Space X

[Duncan A]

He’s a bloody loony but he’s made an amazing thing happen. The line between genius and insanity is as slim as ever.

We're making steady progress here at the Trevanion Space Program, We're hoping for a manned mission in the next couple of months.

Have we got any volunteers?

I hope no olivewood was harmed in the making of that piece of lunacy!

 

[Duncan A]

Sorry mixing it up with TN in Greece. And all I've had is a cup of tea!
Duncan

 

[pcb1962]

I'm giving all credit i can give to the engineers and skilled crafts people who designed and built it. Musk can have everyone elses admiration.

That's a strange thing to say. Musk is himself a very skilled and imaginative engineer, innovation in both his companies is driven from the top down. Vance's biography is well worth reading.

 

[D_W]

Everyone is very excited that the USA can finally, after I don't know how many years, manage to do what the Russians have been doing continually since the late 50s, and what the USA itself could do up until the 80s. "One small step for Elon". (Not saying it isn't technically outstanding, because I couldn't make one, not even using SketchUp.)

And the Greeks have had a space program for 2,000 years.

[youtube]nkI4Iqm-1Wg[/youtube]

Have we got any volunteers?

Talk to these people - they seem keen:

The job of the shuttle was a payloader. When the payload is gone, then it's a bloated super expensive (and dangerous) system to run.

Perhaps the most impressive thing of all in all of this is seeing a booster come down backwards from space, steer itself and land on a platform (or in the case when there's a pair, they can do a synchronized landing).

 

[El Barto]

What possible reason is there to go to Mars? Two years to get there, at the bottom of a gravity well, so you have to fight to get back, and no real, worthwhile assets to bring home..

Science, curiosity. What makes humans worth their space, rather than dirty moneygrabbing capitalism.

Having made a right mess of our environment on Earth, we should not extend our sane destructive habits into space.

Well done to the excellent set of engineers Mr Musk has managed to assemble.

It's bizarre to me that people are looking at colonising Mars when that money and effort could actually be put to good use by fixing Earth. Seems very weird.

 

[sploo]

It's easy to imagine this stuff is easy, when it's actually very hard, as Boeing seem to be proving too.

Indeed. I "fondly" remember an awful lot of very expensive equipment being randomly spread over several square km of French Guinean swamp. Not my fault, I hasten to add!

 

[D_W]

I'm giving all credit i can give to the engineers and skilled crafts people who designed and built it. Musk can have everyone elses admiration.

I watched it with my 6 year old son who happened to still be awake and in no way did i keep him awake for it.......... :wink:

As for NASA misplacing stuff,find me a governement agency that doesn't.

10 points to both of them and the teams who did this.

It's easy to always assume the person at the top is an egomaniacal figurehead who gives pep talks while everyone else does the work.

That's not accurate here.

Without Musk, this doesn't happen. Too much negative and positive news has been published as clickbait to get people to read, and the real narrative of what he's done is lost in garnering clicks.

He's absolutely bonkers about space and has been since being a child. Before any of this started, he had visions of making inexpensive rockets that could colonize space (or send things like greenhouse experiments to mars). As of 2012, I believe he participated in and made every single final design decision and knows everything about the rockets end to end.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/spacex-ent ... -to-space/

Note in this story that he tried to buy an ICBM from Russia (with his own money) to repurpose, and then put in $100MM of his own money back before he was worth as much as he is now. I've seen elsewhere that his constant determination on doing things safer, simpler and cheaper led to them manufacturing parts for the falcon rockets in house (when you call the shots, that persistence and risk taking is necessary) .

If you read his demeanor in that interview, when they talk about people who insulted him, his response was more or less "OK, so I don't know what I don't know. Isn't that true for everyone?"

8 years ago when this article was written, we now know how far away they were from putting astronauts in space. I wonder what else he can envision that he supposedly can't do.

Notice also that he thought he would lose all of his invested money and fail, but in principle, believes that space colonization is mandatory for mankind.

Giving him credit doesn't minimize the contributions or credit given to the rest of his team. He's a problem solver and a visionary, not a virtue signaling pep talker.

 

[woodhutt]

I'm afraid I can't get excited over Space X.
Being old enough to remember watching Sputnik crossing the night sky, shortly followed by Gagarin's first orbit and then eventually the moon landings in '69, I find the launch of another manned rocket a bit same old same old.
I am however impressed by the technology involved in the recovery of the stage one for re-use. That is something more akin to the space travel visualized in my childhood comics. 8)
Pete

 

[Rorschach]

I'm afraid I can't get excited over Space X.
Being old enough to remember watching Sputnik crossing the night sky, shortly followed by Gagarin's first orbit and then eventually the moon landings in '69, I find the launch of another manned rocket a bit same old same old.
I am however impressed by the technology involved in the recovery of the stage one for re-use. That is something more akin to the space travel visualized in my childhood comics. 8)
Pete

The bit that you are impressed by is that bit to be be excited about. :roll:

 

[Sheffield Tony]

The capsule interior images are something quite different to memories of old though, aren't they ? The old days of Apollo or even the shuttle it was a scene of olive drab and chromed toggle switches. Now touch screens, posh chairs and sleek(ish) spacesuits. It does all look more like the Science Fiction of my youth, not the science fact.

