Comments by "Helium Road" (@RCAvhstape) on "Scott Manley" channel.

  1. Buzz Aldrin is the man. He had a plan worked out to navigate using handheld instruments taking sightings out the windows and doing the math himself. A true astronaut.
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  2. In Soviet Russia, space explore you!
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  3. "ZIP Code Contracting" lol that one's new to me, but yeah, this reeks of pork barrel politics designed to waste as much money as possible. The idea that we can't build affordable new suits in a short period of time 50 years after the last moon landing is pathetic.
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  4. The cool thing about the Starliner launch is that this will be the first manned Atlas launch since the days of Mercury and John Glenn 60 years ago. Another feather in the cap of the Atlas program before it finally sunsets.
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  5. Scott, I don't usually comment on this stuff, but these kind of technical explanation videos are my favorite, and this one in particular is outstanding. You answered a bunch of questions I always had about spacecraft design and a few I never even though to ask. I always assumed Apollo capsules were shiny to reflect solar heating during space travel; I never thought about radiant heating from plasma during reentry. Likewise, I never really thought to ask why the Space Shuttle had that black and white color pattern, but it makes perfect sense now. Please keep up the good work.
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  6. That shot of the engine bell wiggling back and forth between oval shape and round at 6:55 always amazed me; the pure power and fury of what was happening to that big piece of metal was astonishing. Watching live shuttle launches was a thrill that never got old. The engine startup was like a shot of adrenaline.
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  7. Somewhere Werner von Braun is smiling. This is a lot closer to his old Collier's Magazine vision of lunar exploration than Apollo turned out to be.
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  8. Capsule: I'm going back to the shop; not feeling up to flying today. Atlas booster: I have better things to do than wait around for you with the meter running. Hop in Lucy, I'll give ya a lift.
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  9. I forget which Apollo astronaut it was who said that if he ever went back to the Moon he'd like to bring a set of skis with him, because apparently the lunar regolith felt to the astronauts a lot like powdered snow on a ski slope as far as texture and consistency goes. So maybe that's a winter sport you can do on the moon without needing actual snow?
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  10. I want America to have as many launch vehicles, especially reusable ones, as possible. One thing I wonder about this one is the short landing gear. I feel as though Falcon 9's barge landings have taught us the benefit of a wider landing base on a pitching flight deck.
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  11. Whenever I see something about space in the news, I always wait until Scott's next video to get the story.
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  12. RE. launching through the eye of a hurricane: that was a key plot point in the awesome film Marooned, where an Apollo spacecraft was stranded in LEO, unable to deorbit itself, and NASA had to figure out how to mount a rescue mission. The film was scary enough that it influenced NASA's decision to have a spare Apollo-Saturn IB stacked up for rescue during Skylab missions.
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  13.  @albertawheat6832  Well, it benefits the smart humans at least. Sorry about that.
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  14. I like the little 3D man with his hands on his head in that disaster sim.
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  15. In the documentary film "In the Shadow of the Moon" Gene Cernan talked about how he was tempted to go to manual and be the only man to fly a Saturn V by hand. He figured it was the last Apollo mission, anyway, worse that could happen was that he'd get fired after getting back from the moon. But he decided to play it straight and let the machine do its job.
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  16. Meanwhile, at Firefly... Engineer 1: Anyone have any idea where to start? Engineer 2: Scott Manley's video just dropped, ask me again in 20 minutes.
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  17. There's always the "Skylab Maneuver": Step 1: Evacuate the station Step 2: Wait Step 3: Pay littering fine to Australia
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  18. I know this project sounds difficult to pull off, but this is Rockwell, they created the Turboencabulator. They could do anything.
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  19. The engineers who work on these things are conditioned to never give up as long as there's money in the budget lol. But honestly, they are trying to fix or at least salvage a broken machine that is many light seconds away, which they can't get their hands on or even get pictures of, based purely on various bits of telemetry data, and more often than not they succeed.
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  20. This thing had better work. ULA is all in since they shut down Atlas production, and the USA in general currently has only one working launch provider, SpaceX. Personally I think it would've been a good idea to hedge our bets and fund an engine swap for Atlas as well as Vulcan.
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  21. Some of the rescue pod systems were not designed to get you back to Earth, but just to keep you alive until a rescue can come get you. My favorite was the Space Shuttle's "Personal Rescue Enclosure", which was a beach ball-looking spherical thing that you curled up inside and could keep you alive in space for about an hour, just long enough for guys in space suits to toss you across from your stricken vessel to another shuttle orbiter. It was about as bare bones as you can get, low mass, low bulk, designed in the days before the LES suits when there were not enough space suits for a full crew of 7.
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  22. So this means Bruce Willis just needs a garden shovel to bury the nuke in the asteroid.
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  23. Awesome timing, Scott, I was just reading up on Nike (again). When I was growing up there was a nearby abandoned Nike missile site situated to defend Philadelphia. It was out in farm land and had a rusty chainlink fence around it. Kids used to sneak in there and poke around. Parts of it were dangerous due to flooding and so on, but it was good "X-Files" type stuff. You should do a video about Nike-X/Sprint and the HiBex programs, ABMs that have ridiculous accelerations of 100G or more and went from 0 to Mach 10 in like 5 seconds upon launch. Fascinating technology.
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  24. Scott you are my main source for space news. There are good websites and so on, but being subscribed to your channel means I will be alerted to most of the important and cool stuff.
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  25. My question is: Who was holding Story Musgrave's beer while this was happening?
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  26. How do Australians avoid falling off the planet without seatbelts?
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  27. Arthur C. Clarke wrote a good story called "A Meeting with Medusa" about a guy exploring the Jovian atmosphere in a nuclear-powered hot-hydrogen balloon, it's worth looking up.
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  28. I hope it works out fine. The US needs more working launch vehicles. Can't put all our eggs in the Falcon 9 basket, and Vulcan isn't cranking out yet.
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  29. Coming soon: Starship Nuclear with liquid core nuclear thermal rocket engine, like the old Liberty Ship concept. Bring it!
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  30. "Building a rocket in a field and then flying it would be a first" Even more fitting since that was how it was done in a few Heinlein stories. Although I assume this one isn't using a nuclear thermal rocket engine.
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  31. That photo of the lander descending under a chute with the giant crater behind it is one of the most epic photos in spaceflight history.
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  32. If the JAXA rover doesn't turn into a mech I will be disappointed.
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  33. And it's not like they really need to reinvent the wheel; just take a proven design from the Apollo or Shuttle era and build new ones, with upgrades to the materials and electronics. Why does this have to be so difficult?
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  34. After the Challenger accident, the LDEF (Long Duration Exposure Facility) was left in orbit for a much longer time than was planned. Eventually it was retrieved by another shuttle and a lot of good data was gathered from it. Since then we've had several chances to visit Hubble Space Telescope and see how it has held up as it aged, and of course Mir and the ISS have both yielded lots of data on long term mission hardware. But Snoopy would be special, since it has been in deep space for five decades, outside of the LEO gravity well and the Earth's magnetosphere.
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  35. Most of the positive comments about the design have already been said, so I'll just throw in my admiration of the black and silver color scheme of Rocket Lab's vehicles, I think it adds a classy touch with a high tech look. I also love how these newer designs are looking more and more like the classic 1950s style, the way God and Robert Heinlein intended.
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  36. I wonder if the book mentions the various types of nuclear rockets. Nuclear pulse propulsion, where you use nuclear bombs behind a pusher plate, would actually be fairly safe "fuels" to handle in the sense that the bomb devices would be hard to accidentally detonate. Nuclear thermal rockets like NERVA are a different story; once the reactor has gone critical the fuel becomes pretty lethal stuff to be around. My favorite has to be the nuclear salt water rocket, which uses an open cycle liquid fuel core. The liquid is basically water with uranium or plutonium salts dissolved in it, which are injected into a reaction chamber and mixed to become supercritical, heating the water to steam and blowing it out the nozzle as reaction mass, along with all the fission products. High Isp and high thrust, it's almost a torch drive but using it in atmosphere would be unconscionable, since it's basically a giant flying Chernobyl disaster.
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  37. That aero phase, with the fins controlling it like a skydiver, is one of the coolest things I've ever seen.
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  38. Makes it difficult for astronauts to judge their altitude. It's one reason the Apollo landings were all made with the sun behind the ship, so that the pilots could see the shadow of the LM in front of them and use it to judge height and ground speed.
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  39. SpaceX should take bids for ad space, Coke vs. Pepsi.
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  40. It was always a hail mary thing anyway, and after Challenger's loss they redid the math and concluded that had Columbia's crew ever used the seats they'd have been killed by the SRB plume anyway.
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  41. On the plus side, if the Americans aren't producing quality science then the Chinese have nothing to steal.
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  42. What's interesting is when you look at designs for space stations and such from the 1940s and 50s, they are depicted as having solar thermal turbine generators for power, basically a parabolic reflector focused on a boiler unit filled with liquid sodium or some other working fluid, that then heats water to turn a turbine and generator. Photoelectrics were not yet ready for prime time so designers and futurists were working with technology of the day. BTW, I have an old Minolta twin lens camera from the 50s that uses a selenium light-powered meter, no batteries required, and it still functions just fine.
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  43. So in the end Jupiter basically ate the probe and digested it.
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  44. The idea of riding the inside of that fairing reminds me of the old astronaut bail-out devices they were testing in the 60s, such as the Douglas Paracone and so on, where an astronaut who needs to abandon his spacecraft would strap this thing to his back. It would deploy a conical heat shield behind him so he would enter the atmosphere back first, with "eyeballs in" acceleration. He had a small solid rocket thruster in front of his chest which would be used to deorbit himself. If he timed it right, he should be able to at least hit a landmass. The conical heat shield was also an aerobrake and had a honeycomb crush zone in it to absorb impact with the ground. The poor astronaut would be falling face to the sky with no idea where he was about to land, assuming he survived reentry.
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  45. Are you sure you don't want to upgrade to Windows 11? Really sure? Really really sure?
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  46. Best train ride ever!
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  47. It's called "The Cold Equations"
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  48. It's a phenomenon known as Manley Scattering.
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  49.  @gean31  "Remember, Joe, if you screw this job up, the crew dies on national TV. No pressure. See at the pub later, yeah?"
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  50.  @docjanos  He also had a famous response to some NASA leaders who wanted to do an RTLS abort during a test flight just to see if it could be done, "We don't need to practice bleeding."
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  51.  @MarcoTheGreat2008  Most throttleable rocket engines can only throttle down so much. I think the Space Shuttle Main Engines can only throttle down to about 65% thrust or so.
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  52. Sure, you could've kept the Saturn V around and launched multiple Skylab-sized modules to create a nifty gi-hugic station.
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  53. Excellent rundown of the subject! I always thought that as technology and operational experience advanced they could build a Space Shuttle 2.0 that would correct for many of the deficiencies in the 1970s design someday, and heat shield tech would be a major part of that.
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  54. "Your conclusions were all wrong, Ryan. Halsey acted Shtupidly." RIP Sean Connery...only he could credibly play a Soviet naval officer with a Scottish accent.
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  55.  @ralfbaechle  If the vehicle is weight & balanced properly it should settle into the proper attitude shortly after entry interface. Most space capsules are designed to do this in case of loss of attitude control.
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  56. Reminds me of the three things a pilot can't use: the altitude above you, the runway behind you, and the fuel you left on the ground.
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  57. Taylor didn't design the spaceship (known as "Project Orion"), but he was part of the team and was responsible for the nuclear shaped charges that would power the vehicle. In George Dyson's book, Taylor states that in the end he was okay with the project being canceled because he was getting pretty good at building small bombs and was worried it would catch on.
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  58.  @mostevil1082  This. Musk makes some people butthurt so they like to crap all over anything he's associated with, even when it works. SpaceX is more than just one guy, it's a lot of engineers doing a lot of work with the support of that one particular guy, and over the last 2 decades they've accomplished some impressive things. I can't say that Starship will live up to its lofty goals, but it's already achieved a fair amount as a test program.
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  59. The one point safety tests are scary. Fizzles are supposed to be easy, for safety reasons. If for example, a B-52 crashes with a megaton-range bomb on it and the bomb's chemical explosives cook off in a fire, you absolutely do not want any fission to occur, but those tests make it look very possible. And I use the B-52 because there were several accidents in the past where this sort of accident did happen, particularly in North Carolina, Spain, and Greenland. Fortunately none of those weapons went nuclear.
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  60.  @winstonsmith478 IIRC Taylor also became known for lighting his cigarette with a nuclear bomb. He put it at the focus of a parabolic mirror that was pointed at the bomb, and he ducked into a trench beneath it. When the bomb went off it lit it up. So not a healthy lifestyle in more ways than one, I guess, but he got cool points for it.
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  61. Why am I not surprised that the Soviet descent rocket braking system uses gamma ray radiation to sense the ground instead of a radar altimeter?
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  62.  @221b-l3t  At least submarines can surface. A 747 cannot "surface" and escape Jupiter, it must fly forever.
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  63.  @pudgeboyardee32  I have known a few USAF missileers. Weird guys. I guess sitting in an underground bunker with a few dozen megatons, surrounded by porn, while waiting to destroy the world will do that to you.
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  64. SpaceX launches more rockets than Blue Origin makes announcements.
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  65. I want to see images of the crash sites where the Saturn stages and LM ascent modules impacted.
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  66.  @dpreston8831  Challenger was not the first time they noticed burn-through damage on the O-rings; on previous cold weather launches the O-rings showed damage after the SRBs were recovered. That's how the Thiokol (and NASA) engineers knew there was potential trouble. In the Challenger accident, the combination of icy weather and wind shear made for the perfect storm and for the first time there was a catastrophic burn through. This failure mode was known to be a problem but the program was under a lot of pressure to produce a high flight rate and get costs down, so they kept putting off the field joint redesign and crossing their fingers. Mike Mullane's book does a great job explaining the mindset of the decision makers. It's also the reason they kept blowing off the debris shedding problem that eventually wrecked Columbia; that was a known issue from the very first flight and they talked themselves into thinking it wasn't really a threat even though the original requirements from the 70s allowed for no debris striking the orbiter.
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  67.  @Lethgar_Smith  Yes. In fact it's already happened.
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  68. Young later said that if he had known about the uncommanded movement of Columbia's body flap during STS-1 launch, he would've aborted and ejected right then and there, and that almost certainly would've killed him and Bob Crippen, since the shuttle seats were later found to be unable to clear the SRB plume. I wonder if Bob Crippen still gets the shivers thinking about that.
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  69.  @mathewferstl7042  Why's you post it then?
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  70. Extra points for doing some math on this joke.
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  71. Never forget that the first Space Shuttle flight was also a super risky test flight. An untested, never flown rocket powered spaceplane, and you stick two guys in it, launch it to orbit, and then fly them home at mach 25 to an unpowered landing. Young and Crippen were an amazing crew.
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  72.  @fruitbouquet5479  "Gonna have to call in an expert." Brings in Alien Hair Guy.
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  73. Define "just went off". That photo is likely days after the blast and the radiation levels were low enough for a short visit. Also notice they are wearing rad badges. The guy in the white hat is Dr. Oppenheimer, basically the chief inventor of the bomb. You can trust he knew what he was doing. (Besides, everybody smoked in those days, so you can flip a coin as to what was going to kill them first).
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  74.  @Dr_Do-Little  Actually, he kinda was selected by accident; the accident in question being the one that killed Gus Grissom and his crew. Had that not happened the flight schedule would've been different and someone else likely would've been the first, probably Gus himself.
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  75.  @trespire  Speak for yourself!
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  76. A lot of ships end as artificial reefs.
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  77.  @Scanner9631  Interesting. Thinking back on it, Grumman went through this thought process back when they were designing the landing gear for the lunar module. 5 was too much mass, 3 meant they had to be too long to be stable, so 4 turned out to be the choice.
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  78. Message: "We are pleased to announce your entry into the Galactic Federation. We require confirmation. If you don't verify receipt by December 31st, 2020, we begin orbital bombardment."
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  79. Tom Stafford also flew on the joint US/USSR Apollo Soyuz Test Project, where the American and Soviet programs learned how to build common docking systems and did an in flight docking.
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  80. Silane won't hurt your engine unless you're letting it form sand as its passing through turbopumps. Make sure it doesn't form a solid until it's clear of the exhaust nozzle.
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  81. Somewhere I heard that a lot of Canadian engineers went south to work on Apollo for NASA or NASA contractors when the Avro Arrow program was canceled. Canada's aerospace industry was counting on that program and when it was cut it resulted in a big brain drain.
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  82. It made me reflect on things.
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  83. Wiping out its own launch pad set the N1 back a very long way.
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  84.  @Sableagle  "I read your book, Ryan. Your conclusions were all wrong. Halsey acted shtupidly."
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  85.  @IstasPumaNevada  The key is to team up with someone who already flies and you just focus on buying and operating the camera rig.
