Youtube hearted comments of Tony Wilson (@tonywilson4713).

  1. I'm an aerospace engineer and agree 100% with all that you have said in this. If there is one thing I'd add is that MOST CF for pressure vessels like rocket fuel tanks is woven on. So late the fibres in some layers is at different angles. That forms that checker patter you often see with CF. The reason its done is you always want some of the fibres under TENSION (being stretched) and that weaving does that by translating the stresses via the resin. In all the vidoes I have seen of Oceangate they are just winding the pre-preg strip onto the casing. maybe they did weave other layers but so far I haven't seen it. This is the point I think you have dead right - there are unanswered questions which wont be answered until the reports are released. PLUS we really do need to know how & why this happened.
    125
  2. AEROSPACE ENGINEER HERE: I am going to try and explain how this gyroscopic control sounds straight forward but its anything but straight forward. The math involved is actually the hardest math there is in all of engineering. Sorry for the length of the explanation, but there is an interesting story at the end I promise. FYI - I love Scotts channel its fantastic. The only thing I don't like is he's flying and I'm not at the moment. In my final year when we had to do 2 high level aerospace options and a few chose to do Spacecraft Dynamics which we foolishly thought would "be cool" because it sounded cool (sort of). For those unfamiliar most universities have a ranking system for classes at my college (U. of Illinois) everything was a 100, 200, 300 or 400 level class. Most undergraduate classes are 100 & 200 level while 300 & 400 are for postgraduates. However most degrees required 2 x 300 level classes. In engineering (as far as I remember) every 300 level class had a 400 level equivalent. The difference was the 400 level required a term paper that had to be presented like it would be for a conference. So when you do an engineering 300 level class you do it with the 400 level students but they have to do their term paper and present it to the class (see below). The 2 most common classes my senior class did 2 were Finite Element Analysis and Orbital Mechanics. FEA because its reasonably straight forward and is used across many engineering fields and OM because that's what both NASA and the satellite industry want. Spacecraft Dynamics is an alternative to Orbital Mechanics and the difference is like the difference between a pilot and a navigator on an airplane. A navigator works out the path you will fly while the pilot flies it. Orbital Mechanics is analogous to navigation while Spacecraft dynamics is analogous to piloting. Within 2 weeks of starting that class EVERY undergraduate tried to get out of it once we realised how hard the math was. Orbital Mechanics is generally regarded as one of the most math intensive classes any engineer can take because its done on spherical coordinate systems and nothing travels in a straight line. Spacecraft Dynamics is another level up on that because not only does it require solving simultaneous non-linear differential equations but doing it with coordinate transformations as well. The Basics To most human beings we see the world in Up-Down-Left-Right-Forward-Back. We call that a cartesian coordinate system. Think of a normal X-Y graph and then look up "smith chart" in YouTube search. In space everything is in spherical coordinates. Further every major body (like the Sun and the planets) there's its own spherical coordinate system and those systems are moving at different speeds and different orbits. That's what makes orbital mechanics the headache that it is. There's no nice simply x-y-z its all r, θ, φ. Navigating from just the earth to the Moon one you have to translated from the Earths (r, θ, φ) to the Moons (r, θ, φ) but if you want to go to Mars you have to go from the Earth (r, θ, φ) to the Mars (r, θ, φ) while dealing with the Suns (r, θ, φ). Yeah its coordinate systems within coordinate systems. The problem with flying a spacecraft. Why Spacecraft Dynamics gets so hard is because you have the spacecraft's own coordinate system which is in cartesian coordinates because that makes it possible to write the basic math out in the first place BUT THEN you have to translate that system into the orbital reference frame that the spacecraft is flying in and that system is a spherical coordinate system. Because the equations for gyroscopes are differential equations you start with a set of 3 dimensional simultaneous non-linear differential equations that you then have to translate into another coordinate system as well as solve it. And why is that needed - because things like Hubble have to fly in a spherical coordinate system while orientating in a cartesian system. Gyroscopes are great because they don't need fuel but there's a things called precession. Go look at Wikipedia for the page title Gyroscope. Down the right hand side there's 2 labelled