Utopia Talk / Politics / Spacex launch

sam adams Member	Wed May 27 10:11:40 Lets get it done!
Average Ameriacn Member	Wed May 27 10:19:39 What gun laws do they have on Mars?
McKobb Member	Wed May 27 10:49:55 You must register all Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulators within the first millennium of residency.
Average Ameriacn Member	Wed May 27 11:10:44 Just a few more minutes, the live stream is already is: http://www.spacex.com/launches/
McKobb Member	Wed May 27 11:14:35 How many if you fuckers remember the Challenger explosion? One of my science teachers was an alt crew member and saw it with her own eyes.
McKobb Member	Wed May 27 11:14:46 *of
Average Ameriacn Member	Wed May 27 11:28:01 Oh it will take a few more hours until launch, sorry. McKobb that was long ago, today Trump is making sure everything will work.
Habebe Member	Wed May 27 14:36:10 The privatizing of space launches is something I have to give credit to Obama on. I was hesitant at the time but it seems to have worked out well.
Rugian Member	Wed May 27 14:50:13 "The privatizing of space launches is something I have to give credit to Obama on." Congratulations, you just convinced Trump to nationalize Tesla. Launch cancelled.
Habebe Member	Wed May 27 15:03:35 lol @Rugian.
sam adams Member	Wed May 27 15:05:18 Crew on board and all buttoned up!
sam adams Member	Wed May 27 15:15:34 Sounds like its going to get weathered.
sam adams Member	Wed May 27 15:18:33 Yup done.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Wed May 27 15:55:55 It doesn’t really feel awesome that we still can’t launch rocket because of rain.
Habebe Member	Wed May 27 15:59:54 Nimatzo, Well, it is alot* of rain....still doesn't sound good.but I have turtles swimming in my yard where I normally mow.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Wed May 27 16:13:08 Florida is probably a bad place for this. Why didn’t they build it in the desert? San Diego?
Habebe Member	Wed May 27 16:16:13 IIRC it was built there for political reasons, probably pok spending... I wqtxhed a documentary on it years ago.
Habebe Member	Wed May 27 16:18:48 . It was selected for two reasons: the fact that it is relatively near to the equator compared to other U.S. locations, and the fact that it is on the East Coast. An East Coast location was desirable because any rockets leaving Earth's surface and traveling eastward get a boost from the Earth's spin. A West Coast location would either send rockets over populated areas or have to contend with launching against the direction of the spin. http://www...ets-launched-from-florida.html I could have sworn it had something to do with a senator or something wanting federal $.... Mabry I was thinking of something else.
hood Member	Wed May 27 17:05:15 You might be thinking of all the rocketry and NASA stuff in Alabama and Houston. Those are still around largely for political reasons. Launch pads on the east coast make sense. West coast pads would need to find a bunch of empty desert and then hope anything catastrophic happens before it climbs high enough and far east enough to be over populations.
sam adams Member	Thu May 28 01:21:50 You could launch east out of ~yuma and have better weather but you would be at higher latitude and and have no ability to barge in large components. The ideal launch location would be near water, on the equator, at high altitude, and have good weather, all while being in a first world location. But there is no such location, a few parameters are mutually exclusive. The best combo is probably mauna kea, but that is a logistics suckfest despite the nearby port of kona. The swamps south of miami would be a little better, gain a few degrees of latitude for no other changes compared with the cape.
Paramount Member	Thu May 28 13:53:19 Nimatzo iChihuaha Wed May 27 15:55:55 It doesn’t really feel awesome that we still can’t launch rocket because of rain - - That’s weird. They can shoot missiles in rain (I think), you can drive a car when it is raining, you can fly an airplane in rain. But you can’t launch a space rocket??
Habebe Member	Thu May 28 14:00:19 At 60-90 million a launch Id think they wouldn't want to take any chances, the coordinates have to be just right. Especially launches that have astronauts in them. Still cheaper than 500 million it used to cost though.
hood Member	Thu May 28 14:50:52 "a few parameters are mutually exclusive" Like barge access and high altitude, or equator and 1st world?
sam adams Member	Thu May 28 14:52:01 Its not so much the rain... We want no clouds so we can videotape the launch. This is to hopefully catch and analyze damage events, and was put into place after the launch-debris-damaged columbia burnt up in 2003. Furthermore we want 0.00 lightning risk. Because a 250 metal vessel connected to the surface by an superheated ion plume(low density though it may be at those modest temperatures) makes a decent lightning rod. There was lots of lightning around FL yesterday... and saturday looks similar.
sam adams Member	Thu May 28 14:53:59 'Like barge access and high altitude, or equator and 1st world? " Indeed. Equator is exclusive of both first world and good weather.
