Comments by "Scott Franco" (@scottfranco1962) on "Scott Manley" channel.

  1. "starliner is not haunted" Sure, that's what they SAY.
    49
  2. Yea, the CPUs just got faster. Also, they figured out that you could use GPS to correct cheap MEMS accelerometers and replace all those mechanical gyros. GPS may indeed be one of the most signifcant ROIs we ever got from space exploration.
    16
  3. Now I know how dogs feel when they listen to people talk...
    9
  4. As a light plane pilot, I have been lit up several times while landing. It appears as a very bright spot off to the side while flying. There is really only one thing that could cause that. Its only mildly annoying, but I also know there are much more powerful lasers out there you could buy.
    7
  5. Thanks for the fuel color thing. I actually had someone contaminate my fuel, I found out about it later when the FAA called everyone who had fueled at that station. The owner was not talking, but we speculated that one of the ramp rats had dumped some jet-a into the 100ll tank. The owner lost his ability to get fuel. Anyways, the "jet a plus 100ll equals no color" thing was told to me several times then. In fact, I noted when checking the drains after fueling that, in fact, the blue color was gone or very light, and the owner gave me a...pardon me, "untrue" (trying to stay civil here) story about the fuel arriving by accident without the blue dye. The central fuel provider (the one with the trucks) told me this was, indeed a rasher of.."untrueness". Its good to see that demo of what really happens. So why would an FBO lie about his fuel like that? Say You have a really big tank, with 1000's of dollars of fuel in it, and some minimum wage kid manning the fuel truck dumps jet A into it. Now you have to dump that fuel and that money, and even that is a problem because the EPA does not appreciate you dumping fuel down the sewer. So you test the fuel, it does not seem too bad, and yadda yadda.
    6
  6. Saw this on other channels, but came here first. Scott does way better explanations than everyone else.
    4
  7. "Basically getting all SpaceX employees to care about Boca chica and the Brownsville area." Yea, because everyone knows that community relations is a big part of the FAAs job.
    4
  8. I have been flying with ADS-B for years, never got a call. I would say its the opposite. There have been cases where pilots got cited for flying over property and the owner reported the aircraft as too low, and the court took the owners word for it. Now you have proof of your altitude on flight tracking.
    3
  9. Ummmm... so we see a shot of the Starliner crew walking back from a scrubbed launch. So we have gone from the pomp and circumstance of the crew riding a special purpose van with spacesuits and portable air conditioners to "hey, not today, walk home".
    3
  10. So the FAA is now the EPA and OSHA combined in one.
    3
  11. "digging 6502's out of old machines" not really the only way. A processor that small can easily be implemented inside a cheap FPGA with plenty of room left over for the surrounding logic, and getting loads of I/O pins besides. Designs like the 6502 in Verlog/VHDL are all around and free/open source. Most older designs of that era could be moved into an FPGA and maintain software and hardware compatibility.
    3
  12. In most of these overwrapped tank uses, the tank is not immersed, yes?
    2
  13. Plus a small devil fortune teller predicted this (Twilight zone fans yea!).
    2
  14. This is the game God plays...
    2
  15. If you illuminate a police helicopter around here, they have got very efficient at quickly finding out where the laser came from and send a patrol car out there.
    2
  16. In today's world, there is probably nowhere a rocket can reenter without affecting flight patterns.
    2
  17. That was a great explanation. It also explains a lot about "circularization" of an orbit, that is, this same effect can be used to remove the elliptic from an orbit.
    2
  18. Its a BARIS: A big ass rock in space...
    2
  19. "butt to butt" ... its Camel sex. Yes, look it up. That is how Camels do it.
    2
  20. Has anyone considered the idea that Elon is just an attention junkie at this point?
    2
  21. Launch Kessler into MEO with a catcher's mitt. End of problem.
    1
  22. So I really don't follow this. The inner tank is thin walled aluminum so that the inner liquid gas will be contained, and the carbon wrap adds strength to resist pressure. But then it gets immersed in LOX?????? Why not add an outer AL shell? Carbon, and carbon composite fibre (usually resin bonder) in LOX does not sound like a good idea. Its like sticking a wick in gasoline. Or what is going on here?
    1
  23. "It ain't rocket surgery".
    1
  24. Can't you just see a bunch of feds in black suits showing up at Scott's door... "we are sorry, you have figured out too much".
    1
  25. Something has always bothered me about the description of fission. So a uranium atom breaks down and produced neutrons that go on to split other uranium atoms. But scientists are fond of talking about how an atom is mostly empty space, and the nucleus is a very small part of an atom. So with only a few extra neutrons, how is the bullet of a neutron able to hit such a small target with regularity?
    1
  26. Scott nails it on the head for analog computers. We knew a lot about how to make analog computers, and their accuracy and reliability was "reasonable". The issue was they had no programmability whatever, and each function needed to be hardwired for a particular purpose.
    1
  27. Sorry small correction: DO NOT TURN STROBES ON TO INDICATE ENGINE START. Strobes BLIND other pilots at night in close proximity. The proper way to indicate engine start is to turn on the rotating beacon and yell "clear" out the window. You don't turn on strobes until you cross the runway threshold to take off. When landing and crossing the runway threshold the other way, you turn the strobes OFF. Do not taxi with strobes on, again, because you blind other pilots. Ask your instructor.
