Comments by "ke6gwf - Ben Blackburn" (@ke6gwf) on "Scott Manley" channel.

  1.  @firesculpturevideo  a servo hydraulic valve is a specific part. It is designed so that the valve can be opened part way, rather than the normal valves that are either all the way open or all the way shut. It is normally only used on larger valves, but it is used when the continuous speed of operation of a cylinder or motor is needed, rather than just position. So to position grid fins, you don't need smooth gentle variable speed motion, you can pulse the valve to get the fin to the needed position, and so the valve just needs to be on or off. If you are dealing with a larger device with a lot of inertia, then you might need a servo valve, so you can command it to 20 percent to start the load moving, then to 50 percent, then to 80 percent, and finally fully open, etc. The servo in the name refers to the valve operating mechanism being something other than on or off. I have worked with these types of valves using either direct magnetic core designs, or rotary motors operating the valve. Now maybe in some fields some people refer to position controlled hydraulics as "servos" because it reminds them of electric servos from airplanes or radio controllers, but that isn't the normal name for having motion controlled hydraulics, because other than occasionally using a servo valve, it isn't really the same thing as a servo. Oh, and the reason servo hydraulic valves are not very common is because they generate lots of heat, and heat kills hydraulics. Normally if you need to control the speed of a cylinder, you use some form of pressure control or variable output pump, etc. Anything that uses friction to control flow is like using the brakes to control the speed on your car, instead of taking your foot off the gas. Not a good idea, unless it is only occasionally needed lol
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  2.  @HalNordmann  they are working on generating propellant from solar and wind powered plants bringing the cost of propellant to a very low cost. And your capacity estimate is half of the estimate of the people actually building it, so it's safe to say it's wrong. And for interplanetary probes, you just put it on a kick stage that gets launched in Starship on a ride share mission. No dedicated lower stages needed.
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  3.  @bjornseine2342  yup,, if you can't get the unobtainable most amazing version, might as well not try to see any form of it! (I say as I watch grand space vistas on my phone lol
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  4.  @ImieNazwiskoOK  I personally like the Dynetics design, much better than BO, though not as good as Moonship, but it had technical problems with negative weight capacity etc.
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  5.  @xponen  ladder is an issue because it's such a long climb, so an astronaut with an injured arm or leg would have a very difficult time getting back to the capsule, plus high chances of slipping off. Starship uses an elevator so all fall hazards can be mitigated easily.
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  6.  @xponen  I think I heard Moonship will have dual hoists for redundancy, and I am sure they will have some sort of additional backup rope climbers or something. I mean, they are NOT weight or space limited, so they can toss in extra Black Diamond climbing gear, put rungs on the outside of the rocket, etc, and not blink lol BO on the other hand is totally reliant on a very tall ladder that OSHA would not approve of.
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  7. He's "flying" all right! Seems pretty safe lol
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  8. Better to just focus on Starship, and let it fly out there and back. No need for supply stations when the Semi truck can drive right there!
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  9. Don't worry, I am sure that Elon will send a dump truck and excavator to the moon soon enough and bring back plenty of rock to go around! Lol He could fund SpaceX by making thin slices and selling them on Etsy...
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  10.  @kmlammto  Besos doesn't have a rocket to get there... Lol And even his big renders are much less capable than Starship, so less rocks to sell.
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  11. It would melt from the heat of friction.
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  12.  @trololoev  so his landing and reusing rockets has failed, and Starlink has failed, and Crew Dragon has failed, and I could go on, or do you prefer to ignore all the amazing successes he has had?
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  13.  @trololoev  Starship and Starlink is what all the talent at SpaceX is focused on achieving, so if they could achieve all the current SpaceX milestones, why can't they achieve Starship? It's not only Elon working on it himself, he hires the smartest engineers.
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  14. I love listening to the Oshkosh CatHerders talking everyone in.
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  15. Soon SpaceX will do this, except the drill will be from a oil platform Elon turned into a launch pad, and it will make the Armageddon drill look like a toy. It will bring back enough moon material for Stanley Kubrick to shoot another fake moon landing on a secret Soundstage lol No fancy space arms needed, just stick a Caterpillar excavator in the cargo bay...
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  16. That set of flight controls will turn out to be the most expensive Christmas gift ever! Lol (because it started you into the aviation hobby ;) )
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  17. Don't worry, think about how many times it took to stick a regular landing! This is only the second, and it was bad luck it was in heavy seas. I suspect that because this was pushing the envelope anyway, that they didn't prioritize finishing the custom work on the Octograbber, but that they will have it done by the next Heavy flight, and we will get an intact center core back.