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  86. The degradation of sites like this and Arecibo is heartbreaking.
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  87.  @jetseekers Do you doubt the effectiveness of a tachyon pulse modulated deflector array?!
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  88.  @dx-ek4vr  Thank you for your valuable contribution to this discussion about sonic booms.
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  89.  @Markle2k  The 747, on the other hand (which is what the guy is talking about) has been an overwhelming success and has stayed in production and service far longer than Boeing ever imagined, and way outlived the customer who originally asked for it, Pan Am. It is also in my opinion, one of the most beautiful airliners in history.
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  90.  @YouTube_username.  You're missing the part about partial pressures. Also, wrong thread to hijack, this one is about Atlas.
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  91. @ I don't know the history of the region, but I'm guessing the railroad was there long before the launch pads. I have wanted to ride that particular Amtrak train, the Coast Starlight, for a while but haven't had the pleasure yet.
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  92.  @pattheplanter  That's like saying you didn't have sex because you wore a condom.
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  93.  @buzzsaw838  ULA was a shotgun wedding between Lockheed Martin and Boeing, with the government being the dad holding the shotgun. Atlas V is an LM rocket, Delta IV is a Boeing rocket. Vulcan will be the first true ULA rocket.
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  94.  @gardnep  The Atlas V was designed and built by Lockheed Martin and production was split off to ULA. Atlas started off in the 1950s as a Convair program.
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  95.  @YoursNKR  Basically, a fire extinguisher.
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  96. Pringles, maybe. Monster. Campbells Soup. Folgers Coffee. Pennzoil. Lots of ad revenue potential here.
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  97. It makes me happy, in a way, that Scott Manley also wastes his time on nonsense like the rest of us.
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  98. If you look up "colony drop" in TV Tropes, Skylab is given as a real life example lol.
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  99.  @LCaddyStudios  Oh really? Then where is NASA getting the crazy money mentioned in this video? The Apollo and Shuttle suit designs are already proven and the major development work was paid for long ago. Simply take those designs update the electronics and maybe some materials, and build more. No need to reinvent the wheel.
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  100. In boot camp we were taught about night vision and how it takes about 25-30 minutes to let your eyes adjust fully to starlight. Light discipline is extremely important. No flashlights, no glowing cigarettes, no brightly illuminated watches, because if you can see in the dark so can the enemy. Even shiny reflective things must be hidden so as not to reflect moonlight. If you must use a light, maybe to look at a map or something, you do so with a dim, red-filtered flashlight underneath a poncho or a field jacket. Red light doesn't ruin your night vision as fast. It's a shame that so many people never get to see a non-light polluted sky, when you're at sea or out in the desert away from any city lights it's astounding how many stars and other objects you can see. The night sky is amazingly cluttered.
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  101. After seeing the meteor, they immediately attacked the nearest humans, just because that's what geese do.
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  102. Yet despite all this science tech at our fingertips, we have flerfers and other idiots. SMDH
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  103. Space Shuttle pilots spent redonkulous amounts of time in the simulator, practicing, among other things, manually flying into orbit and back. Also, KSP players do not fly anything into space; they only pretend to.
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  104. Midgets. Custom designed for space travel. We laugh at them now, (yes, you do, in secret, don't act like you don't) but they are the future of humanity, while you long-leggers are obsolete.
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  105.  @dbf1dware  And now your task is to become incredibly wealthy so you can visit it.
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  106.  @UncleWermus  Nah, the gym membership fee was too high.
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  107. Astronauts are just riding on an expensive simulator developed by Walt Disney and Howard Hughes. It's a very realistic ride, but you never actually leave Florida. Good thing, because just a few miles offshore is the Bermuda Triangle, a triangular hole in the flat earth into which you may fall.
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  108.  @davidmoore8741  What does Ukraine have to do with a 1950s launch vehicle family?
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  109. I think most Soviet rocket engineers admired the Saturn V, even if they didn't admit it. Heck, the N1 has fans around the world, and it never even worked right.
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  110. In Soviet Russia, polonium uses you up.
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  111. A friend of mine used to work on Titan II missiles years ago when he was in the Air Force. He told me a story about some guys that were working in a room with a solid rocket motor that was, IIRC, supposed to separate stages, when they screwed up and set it off. It fired for maybe a second and those guys were essentially erased from existence.
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  112. I believe the ownership chain of Atlas, starting in the 1950s, is Convair, Martin Marietta, Lockheed Martin, and then ULA. ULA was a shotgun wedding between Lockheed Martin and Boeing forced upon them by the government. The Delta family of rockets was Boeing legacy companies.
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  113. The real name for "Fat Earth Theory" is called "earth oblateness" in the textbooks.
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  114. Also funny if Donald Trump.
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  115.  @SnakebitSTI  Mike Mullane calls it "normalization of deviance", basically ignoring the requirements because you got away with it a few times and figure you always will. Ther was a requirement for no O-ring burn-through, yet despite multiple burn-through incidents they launched Challenger anyway. There was a requirement for no debris strikes on the orbiter, yet despite tons of previous debris strikes they decided Columbia was going to be just fine. Follow the rules from the get-go and you can cut down on the risk and danger.
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  116.  @One-ny1hp  Hey guys, found the flerfer!
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  117. The irony of a guy calling people stupid when he confuses the 80s with the 40s....
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  118. For sure there's no way you'd get me to ride on that damn thing, up or down. I mean, it's awesome and as an unmanned freighter it shows great potential, but it scares me way more than the Shuttle did. The belly-flop landing is terrifying to behold, I'd take my chances on STS over that anytime.
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  119.  @Chris_the_Muso  Maybe also because water is corrosive and will get into all the parts and CO2 will immediately evaporate and dissipate in the air?
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  120. I always thought that scene was funny, because it implied that the Imperials were deliberately looking to kill people and didn't really care about cargo or droids getting away, even though the whole reason they boarded the ship was to find the stolen Death Star plans. Also, if they had just rolled the star destroyer so its belly faced away from the planet the escape pods may have all failed to function properly and could've been captured intact in orbit.
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  121. Ask your doctor about Dysprosium. Do not take Dysprosium if you are pregnant, diabetic, or have a heart condition. Side effects of Dysprosium may include unconsciousness, sleepiness, dizziness, greasy or oily stools, death, or an irrational urge to listen to Nickelback.
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  122. Get more for your dollar: send probes to outer planets and/or the Kuiper Belt equipped with telescopes and instruments for this as a secondary mission. Basically, more New Horizons type missions, but a bit bigger and better outfitted. NH was a fairly cheap mission as such things go, spend a bit more on a multi-vehicle program you could multiply the science return methinks.
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  123. Proving that 80s tech still looks more futuristic than 2020s tech.
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  124. Somewhere out there is the list of alternate landing sites for the Shuttle; you could look that up. But basically the Shuttle can land anywhere with a big enough runway. The tricky part is keeping the locals safe around the nasty hypergolic propellants after you roll to a stop.
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  125. That footage of those guys assembling the solid rocket segments, where you can see the rubbery propellant grain, scares me at some deep level. That's one of those jobs that is simple but seems like it can turn crazy deadly in an instant. Damn, rockets, you scary.
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  126.  @pedrolmlkzk  Nope. Launch vehicles and weapons have very different requirements. Generally, launch vehicles can tolerate things weapons can't such as delicate handling of hardware and propellants, slow tanking and slow preparations for launch, trading speed for higher payload mass to orbit. A missile is basically a bullet sitting in the chamber of a gun (silo) which needs to be able to stay ready for years on end and able to launch at a moment's notice. Missiles trade efficient performance for speed and reliability, and must be easy to handle for maintenance people. The liquid fueled Atlas, America's first ICBM, was mediocre as a weapon but made for a great launch vehicle later. Atlas had to be stored empty until an alert, when it would be raised out of the silo or coffin, and it took 15 minutes to load it with fuel and ox, while the current ICBM, the solid fuel Minuteman family, is much better suited to the task.
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  127. Well IIRC the original idea was to have it retrieved by a Shuttle orbiter and either serviced on the ground and re-launched or retired and put out to pasture in a museum. That idea's history now, so either HST gets grappled and deorbited or, if it loses attitude control and tumbles, it becomes impossible or unsafe to dock with, winds up dying in orbit and becoming space junk. My bet is it will die on orbit before anyone coughs up the money to grapple it. So, likely space junk.
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  128.  @AsbestosMuffins  In an extreme situation, an extra 100 lbs can be the difference between life and death, and the whole point of the story is that it's an emergency with no time to build a mission with the proper safety margin.
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  129. 1:05 well that's about what I've come to expect from DHL, the deliverymen who have never once actually found my house for some reason.
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  130. DART is helping Earth fly safe.
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  131.  @Sableagle  No, this was made by a bunch of 50-year-old white guys, many of them Navy vets.
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  132. On one of the early SpaceX Falcon 1 launches, this actually happened and many of us saw it on a live stream. On the Falcon 1 the interstage skirt is fixed to the first stage, and when the first stage separated the skirt banged into the upper stage rocket nozzle. In the video it is dark and then suddenly sunlight enters you see the nozzle scrape past the edge of the skirt and spring back into position before igniting. Though the burn started off well, the re-contact collision caused the upper stage to slew sideways and induced fuel slosh in the tanks, making the vehicle oscillate back and forth. The control system failed to damp it out, it got worse and worse, and finally the fuel sloshed too far and caused the engine to cutoff early, leading to a mission failure. I vividly remember watching that live and guessing what was happening before SpaceX cut the feed. Days later after analysis they confirmed what lots of us were thinking. I think this was the second launch, back in 2007.
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  133. Arthur C. Clarke's book 2010: Odyssey Two also saw some Chinese astronauts discovering life on Europa the hard way.
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  134. The Genesis Device!
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  135. 8:31 It never fails to amaze me that when the air is clear with no dust the Martian sky is so blue. Makes it look like you're in Utah.
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  136. My dad served aboard an aircraft carrier in the 60s. He saw an arresting cable snap and when it whipped around it took out the landing gear from under some A-4 jets, leaving them pancaked on their bellies on the flight deck. The landing signal officer who guides the jets in to land is in a pit off to one side of the deck and he ducked down below deck level, saving his own life.
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  137. "Helicopters do not 'fly', they beat the air into submission."
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  138. I believe some variant of the Titan III was also planned to be used for launching the X-20 Dyna Soar spaceplane before the X-20 was canceled. There are illustrations of it from the 60s. If anyone gets a chance to visit the USAF Museum in Dayton, Ohio, they have several rockets and ICBMs there, including a Titan IV shown towards the end of this video.
    15
  139. Same here, when he pulled out that one module I was waiting for it start singing Daisy.
    15
  140.  @paulcairns8718  Being cautious is one thing, but when there are people who've spent their entire careers on this program and may retire before it's even launched, one might say it's taking a bit too long. And that's before we bring up the money.
    15
  141.  @grg6574  Fewer engines also has many pros. Fewer moving parts to fail, and a higher thrust-to-weight ratio. And more engines didn't work out for the Soviet N1, for a variety of reasons beyond engine choice. This is a debate that's as old as spaceflight itself. But the OP's point is well-taken: big engines are cool to watch in action. What I'd give to witness a cluster of F-1B's shoving a giant rocket into the sky.
    15
  142. For the first stage when you are fighting gravity to get your giant tank of fuel off the ground, high thrust is more important than high Isp, for later stages the reverse is generally true. But yes, solid rockets are sometimes used on satellites to boost them into GTO due to simplicity and the fact that they are small and only need to burn once, briefly, to get the job done. At Goddard Spaceflight Center's visitor center there is a early-model Delta upper stage on display, a small solid rocket motor with no propellant loaded (obviously) and a mock satellite payload on it for context.
    15
  143. I imagine that would be a huge hazard in free fall, with it getting into the ventilation system and avionics, shorting things out, and being breathed in by the occupants.
    15
  144. For a big centrifuge, yes. For a smaller internal drum type like the one Frank Poole runs around, you need some Ligeti.
    15
  145. Yes, this is mission design. Before a mission is flown the planners have to work out things like this to ensure that in the case of contingencies there are fallback options. There's an old but great movie called "Marooned" about an Apollo CSM that gets stranded in orbit while returning from a space station because the service module's main engine fails to ignite. It's a great movie but it always bugged me that the fictional mission designers didn't budget enough propellant for the RCS jets to allow for the crew to use them for deorbit or to return to the space station and await rescue.
    14
  146. They could've landed at a downrange airfield if they lost a second engine after a certain point. I think part of the cockpit dialog was "Story, where are we going?" "I think we're going to Spain". After that they were told to ATO.
    14
  147.  @S1baar  Ezekiel Jones isn't wrong, but he didn't answer your question: the reason you never hold your breath is because if you have to swim to the surface in an emergency, the air in your lungs will expand as the outside pressure on your body decreases. This will cause your lungs to inflate and will damage the lung tissue. This is called lung expansion injury, and is a whole other thing that can painfully kill you besides the bends. SCUBA diving is lots of fun, but you really need to get good training.
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  148. The vast majority of those Hollywood people demonstrate no respect for my beliefs, so their strike means nothing to me.
    14
  149.  @scottmanley  It's like University of Pennsylvania (aka Penn) vs Pennsylvania State University (aka Penn State). People confuse this in conversation all the time, and the Penn Ivy Leaguers really hate it.
    14
  150.  @filanfyretracker  Also wheels on railroad locomotives have steel tires that get "sweated on" the way you described.
    14
  151. By 1997 the internet was a well-established "thing".
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  152. They just made the orbit insertion burn, and so far everything looks good. Let's hope it continues.
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  153. Scott, I thought the Columbia seats were reexamined after the Challenger accident and found to have been unable to get the astronauts clear of the SRB plume. Another reason to be thankful they were never used.
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  154. If you can thread your spacecraft through the open holes in the belt though, then you, sir, are a steely eyed missile man.
    13
  155. In Soviet Russia, moon land on you!
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  156. Can you navigate through space using only a handheld sextant and some brains? Yes, Armstrong's ship mate Buzz Aldrin could do it.
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  157. Ballast.
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  158. That slow motion video of the nozzles flexing is kind of terrifying, the amount of energy being released by that beast is awesome. I love the RS-25 engine.
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  159. Watching this live took me back to my childhood, watching the launch of STS-1 with my little brother, the excitement of seeing something really big, scary, and new blast off for the first time. When the hydrogen sparklers and water deluge began my blood was pumping, what a rush.
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  160.  @Gun4Freedom  Old nuclear bombs can't just be used as is for pulse propulsion; they are designed as weapons and they come in various sizes, yields, and configurations. You'd want all your pulse units to be built the same way, with a fraction of them as half charges for engine starts and stops. So you might be able to reprocess the old bombs and use their fuel to construct pulse units, but that's going to be pretty expensive.
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  161. 20 years since the loss of Columbia. Wow.
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  162. ​ @oopskapootz7276  This engine model has been successfully flown on the Vulcan launch vehicle.
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  163.  @MonkeyJedi99  Q: "How bad is it?" Answer: "Um, oh God oh God we're all gonna die?"
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  164. That's like the Marines' name for combat boots: LPCs or Leather Personnel Carriers.
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  165.  @Jacob-th7do  Never seen Mars bars come in soda cans, but sure, I guess...
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  166. The parts you think might be easy or hard often turn out to be the opposite. Remember that most people worried about the Space Shuttle's main engines, when the simple and trusted solid rocket booster turned out to be what killed Challenger.
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  167.  @philb5593  So the solar panels are basically selfie sticks?
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  168.  @DeputatKaktus  If archiving footage is the question, then fine, use digital cameras, and transfer the video to film after the fact. Digital cameras can be tiny, which allows them to be mounted all over launch vehicles, and they are cheap, which means if they get destroyed or lost they can be replaced, and the imagery is stored on a hard drive far away from the violent events being recorded. Personally I love film for artistic reasons, but for engineering applications not using digital imaging is simply dumb.
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  169.  @MrDariolett  Of course they could do it if they wanted; the plans and documentation for the Saturn V and its subassemblies all still exist, there are photos, books, and actual examples still around. But if you were to build a Saturn V today you wouldn't make an exact copy anyway; you'd use modern technology to make it more capable by using lighter materials, miniaturized electronics, upgraded variants of the F-1 and J-2 made to be more powerful, lighter, etc. You'd wind up with a "Saturn V-A"
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  170. "Why are you holding the door shut?" "To keep the fires of hell from coming in here with me." "Oh. Good idea."
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  171.  @cherriberri8373  I hate astronomy. There, I said it.
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  172. All of those old government training films had good artwork and explained things very well, stuff like how an engine works, etc.
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  173. It's amazing the information they can extract from simple data like spectroscopy. Kudos to the brainiacs who do it.