    1
  28.  @scottmanley  Found it in there, thanks. That's strange. I have flown for 42 years, never seen that.
    1
  29.  @scottmanley  Identical on Cessnas. I suspect that Cirrus recommends you turn off the strobes to taxi, but hey, I am a big believer in following your CFIs instructions.
    1
  30. So Elon said something I have wondered about for some time, that point to point would be more efficient than an airliner at long distances. It makes sense, with all that air friction that airlines have to go through. The remaining question is if the high G forces involved are something the general population could tolerate. Otherwise, you are going to be requiring medical sign off for everyone that flies, which I think would kill the idea. 100 people or so on a starship given the average population is going to include some old guy (like me) who strokes out during the flight.
    1
  31. Suddenly, balance seems to be an issue with landers.
    1
  32. Spatial disorientation by flying over featureless landscape. Scott, you will go into this in your IFR flight training.
    1
  33. That rubberized propellant is what allowed us to get away from liquid fueled ICBMs in the Minuteman. Far faster to launch, since the rocket didn't need to get fueled up before launch, and far more stable in storage. It's unlikely that we would have had a serious submarine launch capability without them. It was truly a stroke of genius. Note that the minuteman and similar rockets didn't have O-rings because they weren't segmented. The shuttle boosters had a shipping problem because they were so big.
    1
  34. We watched these landings blow up all the time, and nobody is onboard for that phase. Nothing to see, move on.
    1
  35. Great film, thank you.
    1
  36. Its ok, Jeff Bezos kinda looks like one as well...
    1
  37. A question for you Manley fans: Although you might assume that Earth near space was empty and pristine before man started orbiting things, it appears to me to be likely that with all of the rocks and dust that routinely falls to earth that some of it might have got lucky and inserted itself into a stable orbit. Of course the earth would be naturally self cleaning given time, you might also expect new material to replace the old. Can this be true, and is it possible to estimate how much rocks and dust is naturally orbiting the planet?
    1
  38. PS the GPS system does work in near outer space. The receivers on earth are designed to reject GPS location solutions off earth, they are cut off above a given altitude. However, a GPS on a spacecraft could be programmed to do it. I think there would be fundamental limits on how far into deep space it could go, but there is no fundamental reason it cannot work.
    1
  39. meee thain....
    1
  40. There is a really cool video that explains doppler vor in detail: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZ2gG1v9Xg8 Its really genius if you think about it. Becoming obsolete now, but the system ruled for what? 75 years?
    1
  41. in perhaps 20 years this yields a power station. In 100 years, perhaps the first true star drive for spaceships.
    1
  42. Bright side: saves on demolition costs...
    1
  43. To be pedantic, all altitude (baro) comes from the static port. The altimeter features a correction known as the "Kollsman window" that sets the current baro reference pressure (ground pressure) for that area. Radar knows where you are! (news flash!) thus it is easy for the ground based receiver to work out what your corrected altitude is.
    1
  44.  @absalomdraconis  It is stuck permanently in Mode C, by definition :-)
    1
  45. I remember when I took my checkride. Everyone in the class before me said it took two tries or more to pass. I did the checkride, then the examiner detailed my mistakes (which I think is what they always do at the end), and I said to him "well, I guess I will have to take the checkride again". The examiner said "why would you need to do that", and handed me my certificate. For the "opposite direction traffic on downwind", yes, happened to all of us. Now you know the value of accurate calls on the radio, starting with the field name and ending with the field name, and calling the runway and direction of traffic: Gualala traffic, Cirrus XXX is downwind left traffic runway 34 Gualala". Winds vary. Most pilots try to determine active runway by the radio calls, but occasionally there can be a "difference of opinion". I had a guy fly opposite pattern to me with NO announcements on the radio. I went back and gave my instructor an earful about that and he said: "there can be no radio airplanes, especially at small fields, and there are deaf pilots...". The lesson was learned. Like with cars, expect anything, watch out for everything. I used to fly into Gualala a lot, those winds come rocketing up the mountain off the coast, and can really give you a ride. The nice thing is, because of the trees, you get sudden calm right close to the runway and smooth landings.
    1
  46. I saw the space shuttle engine when in was under development in Rockedyne. It was about 1976 and I was a high school kid taking a tour.
    1
  47. Scott when are you going down to Boca Chica? I think your take on spaceX down there would be far more useful than the others I have seen.
    1
  48. Colossus wanted an island from which to rule the world. If Colossus were to be made today, the computer would probably ask for a big satellite or maybe a moon base so us humans could not get to it and pull the plug. So this sounds correct to me.
    1
  49. "Das Engine"... hey I tried.
    1
  50. In my 55 years of flying, I have witnessed two plane crashes first hand, at least one fatal, don't know about the other. If you are around airplanes, its going to happen, unfortunately. I have had two "interesting" encounters with wind conditions. One was a crosswind takeoff where I got airborne where after getting off the ground, I got shifted a couple meters sideways very suddenly. The other was a very gusty day where I was almost on the runway, but got ballooned by a a sudden gust and sent back up quite a ways. Even the tower controller said "wow" on that one. Unfortunately the conclusion on both was that it would have been better to wait for better conditions.
    1