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  18. 4:44 - Run. Do not walk, RUN AWAY! I am a rigger, and that cable makes me weak in the knees... Death waiting to happen. In regards to hanging guys below helicopter, when a cable snaps, it can recoil UP and take out the helicopter too. The only safe way to deal with this is to set charges where the cable stays from the top of the towers attach to the outer ring of ground anchors, and sever all the cables at once so that the weight of the truss pulls the now unsupported towers inwards. This keeps people as far from the danger zone as possible (unless one of the cable stays snaps at the top of the tower and recoils back to the ground anchor). Basically getting closer than the length of the cables is dangerous. The only safe way I can see to salvage it is to get someone like Mammoet (just the best heavy move company in the world) to come in with either an unlimited budget, or donating their services, and set up giant crane towers around the outer perimeter, and then snake giant cables across underneath the truss, and then winch them up to cradle under the truss, removing the weight from the existing cables without having to get any workers underneath it. Once it was supported in the cable basket, then you could start replacing the cables. But this dish is in the middle of the jungle, and getting the massive amount of giant equipment up there would probably require building new roads, new ports, and take months getting billions of dollars of specialized equipment, designed, fabricated, shipped from across the world, and hauled up into the jungle. Building a new one is probably cheaper....
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  19.  @pilotavery  then please explain how SpaceX is making modern technology work in space, or how off the shelf laptops and iPads are working in space? SpaceX deals with bit flips by creating redundancy so it can identify bit flips and correct for them, so why can't you apply the same concept to a simple charger that you apply to an autonomous spacecraft navigation system? Your comment demonstrate why NASA is unable to advance, because they can't get out of the ideas and methods of the past.
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  20.  @pilotavery  my point is that it would be possible to recreate the functionality of the old charger unit with modern technology, and avoid the problem with sourcing ancient technology. It could probably be made smaller and use less power as well, even with the additional layers of redundancy. It can also be better radiation shielded at such a small scale. Or to put it another way, look at the radiation tolerant designs that the new design space suits are using, and replicate the same design philosophy.
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  21.  @robertadsett5273  so what I am suggesting is that they apply the new design philosophy to just that single component.
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  22.  @pilotavery  why are we assuming that the battery charger in question is small and only one chip? Chances are it's a large breadboard design with lots of discrete components to support that one chip, and it could be replaced by 4 Pis running redundancy software, and be smaller and use less power.
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  23.  @pilotavery  but that hardened piece of hardware doesn't have to be something that's no longer available. Flexibility in design and sourcing allows a lot of flexibility and cost savings.
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  24.  @pilotavery  the original issue was that the EXACT SAME NOS was no longer available, so I am saying that they select a different NOS hardened core that's in abundant supply, and use modern technology wrapped around it to make it work the same way, such as what SpaceX is doing. Basically instead of having to have a wide range of hardened chips for various purposes, you use one as an error checker and then use redundant modern circuits for the rest. And if they run out of the NOS, have the guy from the Applied Science channel build some chips with giant transistors on it that would totally drown any potential bit flips! Should take him a couple of months if he gets good Patroen support lol In addition, I am sure that it is possible to achieve the same result without using any NOS, with redundancy alone, maybe using dissimilar chips between 3 nodes, because the chances of multiple chips having the same bit flipped is so low as to be an acceptable risk. So if you have 3 units and each has a flipped bit, you can still identify what bits got flipped with the assumption that the same bits aren't going to be flipped on different chips.
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  25.  @pilotavery  I meant making a custom silicon chip with large enough transistors to drown out cosmic ray interference, not discrete transistors. And when there is a need for something, volume doesn't matter, it can get done anyway. Look at everything SpaceX does. High cost, with a volume of a few per year (Starlink not included). If Elon decided that they needed a radiation hardened chip they would buy some chip fab and modify a machine to make the chips. Remember that it takes higher and higher technology to shrink the resolution on a wafer, but you can put larger things on a wafer with the same machine, just like you can paint a wall with an artist's brush, you don't have to use a roller. So if someone decides that it's a necessity, it can be done, and if someone like SpaceX does it, it can be quick and cheap.