pictures and 2 animations. Look at the 2nd animation where they show the effect of twisting a gyro about an input axis. This is the problem you can't just turn a gyro and expect an opposite rotation because precession causes a twist in the other axis. That's the effect of precession. This gets even more complex as you move from singular to multi-axis gyroscope systems because as you twist one gyro it causes the other gyro or gyros to also twist and then you get a compound precession and that math gets so horrible it still haunts me 37 years later. I said at the start I'd give you a good story. I did that class in 1987 during the height of Ronald Reagans Star Wars program and most (if not all) the post graduates were sponsored by DARPA and working on Star Wars stuff. I remember the term papers 2 of them presented. One was on the dynamics of rail guns but that's for another day. The other guy was doing high accuracy pointing of space based laser platforms. He was quite possibly the smartest human I have ever met in terms of applied math to an engineering problem. He could not only solve the basic math but link it to tracking other objects on other orbits as well as ballistic trajectories but what really made his work exceptional was the anti-shake system he developed. Oh Yeah and he put this into software and could make it work in 2 dimensions. It was an amazing achievement but it then needed to be done in 3 dimensions. The real problem with a space based laser platform is the platform wobbling or vibrating when it pans. There's nothing odd about that as every thing wobbles or vibrates when it pans. Things like robotic arms and satellite dishes all wobble when they pan. The difference is when they are attached to a large object like a planet or is in an fluid like air or water that gets damped out. In space however there's nothing but the structure of the spacecraft itself to dampen vibrations out. One way to deal with that is just pan slowly which is fine for telescopes like Hubble or a probe out at Saturn or Pluto but for a laser cannon you want to zap missiles NO, it has to pan fast, stop without any additional motions and shoot. So even if you could solve what's arguably one of the hardest math problems ever conceived there's still the basic mechanics of a space based laser. If you just want to hit something on the ground from space we know the basics of how fast the gun will be travelling (28,000kmh) and what the range is (240km), but what does that mean. Here's how to think of the problem. Imagine a target 2.4km away that you have to shoot. Sounds straight forward until you check the list of longest sniper shots on Wikipedia and find only 6 times in recorded history has anyone successfully shot past 2,400m and hit the target and they were snipers in a stationary position. So just hitting something that far away is hard. Now imagine being in a Ferrari ripping along at almost 280kmh and trying to make the same shot out the window. Now multiply each of those numbers by 100 and that's the basic problem of shooting a stationary object from Low Earth Orbit. which is 28,000kmh at a range of 240km. Now take the target put it on a rocket and fire it into the sky where its going Mach 10 (or more) and its maybe 10x further away at about 2,400km and that's the basic problem of shooting an ICBM from space. Once we realised what the basic task actually entailed we knew that part of Reagan's Star Wars could NOT work. There were other methods in the Star Wars program like the ground based interceptors that we know have. However 37 years ago we knew that shooting ICBMS with a space based laser was not practical. Even 37 years later with all the advances in computers its still NOT practical because the mechanics are still the same problem and you still have to solve the math problems before you even try and make it work. And those math problems are a nightmare because its a gyro problem.
    70
  3. ​ @ErikS-  I am an engineer with 30+ years. You-re right he lacks a lot of experience but from my past interactions with him on this channel he is UNLIKE SO MANY OTHERS willing to engage people who know more than he does. As a counter point so you know what I consider good and bad science and tech channels. A while back I corrected a fairly basic mistake made by the Common Sense Skeptic who's a real Elon Musk basher and being honest he's well justified in bashing Elon. But on this one video where they were trying to promote a long forgotten and dismissed alternative to getting into space I corrected them on a point regarding air launched systems. FYI - My degree is in aerospace and I knew what they said was 100% WRONG. I got a damn arrogant reply telling me I didn't know what I was talking about and should remove my comment. I then replied back and sited all sorts of examples PROVING their comment was wrong. They then deleted me from EVERWHERE on their pages. So YES Ziroth is young he does lack experience BUT IS WILLING TO LISTEN while so many others are pretty SHlTHOUSE.