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  174. There was an article recently about how Boeing's merger with McDonnel Douglas changed Boeing's corporate culture, and not in a good way. Basically, before the merger was the old Boeing that created the 707, the 747, the B-52, and other long-running success stories, but since the merger something changed and the 787 and newer versions of the 737 (such as the Max) have seen a decline in various aspects. Something else to consider, though, is that Boeing is a huge company and the space side is pretty separate from the jetliner side; much of the space side came from the merger with Hughes Space, which is a whole different story than the MDD merger. Big corporations are complex organizations and it's hard to make broad generalizations, although it's fun to joke about it.
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  175. That nosedive flip maneuver looks really dicey for a ship carrying passengers. They should call it the "Jesus Maneuver" because when it happens the passengers yell "Jesus!"
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  176. 3:02 love those old school graphics
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  177. @Watcher505 So you flat earthers have now moved on to SR-71 denying, now?
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  178.  @QuantumHistorian  Comes from common sense. Bread is funny. So it has to be true.
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  179. My policy: always watch first, then read. That way you won't get upset when the show/movie doesn't match the book.
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  180.  @Runetrantor  The moon is too lumpy and too close to the earth for anything to stay in a stable lunar orbit for long without frequent thrusting to keep it there. That's why all of the Apollo LMs either crashed into the moon or escaped into solar orbit after they were abandoned. You could park stuff at a stable earth-moon Lagrange point though.
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  181.  @AndrewBlacker-wr2ve  Here's a choice for you, choose one: 1. Kind and polite 2. Rude and unpleasant Looks like you already chose 2, never mind.
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  182. The US has, in the past, made conscious decisions not to implement certain types of new weapons technology, in order to avoid sparking new arms races. Project Pluto, for example, the nuclear ramjet cruise missile, was canceled, along with nuclear powered bombers, and treaties were signed by the US to preclude certain types of weapons which US engineers absolutely know how to build. But we are now entering a time where major US adversaries, China and Russia, are starting to build this stuff despite America's restraint. The US can certainly build hypersonic weapons as well as anyone else; the question is whether it's good policy to do so.
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  183. Voyager will eventually return as V'ger.
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  184.  @shd2236  There was a flame shooting out of the engine bay, and then the plume changed colors. We've seen that on other rockets before, usually right before the engine blows up. I think they were fortunate to get it down and shut off before that came to pass. Good thing is they'll be able to learn from it quicker.
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  185.  @juanixinauj  That means Japan has to launch into polar orbit.
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  186. Careful, there's a good way and bad way to get your own crater.
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  187. I didn't think I was going to watch a whole hour but this was riveting. That poor woman can't even celebrate her achievement after landing. A very bittersweet story.
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  188. Check out Greenbank Observatory in the middle of nowhere West Virginia for some cool radio telescopes, including one really cool art deco design.
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  189. Now they can free up factory space to restart producing new DC-3's! I mean, it's not like they wouldn't sell a bunch, right?
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  190. Doesn't the shuttle SRB operate at sea level, though? Why test in vacuum?
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  191.  @davisdf3064  Nice. And engineers figure out that all the space debris is a good thing to block solar energy and reduce global warming.
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  192. I love everyone in this thread. "I'd expect any of you to do the same for me."
    11
  193.  @michael5045  Supposedly, long range artillery such as battleship guns must take coriolis into account. Don't know for sure.
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  194.  @volatile_gaming9475  "Game over, man, game over!"
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  195. If they don't knock, then they are an alien from Rescue on Fractalus. Do not let them in!
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  196.  @mattstorm360  Exactly, which is why this vehicle never imploded.
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  197. All true, but also a fair amount of luck. If the failed engine was on the other side of the vehicle it probably would've crashed right into the launch pad equipment.
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  198.  @drewrussell8531  I think the last good Windows was XP.
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  199. The skycrane deployed thumpers as it flew to its crash site.
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  200. I got one of these for my airplane, and it's great. I don't have to bother practicing landings anymore, I just get over my destination and pop the chute. Biggest drawback is having to repack it every time.
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  201. That dark blue space suit looks like it's off the set of The Expanse.
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  202. I can never get over the monstrous power of those engines seen from so close in those launchpad camera shots.
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  203. The story I had in mind was Rocketship Galileo, in which a professor and three teenage boys build a thorium-fueled nuclear thermal rocket out in the desert and fly it to the moon. Crazy, especially the part where they test the engine in a static fire while standing behind a simple shield to protect against radiation. Teenagers. Interesting story, though.
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  204.  @craigcorson3036  "There will never be a good enough reason to use nukes" Oh boy that sounds a bit fanatical. A nuke is not some evil totem, it's a machine that creates lots of heat, radiation, and blast effect. If you have an application that benefits from those things you may consider a nuke. It does nobody any good to be afraid of technology just because it can be used for evil purposes; it's not going to get uninvented and there is no going back to 1944, so the only choice is to be rational and keep moving forward.
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  205. It's actually pre-Boomer, it's the generation before Boomers, the ones who were teens or twenty-somethings during WWII.
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  206.  @enisra_bowman  Oh boy, want some pork with that salt?
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  207. Bananagate!
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  208. Over the years, Rocketdyne got all the glamour jobs with engines like the F1 Saturn V main engine and the RS-25 Space Shuttle Main Engine, and it always seemed Aerojet lost out on the big contracts. But Aerojet had done well for themselves building engines like the AJ-10 and most of the thrusters used for attitude control and as propulsion on satellites. I'm a bit old school, so it's a bit disappointing that they merged into one company. As far as them being owned by L3 Harris, unless I am mistaken, I think Rocketdyne has spent most of its history owned by other bigger companies, and if so this is just more of the same.
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  209. Unfortunately they are relying on Blue Origin for those engines. Hope they get there but BO does not inspire great confidence on my part.
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  210. The footage from the cameras mounted on the SRBs during launch, separation, and splashdown is some of the most epic spaceflight footage ever made. Even has sound with it, so you can hear the wind whistling and the structure howl and creak as it tumbles downward. When the camera turns so you can see the orbiter and external tank screaming away at full thrust into the dark sky, that is just freaking awesome.
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  211. If you gain or lose weight on a long mission, or if your spine stretches out a bit in zero G, I can see the precision fit stop being precision. And then there's the problem with the areas you can't put constant pressure on, like the area around your crotch and genitals, and the area around your neck where the helmet has to attach. It's still a cool idea if it can be made to work, but it's been in sci fi books since the 40s or 50s and we still don't see a viable model yet.
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  212.  @volgawolfhounds741  Bro, do you even quote?
    10
  213.  @lawrencemiller3829  That person should've had a few teeth knocked out.
    10
  214. Or they could just use a flashlight from a window.
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  215. We like to have fun here.
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  216.  @DUKE_of_RAMBLE Nuclear reactors in space are not banned by any treaty.
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  217. Most people who work for NASA don't work for NASA directly; they work for contractors. Like SpaceX.
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  218.  @ZboeC5  Because anti-capitalists think that places like the Soviet Union, Venezuela, Pol Pot's Cambodia, and North Korea are utopian wonderlands where everyone works honestly and there is no corruption and dozens of millions of people were not murdered by their own governments.
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  219. "As you may have heard..." Nope, I don't hear about stuff like this until I hear it from Scott Manley.
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  220.  @LCaddyStudios  All fighter planes have always been built by contractors in the US, Lockheed Martin being one of them.
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  221. I see what you did there. FBI will be visiting, soon.
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  222.  @hydro-flare  More like 7.8 km/s
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  223. Maybe it was the cloud of unburned propellant looking like a wet rain cloud to radar?
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  224. Just watching this video gives me a bit of vertigo. I don't know what it is about the Saturn V; even though we have stuff like Artemis and Starship today, the Saturn V in my mind is just so much more badass. It's also aesthetically beautiful, the perfect shape and look for a rocket ship, right down to the massive engines, fairings, and those fins.
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  225.  @221b-l3t  It also makes it so you never have to worry about anything ever again.
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  226. When the Soviet army was in Afghanistan in the 80s they had problems with their tanks, because the soldiers kept drinking the brake fluid.
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  227. I don't know if they still sell it, but you used to be able to get peanut butter and jelly in one squeeze bottle. It wasn't very good though.
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  228. Interesting thought about the Shuttle's aesthetics. The Soviet Buran shuttle orbiter was a very similar design, approximately the same size and shape, but it was not a direct copy system-wise. It turns out that to do what STS did, your orbiter has to look pretty much just like it did. Function over form, as has been stated. But if you look at the two spacecraft side by side up close, the Rockwell orbiter looks a bit different than the Buran orbiter. The nose is a bit different, the windshield frames, the tile pattern, all these things represent the differences in philosophy between American and Russian aerospace engineers. The Buran looks Russian, while the Rockwell orbiter looks like it came out of a US aircraft factory, like it has some Boeing or Lockheed DNA mixed into its aesthetics. Personally, I think the US orbiter is better-looking, but that's subjective.
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  229. Re ejecting the warp core: assuming the thing has significant amounts of antimatter still inside, you'd better hope you get reeeeaaaalllly far away from it before the containment fails and the fuel contacts the reactor walls. If you look up the famous cutaway poster of Enterprise from the first Motion Picture, it also shows a whole array of magnetic antimatter storage bottles at the base of the engineering hull, each of which should be able to glass over half a planet according to the original series. Come to think of it, operating antimatter-powered starships in LEO is a really dangerous thing to do. In ST III when they destroyed the Enterprise, by all rights it should've wiped out the face of the planet along with it.
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  230.  Adymn Sani  I heard that was a prank they would play, trying to strand you in the middle while you were sleeping and then watch you squirm when you wake up.
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  231.  @Boold198891  Objects like that have higher area to mass ratios than the station and will deorbit naturally due to drag, probably after a few months or so. In addition, when astronauts chuck stuff away they should be doing it opposite the direction of the ISS's velocity, so that the object will be in a slightly lower altitude from that moment on. BAck in the day when the Shuttle astronauts were replacing the solar panels on Hubble they tossed the old ones overboard the same way by hand.
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  232.  @karenrobertsdottir4101  I believe that as long as the quartz remains transparent to X-rays then it'll work. But what do I know.
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  233.  @mattweihl  Yes, Mike Mullane talks about this in his book.
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  234. It's absolutely slow motion. Look it up. It was shot with high speed film cameras for the purpose of allowing engineers to examine it frame by frame so see how the system was performing after the launch. Every launch is extensively filmed so that if something goes wrong they can figure out what broke and why, or if nothing goes wrong they may still learn something and improve future missions.
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  235.  @FLPhotoCatcher  Whenever I think of Starlink or any of these other dump-hundreds-of-satellites-into-orbit programs, my song is Space Junk by Devo.
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  236.  @kennethc2466  Do you get offended when someone makes fun of Blue Origin? Because this is a conversation about the New Shepard, has nothing to do with whatever you're talking about.
    9
  237. Electrolux vacuum cleaners are an example of really good industrial design, I love that 50s/60s machine look and the logo.
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  238. We'd be in LEO with an even older ISS, because when there is no competition, LEO is about as far as you can get funding for.
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  239. It's also a gamble. In the years it takes for the spacecraft to get into position for its mission there are plenty of opportunities for something to go wrong. I'm always happy when something like New Horizons or Cassini gets all the way to its target and nothing major goes wrong.
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  240. I imagine you would treat the sun's surface the same as you would a gas giant, since it is basically a gas giant that is burning itself.
    8
  241.  @HALLish-jl5mo  Correct. And the water/steam inside the engine is a working fluid.
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  242.  @lawrencedoliveiro9104  Yes, the props were fake, but in universe they were real tech of the early 21st Century.
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  243. My understanding is that newer boosters have a leveling system, while 1058 was older and did not. So this is somewhat less likely to happen to boosters going forward. Read that in an article over on Space News I think.
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  244. Where I grew up it was against the law for kids to buy rocket motors at the hobby shop without some kind of license or something. So as a result I never got to do model rocketry, even though I desperately wanted to, looking at all the cool kits. I guess some asshole somewhere was happy they "kept me safe" or something though.
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  245. The title of this video is all about landings and failures to launch. It's a real downer. I'll be here all week, folks. Try the veal.
    8
  246. There is a video, possibly by Mark Felton, which describes the German plan for submarine launched ballistic missiles. A U-boat would tow a sort of barge behind it which contained a V-2 missile. This barge would've been a missile silo turned on its side. When it was time to launch, the barge would ballast itself to pitch up 90 deg into launch position. Never got close to making it happen, of course. But people in the 1940s were thinking ahead of the tech at the time.
    8
  247.  @LCaddyStudios  The Apollo and Shuttle suits were also built by contractors.
    8
  248. Hindsight is 20/20. Nobody at North American, Grumman, or NASA ever thought there would be a need for interchangeable filters, any more than they thought the LM's descent engine would be used for mid-course correction burns. Faulting them after the fact is hardly fair, given the circumstances.
    8
  249.  @TheNasaDude  I dunno, but in that stupid movie they were driving a drilling rig rover thing around in super low g, so, Hollywood rules.
    8
  250.  @TimothyLipinski  The RTG carried on Apollo 13's LM was carried back into Earth's atmosphere after the crew abandoned it and is still at the bottom of the ocean today. RTGs and nuclear reactors used in space are engineered to be very safe in the event of a launch vehicle failure and aren't worth losing much sleep over. A bigger problem is if a reactor gets placed on a trajectory to reenter the atmosphere after it's been critical. The Soviet Kosmos 954 satellite failure resulted in a nuclear reactor breaking up and scattering over northern Canada in 1977. Much of the core was never recovered and is still out in the woods and lakes somewhere.
    8
  251. I remember seeing that explosion in the early days of Youtube and thinking the launch platform must have been lunched. Was surprised to hear it was only lightly damaged.
    8
  252.  @xomm  The reentry is a bit longer than a capsule going full ballistic, but only by a few minutes. When it gets down it lands on a runway where an ambulance can roll right up and get the patient off. Also, a lifting body should have decent cross-range capability, so it will have a bit more opportunities to deorbit and still make the landing field. Not as much as a winged Space Shuttle, but a fair amount more than a capsule.
    8
  253. Well, if I were wealthy and funding my own space tourism business, damn straight I'd give myself an early ride. Let the jealous chatterboxes on the internet be damned.
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  254. "Go up to that live rocket, the big one over there with the vapors hissing out of it and tighten that bolt." "This bolt here?" "NO! That one lets the hell out of the big red tank thingie! Turn the one next to it. Remember, righty tighty, lefty loosy!" "Got it boss mang. We gonna take care of that badboy."
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  255. Fort Washington, situated south of Washington DC at the confluence of Piscataway Creek and the Potomac River, was built in the early 1800s to defend DC from river attack and is now a national park, but for a while after the 9/11 attacks the Army deployed a Patriot missile battery there, which was plainly visible from the bike trail on the other side of the river.
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  256.  @SimplySketchyGT  Slow your breathing = fine, holding breath = very bad habit
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  257. That is Mars. That big red thing in the sky is just a very large chunk.
    8
  258. Highly illogical.
    8
  259.  @burningchrome70  You put the sticker on a transparency across the mouth of the telescope so that the SpaceX watermark shows up in every image lol.
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  260. It was called the Apollo Telescope Mount, and yes, it was used.
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  261. The thing about Atlas and Titan is that they were such good launch vehicles, and so inadequate as alert-worthy weapons, that they actually stayed in production as launchers long after they were retired as weapons. These solid fuel jobs, on the other hand, are really optimized as weapons, designed to sit in storage for years, like cartridges in a rifle magazine, and then work simply and reliably if fired in anger. They will get warheads to the other side of the planet very quickly, but they aren't as efficient as liquid fueled launchers, can't lift as much mass for a rocket of their size, and their high accelerations, desired in a weapon, can be rough on more delicate payloads. But it's good that they've found a niche launch market.
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  262. There is a great book out there called "Longitude" which tells the tale of how Harrison invented his clock and how the Admiralty avoided paying him the prize money for decades before King George III finally overrode the board and made sure he got paid. The Admiralty was heavily influenced by the astronomers to reject Harrison's clock prior to this. The astronomers at the Greenwich Observatory had worked out a complicated system for finding longitude based on the moons of Jupiter, which can be thought of as the hands of a clock in the sky, and if you have the right almanac of published tables, you can use the Galilean moons to find out what the time is in Greenwich and compute your longitude. It also factored in the sun and moon and some other stuff. Problem is, of course, seeing the Galilean moons is only possible at night with a clear sky, and you have to deal with the ship's pitching and rolling as well, so it is impractical for most ships in the 1700s. It was used by landbound surveyors and cartographers though.
    8
  263. Not just your eardrums, but probably several of your organs. I can't imagine the violence of that sound at close range.
    8
  264. You bet, Buck! bidibidibidi
    7
  265. What is that really cool 70s-looking computer graphics at 9:00? Did that come from NASA, or some contractor, is it in a documentary somewhere, is it public domain? It reminds me of the early vector scan video arcade games like Asteroids.