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  26.  @robertadsett5273  that's not what I am saying. I am saying that doing a full redesign and thorough NASA-approved test and verification cycle to recreate that particular function, or possibly even the entire electrical system as a unit, is still faster and cheaper than starting a new entire suit design from scratch. Everyone is saying that they can't get that exact part anymore, and so therefore the entire suit has to be discarded. I work with large industrial machines with automation on them, and often the control system will no longer have the parts available, and so I start by checking ebay for spares, but eventually we have to scrap the machine because I can't get original equipment control system parts. Oh wait. No I don't! I just design and spec a new control system and retrofit the machine! No need to replace the entire machine when the components can be replaced and upgraded instead.
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  27.  @robertadsett5273  basically I hear you focusing on all the reasons why it's an impossible project, and why they need to start from scratch and do a totally new design, but nearly every one of the issues you bring up, they will have to solve in a new design as well. And if they can solve it for the new suit, they can apply the same concept to retrofitting the old suits. This is why SpaceX is so far ahead, because if you posed those problems to Elon, he would tell you to solve them and find better ways to think about it, and have a prototype next week to start testing on! Yes, I know that IC Fab is about more than just mask size, so I would start calling field experts and Fabs and asking if any of the existing machines are able to also do thicker layers to make larger transistors, or there is some clever workaround to increase the "mass" of the transistor to make it less sensitive to strikes. So far it doesn't sound like anyone has attempted to apply themselves to this issue, so assuming that the ONLY WAY is to build chips like they used to be built is ensuring that no new discoveries will be made that might turn out to be supper simple solutions. But, since SX IS working on the cosmic ray tolerant systems already, I suspect that they will solve it though a combination of redundancy and programming, and maybe some form of physically hardened chip, and then we can see what they did and how well it worked!
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  28. Yup Boeing is not as far behind SpaceX as they were, though they still have to successfully launch it actually into space still, and have no other setbacks or delays or bugs to work out that would throw them further behind schedule lol
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  29.  @divedevil985  Tesla currently does not get any EV subsidies, they reached the sales cap a long time ago. And the new ones being pushed are specifically designed to exclude Tesla as much as possible.
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  30.  @Oliver-GS  unless you were planning on having it sit in orbit for a year, and then need to fly again, it makes no sense. Electrolysis takes time, based on the amount of power (solar panels?) you have, but it produces gas. So then you would need to take more solar power and run a cryogenic liquification plant to make it liquid, which means you have to launch that equipment and all those solar panels. Much easier just to send up the cryo fuel already.
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  31. Scott, did you notice what appears to be an explosion of LNG on the ground at about 4 seconds after ignition? On the NSF stream 5:02 you can see the flash through the dust, followed by debris flying straight up, and then a fireball licking above the dust, and on the SpaceX drone it's on the right side of the pad 0:13, and seems to be related to the stream of white vapor blowing off the side of the rocket. It almost looks like an LNG COPV came off and blew up on the ground. The trajectory of the debris flying up, and the size of the fireball make it look like a seperate explosion, not just debris kicked up by the rocket.
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  32. The nose section is sheet metal welded onto a square tubing welded steel wire frame using construction that looks a lot like your basic square tubing commercial stairway handrail. Depending on how far the open end collapsed, they may be able to just use some jacks and chain pullers to pull it back into shape, or they might have to cut out some bent sections of square tube and weld new pieces in. If some of the sheet metal got kinked or torn, they might have to slap some new sheet on, but that's a simple process. Basically, while an annoyance, it should not take long or effect things that much, because of how simple this design is. Score another point for this construction style! Lol Oh, and I suspect that the failure may have been the bottom of the frame itself failing at the attachment to the hold down brackets, since it is such light construction, but I am pretty sure they will add guy wires to it next time lol
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  33.  @EdwardDowner  yes, I know. The op misunderstood what they were saying (sending Elon to orbit, etc), and I was pointing out that they were wrong about many things, but not in the exact way he was reading it. I was also showing how they were probably thinking of other rockets that have multiple "Boosters" where Starship only has one Booster, but we call it a Stage. So if they thought that Boosters were the thing you strap on the sides, and had no idea what SSTO meant, they just got all mixed up.
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  34. Scott is a paid shill for the big conspiracy. The rockets are all fake, and the ripping sound is from overexcusion of the Reality Subwoofer drivers. This is why SLS and Starship haven't flown yet, they are having supply chain problems sourcing the new drivers that can handle the extra sound levels, and I hear SpaceX is having to develop their own drivers in house to handle Starship... ;)
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  35. I guess you have never been frozen out of a car or doctors office from an air conditioner on high? Lol If they have a high enough air flow, they can certainly remove enough heat, and they know exactly how much heat needs to be removed as well.