    27
  4.  @EngineeringwithRosie  I did aerospace but have spent the last 30+ years in control systems. I am qualified in what gets call EEHA - Electrical Equipment for Hazardous Areas. In the context of engineering a Hazardous Area is an area that has all the time or part of the time an EXPLOSIVE GAS or EXPLOSIVE DUST mix. It has nothing to do with toxicity, physical hazards, lack of oxygen or anything else. Its the areas of control systems where we keep gas plants, chemical plants, wheat silos, sugar processing plants,.....etc. from exploding. Of all the things that engineers in my field take most seriously its Hydrogen. Not only does it leak very easily but it ignites very easily. With gas mixes there is a range of mixing where the mixes is explosive. If there is not enough ignitable gas its wont explode and if there is too much it wont explode as there isn't enough oxygen. We call these points the Lower Explosive Limit (LEL) and Upper Explosive Limit (UEL). When gas first leaks from a pipe or cylinder its 100% and then starts mixing with the air. Once it reaches the UEL it becomes explosive and stays that way until it dissipates enough to be below the LEL. Methane has an UEL of 16.4% and LEL of 4.4% while Hydrogen has a UEL of 75% and LEL of 4%. That means when Hydrogen leaks and start mixing with air it becomes explosive quite quickly and a lot quicker than methane. It also stays explosive slightly longer as it dissipates. Then there is the serious issue of hydrogen with ignition energy. Ignition energy is the minimum amount of energy that is required to get something to ignite. The minimum ignition energy for hydrogen is 0.019 mJ while for most hydrocarbons it is around 0.1mJ (approximately 5 times higher). So not only does a Hydrogen leak become explosive far quicker and stay explosive longer it takes about 1/5th the energy to go bang. That means everything we do electrically around hydrogen has to be specifically designed for hydrogen and there are some big traps in those areas. If you want to discuss further let me know.
    14
  5. This is the first YouTube video I have seen anyone do on the X-29 where you actually describe the aerodynamics correctly. I'm Australian but was lucky enough to do a degree in Aerospace Engineering in America courtesy of a sports scholarship in the late 80s. During my final year we had a series of guest lectures usually from alumni who were doing this in industry. I distinctly remember 2 of those lectures. One was on terraforming mars and the other was from an aerodynamicist who worked on the X-29. So I have heard directly from one of the guys who did the aerodynamics of this plane and everything you have said here about the positive feedback of the wingtips is 100% correct. Also my professors area was aircraft structures and he specialised in 2 things finite element analysis of axisymmetric structures and aeroelasticity. Unfortunately he didn't get to teach the class in aeroelasticity because there were never enough students signing up for it but he did explain the basics of it to me. I actually spent a summer working for him doing FEA on the APDS for the Abrams M1, but that's another story. Hers's a slightly more detailed description of wing divergence and flutter. Both wing divergence and flutter are structural effects caused by aerodynamic forces on the wing, hence the term aeroelasticity. They come from the basic fact that pressure is a force and the flow of air causes differential pressure across the surface of the wing. The first effect of that force is to bend the wing upwards. That's easily noticeable if you get a window seat on a commercial jet where you can see the wing. On the ground the wing tip will usually droop a little towards the ground but in the air the wing bends upwards. The second effect is less obvious but its a twisting effect on the wing because of the variations of the pressure across the wing. If you go fast enough those aerodynamic loads can bend or twist the wing far enough that it just breaks. That is called wing divergence because the wing simply diverges from the rest of the plane. For anyone who's a pilot that's why there's a Yellow mark on your airspeed indicator for Vne (Velocity Never Exceed). Yes the wings wont come off at that speed as there's a margin of error, but if you ca past that point and the wings stay on the plane has to go to the mechanics to find out what you damage you did do. The other effect what we call flutter is more complex and the videos below will show why it has that name. As the wing twists it also changes the angle of attack. In some wings that gets to a point where the wing starts to stall at which point in dumps the lift and untwists. It can then load up and twist again until it stalls