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  266.  @TheNasaDude  That was real for Alexei Leonov.
    7
  267. Kubrick's 2001 also had flat panel screens on the spacecraft, something that was way ahead of its time, we literally didn't see those get widespread until, well, around 2001 or so. Even the sequel film, made in 1985 and set 9 years after the first film, had CRT screens, which by that time had real computer graphics on them.
    7
  268. The "Today I Found Out" channel has a great video mocking the moon hoaxers. Recommend.
    7
  269.  @Codysdab  Different regions of America are weird in different ways, too. Just like every English-speaking country.
    7
  270.  @theseductivepotato7459  That's how most failed beyond-LEO missions end.
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  271.  @-coolerlegothings-9784  No, JWST is not a replacement for HST, different wavelengths. A new HST-type could also be built to be easier to maintain without risking humans. Hubble is over 30 years old, and even if we do nothing we'll probably get a few more years out of her, we've gotten our money's worth. Time for a better model.
    7
  272.  @I_am_ARTBOT  I played the daylights out of Rescue on Fractalus on the Atari 5200 console back in the day.
    7
  273. And while you're at it, how connections are severed in flight, as when the space shuttle ET separates, or the Atlas booster engines cut off and jettison, etc.
    7
  274. Always thought it was an amazing coincidence that Earth and Mars days are almost the same length. Easy enough to make up a reason for that and use it as an excuse for lots of sci fi worlds to have similar days as well I guess. Happy retconning.
    7
  275. If Apollo 13 had 3d-printed a CO2 adaptor they probably would've died from CO2 poisoning before they finished. Sometimes it's just quicker to use duck tape.
    7
  276.  @stephenburrows4250  If Trump gets voted out of office, all of this moon landing stuff gets canceled again, just like it did in 2008. Happens pretty much every time a new party wins.
    7
  277.  @HullBreaking  Cool, dude. How does that make you feel?
    7
  278. The US never flew an actual nuclear jet engine. One reactor flew under a B-36 but was not used for propulsion, and operated successfully without incident. Project Pluto successfully ground tested a nuclear ramjet but it never flew and had no accidents. Also the NERVA project tested nuclear thermal rockets successfully, which also never flew. NERVA engines were developed for space vehicles, not weapons or bombers.
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  279.  @miccrhaafetl5101  I'm not saying Alien Hair Guy is an alien, but...alien.
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  280.  @MrPig40  ASAT missiles are generally not orbital; they don't have the velocity to achieve orbit and don't need to. They just need to toss themselves in front of an oncoming satellite (with great precision) and the huge velocity of the collision does the rest.
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  281. Bomb damage comes in three types: radiation, heat, and blast. Blast damage includes flying debris, such as tree trunks, fragments, and splinters. If you're hiding in a ditch or a hole you may be safe from the heat and radiation, but if the trees overhead are exploding and showering you with splinters that might be bad. So one purpose of testing is to look for things like that. ("Radiation" in this context means the prompt, direct radiation from the bomb when it detonates, which doesn't last long but is very intense if you are close. Think of a camera flash, but instead of visible light it's gammas, X-rays, and neutrons. Radioactive fallout is radiation you worry about hours to weeks later.)
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  282. "I am Locutus of Borg. Resistance is futile."
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  283. That day came and went when they got NERVA to work and then canceled it.
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  284. Things that keep you alive in one form are deadly in another. You die without water, but water can surely kill you. Electric shock can kill or restart your heart. UV radiation can be bad for you, but the right kind in moderation helps you produce vitamin D.
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  285. The Navy vehicle also didn't have delicate humans inside it, so it could be operated with more risk.
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  286. If they can get Kaylee to join the engineering team things'll work out all shiny I conjur.
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  287. "We are rockets! Bom bom bom, bom bom bom!"
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  288. Manned is still appropriate, because basic English.
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  289.  @declan9876  I agree, a small chance to survive is better than no chance. Makes you wonder if Columbia's crew had used these things at least some of them might've made it.
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  290. I know some people who have worked for Boeing for many years, and they are good engineers. They don't work for the programs that get all the bad press, Starliner, 737, SLS, etc. They work for older, more obscure programs and are pretty good at their jobs, despite the upper level corporate issues. That's all I got.
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  291. In WWII the US figured out how to put tiny radar transceivers into anti-aircraft artillery shells, vacuum tube tech that could withstand the shock of being fired out of a gun barrel.
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  292. Inners wreck Ganymede. Only Belter life matter now.
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  293. I think the immense perihelion velocity is cool, it's getting closer to the relativistic speed range.
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  294.  @Willaev Yeah, let's skip the conspiracy theories, though.
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  295.  @HollowVortex81  I once learned to program a Motorola microcontroller, and though it seemed complex at first, once you learned the machine code and registers, etc., it was fun because you knew exactly what you were telling the machine to do. With a high level language like BASIC or C++ you are very removed from what the hardware is actually doing inside the plastic chip case.
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  296. Very cool. This reminds me of a NASA proposal to build a giant pinhole camera out of two free-flying spacecraft, one of which would have the collection sensor and the other would have the "pinhole" aperture to focus the image on the first. The idea was that they'd be able to see extrasolar planets in enough detail to make out seas and continents. Each spacecraft would have to flown extremely precisely in order for the two to aim at distant point subjects. I think it was an idea from the late 90s that never got funded.
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  297. I once studied RF tech pretty hard in college, loved it, but never worked in the field and now my knowledge is lost. Still really cool stuff.
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  298. Strong memories of the McDonnel Douglas DC-X project from the early 90s here. That might be worth a video, Scott (hint hint!).
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  299. It makes me happy to see so many Airwolf, Blue Thunder, and Knight Rider fans. Especially Airwolf.
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  300. Most significant figures > least significant figures. Makes sense.
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  301.  @digitaurus  California-accented Scottish English lol
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  302.  @Ottee2  IIRC that one has been restored and placed indoors now. I plan to visit it, hopefully soon.
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  303. 7:28 that Lockheed ad for the Agena stage is classic. You could do a whole video about the Agena, which was a real workhorse for America in the early days of spaceflight.
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  304. Oh yes, the movie where a missile strike in GEO somehow causes instant Kessler syndrome thousands of km below in LEO, within 15 minutes. Conveniently, Hubble, ISS, and Tiangong are all in the same orbit plane, at the same altitude, close enough to drift to in a space suit. Also, the Space Shuttle is still flying. Sorry for the rant, aside from that stuff I actually like the movie and thought Sandra Bullock was great.
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  305.  @kamakaziozzie3038  Problem?
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  306.  @3gunslingers  What I saw was a fake heating effect done in a cut rate space sim that can't even get earth's mass right and none of the numbers are even close to reality. Scott likes to use it for quick visual demos, but don't think KSP's visual effects have any bearing on reality.
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  307. I like how that rocket powered plane is held back by sandbags and a street curb, while aiming into a shipping container just in case.
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  308. Sure would be nice if we had some GRENADES right about now.
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  309. For a great read on the history of the Atlas program from the 50s up to the early days of Atlas V, pick up a copy of the book "Atlas: The Ultimate Weapon". Goes into detail about how the program was started, the people involved in it, the early efforts to design and build launch facilities, command and control systems, guidance systems, propulsion, weaponizing it using coffin launchers and later vertical silos, later development as a space launch vehicle, etc.
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  310. Tiles were the biggest PITA for the Space Shuttle, in terms of man hours needed to service them between flights. That's one of the main reasons STS was so expensive to operate. SpaceX has done a lot of cool stuff, but reusable orbiters are tough.
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  311.  @ArKritz84  For any given system, a trade study is necessary to determine the pros and cons of lots of small engines vs. fewer bigger ones. There is no free lunch either way. TANSTAAFL as Mr. Heinlein used to say.
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  312. I used to work in aviation maintenance. We used to have a saying: there's no such thing as a perfectly good airplane (or spacecraft); they're all in various states of disrepair. Every jetliner you've ever flown on, however shiny and new, has had something minor wrong with it somewhere. The problem with spacecraft is that they're so dependent on high performance that it's hard to design margin of error into the systems. A B-17 bomber or an A-10 can fly home on one engine and half its structure ripped to shreds, because it can be built heavier than required to get the job done. A jetliner can absorb a surprising amount of punishment due to weather, engine failure, rough landings, etc. Most spacecraft don't have that option. A launch vehicle's engines are like a dragster's engine, they have to operate at super high performance for a short period of time and the whole vehicle has to be as light as possible, while flying at hypersonic speeds and large accelerations. The whole machine is always on the edge of spectacular success or failure.
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  313. I call that for a metal band name!
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  314. ​ @Mute_Nostril_Agony And Arthur C. Carke describes it in detail in the book.
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  315. Last time I was this early, early jokes weren't stale yet.
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  316.  @NullHand  You can't shut down a whole patch of airspace across an entire ocean permanently.
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  317.  @donjones4719  Atlas V and Delta IV are both EELV programs. The government wanted two EELVs to ensure access to space in case one system was grounded, which is what happened when Challenger blew up and too many eggs were in the shuttle basket. The USAF (now Space Force) does not want to rely on just one rocket. The Centaur is just an old, very very good design for a high energy upper stage. Complaining about monopoly in the space business is kind of pointless, since there are more launch providers now than there were a few years ago, and maybe more coming up, and the upstart companies are building their own unique designs.
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  318. That's a piston engine. Jets are more like "suck squeeze burn blow".
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  319.  @lordcraycray2921  That actually makes sense. But still, when it comes to Russia I always think of radiation, and this only reinforces that in my mind.
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  320. I have a cool book somewhere with all kinds of designs for the Apollo Saturn system that were supposed to build on the initial moon landings. Habitats, cargo LMs, all kinds of cool stuff.
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  321. It's amazing how far back the heritage goes on so many modern launch vehicles. Thor was a long time ago. Atlas is another program that's been around since the mid-1950s.
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  322. So, after you advised us to fly "safe", I was wondering, does Blue Origin have a large bag or sheath of some sort to provide the booster with protection from the elements?
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  323. Laser Squad! Now that's a name I've not heard since...loved that game back in the 90s.
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  324. Ah yes, Bill Nelson, who said to Congress he has "no idea" why China is exploring the far side of the moon.
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  325. Where the power goes out so you can't charge your electric car that makes you feel self righteous, and where people drop drug needles and shit in the streets. Seriously, get out of California.
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  326. When the launch is successful it's a New Zealand rocket. When it fails, it's the Americans'.
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  327. Outstanding work, and glad for the Orbiter shoutout! I have simulated every Apollo missions from launch to splashdown in Orbiter.
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  328. Unmanned landers have already done so, many years ago since, but if you're talking about manned landings, forget it. In addition to the extreme (and I mean EXTREME) difficulty in keeping a human alive in that hellish environment, you also have the problem that ordinary rocket engines will not work in that extreme ambient pressure. Venus is a great setting for a sci fi story about a prison planet from which no man can ever escape.
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  329.  @thomashiggins9320  Yeah, it's a brutal story.
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  330. Or a setup for a Gilligans Island reboot. Just need a movie star and a country girl.
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  331. That wasn't a warning light, it's one of the plasma weapons like the ones on the wingtips of the Martian machines in War of the Worlds 1955.
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  332. The scary thing is that the plume is invisible between the nozzle and the shock diamond. You can't see it, but there is a stream of intense violence in that space.
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  333.  @peterstickney7608  Ah yes, the good old days, when boys would build their own nuclear reactors, usually from a kit your dad bought at Radio Shack. Good times.
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  334. Even if the manual control thing were true, it's not necessary. Even with the autopilot engaged, the human in the left front seat is still in control of the vehicle.
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  335. Even the sites of the crashed LMs would be cool to visit and see the scattered parts. Depending on the circumstances there may be some machinery or avionics intact enough to be worthy museum artifacts.
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  336. Great rundown on Soviet/Russian launch vehicles, Scott, have a Merry Christmas!
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  337. Moonraker was goofy, and they got the spin gravity on the space station wrong as usual, but as I've grown older I've learned to accept and love it. Besides, it was conceived before the first real shuttle launch, when we all thought that launching space shuttles all the time would be an everyday affair. I think the hardest thing to believe was the idea that the British government would pony up the cash to actually buy a half dozen space shuttles, complete with a supply of external tanks, SRBs, and launch facilities.
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  338.  @Daniel-kz3df  Doesn't change the fact of what I wrote: everyone, including the astronauts, thought the SSMEs would probably be the thing most likely to cause an accident, not the SRBs.
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  339.  @neithere  I don't care about Ukraine.
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  340. There needs to be an Arnold Schwarzeneggar action movie where the bad guy's head winds up inside this thing.
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  341. I think it was dumb luck. Had that happened at higher altitude the thing might've failed hard (ie. blow up) before it had time to land and shut down.
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  342.  @nizm0man  The suppliers and tooling didn't exist when they set out to build it in the first place, and yet they did. You can build anything if you have enough money. The USSR made an exact copy of a B-29 bomber and they no access to Boeing's plans, documents, or factory tools. What they did have was a real B-29, enough money and the threat of Stalin executing them if they failed.
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  343. The Gregorian calendar is, by historical twists and turns, sort of based on the winter solstice, so...
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  344.  @bbartky  Oh yes, the Osborne. A suitcase with a 5 or so inch cathode ray tube that was heavy enough to be used as a wheel chock on a 747. Used one of those at work back in the day. It was hopelessly obsolete, but the only thing that ran the custom test software we were using in our shop.
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  345.  @Duhya  Largely true for LEO missions, but for translunar or interplanetary returns at 11+ km/s such as Apollo, control is absolutely necessary to ensure lift is generated, as neither the vehicles nor the crew could survive a ballistic reentry as such crazy velocities.
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  346.  @kennethferland5579  Apollo 13 LM Aquarius was equipped with an RTG to power experiments. Look things up before responding in a hostile manner next time.
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  347.  @3gunslingers  With this attitude we'll be to Mars in no time at all.
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  348. Despite my knowing that these things will not happen anytime soon, it's still a bit terrifying to see such enormous power. As for Q, I think he's cool with humans thanks to Picard, but his fellow Continuum member Trelane, the Squire of Gothos, may be the bigger threat.
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  349. 8:10 James Bond called, he wants his Moonraker pictures back.
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  350. RIP Dusty Hill, gone to the great Lagrange point in the sky...
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  351.  @Hevach  True, but I'm glad we didn't have to watch the Saturn V blow up over and over again before it finally worked, though the footage would be spectacular. We did go through that in the very early days of Explorer I and Corona and so on.
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  352.  @mrcuttime22  Oxygen and hydrogen are nontoxic, as long as they aren't on fire.
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  353. Brawndo's got what plants crave!
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  354. That is a great article, worth looking up. I read it back around 2007 I think. The STS flight software is known as the closest thing to perfect code that's ever been written. Whatever else was wrong with Shuttle, the software was on point.
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  355.  @Infinite_Maelstrom  The fins are one of the coolest aesthetics of the Saturn V and Saturn IB, useless or not they look cool.
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  356.  @samrobinson9110  Maybe. I should've tried to ignite it to see what kind of Isp PB&J gets you.
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  357. Spam in a can.
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  358.  @jhdsfalsjhdfjashdkhvjfldld8301  Explain. Please cite facts and numbers.
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  359. A square orbit around the moon, well I'll be! I have to say, I was one of the doubters/haters of Artemis but since the launch and seeing all this stuff lately I've gotten pretty excited about it. The odd orbital mechanics is super cool. And so, by the way, is seeing that NASA worm logo out in deep space looking back at Terra and Luna.
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  360. The purpose of navigation lights is so you can tell the relative heading of a ship or aircraft (or spacecraft) from a distance. Red is always port side, green is always starboard side. Ships have white lights on the masts, a low one forward and a high one aft, while aircraft typically have a red "beacon" and an flashing strobe "anticollision" light. It seems to me spacecraft have apparently only had them since LED tech made lights light enough to bother putting them in your mass budget, I may be wrong. If you see a spacecraft (or any vessel) in the distance, you may be able to make out its shape but not its orientation, so the lights aid the observer.
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  361. If I Did It
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  362. Would be cool if they had video and sound in the cabin when this happened.
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  363.  @filanfyretracker  As a sport diver who's never been deeper than 140 ft or so, the deep ocean definitely scares me more than vacuum.
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  364. Because Dragon had a rocket engine blow up, which would kill the crew. Starliner's anomaly was non-lethal, easy to correct by an alert crew, and easy to fix without redesigning hardware. The vehicle went off course, but it was recovered and undamaged.
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  365.  @DeathValleyDazed  I'm referring to what some people call "The Greatest Generation", yes. I do not call it that, for reasons which are off topic and personal.
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  366.  @jokerace8227  If you look at some of the orbital bail-out schemes proposed for rescuing astronauts back in the 60s many of them involved an inflatable heat shield of some sort, some of them strapped to an astronaut's back so he would reenter butt first and descend under a chute.