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  36.  @RogerGarrett  you apparently missed the part where we don't currently have the technology to give a remote robot operator the dexterity and precision to function at the same level that a human can. When I am threading a bolt in, I need to apply precise pressure to it and FEEL for the tiny click when the threads slide over each other, and FEEL how much torque I am applying when I start turning it, and FEEL that it's going in smoothly and not cross threaded. I also use FEEL to tell the difference between a bolt that's cross threaded, and one that's just rubbing on the piece that's getting bolted on. None of this is yet included in Boston Dynamics robots, or any other system like that. And certainly not in a space rated package. We are not talking about assembly line repeated identical operations that can be engineered for a robot. If it were only the ability to be able to see what was happening, that's easy, but we FEEL what's going on, and technology isn't ready to support that.
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  37.  @RogerGarrett  the technology needed is already under development by many companies and government funded projects, but just because it's under development doesn't mean it's close to being a possibility. Plus, Congress won't be interested in finding space programs if they don't involve getting people there. That's just part of the politics involved here. SLS was funded not because it was a good idea, but because that's what Congress told NASA to build, to keep the money flowing to all their corporate donors in all 50 states. That's why Congress hates SpaceX, and keeps trying to undermine the commercial partnerships and fixed price contracts, because the big government contractors don't like it. So, if the technology were proven, it probably would not get funded anyway, because politicians only care about humans in space, not robots, and so that's where the money is
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  38. I wonder if the National Team had dismissed SpaceX as a valid threat, thinking that there was no way NASA would approve of the technical merits of Moonship, and so despite knowing that SX would be much cheaper, felt they could skimp on features and ignore pricing rules, and then be able to charge more for charges later, and maybe bargain on the price a little bit, because they believed that they were a shoe in, with room to bargain. Getting dinged on both technical and pricing, and not being given a chance to bargain must have shocked them, just as much as SX being given the contract.
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  39. Elon should load an excavator and dump truck on his rocket and go collect a bunch of rocks, slice them thin and sell them on Etsy. Could fund SpaceX that way! Do the moon first and then Mars.
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  40.  @ReinoGoo  - *groan...radio nerd dad jokes... Sheesh
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  41. Yes, BEV, Battery Electric Vehicle, in other words, no fuel on the vehicle, it's charged and operated purely with electricity.
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  42.  @carljohan9265  ya, you have to run to the hobby shop and pick up a new pack of Estes engine ignitors, and crawl up under the rocket and replace them lol (they actually use large ignitors underneath to burn off the vented hydrogen gas, which have to be replaced after an abort)
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  43.  @alphagt62  the emergency abort system functioning properly proved that the ground support systems that failed were either badly designed or poorly maintained, and a fraction of a second later, could have resulted in the loss of the rocket.
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  44. So, you could say that the US Space industry is a lot like a cow? Outstanding in their field... *cue the original Tom Scott video, and then groan!
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  45. It would require some redesign to the Starlink satellites to add the additional transmit capabilities, so it would take at LEAST a couple of months for Elon to add that into future launches lol
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  46.  @steveelectronics7819  LOL! I was trying to think of something like that earlier, I shall now steal it from you. Ty!
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  47.  @DoctorMangler  you are focused on the ability to sign off on plans, rather than the skills to make good engineering decisions. Since he has teams of certified engineers to sign off on plans, that's not important to him, but the ability to make good engineering decisions is what makes the company so successful. Go look up the video of a NASA engineer Dan Rasky talking about his time at SpaceX on a talent exchange with NASA, and how impressed he was with Elon's skills and abilities to learn rapidly from the people around him. If you think that Elon is LESS CAPABLE than a freshly graduated engineer just because he can't sign off on the plans, then you have a lack of comprehension of the situation.
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  48.  @DoctorMangler  oh, and I find it rich that you will claim that he's not an engineer on the successful things, but when it's convenient, you act like it was his personal fault that the windows broke. I highly doubt that he was running the glass shop, I think he was busy working on the Dragon at the time.
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  49.  @DoctorMangler  where do you come up with patents? I never said anything about patents and they have nothing to do with Elon's engineering skills. I am talking about the products that Elon is behind, from Dragon and Falcon to Starlink and Tesla.
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  50. As usual, you use your gift of explanation to make things understandable without lots of obscure jargon, or dumbing it down. Very well done, and a perfect length!
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