Dakyron Member	Thu May 28 14:55:13 Seems like southwest Texas would also be a viable option. Somewhere east of El Paso. You could launch east over the gulf, have good weather, other than the occasional hurricane.
sam adams Member	Thu May 28 14:55:24 250 footlong.
sam adams Member	Thu May 28 14:59:38 "Seems like southwest Texas would also be a viable option. Somewhere east of El Paso." Indeed. Its a decent spot. My buddies at blue origin go there for their little tests. But the latitude could be lower and has no water access for the great rockets.
sam adams Member	Thu May 28 15:02:15 There used to be a group that would drag rockets to the equator on barges and then just launch them from the barges. A little bit of latitude is worth a lot of money apperently.
Forwyn Member	Thu May 28 15:15:02 Time to annex Mexico. Cancun launch pad when? And if there's a catastrophic failure, it will break up over Cuba. Win-win
sam adams Member	Sat May 30 14:00:38 30 mins Wx looking decent
tumbleweed the wanderer	Sat May 30 14:28:40 fitting pic of Bob & Doug http://cdn...ent/uploads/2018/01/1a0zma.jpg
smart dude Member	Sat May 30 14:28:56 trump will try to take credit for this
sam adams Member	Sat May 30 14:39:00 Well that rocked
Wrath of Orion Member	Sat May 30 14:39:24 Yes, very enjoyable (and successful).
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Sat May 30 14:45:15 Take us to Mars.
State Department Member	Sat May 30 14:58:04 Hell yeah.
jergul large member	Sat May 30 15:00:52 Nice to see that you are LEO capable again after only a 9 year hiatus.
jergul large member	Sat May 30 15:05:41 For the record. Manned flights to the ISS Shuttles (US) - 13 Musks (US) - 1 Soyuz (RU) - 48
sam adams Member	Sat May 30 15:08:29 Poor jergul is jealous.
Wrath of Orion Member	Sat May 30 15:16:01 Interesting that jergul can't even comment on it without passive aggressive snark.
jergul large member	Sat May 30 15:16:26 Sammy Is it not you that is jealous? Its not hard to imagine the hay you would have made of Russia not sending manned flights for 9 years after their platforms showed a unfortunate tendency to explode and kill the payload. Then you would laugh at Putin once Russia finally launched a private rocket to the ISS. The numbers are just to put things in perspective. I am not at all jealous. It was time to showcase that you do not need to send pork into space. Known in Russia for a while, but is not common knowledge now that the US propaganda machine has pun into action. Reusables is the only truly interesting part beyond that - though I think Musk would be pushing for a Space Needle if only there had been a way to monetize freight properely for that. Space needles is the best way to escape the gravity well paradox if we imagine lifting more than trivial weights into space (I have no idea what the collective payload weight humans have put into orbit since Sputnik, but I think we would be surprised at how little it is).
jergul large member	Sat May 30 15:17:22 WoO You say with a passive aggressive snark. Its just about perspective. Its good to have. You should try it sometime.
Average Ameriacn Member	Sat May 30 15:20:19 MAGA! Hillary would have never achieved that.
Wrath of Orion Member	Sat May 30 15:20:44 That's fucking hilarious coming from you.
jergul large member	Sat May 30 15:21:19 Aint that the truth? Hillary is many things, but she aint no Elon Musk.
jergul large member	Sat May 30 15:22:07 WoO My thing in this forum is perspective. I mirror arguments all the time and several times today so far.
Wrath of Orion Member	Sat May 30 15:22:37 Damn, the level of butthurt from jergul is nuts. I'm not sure why this has triggered you.
jergul large member	Sat May 30 15:24:08 You are the one coming off with a dildo up your ass WoO. Stop projecting, mkay? I said several nice things about the launch high lighting the actually relevant bits about it.
Wrath of Orion Member	Sat May 30 15:28:16 lmfao You also confuse "providing perspective" with arguing only for the sake of arguing. Yes, you're right, just about all you do here is "provide perspective." Call it that if it makes you feel better.