again. Its a cyclic effect that can under certain conditions activate one of the wings dynamic characteristics (natural frequencies). There's a few good videos here on YouTube that show this. 2 of my favorites are: "How to break a glider´s wing" on the YT channel diegocodagnone "Aeroelastic Experiments - Very High Aspect Ratio Wing" on the YT channel Dani Levin About 2 minutes into the second one you can see both the wing tip twisting and the wing flexing. If you have a look through this video on the X-29 you will see that it has an incredibly thin wing. The trailing edge flaps and ailerons on the wing had to be powered and if you look carefully you'll see there's small pods under the outer wing. Those pods are the aileron actuators. the aerodynamicist who gave us that lecture explained they had to be in pods because the wing was so thin they could NOT be inside the wing. They also had to be powerful and very fast to counter the aerodynamic effects. LASTING EFFECTS of the X-29 Another thing not brought up in much detail here is that the triple redundant dynamic control system has had a massive effect on aircraft systems since. This was the first time an aircraft of any sort had a digital system where the stability of the aircraft was fully controlled by the computers. All other aircraft up to this point had their stability either designed into the airframe or was done by analog computers. This has had lasting effects on fighter design and is most notable in planes like the F-22. There's a great video on the F-22 flight control system titled "Special Lecture: F-22 Flight Controls" on the YT channel MIT OpenCourseWare, which is totally worth the time to listen to. Also on the YT Channel Ward Carroll he interviews an F-22 pilot in the video titled "Deep Intel on the F-22 Raptor" which if you watch AFTER the other video will make a lot more sense with some of what's said. That all said, if it makes you wonder why the Boeing Max-8 MCAS system was NOT even double redundant let alone triple redundant. The only answer I have there is to take your pick of stupidity, insanity, greed or a combination of all 3.
    14
  6. What a great line. I started watching Sal after seeing him on Ward Carroll's channel. Ward's an ex F-14 RIO (backseat). Sal's so good at explaining the subject of ocean going logistics that I have kept watching. I'm Australian and ocean going logistics are a big issue for us. There's even calls for us to have a NATIONALLY OWNED 20ship fleet to ensure we get or send stuff.
    13
  7. I only saw Gary for the first time recently. He might be specifically talking about Britain but what he's saying applies everywhere. I'm Australian and he could easily be describing Australia, Our government just pulled $38 Billion out of thin air during COVID at one point, with no explanation of where it came from or an explanation of how they decided why anyone got any of it. A few weeks ago when the 2021/22 publicly listed companies had their reporting season it was announced that the CEOs of the ASX 200 had a new record HIGH average salary of $9.5 million. That's a wage bill of $1.9 billion for 200 people. That doesn't include all the other executives, board members or their bonuses. Now I know where our $38 Billion went.
    10
  8. I'm an aerospace engineer (U. Illinois) and Dr. Jonathan Trent commented a while back that people are not paying attention to just how harsh of an environment Space and particularly Mars actually is. He's also commented that NOBDY is even close to a functioning self supporting closed loop bio-logical system. As a doctor you'd have a more detailed grasp of what it actually takes to sustain life. Beyond water and oxygen there's food and that means DIET. It seems that the space cadet family have just ignored that human beings EAT, PEE and POOP or as I call it the EPP problem. Your an ER doc. Does the human body stop EPP when you put it into an induced coma? And yes I know what its like to come out of an IC. People generally have no idea of going into IC but they sure do remember coming out. I'll never forget the doctor saying "Relax. Congratulations you made it!" What amazes me is that the space cadet family have as a core belief that we must become an interplanetary species to survive, because we have basically broken the life support system on the planet we live on. They then proceed to ignore the issues of life support which are at the core of their beliefs. As doc you might also have better knowledge on the psychology of cults. But my understanding is that all cults have people who CHOOSE to WILLFULLY IGNORE basic facts that are right there to be clearly seen. These are people who can look at something and then deny or dismiss it. Feel free to comment further on that.