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  367.  @ariaspes3842  That's twice now you've pedaled that bogus 37% failure statistic. Stupid troll, if you're going to spread propaganda, you have to be at least a little bit truthful. If you respond to this comment, don't forget to post a citation for your fake numbers.
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  368.  @bobqzzi  The scene where the astronauts are talking to their families, believing they are probably not going to make it, was pretty stark and horrifying. Gene Hackman's did a great job of portraying an astronaut who was at the end of his rope mentally.
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  369.  @5Andysalive  And that rescue vehicle CSM 119 is the only "flyable" Apollo spacecraft in existence now, on display at KSC.
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  370. I had to put on my new reading glasses to read this post.
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  371. It's 2019, you think they'd have the technology to add stars to the fake moon landing videos by now, jeez! The Chinese guy just copied Stanley Kubrick's outdated moon-faking technique, no innovation! (this is a joke, don't melt down)
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  372. It's not that hard: India wants Pakistan (and China) to know that they can hold their space assets at risk. Objective achieved. Some people will whine about space debris for a few days or weeks and then they will get bored and forget about it, but India's adversaries will remember the threat. India is betting that most of the space debris will decay and never collide with anyone else's satellites, and the chances of that happening are still pretty low.
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  373. MDD was once a good company, too. And before that, Douglas and MD were once good companies. The DC-3 was introduced in the 1930s and is still in service today.
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  374.  @NeonVisual  Mynocks. Chewing on the power cables.
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  375. That scene in From the Earth to the Moon was awesome. They woke the guy up in the middle of the night and fed him coffee until he came up with a fix.
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  376. ​ @therealjamespickering Anyone involved in ship or air navigation is who TF uses nautical miles. Next stupid question?
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  377.  @MonkeyJedi99  In the Red Mars trilogy the first Mars elevator gets taken down by revolutionaries, who cut the counterweight off beyond synchronous altitude, causing the elevator to wrap around the equator, violently destroying anything or anyone close to the impact track. Because it was made of carbon nanotubes or similar, it didn't rot away, was hard to cut up by tools, and so large parts of it lay on the surface for the rest of the story basically being a giant eyesore and nuisance for the people of Mars.
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  378.  @coopman0  ATTEMPT NO LANDINGS THERE
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  379.  @nottrevorallen  Nobody with a heart who has ever witnessed a space shuttle launch would not think it was epic. Bitching about the shuttle is for space hipsters.
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  380.  @adamc1713  Dream Chaser can't carry 7 people and a school bus-sized payload to orbit and back. People say that capability, mandated by the USAF, was overkill, but it was there, and it was used, for things like Hubble, space station construction, LDEF recovery, and so on. So to me an STS 2.0 would not give up capability, but deliver the same capability with better safety and economy.
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  381. The smile is just his face pulled back from g forces, like in Spies Like Us.
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  382. Rocket explosions are one of the few real life explosions that actually do look like a Michael Bay film.
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  383.  @MX304  The X-20 was also designed with skid landing gear. Never got to fly, unfortunately.
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  384.  @dancoroian1  I'm a republican: someone who keeps going back for more beer.
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  385. Not to mention the Titan V, which was used by Zephram Cochrane to launch his prototype warp drive spacecraft.
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  386. My guess is that FAST, like a lot of communist projects in the past, was probably made bigger than Arecibo for propaganda purposes. The practical or scientific value of such things is secondary to the public perception of party strength. Anyone who thinks it makes Arecibo or any other active radio telescope obsolete is just falling for the propaganda or maybe trying to get in a dig at the US by trolling.
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  387. Whatever else was wrong with the Shuttle's design, its glide ratio was exactly what it needed to be and was never an issue on any flight. If you want to fly a U2 into orbit you're doing it wrong.
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  388. There is an old sci fi short story out there called "The Cold Equations" in which a space traveler is faced with a very grim decision due to the rocket equation. Worth a read.
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  389. "We're passing through the magnetic field, set your deflectors double front."
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  390. Skylab was a modded upper stage, and it was a pretty good station.
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  391. My guess is that the manhole cover bent and started fluttering like a flipped coin, really fast, and was destroyed by heat and acceleration without ever reaching the crazy hypothetical speeds described.
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  392.  @RobertLutece909  Sad for the composer, happy for me. I love Ligeti because of that film.
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  393. Back when I used to use the Orbiter Spaceflight Simulator there was an addon vehicle called the "Dragonfly" that was basically a tug for moving cargo and other modules around a space station. Whoever created it had built into it a detailed model of fuel cells, and I remember that operating the vehicle was complicated due to the complex sequence you had to go through the start up and manage the fuel cells.
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  394. 15:14 "Overwhelmingly Large Telescope (canceled)" cool name, too bad it didn't get built.
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  395.  @benranson8424  America started off as a bunch of ex-British rebels, after all.
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  396.  @absalomdraconis  A heat shield plus a parafoil means making it heavier and bulkier. The idea is to provide a way to survive with the smallest mass penalty. This is even more important on spacecraft than on aircraft.
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  397. That is why we worry that they and Pakistan will nuke each other into oblivion.
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  398. As I get older I find I just don't have the patience to argue with moon hoaxers or flerfers. A lifetime of studying science and engineering have given me the ability to sus out facts in most cases and the ability to do math and make observations which clearly confirm things like how a rocket works or the fact that the planet is round, orbits the sun, etc. I can't convey all of this to someone who has so completely bought into conspiracy theories such that they cannot admit their theory is wrong without suffering some form of embarrassment. You're not just fighting ignorance and bad science; you're fighting human nature and the human tendency to dig in one's heels and defend a position based on fear or ego or other emotions. Someone has to keep arguing the side of reason, of course, but it tires you out after a while and feels so futile at times.
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  399. It might be a DC-X / Grasshopper type test vehicle. Or it might be a big joke to distract us from what they're really building.
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  400. Even Atlas III was pushing it. Atlas II and IIAS were the last "real" Atlas rockets according to many, because they still had the two design features that make Atlas distinct: the balloon tank and the booster-sustainer engine configuration. According to one history book, Lockheed Martin debated whether to name the new rocket Atlas V or Titan V. I think its connection to Centaur and development lineage from Atlas III gives it the right to still call itself an Atlas, if just barely.
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  401. As if hundreds of microsats isn't bad enough, we have people throwing needles into high orbit creating a long lived debris hazard. Wouldn't want to be in a spacecraft or worse, a spacesuit, when one of those needle projectiles hits you at several km/s.
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  402. It will land on Gilligan's Island. The ground controllers will see the castaways dressed in feathers and think they're looking at aliens on Venus.
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  403. Insurance or not, they'll never get back the time they spent on a project they tried so hard on only to watch it utterly fail. If it's a one-shot program like a Mars probe or something you could spend years working on it only to lose it due to one small missed detail.
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  404. Jose Jimenez, he no like to drink so much when he fly.
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  405. Read Mike Mullane's book, he was an astronaut at the time and was one of the people who did the math and recommended using the OMS during the main engine burn, long before the ISS. One reason was to give them an extra push for transatlantic abort scenarios.
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  406.  @kedrednael  No
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  407.  @manyhammers5944  Do a search on "radioactive boy scout". Some kid in the 90s tried to make a nuclear reactor in his mom's garden shed. He got thorium by collecting lantern mantels and grinding them up and processing them to separate the thorium if I recall correctly. Lots of other dumb things, too. He died about a year ago I think; a few years back he was arrested for stealing smoke detectors to get the americium, and in his mug shot he had weird sores all over his face.
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  408. Allow my voice to join in the chorus of premier hatred.
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  409. The importance of New Jersey to tech history. Radio astronomy, Thomas Edison, Princeton physics, Bell Labs, RCA corporation. Lots of cool history buried under those turnpike jokes.
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  410.  @danieljensen2626  Also, ULA is a customer for Blue Origin engines, so throwing them some Vulcan payloads may be good for business.
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  411. Not this again....
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  412. I want to see three craters named Alex, Geddy, and Neil.
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  413.  @christopherpardell4418  LOL SpaceX go brrr!
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  414. The Horta: "NO KILL I"
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  415.  @DUKE_of_RAMBLE  Not the one I've heard of, NASA awarded Lockheed Martin a contract to develop a nuclear thermal rocket engine demonstrator. No explosions or weapons involved. An NTR is a solid core reactor through which you pump a propellant fluid, usually liquid hydrogen, which is heated and squirts out the nozzle producing thrust.
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  416. It's like the movie Last Starfighter: the game was a test by a secret agency that protects the planet from asteroids, and the best gamers were chosen to do it for real.
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  417. Quality Polaroid photos from 2019?
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  418. Something big enough to change the moon's orbit in a big way, or worse, obliterate it, would probably be a Very Bad Day for Earth. But for those wondering why the moon is useful, life on earth is pretty highly affected by the tides, the earth's crust even moves a tiny bit due to tidal forces. Also, in the long term the moon's gravitational effects are important for damping the nutation and precession of the earth's spin axis. Even moonlight has an effect on life.
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  419.  @NemoConsequentae  Except they'll call it the "Xeagle" because Masten.
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  420. Sulu figuring out that flying a Huey is harder than a starship.
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  421. Metric is inconsistent too? Hush child!
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  422.  @paulschulte1064  So what was the answer? Is there lift being generated?
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  423. We are farther removed from the Columbia accident today (20 years) than Columbia was from the Challenger accident (17 years).
    4
  424. @ Payload Specialists came in two varieties: those who had something to do with the payload, and those who were politicians/celebrities/PR Stuntmen.
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  425. Obi Wan: "So wait, you made the run in less than 12 parallax seconds?" Han Solo: "Uh, yeah, sure. That's what I meant. I think." Han looks at Chewie, "What are you laughing at? Shut up and give me another beer. I'm trying to drum up business here."
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  426.  @thiesenf  A metric shit ton of feathers is even more deadly.
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  427.  @davidkottman3440  His eyesight on the other hand...
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  428. I get emotional but then I put it in perspective. Airplane accidents are no less horrific, and neither are train or highway accidents. Astronauts seem special to us because we project our dreams onto them and because they're public figures, but getting killed in an accident sucks no matter who you are and can happen to anyone.
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  429. ​ @scottmanley It's in Stanley Kubrick's old studio 😉
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  430.  @221b-l3t  I think Spaceship 1 had a control issue that didn't get worked out, there being only two flights before it was retired. I do remember the awesome footage of Mike Melville dumping M&Ms through the cockpit while he was in zero-G.
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  431. They should put Buzz Aldrin back in the cockpit and make him mission commander. The ultimate chad space navigator can find his way back with handheld instruments and a wristwatch if all else fails.
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  432. It depends on how many test articles are left when the program ends. Nobody builds flight hardware just to donate it to museums; if they can earn revenue with it they'll expend it.
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  433. The fact that NASA needs to worry about pansies getting emotionally bent out of shape over a survival gun makes me shake my head.
    4
  434.  @ThePrisoner881  No, it's kind of scary. It IS a bomb, that's the whole point of it. If the propellant tank is damaged by accident, you can get not only a criticality accident which kills the crew and wrecks the ship, but you also will probably get a Chernobyl-like excursion that blows the ship open and sprays the fuel and fission products all over the general area. In deep space, you just lose the crew and vehicle. Close to the surface of a planet or moon you get a bigger mess. Also, in the more enriched fuel version of this system, a damaged propellant tank might actually bring on a nuclear explosion. The US Navy's nuclear power program is an example of a well run and disciplined program, but the Soviet navy has a much spottier record with nuclear power. I agree with you that nuclear energy is the only realistic option for aggressive space exploration, but building something like a NSWR is not something to be taken lightly. There's a lot of ways to f*** this stuff up.
    4
  435. Lockheed Martin is also working on fusion power. With the advanced technology of both companies, we may be closer to an Epstein Drive.
    4
  436. Also, SpaceX's launchers are far from perfect. They have, in fact, blown up rockets. Atlas V has a better record.
    4
  437.  @karolakkolo123  True, even better: stand on your roof and look down at night, eclipse with extreme closeup.
    4
  438.  @PanduPoluan  Of course I know that, and nothing you said has anything to do with what I said.
    4
  439. I'd really like to hear more detail about the passive magnetic damper system. Gravity gradient I understand well but that mag system and how it kept the yaw angle steady is new to me.
    4
  440.  @NullHand  You don't schedule rocket launches around regular weekly windows, that's not how orbit dynamics works.
    4
  441.  @kiwidiesel  Geese are sketch.
    4
  442. Oi rockhoppa!
    4
  443. Exactly. Belters would never waste that useful scrap mass.
    4
  444.  @ASalishFalcon  Cool. I can taste the battery metallic flavor in the air from here lol.
    4
  445.  @million_heir5298  LOL or they hear snake jazz.
    4
  446. I'M THE REAL CAPTAIN KIRK!!!!!
    4
  447. If you have a picture, they will tell you it's photoshopped. Basically, what you need is not just hard evidence, but lots of scientists to see and be able to collect that hard evidence for themselves. Something like alien life or cold fusion or UFOs isn't just science; it's fraught with all sorts of expectations by the public due to decades of exposure to science fiction writings and movies. It's a bit different than saying, "I discovered a cheaper way to make plastic" or the like, which hardly makes headlines and doesn't immediately make people think you are a fraud or an overeager science n00b.
    4
  448. It's in Orbiter, has been for at least 10 years.
    4
  449. When the test plane rolls out of the factory for the first time there, is no checklist. The engineers and test pilots have to write it.
    4
  450. Stares in Gary Seven
    4
  451.  @pov1  I don't believe that for one second. Landing an airplane on a paved and heavily instrumented runway is not the same as landing on an alien planet surface full of poorly mapped obstacles and sloping ground, with a comm lag of several seconds. Proof is in the pudding: the Apollo astronauts, all test pilots, managed to make 6 good landings in a row, while these modern robotic landers are having a hard time getting consistent results.
    4
  452. 6:53 I like that 80s graphic design, like an ad for a toy rocket. "Get the new Peacekeeper Nuclear Missile by Hasbro! You and your friends will have hours of enjoyment posturing, threatening, and even nuking each other!"
    4
  453.  @martythemartian99  pink hair theory
    4
  454. Shuttle haterz be like:
    4
  455.  @infernaldaedra  I'm sure it can be made to work, but no thanks. I'd rather fly in a Shuttle with a nice comfy smooth runway landing. That bellyflop means that no matter how smooth the mission has gone, the last few seconds will be terrifying. With Shuttle, the scariest parts have all passed by the time you are on final approach and the landing gear deploy.
    4
  456. It seems like a poor design choice to make those batteries hard to replace or recharge while the vehicle is on the pad, given that they are a showstopper.
    4
  457.  @michaelsommers2356  What was it Scott was saying about pedantry again?
    4
  458.  @michaelsommers2356  Well, SpaceX is calling their latest a starship, and it clearly is not capable of interstellar travel, but I don't get too upset. Beech made an airplane called the Starship back in the 80s too. Same deal. So I'm cool with biplane.
    4
  459. Only downside to that is that you need to have more propellant to start the landing maneuver at a higher altitude, especially if you're going to use an extra engine. I don't know what their delta-V budget is for a typical Starship mission, but I'm guessing it's tight. Falcon 9 does the hoverslam because it needs to use just enough propellant and can't carry smaller landing engines that would allow it to hover. Personally, even if this worked every time I don't think you'd get me to ride it without a solid bailout system.
    4
  460. 23 years in the making, billions of dollars, and the delta-V budget only gives us 6 to 10 years? Can't say I'm very impressed by this project. Hope the data is worth it.
    4
  461.  @toohardtowatch  Yes, lack of atmospheric haze is a big thing. Human stereo vision stops being good at angular range-finding beyond a certain distance, but we can still estimate the range to a distant building or mountain based on haze and humidity. We also have familiar objects to aid us, such as trees, animals, people, cars, light poles, etc. On the fractal surface of the moon, though, most of these advantages are not present. During the Apollo landings, the landings were all set up so that the sun was behind the LM and the crew would be able to see the shadow of the spacecraft on the surface during final approach, which gave the crews a familiar shape to help judge distance and height.
    4
  462.  @MonkeyJedi99  Right there with you. Thank God for the Expanse!
    4
  463. Careful what you wish for. Gamma ray burst, anyone?
    4
  464. Like Dr. Snuggles' rocketship.
    4
  465.  @z-beeblebrox  So hydrogen bombs and dinosaur-killer asteroid explosions can't get any louder than that?
    4
  466.  @kennethc2466  I'm not going anywhere, better just mute me, Rosco.
    4
  467.  @kennethc2466  You really hate this guy. Let's hear some more.
    4
  468.  @kennethc2466  This is great, keep it going!