Habebe Member	Sat May 30 15:30:14 Elon Musk is probably the greatest African American alive.
jergul large member	Sat May 30 15:30:49 Not spaceneedle. That seems to be a building in Seatle. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator
Seb Member	Sat May 30 16:01:20 Jergul: Industrialising rocketry is a hell of a lot easier than inventing the bespoke materials needed for a space elevator.
hood Member	Sat May 30 16:08:49 "For the record. Manned flights to the ISS Shuttles (US) - 13 Musks (US) - 1 Soyuz (RU) - 48" Market competitive rockets: Legacy US: 0 Russia: 0 Musk: 3 Just "providing perspective" for what actually matters going forward.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Sat May 30 16:21:04 What the fuck is Trump talking about?
Habebe Member	Sat May 30 16:28:01 Hood, Very market competitive. Old US rockets cost about 500 million a pop. Musks are 60-90 million.... Plus they look cooler.
jergul large member	Sat May 30 16:43:43 Seb Also, that. But this is still babysteps. Hood The gain in productivity barely registers against the backdrop of how incredibly inefficient Russian space agencies is and has always been. NASA was always better, except for the bit about exploding. But cute that you would invoke market competative to a sector plagued by cronic pork in the billions of dollars range. Habebe Total costs per launch is closer to 5 billion.
jergul large member	Sat May 30 16:45:27 For NASA. Space X? Well, how many payloads has it put up and what is the total cost of its programme? On the bright side, it will be easy enough for Musk to half the cost per launch :-).
jergul large member	Sat May 30 16:49:02 Seb My point was mostly that space afficiendoes are dreaming of the wrong things. Liquid propellant launches is like cheering forth efficiency gains in horse carriage production. Chemical reactions simply cannot defeat the gravity well in a manner suited to intrastellar colonization. I doubt we have sent up a Nimitz class carrier equivalent in payload yet. Fine that it amounts to a small town, but its a pretty small small town.
Habebe Member	Sat May 30 16:50:56 Jergul, Im not saying your wrong, but how do you figure or where did you read that regarding cost?
jergul large member	Sat May 30 16:55:10 I actually just heard it on the Norwegian news. The sunk costs on space launch programmes are hideously large. Everyone prefers to ignore fixed costs and the costs of R&D, and simply focus on the added cost of actually making a launch. Which gives the 500 million price tag. Bad, but the truth is far worse. Russia is worse. Far worse in terms of productivity, but it has gotten away with paying their rocket scientists with potatoes for a while.
Seb Member	Sat May 30 16:59:28 Jergul: You can't build a space elevator without a substantial space based industry. Rocketry is still the only game in town for now. Even if you had electromagnetic accelerators, the g-forces are too strong for people and making all hardware you want to put in orbit rugged against those accelerations isn't going to work. You need to bootstrap your way to anything else, and reducing cost per kilo is the first step. Pretty sure musk would love to build an elevator and accelerators, and nuclear thermal rockets. But none of those are possible without a thriving space industry outside orbit, which requires rockets first.
jergul large member	Sat May 30 17:06:09 Seb I don't think there is an interdependency beyond the propaganda effects of consistently putting stuff into semi-permanent orbit. The required advances will come from other industries.
jergul large member	Sat May 30 17:08:44 Cost cutting may actually undermine the development of systems able to lift actually relevant amounts of payload into orbit (relevant in terms of intrastellar colonization). We will probably end up seeing China or something bootstrapping its way to something reasonably efficient and with an acceptable scale.
Habebe Member	Sat May 30 17:23:05 Jergul, Well yeah, we have spent ungodly amounts of money on R&D, im not sure of the details on how much Spacex has spent, but the new dragons are supposed* ( key word) to get launches down to 2 million, we would be thrilled at 10 million.
jergul large member	Sat May 30 17:29:41 http://www.futuretimeline.net/data-trends/6.htm Still just launch costs. Fixed costs + R&D not included.