    5
  9.  @commonsenseskeptic  I did aeronautical & astronautical engineering at Illinois in the late 80s. So far love your channel. The fact you are using simple basic math to prove points is fantastic. I totally empathize with your frustration with the "space cadet family" (SCF). I'll call them that instead of a cult. Irrespective of what we call them the point is there is too much of public discussion about technology (across all industries) being presented by people with no technical training or those with technical training who have just thrown away all they were taught. A while back Dr. Jonathan Trent (who is without doubt one of the smartest people I've ever encountered) commented that NOBODY is even close to being able to deploy a fully self sustaining closed loop biological system for off world use. So at the most fundamental basics we don't yet have the technology for long term off world self supporting habitation. That's not to say its impossible but the actual science (both R &D) hasn't been done to where we have a deployable system. Put it this way: If we only had a partial system that was deployable and could recycle SOME air, SOME water and provide SOME food, then why isn't that module already attached to the ISS. Even if it only provided a few cubic meters of Oxygen, few liters of water each week and few kilos of food each month, then that's a huge cost saving because that's supplies that DON'T need to be lifted to orbit. Go back an look at the ORIGINAL Space Station Freedom concepts that merged into the ISS. That was all being done while I was an undergrad. Those concepts called for 6-8 people stationed in space NOT 3. The simple reason why it was quickly scaled back was food, water and oxygen COSTS. Going back to basic math. Look at the next planned lunar mission. The Apollo LM had 75hours for 2 men that's 150 (2 x 75) man hours of life support. When Trump announced 4 people for 2 weeks that became 4men x 24hours x 14days or 1344 man hours. That means you need to land on the moon 9 times as much water, food, oxygen, CO2 filters, etc. and al the hardware to use it. Reducing that mission profile to 3 people on the moon for 10 days brings that back to 720 man hours, almost halving the life support requirement. Basic math is a great tool. Its also something people who like spinning daft ideas hate. In space discussions the ridiculous spin masters are the terraforming people. Way back when I was in college we had a guest lecture from an alumni who had just done a study for NASA on terraforming Mars. He basically told us to forget it. To change a planet that much was technically impossible and he gave us a list of reasons. The number one reason he gave is that planets are massive STABLE systems. For sure at the detailed level they are incredibly chaotic, but at the planetary level they are hyper stable. Otherwise they'd be falling apart. Planetary systems are like mob psychology. Its impossible to predict details like what individual members of a mob will exactly do. Yet you can predict a mobs overall behavior with incredible accuracy. That's one of the basic tenements of Isaac Asimov's psychohistory, which is now a genuine scientific field of study and we see every day in both commercial and political advertising. Its part of why public understanding of climate change is so poor. This entire concept of terraforming mars was DISMISSED by NASA over 30 years ago as folly. This is just a discussion on space. If we start going into other areas of technology like energy, water, agriculture, the ocean systems and the insane public discussions on them we'll be here for weeks. I you want to have a discussion on this stuff let me know.
    5
  10. AUSTRALIAN HERE and you could easily swap all the British place names Gary mentions for Australian place names and NOBODY would realise the story is about Britain. Just like Britain we are dominated by economists who went to places like Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, Yale, etc. We have a huge problem in Australia with calling out the nonsense of these people. There is some sort of "You must not question" mentality when it comes to people who went overseas and went to one of these "elite" universities and did economics (either as a degree or MBA). They are like some sort of sacred priesthood that speaks nothing but absolute truth when the reality is they are WRONG, WRONG and WRONG on most things.
    4
  11. I'm Australian and started watching after Ward Carroll and Juan Browne recommended him. I haven't stopped watching. Its actually a far more important subject than most people realise because of how much stuff gets moved by sea. Australia is an island and almost everything we do goes by ship. People go by air but stuff goes by ship.
    3
  12. Lets look at one of the real tragedies here. Chris Anderson has taken his creations TED & TEDx which were (past tense) brilliant and trashed it. Here's some examples of what I mean by brilliant. These are very intelligent highly skilled people giving us introductions into their work. FYI - I am an aerospace engineer and the first 4 are all STEM people. Jonathan Trent (formerly of NASA). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8lWDmz7wVU Emily Calandrelli - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9haKpJakU4 Bill Crawford - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rF5hDwZa7-0 Don Pettit - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWjdnvYok4I Nick Hanauer on Plutocrats - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2gO4DKVpa8 Cassie Jaye on Men's issues - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WMuzhQXJoY Lera Boroditsky on language - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKK7wGAYP6k These are all amazing talks by amazing people and we'd normally never get to hear what these people have to say or what they are doing if it wasn't for TED & TEDx. I am Australian and had never heard of the that tribe in Australia with no concept of Left & Right before seeing that unless I heard Lera Boroditsky's talk. What Chris Anderson has done to his own creation by sucking up to Elon Musk is a tragedy.
