurate final trajectory that is not at all the same choice that would be used if a specific trajectory is desired ending up somewhere there-ish is not a failure.

If Musk truly loved America, he would have launched the Eagle Heavy.

I've always liked to imagine Elon Musk as being essentially Cave Johnson.

KTG17 wrote:
The environment here in this country, through whatever means you wish to list, allows for some awesome things to happen. I am proud to be part of that environment. So kiss it.

I'm not really clear on how it's supposed to be a point of national pride that the US has coastline near the equator and connected to developed-nation-average infrastructure. The US being better suited to rocket development than the UK is a direct result of orbital mechanics, not a relevant fact about the political entities currently occupying those points on the map. I guess go Team USA, we haven't wasted our potential launch sites so badly that nobody wants to use them? Seems kind of underwhelming as an accomplishment.

I am sad he did not launch a '57 Chevy with an 8-track blasting some Lynard Skynard.


THAT would have been 'Merican!

 Kroem wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:

 Kroem wrote:
Nice one, they only gave it even odds of getting off the launchpad so I'm glad it went so well.

We need to get on with space travel in England, can't let the Americans and the Russians have all the fun exploring Alien temples and wooing spacebabes without us!

The European Space Agency is headquartered in England.

Here are all the missions launched or planned:

http://www.esa.int/ESA/Our_Missions/

The link just says 'page not found' for me, unless that is a tongue in cheek reference to how little the ESA actually get done.

No, it was a bad bit of html. I have fixed it.

GENERAL IN THREAD REMINDER - RULE #1 IS BE POLITE.

Doubled.

 kronk wrote:
I am sad he did not launch a '57 Chevy with an 8-track blasting some Lynard Skynard.


THAT would have been 'Merican!

And a pistol in the glove box and a pair of shotguns in the boot (trunk) in case of encounters with anything Un'Merican

This a fantastic achievement, regardless of how 'Merican it is. Space rocks.