Average Ameriacn Member	Sat May 30 17:32:43 Biggest achievement of Norway space program http://www...-at-the-Norwegian-Space-Centre Name change at the Norwegian Space Centre The Norwegian Space Centre is now called the Norwegian Space Agency.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Sat May 30 17:36:37 It doesn't matter with what technology we get there, every step is another step towards realizing the goal. Right now the only one with a vision is Musk and he is getting things done and keeping humanity on a path we slipped out of in the 70's. But sure, if it costs nearly 2 million USD to launch a grown man into space, that will obviously severely slow down this dream. A space elevator or sled sound great on paper and it would lower the bar for entry considerably, but they are still in a conceptual phase. Hopefully the material issue is only a matter of engineering. I think what seb is getting at is that once in space, there are tons of other problems to solve and engineer ourselves out of, lessons that can not be learned here on the ground. That work needs to still be done.
jergul large member	Sat May 30 17:44:33 Nimi That is sort of my argument too. The work that needs to be done at the scale it needs to be done is impossible without a space elevator. Thinking that more of the kind of launches we have done for 50 years is a major contribution beyond keeping the dream alive is a bit misguided. Today, we gather to celebrate yet another 2 people being shuttled to the ISS and consider it a major achievement based on...cost efficiency? Its nice, but it is the wrong dream. If anything, it may be a distraction.
Habebe Member	Sat May 30 18:52:26 Jergul, Are you talking about research we have already done/paid for or research we are doing/will need to do? The nice thing about Musks way is that he helps pay for some of the R&D by other commercial means such as starlink internet. NASA still does research, we just don't build rockets anymore. Honestly, the best thing Obama ever did.
Habebe Member	Sat May 30 18:55:30 Considering cost was a major*** obstacle, yes we should celebrate making it vastly cheaper.Its a stepping stone, Musks true dream is actually to have a colony on Mars.
LazyCommunist Member	Sun May 31 05:43:49 How dare he to steal these lines from North Korean speeches? http://www...hat-got-its-start-a-decade-ago said Vice President Pence, who called the launch "a tribute to the vision and leadership of a president who, from the very first days of this administration, was determined to revive NASA and American leadership in human space exploration."
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Sun May 31 05:54:34 Jergul There are problems of scale, I have nerded over this a lot. I don't think it is possible to reach the scale we need to do what I dream of with rockets. But there are a wide range of problems of different scale. Even building the institutional tradition and making it part of the culture and a mission of humanity, that alone has value.
jergul large member	Sun May 31 08:22:29 Nimi We agree then. I have nerded over this extensively myself. Space stuff has value. Reseach is done on the ISS, scientific probes are sent up, the world as we know it could not exist without satelittes. But the scale. So tiny. The sum of payloads we have sent up. So small. Chemical reactions cannot get us to where we think it will. Not even within the Continent, country, State and town where the ballpark might be. People are making order of magnitude errors imagining otherwise.
Habebe Member	Sun May 31 20:20:26 So what ever happened to blue origin?
Seb Member	Mon Jun 01 04:02:14 Not nearly as psyched up about this as the vertical landing.
jergul large member	Mon Jun 01 04:37:06 Finally a sensible person. Reusables is the important thing, not duplicating something we have done for 50 years and that Russia does habitually quite a few times a year.
Habebe Member	Mon Jun 01 08:51:06 Dropping launch costs is intimately linked to reusables. I get it, doing something cheaper isn't the moat exciting. But it's sort of how we had computers for years, and then Steve jobs came along with the woz and got them cheap enough to have in your home. 2 million, while not quite there yet is cheap enough for regular people to launch into space.
Seb Member	Mon Jun 01 09:53:38 Habebe: Point is, reusables atte what he did previously. This is just another souyz pod.
Habebe Member	Mon Jun 01 11:42:39 Seb, Its still a step in the right direction. Albeit a less exciting one.
jergul large member	Mon Jun 01 13:52:50 Apple products are your idea of what is cheap to have in a home?
Habebe Member	Mon Jun 01 16:15:03 Jergul, I'm refering to the apple 2. So like early home pcs. Compared to computers the size of city blocks. SpaceX has done two other things. 1. They've made space sexy again.Musk has a 9 year olds sense of cool, he is flying fucking dragons into space. 2. He has proven that we can still go to space. This is probably more a local US thing. We haven't seen a NASA launch for lile a decade. Truth be told they were growing boring then, but now we're doing it again and it seems awesome.
jergul large member	Mon Jun 01 16:54:13 My first PC was an IBM. Macs are many things, but they have never been cheap. Its a local thing hyped to international importance beyond any practical meaning. Thats propaganda for you. I am sad I can no longer tease sammy about not having the capability to transport people into orbit, but nice that you have rejoined.
swordtail Anarchist Prime	Mon Jun 01 17:05:36 what a shit load of government money and knowhow can do. musk is a genius!
hood Member	Mon Jun 01 17:23:24 "As of March 2018, SpaceX had over 100 launches on its manifest representing about $12 billion in contract revenue." vs: http://en...._Launch_System#Funding_history I'd say 100 launches for $12 billion is pretty fucking amazing vs. 0 launches for $18 billion.