    3
  13. And there's a video here on YouTube that tells you how to pronounce Languedoc and its titled "How to Pronounce Languedoc? French Region Pronunciation"
    3
  14.  @commonsenseskeptic  On another note I'd love to help you do a debunk of space mining. I did a degree in aerospace (late 80s). I've worked mainly in automation, robotics and controls systems. In 2002 I met Harrison Schmitt who was here in Oz to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Apollo 17. I wanted to discuss with him satellite maintenance. Everything from my background said it was an industry waiting to boom. He quashed that quick by getting me to answer why nobody has done it? He then told me look up Helium-3. That meant mining and by chance Australia was just starting a mining construction boom to feed the Chinese beast. It too some time but I got into mine site construction and operations. Unlike all the fanbots and schemers I actually have worked on mines and helped build them and get them running. I can tell from basic numbers just how ludicrous some of the proposals are. Forget the money the tonnage is the reality. For example I worked at the Tom Price Iron Mine at one point. It produces 20MTA (million tons per annum) and its perfect for the basic numbers. Good iron ore is about 70% iron content. Lower grades are 55-60% and the really high grades are up to 95% (basically iron filings with some dirt thrown in). So for every 20 tons of iron ORE we get about 14 tons of iron. Which just so happens also is the landing capacity for the Space Shuttle. So it would basically take 1,000,000 Space Shuttle flights to handle the what just 1 iron mine does each year. Australia doesn't produce 20MTA it produces over 800MTA of ORE and China produces over 1,200MTA of ORE. Other than for incredibly rare and hyper value substances that the entire world demand is under 100tons per year will ever be feasible. Your mate Angry Astronaut just last week just pointed out the potential to mine nickel from the moon. One of my construction projects was Nickel mine. Global production of Nickel in 2020 was 2.5 million MTA (of metal). Which if we got from the moon would require about 178,000 space shuttle flights to land it here on Earth. What about Copper that's about 20MTA a year (of metal). In a way I like Anrgry because he stands up and calls out a lot of things that need calling out. BUT THEN he states some idiotic garbage and does it regularly. People can scream and yell all they like AND THEY DO. The fanbots scream at me all the time. Even if we suddenly got a Space Shuttle with 10x the capacity it still doesn't make sense. Except for incredibly rare ultra-high value substances NOBODY will be space mining anything anytime soon. So if you do want to do a debunk on the whole space mining thing let me know.
    3
  15. I actually came to this channel from Sub Brief.
    2
  16. ​ @mapper7310  I'm An Aussie and that is the point I keep trying to tell people. These issues are WORLDWIDE. I'm an engineer and my interest in economics came from a small project I did in 2016 into Australia's energy sector. Its way worse than ANYTHING the Australian people understand. When I look about the world for similar information I get the same story again and again and its all the fault of economists. I even heard the other day companies are leaving NZ because of energy costs. It took me a couple of year s to get an understanding of the cause and its 2 things. FIRST - economists think the rest of the human race are a problem they have to manage. SECOND - economists don't understand how economies actually function at the nuts & bolts level. They know how markets function because that's WHAT they are trained in. What they don't get is that market solutions don't work for certain basic requirements. They don't get that every business and household needs things like energy and water AND if you screw those things up then everything suffers additional costs. That's why their market solutions don't work for education, health care, infrastructure in general and PARTICULARLY ENERGY. They don't understand how that stuff functions and supports society. I watch people like Gary because it helps me understand how mainstream economists think and operate. His video on "Why are economists always wrong?" is something EVERYONE should watch because it explains so much. He's not perfect but the value of his information is staggeringly high.