    4
  469. They didn't bother to safeguard the hi rez Apollo 11 landing tapes, and that was pretty much the most historical thing NASA ever did, its whole reason for being. So, no surprise here.
    4
  470.  @aesbj9228  As in "almost 50 years since the last moon landing"?
    3
  471. It kind of looks like the graphics you see in the cockpit of the Nostromo in Alien during the landing scene.
    3
  472. "I've seen attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion..." Roy Batty knew what happened up there.
    3
  473.  @nikolatasev4948  Yep. The best programmers or engineers won't help you if you have poor configuration control, system engineering, and a rigorous and thorough testing regimen. If management whines about the cost, tell them you won't work on it because you don't want the guilt on your conscious when the damn thing kills its crew. Manned spaceflight is not the place to scrimp.
    3
  474. Some people make an entire career out of something we take for granted. Designing antennas, or the water suppression system on a launchpad, or a turn signal system for a car. Engineering is a busy field.
    3
  475. Shiny
    3
  476.  @filyn  The saying I heard about bumblebees is that, like helicopters, on paper they shouldn't be able to fly (if that's true, your paper is wrong, of course). Also bumblebees are cute and fuzzy, not ugly. (And I'll confess, some helicopters are good looking machines to me.)
    3
  477. I swear these youtubers all conspire to sync up the subject du jour. Amy's Vintage Space also talked recently about the jet boots experiment on Skylab.
    3
  478. So as we worry about a collision, SpaceX is launching another cloud of space junk into orbit.
    3
  479. You don't just have a problem with LM, you have a bunch of left wing opinions and LM making weapons is just one of them. For my part, I'm glad LM makes weapons. I'm also glad they build launch vehicles. And I don't buy into any of that other political crap you're peddling here. Class warfare, "what the American people want", blah blah blah, save that for your Antifa rallies with your pink pussy hats. As long as LM's planes are bombing terrorists I'm cool with it.
    3
  480.  @neithere  Stop shilling.
    3
  481. Skylab used an Apollo-style artificial atmosphere, while ISS uses a space shuttle type atmosphere, so you couldn't just berth it to the ISS unless you had a special airlock module between them. Such a module was actually built to allow the Shuttle to operate with Skylab but never got used since the shuttle got delayed until after Skylab's orbit decayed. A great missed opportunity; had it worked out there would've been Skylab-STS missions through the 1980s and lots of data gathered on long term human spaceflight 15-20 years before ISS.
    3
  482.  @justrecentlyi5444  The Apollo spacecraft family, including Skylab, used a low pressure pure oxygen system. The space shuttle used a normal air system at much higher pressure, almost sea level, similar to what you breath in a jetliner. So if you wanted to transfer from the shuttle's cabin into Skylab, you'd have had to go into an airlock where you'd slowly lower the pressure and breath pure oxygen to keep you from getting the bends when you enter Skylab.
    3
  483. Well, if the Singularity hits, you might live to get an immortal robot body, only to die anyway when it gets vaporized in a multi-gigaton asteroid impact.
    3
  484. Get your coat and see yourself out.
    3
  485.  @owensmith7530  Let that be a lesson: when a veteran cosmonaut tells you something, you should probably pay attention.
    3
  486.  @christopherpardell4418  Please, never ever accept a job as a public official in NASA or any other space agency.
    3
  487. "Follow me!" - Marshall Applewhite, 1997
    3
  488.  @daszieher  American Civil War in a nutshell. The Union had strategy but tactically was pretty deficient. The Confederacy had great battlefield commander who won lots of battles early on but their strategy was lacking. The result was a long meatgrinding war that ended in a Union victory and a horrendous casualty figure.
    3
  489. Rich Corinthian leather?
    3
  490. Yes, it's the poster child for how government will build something cool in the slowest and costliest way possible. Even more so than the Space Shuttle.
    3
  491. You can always wear your favorite snoopy cap replica you bought at the NASA gift shop, I'm sure. Will help your hair out of your face while you're in the suit, anyway.
    3
  492. Taylor was mentioned in George Dyson's book Project Orion (George is the son of Freeman). Taylor worked on the nuclear pulse-propulsion program and was interviewed on the subject, search for it on youtube. He also famously used a parabolic reflector to light his cigarette with a nuclear bomb.
    3
  493. Oscar Goldman is who you want to talk to about this.
    3
  494.  @PlanetEarth3141  Well, in the 70s, they'd throw in an arm and two legs along with the eye. Inflation, though.
    3
  495. A laser bluetooth mouse should work fine if you make the mousepad with a sheet of metal underneath the cloth and put magnets in the mouse so it doesn't float away. Magnets fix everything!
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  496. My understanding was that the Project Pluto engine worked quite well when it was tested in a static test, and that it was air-cooled, no liquid coolant of any kind. I also believe that the reason the project was canceled was because it was expensive, prone to safety issues (as we see here), and because it was too provocative. US policy makers figured that if they went ahead with it then the Soviets would be sure to start building and stockpiling the damn things as well. It was also an insanely scary weapon, basically being able to hit multiple targets, and optionally, the reactor could be "salted" so that it spewed out deadly fallout onto the areas it flew over, pretty much the ultimate "I hate the world" weapon. I really am shocked the Russians would build something so stupid, 30 years after the Cold War ended.
    3
  497. You forgot to tell him to fly safe.
    3
  498. The Saturn IB isn't "cute", it's cool-looking, and it was a workhorse for NASA. Could've been a workhorse for a lot longer had Congress funded it into the Shuttle era. I love the fins, too, not so much the Saturn I block 2 but the ones on the Saturn IB are so cool looking. Those small fins are part of what makes the Saturn family of rockets so good looking.
    3
  499.  @mikepatrick1904  Only the ones in that particular squadron, which was training USAF pilots for spaceflight. The F-104 in Yeager's accident was one of these specially modified Starfighters which had a rocket motor installed in the tail above the jet nozzle and gas thrusters in the nose. The pilot would use the rocket to zoom climb to stupid high edge-of-space type altitudes, where his jet engine would flame out and his control surfaces were useless, and use the thrusters to control the jet's altitude like he was flying a spacecraft for a few minutes, until he fell back to lower altitude where he would restart the jet and fly home.
    3
  500. The 727 is one of my favorite ever jetliners, glad to see one still in service, and with a cool paint job to boot.
    3
  501. It'll be a sad day when the last Atlas rocket flies, that program is well over 60 years old at this point, been passed through multiple companies, and many of the people who worked on it have passed. Centaur will live on, but Centaur didn't start off as an exclusively Atlas-related program, the two programs just wound up being a good match for each other and by the time the Atlas V was introduced they were tied at the hip. Original balloon-tank Atlas was the closed thing we ever had to SSTO, as well. Wasn't great as a weapon, but is a great launch vehicle. Besides, there aren't many rocket names as badass as "Atlas".
    3
  502.  @neithere  But that was the best part: Clooney gets killed off the film.
    3
  503.  @benjaminhanke79  Redesigning the systems when you have something that works perfectly well is riskier than making changes just so everything looks neater. As @Owen Smith says, the movie dramatized the procedure a bit, but Apollo 13 proved it worked under adverse conditions, and that real life testing is worth a lot. Especially since the program was already facing cancelation and getting the last few expeditions to the moon depended on them staying on schedule.
    3
  504.  starshipeleven  No need to get personal. But I'm sure the Rockwell engineers had a clue.
    3
  505. That can be computed easily by multiplying the mass of the spacecraft with the acceleration created by the drive. Would have to look it up, but it would vary based on which version you were talking about. The smallest design was a 10-meter diameter pusher plate vehicle designed to be lofted on a Saturn V class launcher and used for Mars missions; the largest was the size of a small city that was designed as an interstellar generation ship firing fusion bombs out the tail. That would undoubtedly be the most powerful thruster ever built, insane mega-engineering at it's finest.
    3
  506. While I congratulate SpaceX for getting so afar ahead they've almost cornered the market for launch vehicles, I hope ULA and others get in gear soon. You never want to be in a position where you rely on only one launch vehicle. The Challenger accident was how we learned that the hard way. If something goes wrong and Falcon 9 gets grounded for some time the US, and for that matter, many non-US customers, will be in a jam.
    3
  507. Those suits...just weird. For starters they look like costumes from a cheap sci fi movie more than functional suits, made out of what looks like oven mitt materiel, paintball helmets, and hunting boots. But what really makes them look odd is the lack of visible external connections and other stuff. Other suits have always had connections on the front for hoses and comms, as well as visible fittings made of shiny metal. I think that's what makes these look like costumes more than anything else.
    3
  508. But I am also 80% water, which makes it very toxic.
    3
  509. He's wearing a hoodie in this vid, indicating that it's cool in Scotland. I'll take that any day over 95degF and super humid with mosquito bites all over my body, which is every summer where I live.
    3
  510. "Boeing, Fueled by Our People"
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  511.  @Gregnier  Sounds like the B-70 Valkyrie Mach 3 bomber.
    3
  512. Not to be confused with the Chevrolet Chevette, sometimes known as the "Shove-it".
    3
  513. The simplest thing would be to build a replacement for Hubble.
    3
  514.  @fairwinds610  Yes, Bolo! Loved those books.
    3
  515. A lot of cargo planes use a similar scheme and it works quite well for them, including the C-5 and the cargo version of the Boeing 747.
    3
  516.  @johnrielley7756  I loved that show. I remember they developed that magic rocket fuel called "monohydrazine" which had huge specific impulse and allowed all the single stage to orbit adventures on the show.
    3
  517.  @awilliams1701  The two poor bastards who were mangled by the transporter died horrible deaths in TMP.
    3
  518.  @cplpetergriffin1583  Don't argue with him, let the pinhead think he's got it all figured out if that's what makes him happy.
    3
  519. Well this explains why the SRBs are so stylish.
    3
  520.  @Splattle101  The Nike family ABM warheads were supposedly designed to kill inbound warheads through "neutron heating". In vacuum there is no air to carry the blast effect of a nuclear explosion so you need radiation effects to do the damage. The idea was to bombard the enemy warhead with neutrons at close range and cause it to undergo fissions, thus rendering it useless. Even the fairly high yield ABM warheads relied on radiation effects due to lack of air as a medium. I read that in one source, and I'm no expert, but it makes sense to me anyway.
    3
  521.  @esquilax5563  No it's not hard. It's defined by the spacecraft body. The space shuttle's left wing is the port side, for example, no matter whether it's upside down or not. Airplanes can fly upside down but it doesn't change the meaning of the lights.
    3
  522. Don't give 2020 any ideas...
    3
  523. NASA will defraud the taxpayers. Research the SLS fiasco as well as the JWST. Like pouring money down a toilet.
    3
  524.  @paulhaynes8045  Racism is protected speech.
    3
  525. The surrealist artist would say, "Ce n'est pas un verre." The Treachery of T-shirt Images.
    3
  526.  @Graham-ce2yk  Great movie. Poor mission planning.
    3
  527. 10:20 Gotta love how even in the era of modern HD video China's rocket launches still manage to look like Cold War Soviet rocket films.
    3
  528. They can't dispose of it, period, they ran it out of propellant. There is nothing anyone can do about it.
    3
  529.  @davidb6576  So then, how does that make you feel?
    3
  530.  @Ccs4646  You can fly cheap or you can fly safe. Atlas doesn't blow up. Falcon does.
    3
  531.  tommy aronson  "Boomers" seriously?
    3
  532. Lots of film and TV shows have stock NASA footage.
    3
  533. AT-AT's that will operate on Mars. Imagine how cool that would look.
    3
  534. As if the whole Pluto controversy couldn't any dumber, the seemingly minor semantic change of classification prompts a huge shift in coordinate system, upsetting all mapping work to that point, because common sense isn'tcommn. SMH.
    3
  535.  @EFCasual  Well, you have high standards for your dictators.
    3
  536.  @patreekotime4578  No, the warning comes later in the story.
    3
  537. I love these rocket history vids!
    3
  538. It would be beneficial for NASA to partner with the UK to develop the Skylon tech as long as it's actually viable. We've heard about that project for years now, time to get it moving.
    3
  539.  @Astronist  How would US investment in Skylon not be helpful? It's not like the UK government is dumping piles of money on them.
    3
  540.  @Astronist  I was thinking about the Harrier, and how US Marine Corps interest in it kept it going for another generation or two.
    3
  541. 18:37 Mike Collins' Omega Speedmaster watch. Buzz wore his on the outside of his spacesuit, visible in photos. Neil's watch was strapped to the LEM control panel to act as a backup for a failed cockpit clock. Sadly, Buzz's watch went missing after the mission, likely stolen during shipping back to Houston.
    3
  542. The APAS docking system used by both USA and Russia was developed for the Apollo - Soyuz Test Program which flew in 1975.
    3
  543. STS gets dumped on a lot, but had they stuck with it and developed some of these various upgrades and spin-offs, I think the whole sidestacked/reusable SSME system would've proved very versatile. Even as it flew, the straight up STS configuration managed well over a hundred missions and accomplished a lot of stuff. There certainly was nothing like the Space Shuttle before, so considering everything they did was pretty much the very first time ever, it's not really fair to hate on it so much. As for Wayne Hale complaining about the abort options on the stretch ET, there are ways to engineer around that.
    3
  544. Years ago I at Cherry Point Marine Corps Air Station and was on the running trail off the end of the gigantic runway there. A loaded C-5 was all the way at the end of the threshold taking off away from me, so the business end of the engines were pointing right at me. That was awesome. That sound, and the fact that the heavy jet took its time moving away.
    3
  545. Youtube's little propaganda banner: "Robust safeguards help ensure the integrity of elections and results." lol
    3
  546. It takes them a couple of days to separate from each other after they are deployed, so you have a few opportunities to spot the line of them. Mainly, when the satellites are in sunlight and you are in the dark, near sunrise or sunset. There is at least one website that tells you when and where to look to see them, I forget the name.
    3
  547. All you need is an awkward family birthday wish to Frank Poole on that tablet screen.
    3
  548.  @jwenting  Tru dat
    3
  549. It's too bad the booster won't live, but then again, which rocket does?
    3
  550. Sounds interesting. Can you tell us more about this? Is there a picture somewhere?
    3
  551. Robert Heinlein wrote a classic sci fi story about swamps and plantations on a colonized Venus. It's called Logic of Empire and it's about a guy who gets drunk and accidentally signs up as an indentured servant to a colony company, who ships him to Venus and puts him to work in miserable circumstances. Obviously written before the facts of Venus were known, but a great story. It's in the book Green Hills of Earth IIRC.
    3
  552.  @peterebel7899  That's not what I wrote at all, if you can't handle basic reading comprehension why bother even posting.
    3
  553. The mentioning of Bessel Functions suddenly gave me a flashback to my darkest college days...
    3
  554. I was partial to Gowron myself.
    3
  555. Wish away the stupid coronavirus.
    3
  556. Carry 20+ tons of up mass along with 7 crew and then return 7+ people to a soft runway landing along with another huge payload? Not really. Space Shuttle was expensive and dangerous, but it was way more capable than anything else.
    3
  557. They were trying to build a rocket without Von Braun's help, so they only half knew what they were doing.
    3
  558.  @absalomdraconis  True, it failed at its goals of safety and cost effectiveness. But it was still a technical marvel and was truly an awesome thing to see in action. I'd say it's not bad for a first-ever spaceplane. Hopefully the data from it will be useful in the future. X-37 is likely already benefitting from it.
    3
  559.  @cassgraham7058  RL-10 is also only ood for upper stage use.
    3
  560. "24 million Isaac Newtons" sounds like a Rick and Morty episode lol
    3
  561. The footage of those reentry vehicles coming in always reminds me of Atari Missile Command. Which is a little nostalgic and a little nightmarish at the same time.
    3
  562.  @Shindiggity Who pissed in your Wheaties this morning?
    3
  563.  @peteranderson037  Who hurt you?
    3
  564. 14:18 "Mynocks, chewing on the power cables."
    3
  565. It's a good design, but it's still built by potato-drinkers like the guy who drilled a hole through one a couple of years back.
    3
  566. "If you find a missile like this, please don't try firing it, it will probably explode in your face." Got it, thanks. I'll remember that next time I'm wandering around in the woods or digging through my mom's garage. ;-)
    3
  567.  @jimsmith7212  Of course, banana is also a unit of radiation, too, bananas do it all!
    3
  568.  @invadervim9037  No, he used a sextant.
    3
  569. In the novel Red Mars they used an airship. The author is pretty hard sci fi, but I still question it.
    3
  570.  @headcrab4090  Obviously it's meant for overland travel, not tunnels.
    3
  571. @ So maybe if the government pays for more woke Sesame Street in Iraq the rockets will work better? Makes sense, I guess.
    3
  572. Cruise may get to space and even hang around astronauts, but that doesn't mean the movie will be in any way accurate. Seen it too many times before where they ignore the technical advisors and make films with garbage physics anyway.