Hrothgar Member	Tue Jun 02 02:07:19 It's no contest - Elon and his flamboyant crazy ways IS the genius achiever of my lifetime. He will be remembered like Eisenstein or Thomas Edison or the Wright brothers.
Seb Member	Tue Jun 02 05:09:08 Maybe Edisson. But not Wright or Einstein.
Seb Member	Tue Jun 02 05:10:06 Hood: Does Spacex have debt though?
Seb Member	Tue Jun 02 05:10:35 The relevant figure is the amount of investment and revenue into Spacex.
jergul large member	Tue Jun 02 05:16:55 The comparison to Edison is rather good.
Habebe Member	Tue Jun 02 08:18:33 Edison, but with better business ethics.
Seb Member	Tue Jun 02 08:33:06 Habebe: Not necessarily actually, if you dig around a bit. Asside from the union busting, harassing of staff and whistle-blowers, deeply shady stuff about trying to frame a whistle-blower, the stock manipulation etc. there was some suggestion that the key ideas for re-usable boosters were brought to him by a guy, who he has then sidelined and screwed in a similar way to Tesla (haha, you are my employee, nah, not giving you a share of the business, of course everyone gets stock options these days, but like, you know, a proportionate level of the size given contribution.) but unlike Tesla this fellow decided to suck it up.
Seb Member	Tue Jun 02 08:33:32 An workplace safety violations.
Seb Member	Tue Jun 02 08:37:34 Musk is a smart chap, he's a great salesman and front man. He's got a fairly good grasp of business strategies etc. But he's also a bit of a shit-heel, engages in some very dubious practice, and one shouldn't conflate the scientific and engineering genius of his employees with his ability to pull off the business side. I also think he has at times been a liability for the firms he owns/runs, and gone through periods of executive burnout where he probably ought to have taken a step back for a bit. Edison is a good comparison in many ways. Bezos though, is by any definition going to be recognised as the greatest businessman of the generation, probably followed by Jack Ma.
hood Member	Tue Jun 02 08:59:00 "Does Spacex have debt though?" This I don't know. But any debt they do have wouldn't exactly frighten anyone at this point, considering their Falcon series rockets are the cheapest out there and currently the most reliable active US made rocket. If they aren't profitable, it's because they're pulling an Amazon and reinvesting their money (Starship, Starlink) in a sustainable way.
Habebe Member	Tue Jun 02 09:23:17 Seb, Musk honestly seems less interested in making profit to male himself wealthy than to turn a profit so that he can do some cool shit that interests him. Tesla for example has freely open sourced there cars ( at least some) Eddison was a known monopololist and anti capitalist. As for debt, SpaceX is known for good financials, he may have have 250 million in debt, I know they were looking into it. But at this point they are too important to fail and their number one customer is the US government, thats a good client. Starlink seems to be leading the way and doing well too.
Seb Member	Tue Jun 02 09:53:17 Hood: No, but in terms of launch per funding, should be factored in of comparing to Boeing etc on SLS. If SLS have achieved 0 launches for 18b but spacex has 20b in investment and 12b in revenue, SLS failure to deliver looks less unimpressive. Also I think SLS is higher payload to higher orbit (though falcon is modular). But it's clear Spacex is a better organisation built around agility and sustainable operations at low price point. Agree that Spacex is very competitive so investors aren't losing sleep.
hood Member	Tue Jun 02 10:19:19 Sure, but the entire Falcon 9 stack (not including the Heavy) cost them like $400 million. If SpaceX isn't actually profitable, they're undoubtedly at the point where they could be profitable at any time they chose to pull back on R&D.
jergul large member	Tue Jun 02 16:43:02 Why is "profitable" a relevant metric?
sam adams Member	Tue Jun 02 18:05:25 Because capitalism is how shit gets made, comrade pinko.
	show deleted posts