But this fits with my firm belief that SF does not predict the future, but guide it. SF writers provide the sort of imagination that we engineer types can often lack. Engineers of my era grew up reading and watching SF to now be attempting to make it real.

But yes, not just the booster landing but the level of automation of docking and indeed the whole flight. Not like Armstrong landing Apollo 11 by manual control with not that many seconds of fuel to go before it became a one way trip. Computation and control has come on, although the old style seat of the pants spaceflight may have been more exciting. But I'm an engineer. I was still excited

 

[D_W]

But this fits with my firm belief that SF does not predict the future, but guide it. SF writers provide the sort of imagination that we engineer types can often lack. Engineers of my era grew up reading and watching SF to now be attempting to make it real.

Much like the change in interiors in airplane cockpits. A friend of mine got into flying about 25 years ago. I remember even on moderately priced planes (like $1M new) how dizzying the density of the mechanical-looking avionics were. Then, jets started getting "garmin stacks" and such in the middle, and now nearly everything in some planes looks spartan with several screens.

I'm sure it's cheaper to make. Just like everything else.

In the world of guitar stuff, getting quality switches and pots gets harder over time as less and less actually uses such things - not to mention vacuum tubes. In the old days, demand for quality tubes was so high that there was no need to "match" them for audio use. They were made to a closer tolerance. Now, people (including me) will pay extra for matched tubes for guitar amps because of the much looser spec of foreign tubes. NOS old tubes are priced like unobtanium sometimes.

Or more specifically, I think Musk's preference for simplicity, reliability and cost efficiency dictates use of the stuff in the dragon capsule. I can imagine that just in the space shuttle itself, someone must've been responsible for checking and deoxidizing all of the switches.

 

[sploo]

Or more specifically, I think Musk's preference for simplicity, reliability and cost efficiency dictates use of the stuff in the dragon capsule. I can imagine that just in the space shuttle itself, someone must've been responsible for checking and deoxidizing all of the switches.

Memory fades (this was over two decades ago), but I recall sitting in on a pitch from a CAD/simulator software vendor (who were trying to sell us their product - we were a small satellite builder). They claimed NASA used their software to model every component of the space shuttle - and it could simulate details such as relay bounce, and tell you which area of a board would get warm.

 

[CHJ]

I guess someone has done the sums in relation to serious in flight instability and the ability to use a touch screen, I'm blowed if I can make sensible use of my cars Infotainment/navigation touch screen whilst in motion and have to resort to the physical knob switched menus, even as a passenger.

Do you think it's a case of things getting so sophisticated and refined that it's auto recovery or nothing, or perhaps they have basic manual hand grab overrides?

 

[AJB Temple]

In the world of guitar stuff, getting quality switches and pots gets harder over time as less and less actually uses such things - not to mention vacuum tubes. In the old days, demand for quality tubes was so high that there was no need to "match" them for audio use. They were made to a closer tolerance. Now, people (including me) will pay extra for matched tubes for guitar amps because of the much looser spec of foreign tubes. NOS old tubes are priced like unobtanium sometimes.

Or more specifically, I think Musk's preference for simplicity, reliability and cost efficiency dictates use of the stuff in the dragon capsule. I can imagine that just in the space shuttle itself, someone must've been responsible for checking and deoxidizing all of the switches.

Didn't know you are into guitars and tube amps DW. Fully agree that getting top quality valve tubes is much trickier now. I have a modest stock of about 200 old tubes for various amps like Fender Bassman (original), Boogies, a few esoteric things and some fairly modern American stuff like Atlantic. Electronic emulation and simulation of these does not get close. I also bought up a stock of machine heads (Grover et al) from a music shop that went bust a few years ago. I doubt I will use them, but eventually someone will need original parts to restore old Gibsons, Fenders, Gretsch, Martins and even PRS etc.

 

[Rorschach]

I guess someone has done the sums in relation to serious in flight instability and the ability to use a touch screen, I'm blowed if I can make sensible use of my cars Infotainment/navigation touch screen whilst in motion and have to resort to the physical knob switched menus, even as a passenger.

Do you think it's a case of things getting so sophisticated and refined that it's auto recovery or nothing, or perhaps they have basic manual hand grab overrides?

There are physical switches as well as the touch screen. From what I could gather they don't have a lot of manual control during any period where instability is likely to occur so maybe it just isn't an issue.