    3
  573. Silver boosters? Because they look awesome. See the Atlas IIAS for an example.
    3
  574.  @bobroberts2371  Wow, I think I remember that cover. I used to subscribe to that magazine.
    3
  575. A side note to Iridium is that the first collision between two satellites was between an Iridium vehicle and an old Russian satellite in 2009.
    3
  576. New Glenn's plan: it's a bold strategy, Cotton.
    3
  577. Alliteration always amazes and arouses all aviators.
    3
  578. In the Bugs Bunny cartoon, the tortoise wins by tricking the hare into getting himself arrested and taken to jail. This would be the equivalent of Jeff using lawfare tactics against Elon lol.
    3
  579. Skow clap, sir.
    3
  580.  @somedude4805  Nope. Figured you were referring to 2001: A Space Odyssey. When it comes to space sims I'm an old Orbiter guy.
    3
  581.  @tybofborg  "Did you say explode? I don't want to explode."
    3
  582. We need that giant wheel station from 2001: A Space Odyssey, along with the nuclear-powered moon shuttle that gets you to Tyco Station.
    3
  583. I think ULA made a poor decision to rely on Blue Origin for their engines, but hopefully I'll be proven wrong.
    3
  584. Sounds like a job for worker THX-1138.
    2
  585. I always wondered how they measured angles from such distant observations. Cool.
    2
  586. I hate when they name things "Starship" that obviously will not ever fly to other star systems. There was also a very cool airplane (that was unfortunately a commercial flop) called the Beech Starship as well.
    2
  587. I agree, but sometimes I kind of need the dumbed down version, since I feel pretty dumbed down sometimes.
    2
  588. I love 727's, I think they are still sleek and futuristic looking. My dad worked for Delta Airlines when I was growing up. At one point in the 80s I think Delta owned something like 200 727's, and as I used to get a discount, I flew on them a lot. I used to keep a mental note of the numbers on the nose gear door, and I think there was one particular 727 which I flew on multiple times. Delta also owned a ton of DC-8's, which is a whole other classy cool old jetliner.
    2
  589. Apollo 1 accident was 19 years before the Challenger accident, not 15. So the trend is flat at best.
    2
  590. Time magazine has been a joke for a long time now, along with lots of other traditional media publications.
    2
  591.  @asandax6  You need to quit telling Americans what to do.
    2
  592.  @TheKakan1337  Hence "Soviet"
    2
  593.  @TheKakan1337  Ukraine was part of the USSR.
    2
  594.  @nzoomed  He wasn't destined to live a long happy life in any case. Despite being quite smart when it came to chemistry, he was pretty simple-minded about almost everything else. He was very poor at writing and spelling, for example, and when he handled all these hazardous materials he exercised laughably ineffective safety measures, showing up at school with radiation burns on his wrist under his watch and so on, with little concern over what he was doing to himself or his neighbors. His "reactor" was never close to being an actual fission reactor, but it was a stupidly toxic and radioactive pile of hazardous garbage that got hotter as the days went by, irradiating the nearby houses, until he dismantled it and stuck it in trash bags in the trunk of his car like the idiot he was. He later joined the Navy but didn't have the common sense to succeed in that career either.
    2
  595.  @marcmcreynolds2827  The commando raids were a good idea, but the fact was that Germany never took nuclear weapons as seriously as the UK and US did, and their work on the subject was half-assed by comparison. They never had anything on the scale of the Manhattan Project, and even that took a good three years to produce results.
    2
  596.  @lektwik  Yes? And?
    2
  597.  @toweri_li  Well, there have been airplanes which flew away after the crew bailed out.
    2
  598. What is "sensitive" that needs to be redacted? I thought the ISS was all civilian?
    2
  599.  @Ye_Old_Grog  No, "we" don't, not when compared to lots of other countries.
    2
  600. It's cool, but that enormous number of satellites at that altitude there will be a substantial number of failed units that can't be deboosted to a high drag altitude for disposal and will thus create more space junk. Especially considering there are multiple companies doing this.
    2
  601. Those graphics are fun sometimes. There was a graphic for the now-abandoned Ares V rocket (which morphed into SLS) which showed it with black and white pattern similar to the Saturn V, obviously a ploy to drum up enthusiasm for the project by making it look related to the coolest launch vehicle ever flown.
    2
  602.  @OCinneide  They didn't change it, they just reworked it to make it more fireproof while changing procedures. Prior to launch, the cabin atmosphere was pumped up with normal air, and after launch as the air leaked out they would replace it slowly with low pressure oxygen. Apollo 1 was a firetrap because the cabin was filled with O2 at higher-than-sea level pressure, along with faulty wiring. As for ASTP, I think that model of Soyuz had a low pressure system, not sure.
    2
  603. If Hubble loses attitude control there won't be any safe way to dock with or grapple it, and thus no safe way to boost or deorbit it. NASA needs to do something while they still can, find a way to attach a propulsion module to that docking ring the last service mission left there.
    2
  604. That video of the helo's shadow on the ground flopping around looks like the bat from Atari 2600 Adventure game.
    2
  605.  @r3d0c  Your snark is unappreciated and misguided. Every mission has risk associated with it, no matter how many brains are involved and how much money is spent. And if you ask any one of those scientists and engineers, they'll all tell you that. Let's not pollute Scott Manley's comment section with the same toxicity the rest of the net has.
    2
  606. Really? How many square rockets does the US fly?
    2
  607. Voyager is still within Sol's sphere of influence, so it has not entered galactic orbit yet, but will when it gets far enough away.
    2
  608. Yes, but close enough. Unless NASA restarts the Voyager program with some fresh new vehicles...
    2
  609. This abort system is better than the one on the 737 Max.
    2
  610. Some people only watch auto racing for the crashes. Falcon 9 landings are probably about the same, only no people get hurt when one crashes.
    2
  611. FLEXTAPE
    2
  612. Resistance is futile.
    2
  613. Falcon 3.0 not only had a thick manual, there was an actual guidebook for it written by an actual F-16 pilot. Lucasarts' Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe was a killer WWII flight sim and the manual was like reading a history book of aerial warfare in the 1940s. The 90s were the good old days.
    2
  614. Dewars 12 scotch whiskey. Did that have a role in forgetting to turn the lights on? ;-)
    2
  615.  @georgejones3526  I imagine an aerospike engine landing and getting stuck in the mud.
    2
  616. Great video. The mention of a space zeppelin reminds me of Iron Sky lol.
    2
  617. Sucks that they lost it again, but that camera angle looking up at these things as they do that belly skydive are among the coolest looking footage ever.
    2
  618. The old school Atlas rocket was almost SSTO with a manned Mercury spacecraft on it. We know how to build SSTOs, we've done the math, we just haven't found an economic reason to do so.
    2
  619.  @PlanetEarth3141  Or the origin of the Borg...
    2
  620. Awesome to see the mighty 747 finding new work.
    2
  621. My guess is you're not an engineer yourself, nor do you know any engineers who work on stuff like this, certainly none who work for Boeing.
    2
  622.  @digi3218  I wasn't making excuses. Just pointing out that losing your spacecraft in...space...is not at all uncommon. Didn't read your long post, sorry.
    2
  623.  @bearlemley  Well, it looks like reverse engineered alien technology, so I'm gonna go with Lockheed Martin for the Jupiter II. But the reason they got lost was Dr. Smith, so he might be a Boeing employee.
    2
  624. The Canberra family of aircraft has a long and storied history. I believe both the English Electric and Martin versions saw a fair amount of combat in Vietnam in service of Australia and the US.
    2
  625. Zubrin is like Elon Musk, but without the money.
    2
  626. Looks like Ron Howard nailed the look of leaking fluids in Apollo 13.
    2
  627.  @martinilopez1  wow, who_pissed in your corn flakes this morning?
    2
  628.  @martinilopez1  So you're apologizing for calling me an a**hole, then?
    2
  629. STS was more expensive and dangerous than we had hoped, but it turns out there were good reasons for wanting that capability. Fixing Hubble (or even retrieving it) was one.
    2
  630.  @danielpassigmailcom  The Titan rocket family had a payload size and capacity approximately that of STS. I think there were others.
    2
  631.  @ericg7044  Since they merged with MDD
    2
  632. Shuttle was designed to return with payloads, including some fairly heavy ones like Hubble. Columbia retrieved and landed with the LDEF, which was about 10 tons IIRC. Not sure about this one.
    2
  633.  @RG-zt4cn  I don't understand the question. Nukes.
    2
  634. FAA is damned if they do and damned if they don't. On one hand they are too conservative-minded and ruin the fun of the daredevils, on the other hand they catch hell for being too lenient and get accused of being in bed with industry, etc. Nobody ever likes the kid who gets to be hallway monitor. Imagine the hell they'd catch when one of these rocketships crashes into a group of spectators and douses them with burning rocket fuel. We've seen it happen at air shows and it resulted in air shows made of tiny dots doing maneuvers far away. It's a shame about the rocket racing, it did look cool but you could see it getting watered down and chipped away into oblivion.
    2
  635. Looking out that window it reminds of how gutsy Young and Crippen were to fly STS-1 in an unproven spaceplane design trusting the math.
    2
  636. There exists a GPC MFD add-on that simulates the energy management displays which really help you to manually fly the orbiter back to the landing site.
    2
  637. They aren't tourists, they are Italian air force and they were there to do a job first and enjoy themselves second. Presumably, the paying customer is the Italian government, not the passengers.
    2
  638. I don't understand why they want to sink the Starship booster. Wouldn't they want it to float so they can retrieve it and examine it?
    2
  639. I wonder if the North Koreans are aware that all of their missile names are penis jokes in English.
    2
  640. I don't know if you can call it "innovation" when it blows up four times and never works right even once, even obliterating its own launch pad in the process.
    2
  641. The flattards will question the size and distance and motion of the sun, blah blah blah. To idiots like them, the wonders of the universe will forever be out of reach. Pretty sad, really.
    2
  642.  @Xatzimi  January in Florida is not usually as cold as it was on that morning. That said, a reliable launch vehicle should be able to operate in cold weather. STS shouldn't have had any problems with it if they hadn't cut corners to get the schedule on track.
    2
  643. 8:45 there is an anime character on Scott's computer in the background who appears to be performing the "Tickling the Dragon's Tail" test with a nuclear bomb core. WTH is that all about?
    2
  644. Scott, since you mentioned the Soviet spacecraft, maybe you can do a video on the one that crashed in Canada in the 70s and basically scattered its reactor core over the northern wilderness.
    2
  645. Avionics hooked up on the ground to act as if they are in flight is what we used to call a "bench bird".
    2
  646.  @Canada_Dominium  No, it wasn't a Dyna-Soar. It was some kind of fictional lifting body that could seat three people, including the rescue pilot, which was launched on a Titan rocket similar to Dyna-Soar. That fact that they didn't have room for all three marooned astronauts was a major plot point.
    2
  647.  @frabe81118  It's being pre-empted for a special showing of Seattle Follies.
    2
  648. I vote for the Triton mission, or anything Neptune related.
    2
  649. First surface to air missile, yes.
    2
  650. At least one variant of the Atlas missile had a blunt nosecone as well; I'm guessing that was a reentry heat shield. And yes, it looks wrong.
    2
  651. I think it sounds like a stunt that, if all goes well, will result in a bunch of overrated cheesy "art". If it doesn't go well, well....then it's a very bad day.
    2
  652. Interesting lander design, height to width ratio much higher than Apollo LM, and the lander has 6 legs instead of the Apollo's 4. I thought the whole legs thing had been settled by the Grumman engineers, and that 3 was too few and required long legs, while more than 4 was excess mass, and thus 4 was optimal. I could be mistaken.
    2
  653.  @rosswarren436  In those days you were lucky to get 7 months of life out of a satellite to be fair.
    2
  654.  @esquilax5563  Yes, they do, the axes of the rocket body or any other space vehicle are defined by the engineers who designed them made the drawings, and wrote the documentation.
    2
  655.  william bush  No, only compressed air for me so far. Nitrox was kind of a new thing in sport diving in the 90s when I got started but I never tried it. It's where you bump up the O2 percentage a bit from the natural 20% to something like 25% or something. Gives you more bottom time at medium depths, but in deeper dives you can get oxygen poisoning. Plus you need a different dive table or computer so I never bothered.
    2
  656.  william bush  But yah, nitrogen narcosis is another thing to look out for. People get drunk on nitrogen sometimes, get disoriented, and drown before they know what hit them. And the opposite in oxygen poisoning, which sounds odd but it's yet another thing that can hurt or kill you. These are reason why sport divers never go deeper than 130 or 140 ft. Once you go deep the risks add up really fast. Most sport dives are 75 ft or less depending on where you are.
    2
  657.  william bush  And also, there are sharks lol!
    2
  658. They've played around with spherical drones I think, look like the interrogator droid from the Death Star, but I think they are designed for use inside the cabin and were just an experiment.
    2
  659.  @davidb6576  And how does THAT make you feel?
    2
  660.  @rorykeegan1895  Sure thing, buddy.
    2
  661.  @Ccs4646  Atlas V has indeed had more launches. All successful. It is indeed less complex. Both points for my argument. I would rather fly on the rocket that doesn't blow up. And it's good that Crew Dragon's launch went well; had it needed to abort its engine might have blown up.
    2
  662.  @SWilford  Nah, they stole it from Karate Kid, when Mr. Miagi tries to catch a fly with chopsticks. Also, at one point Musk was calling it the Mechazilla arms.
    2
  663. 8:56 That looks like the symbol of the Klingon Empire
    2
  664. GPS IIR-1 launched on a Delta II in 1997. Just above the launch pad one of the SRMs failed and the vehicle exploded spectacularly, raining debris and burning propellant down all over Cape Canaveral AFS. There is video. Several parked cars were hit by chunks of burning solid rocket fuel. Imagine explaining that to the insurance company.
    2
  665. Indiana Jones and the Plutonium Rover
    2
  666. The American version is the Martin B-57 Canberra, for reference.
    2
  667. Have they re-flown a first stage yet?
    2
  668. I think that even if you do nothing, the air blowing from the ventilation system will eventually push you up against a wall.
    2
  669.  @averageeclairenjoyer3010  Yeah, the movie never explains how a Soviet spacecraft winds up in a position to be able to rendezvous with Ironman 1, or how NORAD didn't notice it. Not a knock against the film, really, just one of those nerd questions I always ask.
    2
  670.  @swissTom124  Apollo expeditions were limited in range by rules. You couldn't drive the rover more than some distance (was it 3 miles?) from the LM, so you could still walk back to the ship if the car broke down.
    2
  671. Right, What we need a dictator to make us do what needs to be done. I nominate me.
    2
  672. Getting excited for China's space accomplishments today is like being excited for Germany's aerospace accomplishments in the 1930s.
    2
  673. Fasteners are one thing, what shocked me the first time I stood next to a Mercury is how tiny the spacecraft is.
    2
  674.  @Nuke-MarsX  Lots of studies have been done regarding parachutes vs. powered landings, going back to the 60s, and it's generally agreed that a parachute and landing gear system big enough to land a large vehicle masses more than the engines and a bit of extra propellant used on the same vehicle. Add to that the fact that the engines used to recover SpaceX's boosters are also used during the launch, so they are not dead weight. Also, a parachute recovery system won't be recoverable by a Mechazilla-style system, and that system allows you to do away with heavy landing gear and hang the structure under tension, saving more mass.
    2
  675. "COVID crisis caused a crash" say that five times fast
    2
  676. Training wheels are off, people. You'll have to tell yourself from now on.
    2
  677.  @Archgeek0  Statistically, it's a very safe bet. The odds of a collision are still quite low, and if one does occur, so what? India could deny responsibility, or just apologize, maybe even pay out some compensation, but the odds of having to even worry about that are still quite low math-wise.
    2
  678. In addition to redesigning hardware I hope they took a good look at their best practices for ground testing and handling, seems like there were several points where they should've taken a step back and said, "Nope, doesn't look or sound right, do not approve this tank for flight."
    2
  679.  @dalethelander3781  Yes I'm well aware of that.
    2
  680.  @GrimJerr  Check out the movie Oblivion.
    2
  681. Gotta love the off the wall ideas that might've worked. My favorite is the Chrysler SERV, a wildly different alternate design for the Space Shuttle that ditched the side-stacked orbiter idea for an SSTO VTOL vehicle with an aerospike style engine system that would take off and land back on the same pad. For manned missions it would have a small winged glider as an upper stage, which would have abort rockets to escape the launch vehicle in an emergency: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrysler_SERV
    2
  682.  @shawnmiller4781  Well sure, I know what that is, but it's not in the museum.
    2
  683. Would be ironic if the damage was caused by debris from a Russian ASAT test.
    2
  684. I had commented on that short video that I always thought the crackle was from rough-burning solid rocket propellant and that I was surprised that the all-liquid rockets do it, too. Very cool that you made this video so soon after that.