    2
  17. Aerospace engineer here - WELL DONE.
    2
  18. To All - just to give a different perspective on a person mentioned at one point in this. Jeff Greason is mentioned several times in this video. He was a founder of XCor which has CSS rightly points out went bankrupt. Anyone can check that on XCor's history on Wikipedia. I'd just like to point out something that anyone can also check on Wikipedia. You'll see that XCor was closely associated with Burt Rutan who designed and built the X-Prize winning Space Ship One. Yes XCors entrant in the X Prize (the Lynx) failed to fly but then so did all of the other contestants. Peter Diamandis the person who ran the X-Prize also tried to get the Rocket Racing League started. He chose XCor to build the prototype for the Rocket Racing League. That prototype not only flew but once flew 7 times in a single day and to the best of my knowledge that has never been equalled or surpassed by anyone, government or private. I just wanted people to know that in his day Jeff Greason was one of the top aerospace engineers in the world. FULL DISCLOSURE - I had some limited contact with Jeff regarding his rocket motors circa 2018. I've had no contact with him since. At that time he seemed a reasonable person and very knowledgeable, which makes my quite surprised to see him associated with these people. If he does reply to CSS I hope that CSS will give him a fair opportunity.
    2
  19. And for anyone who's interested. As an engineer I agree 100% with CSS's summation of the NASA assessment of OAC's CLD proposal. My bet it took more time for someone at NASA to write up the assessment than it actually took to reject the proposal. Also CSS's assessment of the docking issues are spot on as are the balance issues he points out. This is exactly the sort of thing I wished more people in the media would point out regarding space subjects. My pet subject for unrealistic space issues is space mining and here's the basics of why. I'm Australian but did my degree in America. After meeting Harrison Schmitt in 2002 who spoke about mining the Moon for Helium-3 I went into the Australian mining industry to learn how to build and operate remote mines. I have over 15 years of first hand on site experience building and operating mines and I can state in all honesty that even the boffins at NASA haven't got a clue. I written to several people who have done TEDx talks on space mining and the one who did reply was actually an architect. He is actually a decent person who did the TEDx as a public speaking exercise. He was quite honest that he didn't know the subject that well. He sent me the main source of material for his talk which was the published papers from a NASA Conference on future lunar activities. It included quite a bit on mining and I can tell you all the NASA people need to actually spend some REAL TIME on mine sites seeing how they actually work. The biggest giveaway for anyone interested is to look at how they plan to do maintenance. If they say nothing then that shows they know nothing about mining and if they say robots then they know nothing about maintenance of heavy duty machinery. At its most basic mining is about getting what you want out of rocks. Just digging rocks and dirt out of the ground puts wear and tear on the machinery. After that you smash those rocks into smaller rocks and in some cases into powder. Yeah - at its most basic mining is about smashing rocks and that is incredibly hard on all the machinery. Anyone who thinks there's no maintenance is delusional and anyone who thinks it can be done with robots is ignorant of heavy duty machinery. And if CSS wants me to help on a "Why space mining is bunk!" video - then YES I WILL HELP IF HE ASKS.
    2
  20. NO GARY (from Australia) THANK YOU. For helping the rest of us better understand how the system works and how it works against us.
    2
  21. HEY SAL - From Australia (love the channel and just hyped you on Peter Zeihan's geopolitics channel) Since we understand the metric system better and also have to deal Americans we are fairly good at quick approximate conversions. if you understand the 3meters is very close to 10 feet (its actually 9.84252) then its simple. For meters to feet just divide by 3 (you don't need to be exact just close enough) and then add a zero. So 8.52986 meters divided by 3 is close to 2.8 (and a bit) which means 28ft and the precision is 27.98510499 Going the other way is equally simple divide feet by 10 and multiply by 3. 57 ft -> 5.7 x 3 = 15+2.1 = 17.1m and the precise answer is 17.34. Its NOT exact but a quick way to get close. Just remember going meters to feet it will tend to give a bigger number than exact and going feet to meters will give a smaller number than actual BUT either way you will be close enough in most cases.
    1
  22. HEY SAL Did you really say $660 a month to be at seas for weeks on end? FARK - no wonder people like Bezos, The Møller family and others are Billionaires. And they all complain about what it costs to deliver stuff????
    1
  23.  @wgowshipping  Sal in a crazy way you make these things seem almost sane. Just so you know Ward Carrol recommended your channel.
    1