 

[D_W]

In the world of guitar stuff, getting quality switches and pots gets harder over time as less and less actually uses such things - not to mention vacuum tubes. In the old days, demand for quality tubes was so high that there was no need to "match" them for audio use. They were made to a closer tolerance. Now, people (including me) will pay extra for matched tubes for guitar amps because of the much looser spec of foreign tubes. NOS old tubes are priced like unobtanium sometimes.

Or more specifically, I think Musk's preference for simplicity, reliability and cost efficiency dictates use of the stuff in the dragon capsule. I can imagine that just in the space shuttle itself, someone must've been responsible for checking and deoxidizing all of the switches.

Didn't know you are into guitars and tube amps DW. Fully agree that getting top quality valve tubes is much trickier now. I have a modest stock of about 200 old tubes for various amps like Fender Bassman (original), Boogies, a few esoteric things and some fairly modern American stuff like Atlantic. Electronic emulation and simulation of these does not get close. I also bought up a stock of machine heads (Grover et al) from a music shop that went bust a few years ago. I doubt I will use them, but eventually someone will need original parts to restore old Gibsons, Fenders, Gretsch, Martins and even PRS etc.

I played guitar young, still play some now and have built a couple of fender style guitars. Building furniture just isn't something I like very much, so guitars and tools is kind of a natural combination. Never got into tube amps as a kid (we played live and got paid - not a lot, but enough to make it worthwhile - i had a solid state fender back then and two guitars - that was the 1990s and it just needed to be loud), but recognize now as i'm older, less loud and more warm (just at the edge of breakup is good). A lot of the older equipment needs refurb (I don't work on amps), but the good stuff had much better pots and switches than a lot of the new stuff.

Someone who had worked on electronics a lot at the time informed me that those analog components are never coming back at the volume and quality they used to come in - the pots and switches were used in amps, but applied to much wider use - lots of demand, lots of suppliers, lots of competition. I haven't followed up on all of it but understand that some military stuff in china and the USSR may still use tubes. I have no idea what they may have in the consumer market that requires them.

Wish I'd have had the foresight to buy open lots of tubes on ebay in the mid 1990s when it first started. Just checked my tube boxes, some china, some slovak republic (they say that on the new boxes - jjs, I guess that's czech), and not sure where mullards are made now, but probably somewhere very far east of where I'm sitting.

The tube compression without being gainy or sounding fake is hard to emulate elsewhere - maybe someone has done it, but I tried DSPs and some of the popular modeling amps (not the junky ones) and they're all still off the mark. Favorite amp at this point is a small chinese made point to point marshall TMB clone - it's really easy to set, pentode and triode and seems to like everything except ceramic pickups (no loss for me). I have a mesa mark V, too, but playing much on it is above my pay grade. It's a great amp, but not particularly simple.

The best solid state amps I've heard, actually, were simple and made in the1980s (marshall mosfet and some of the amps fender was making at the time - but still something missing from tubes).

Resisting the desire to buy a tube power amp for the basement stereo.

 

[woodhutt]

The capsule interior images are something quite different to memories of old though, aren't they ? The old days of Apollo or even the shuttle it was a scene of olive drab and chromed toggle switches. Now touch screens, posh chairs and sleek(ish) spacesuits. It does all look more like the Science Fiction of my youth, not the science fact.

But this fits with my firm belief that SF does not predict the future, but guide it. SF writers provide the sort of imagination that we engineer types can often lack. Engineers of my era grew up reading and watching SF to now be attempting to make it real.

But yes, not just the booster landing but the level of automation of docking and indeed the whole flight. Not like Armstrong landing Apollo 11 by manual control with not that many seconds of fuel to go before it became a one way trip. Computation and control has come on, although the old style seat of the pants spaceflight may have been more exciting. But I'm an engineer. I was still excited

As I said and as a retired engineer myself, I am very impressed by the technology involved in the recovery system of the first stage booster. For the rest, the Gucci spacesuits and cabin display by Samsung technologies seems simply cosmetic if functional, it still only combines to put men into space which is not new.
The benefits of space research are more difficult to evaluate. Sure we are all aware of some spin-offs from space research but much of it is self-driven. I mean that, the technology has advanced in order to accomplish the desired outcome - not as a result of the outcome.
Given the vast investment involved, I cannot but wonder at how much more beneficial it might be to spend some of that money down here. With 3/4 of the globe covered by water, we have an enormous 'inner space' that could be explored to the benefit of mankind (sustainable sub-sea farming etc.). There are also vast tracts of the earth which at present are infertile and uninhabitable. Presumably, if it is intended in future to populate other planets, this would require solutions to house and feed inhabitants in similarly unwelcoming environments. Research into such down here on Earth could be beneficial both in the immediate and distant future. I know that such research is being done, but not with the same level of investment or apparent urgency.
Pete