    2
  685.  @atlas8827  There's no proof of that. In fact, it could be argued that private spaceflight was held back by government run agencies like NASA. Congress basically allowed NASA to monopolize the launch market in the 80s to try and make the Space Shuttle "profitable", or at least less lossy. One wonders if a bunch of universities decided to pool their considerable funds and contract a builder for a space telescope as well as a launch provider how it would turn out and compare to Hubble, which has been an undeniable success, albeit an expensive one. Can't do worse than the current JWST money pit cockup.
    2
  686. "We won't need wheels where we're going..."
    2
  687. I think it's published by Apogee Books.
    2
  688.  @machy8515  Found it. Lunar Exploration Scrapbook. Go to Apogee Books website and look it up. Also, check out the vast pile of cool books they publish on space stuff. I have a bunch of them and some of them are crude and poorly printed but the ones on the Saturn V and the DynaSoar are great, so is the one on the Atlas rocket family, called "Atlas: The Ultimate Weapon".
    2
  689. I believe it's called the "Oberth Effect" (there is a wiki page) and I think it's used quite often.
    2
  690. Yup
    2
  691. Okay, idea for a new test: build a sloped tunnel, put a nuke at the far end, and stuff a bunch of these steel spheres in on top. World's most badass shotgun.
    2
  692. "The Americans must be executing their scientists at a faster rate than we are, we must increase scientist executions in order to build better rockets!"
    2
  693. I'm pretty sure someone did a Gemini Lunar mission addon for Orbiter; over the years they've done most of the alternate history stuff. Someone did LUNEX a long time ago.
    2
  694.  @theatom7264  I don't know about that, both VentureStar and Star Raker had pretty tough engineering problems to solve. I would like to see if anyone could solve VentureStar's propellant tank issues, given advances in material science. And that linear air spike engine was pretty nifty if you can make it work right.
    2
  695. It's become the fad to rip on Boeing, but as an American I want to see them succeed in the end. More successful space companies, competing with each other, is a good thing in the end. They need to stop coddling them, though, and ween them off that defense/NASA money they've become so addicted to since the end of WWII. Same goes for the other legacy aerospace companies, the Lockheeds and Raytheons and so on, many of which have storied histories to be proud of.
    2
  696. Missile manufactured by Weyland Yutani Corporation.
    2
  697. Many jet fighters lack APUs to start their own engines and thus require ground support equipment to start up, usually the device is called a start cart, and the procedure is called "fluffing the jet". Think about that. They had to fluff the Saturn V.
    2
  698. My favorite thing about these air launched systems is that keep very cool retired aircraft in service. I hope the Stargazer finds work and stays airworthy, as well as the F-104 system.
    2
  699.  @adamc1713  True that. There were lots of ideas for upgrading STS over the years that never got the funding to go ahead. Liquid flyback boosters to replace the SRBs, for example. Stuff like that would be a no-brainer for an STS 2.0, where all the lessons of 30 years of operating STS could be applied.
    2
  700. 1:07 That quote from Richard Feynman is crazy, especially if you read the rest of it. IIRC, he wanted to watch the bomb go off without using those welding goggle type glasses, and he reasoned that it was the UV light that burns out your eyes, not the visible light, so he got into a pickup truck, reasoning that the windshield glass would block most of the UV while allowing a clear view of the event, and watched it through the windshield. That is what they call "trusting science", and I certainly do not trust it as much as Feynman did!
    2
  701. I'm guessing I'm not the only one who's a bit sad to see the Atlas program marching towards an end. It's one of the world's oldest rocket programs, dating to the mid-1950s as an ICBM, morphing into a series of reliable launch vehicles. Atlas V is radically different than the OG Atlas, but the program has been a good one. Will miss it when it's gone.
    2
  702. Definitely Nike X!
    2
  703. In the long run it's all moot anyway. Mars is too close to the sun to be an escape from it when it swells.
    2
  704. Too easy to pile on, it would just come off as being mean, like picking on a special needs kid or something. I agree with ignoring the idiot.
    2
  705. At least in Europe they don't line up and execute the engineers when a rocket fails. Not now, anyway.
    2
  706.  @dpscloud3324  They can also cook hot dogs by sticking skewers out the window and asking ground to turn the lasers to max.
    2
  707.  @ronschlorff7089  Oh yes. And 1960s Teri Garr. (RIP)
    2
  708.  @callmeshaggy5166  Link?
    2
  709.  @KuK137  Communism is a political ideology, not a race.
    2
  710. This is all a smokescreen. The launches will take place in secret, very soon, to set up our defenses against the UFOs. Commander Straker is seeing to it.
    2
  711.  @GenoLoma  And for Sandra Bullock.
    2
  712. The movie Ad Astra from a few years ago was of questionable quality in some ways, but its depiction of what Neptune would look like up close to the naked eye was pretty spectacular.
    2
  713. About the linear accelerator on the moon: the goal is to launch the payload at greater than lunar escape velocity, so that it goes into orbit around the earth. If you locate the accelerator in the right place on the moon and point it in the right direction, so that the payload leaves the lunar sphere of influence traveling in the right direction, the payload will have a perigee closer to earth, or if shot fast enough, even hit the earth. With a bit of aiming, you could splash down payloads routinely in the same spot in a body of water, such as the Gulf of Mexico or wherever your pickup operation is.
    2
  714. Anytime somebody tries to guilt me into buying into something by labeling it as "eco-friendly" I start with the assumption that it's probably a scam.
    2
  715. The difference between being killed or being maimed for life.
    2
  716. I hope he got the thrust of your remark.
    2
  717.  @MattMcIrvin  I find the look of The Last Starfighter to be part of its charm, part of what makes it nostalgic and stand out as an early 80s film. They also used CGI on the TV show Babylon 5 in the 90s and it's really not that much more advanced that The Last Starfighter.
    2
  718.  @stoic.little  I see what you did there.
    2
  719.  @steveadams7550  As long as it's an older Boeing he be aright.
    2
  720. I knew there would be a Tholian Web reference!
    2
  721. Please fix that squeaky chair. Just sayin'.
    2
  722.  @gamerfortynine  Oh, well, sorry you're not impressed. Here's your money back:
    2
  723. In the Tom Clancy book Red Storm Rising one of the characters, a female F-15 pilot, actually becomes a space ace by shooting down 5 satellites with this missile type in a war with the USSR.
    2
  724.  @headcrab4090  Kim Stanley Robinson is a hard SF guy, so I assume he did his homework. I just wonder how humongous an airship would need to carry two people, living quarters, and supplies for a weeks-long voyage like he describes. My next question would be how do I get to ride one.
    2
  725.  @Bora_H  That makes a lot more sense.
    2
  726. I would reallllly love to spend some time on Mars just to see what it all looks like in person. Long way to travel just to take some cool photos, but what the hell.
    2
  727. 2010 was a great film, and the book was also good, in my opinion the book was Clarke's best full-length novel. I read it in 1983 or 84 before the movie came out. In the preface Clarke said that he wrote the book as a sequel not to his earlier book, but as a sequel to Kubrick's film, because Kubrick's film was significantly different from the book version and Clark believed most people were more familiar with the film. I read the book 2001 and have to say the film was way better and more mystifying. The film 2010 is great, but obviously doesn't have the Kubrick touch. I was later saddened when I found that the story of 2010 was unrealistic due to most of the story taking place deep in Jupiter's radiation belts.
    2
  728. There was a character in Star Trek who basically was exactly this.
    2
  729. Did I miss it, or did you fail to mention the cannon fired by the Soviet space station in the 70s? AFAIK it's the only test of a firearm in space to date. Also, I have actually seen and handled a gyrojet pistol. After hearing about them I was underwhelmed. It was very light and cheaply made, and felt flimsy. The owner was a gun dealer and he kept it in his shop on display. He said the ammo is super rare. He also explained why it never caught on: it was extremely inaccurate due to the projectile taking too much time to spin up. In addition, it's useless at close range because the projectile takes several yards to accelerate to ballistic velocity. Basically you could probably hold your finger over the muzzle, fire it, and the bullet would just fizzle against your finger for a moment (I wouldn't recommend that, though). Maybe with more development it could work, but like caseless ammunition it hasn't been made practical yet.
    2
  730. I want to recommend the book "Atlas: The Ultimate Weapon" for anyone who wants a good history of the Atlas program from the 1950s up to about 2005 when the first Atlas V's were built. I love that the old Atlas program logo is still on the side of every launch vehicle. Convair, Martin, Lockheed Martin, and finally ULA, the program endures.
    2
  731.  @regulatormachine2788  Well, okay, I will then. And I'll keep your five bucks, then, too.
    2
  732.  @eliasnewall-vuillemot2680  I'm not talking about a launch abort. I'm talking about abandoning ship while still in orbit.
    2
  733. Eris? Ahem, Team Xena here...get your nomenclature right!
    2
  734. The projectiles were hitting the Earth at translunar velocities, so about 11 km/s or so. Possibly a bit faster, depending. They were also likely falling at a pretty steep angle, as opposed to just grazing the atmosphere like a returning Apollo vehicle would, so a big enough rock would make it to the surface. Awesome book, one of my favorites. Fortunately they have yet to butcher it with a bad movie.
    2
  735.  @lawrencedoliveiro9104  There is, believe it or not, a conspiracy theory out there that says that nuclear weapons are fake and that the whole Cold War was a hoax to keep the world's population fearful and under control. Shit you not. These people dwell in their own private Plato Caves and have crazy imaginations of the shadows they see on that wall.
    2
  736.  @somedude4805  Well, if there is a monolith nearby, just level the ground next to it, knock it over flat and BOOM: instant indestructible landing pad. Thanks, aliens!
    2
  737.  @somedude4805  I see now. I skip most of his KSP videos because I don't use the program and don't really want to watch other people play games. But yeah, you should see 2001. Some people find it a bit long and boring in some parts, but it's one of those gorgeous visuals films like Lawrence of Arabia where you just settle in and drink up the scenery. It also doesn't dumb anything down and leaves you to figure out what you just saw, which I love.
    2
  738.  @somedude4805  Douglas Trumbull did the visual effects in that sequence, using a very painstaking slit-scan technique. That was over 50 years ago and he I think he still does fx today. He also did the effects in Blade Runner and a bunch of other films. What I find fascinating about that film is that it was made before anybody had yet walked on the moon, so they were making an educated guess about the lunar surface up close and got it very close to reality. Also, the flat panel displays on the spacecraft were pure fantasy in those days but you're using one right now.
    2
  739. The range safety officer on the Space Shuttle program must've been an awful job. If the day came when you had to push that damn button you were probably going to kill 7 people, since there was no launch escape system for the orbiter. At least when the RSO blew up Challenger's boosters it was too late for him to worry about hurting the crew; that was an awful day for different reasons.
    2
  740. The USAF used to routinely catch film payloads the same way using a C-130, so it's a proven technique.
    2
  741. I can't get used to seeing it fly with the nozzles hidden by the aft fuselage skirt. Look weird. Most rockets you can plainly see the nozzles. Isn't that extra bit of skirt just dead weight that could've been left off for better performance?
    2
  742. Scott, for a great "path not taken" story you should look up the Chrysler SERV, an alternate idea for a space shuttle that was radically different than the winged spaceplane concept.
    2
  743. That Super Sabre footage always makes me cringe. It's famous and has been on TV shows for decades. I don't know who the pilot was but I assume he didn't survive and his final moments must've been terrifying.
    2
  744.  @scottmanley  Found it: the guy's name was 1st Lt. Barty Brooks and he did not survive. January 10th, 1956.
    2
  745. Oh boy, don't let the hoaxers hear this lol
    1
  746. So we're allowed to go to Hawaii now?
    1
  747. I say degrees Kelvin. Screw 'em. Also, Pluto is a (dwarf) planet.
    1
  748.  @Sherwoody  You wasted yours by washing it down the drain, you're supposed to detonate it!
    1
  749. That 747 is such a beautiful airplane.
    1
  750. "China is less courageous than India or Isreal..." lol shots fired, commies!
    1
  751. "These aren't those kind of feet." [Quentin Tarantino has left the chat]
    1
  752. If it was intentional you wouldn't let it trash your test stand like that.
    1
  753. My background is in electronics, not rocket engineering, but my understanding is that the nozzle acts as a sort of impedance matching device between the engine and the ambient environment, to ensure as much power gets delivered from the "source" to the "load", so suddenly losing the nozzle in such a short period of time probably generates a wave of some sort that the "source" isn't going to like. I'm just BS'ing here, of course, but I find that electronic and mechanical systems can often be analogs of one another. Keep in mind I don't know what I'm talking about.
    1
  754.  @johnsmiff9649  Crew Dragon isn't dangerous because of its design; it's dangerous because it's built by SpaceX, who think you can fly people on rockets with the same slacker hipster attitude you run an internet startup.
    1
  755. I took a ride in an Uber. I guess that makes me a "motorist".
    1
  756. Pretty darn "anime"? So it looks like it will convert to a giant mecha?
    1
  757. Advances in technology are useless without proper systems engineering.
    1
  758. As the center booster approaches the barge, over the sound of the engines could be heard "Leroy Jenkins!!!!"
    1
  759. MAD works. But it doesn't protect against mistakes or suicidal madmen. Problem is there's no good alternative. Need to become a multiplanet species just in case.
    1
  760. Looks like the sats are spinning a Tholian Web around the Earth.
    1
  761. You know I saw this coming as soon as I saw the title but I wasn't expecting that execution. Nice work, Mr. Manley.
    1
  762. Mercury's apparent position is affected by relativity due to its proximity to Sol, just a bit. This vehicle's perihelion is a lot closer to Sol so that relativistic effect will be much more important when it comes to orbital computations.
    1
  763. Why do the giant letters have gravitational force? These things are totally fictional, so you can make them out of whatever you want. Giant hollow Styrofoam, or tin foil, or even some kind of Star Trek holographic tech that shines light outward, also solving the facing-away-from-the-sun part.
    1
  764. The Vulcan is cool and all, but it will be sad to see the end of the very long Atlas program, which stretches back to the mid 50s and has had huge historical significance, starting as the first American ICBM and quickly retiring as a weapon and morphing into a very successful launch vehicle family, including launching Mercury manned spacecraft into orbit. When the last Atlas flies, we need to have a big online tribute party for it.
    1
  765.  @mattbrew11  Orbiting 40 satellites is easy, though. Launch any rocket with a basket of 40 baseballs, eject basket, done.
    1
  766. Whatever the hate for SLS, I still love that RS-25 engine, such beautiful machines. When the engine shuts down and there is ice on the outside of the nozzle while a moment before there was hell fire on the inside, that just gets me every time.
    1
  767. "Yeah, there's stars in there. Shut up." Scott Manley, 2022!
    1
  768. I love this kind of stuff. When I was little there was a TV program, some kind of documentary about the technologies used in the soon to fly Shuttle. The film of the guy holding the tile fresh out of the oven stayed in my mind to this day. So what about the metal scale system that was developed for the X-20 program? Would that work any better?
    1
  769.  @hoghogwild  TLDR your silly book length kook rant
    1
  770. We are now at the point where large clouds of space junk are being launched en masse. Astronomy will be a problem, but so will collision hazards.
    1
  771. Or the theme from Dragnet.
    1
  772. "Damn rockets, ruined Scotland."
    1
  773. It's only a problem if the CCP cares what happens.
    1
  774. If NASA had made 17 or 15 of them then there'd be at least one left for museums. Tough luck it happened to be exactly 16. BTW last I heard there is also a raft of F1 engines sitting in storage someplace, waiting for the day when someone finds a use for them.
    1
  775. At least Boeing quit now before wasting many more years of time and money on it. If you're in over your head, please quit now so the customer can cut their losses and move on.
    1
  776. Fascinating stuff Scott.
    1
  777. Some of these are pretty cool, but I still want my giant wheel station with a Howard Johnsons in it.
    1
  778. "Perilune" Technically not incorrect, but I believe NASA used the terms "pericynthion" and "apocynthion" to label the apses in a lunar orbit. Also not incorrect would be "periselene" and "aposelene". To be consistent with the usual naming system of Solar System objects, the proper name of the planet or moon is the Roman form, in this case "Luna" (the actual name of our moon, even though we get lazy and just call it "mun"), and the aspects of the body are in Greek form, "Selene" or sometimes "Cynthia". I have heard people say "lunar geologist", which is a contradiction in terms; "geo" refers to the earth (aka "Terra"). The proper name for such a person would be "selenologist". On Mars he would be an "areologist", and so on. This language and naming stuff is kind of a pet peeve for me. We want to live out there some day, we may as well learn the names. Just don't call your colony "Hadley's Hope" if you know what's good for you.
    1
  779. Love these technical history videos! The aeolipile's creator was Hero of Alexandria. I remember seeing that in a book somewhere growing up, with a picture of it. I would call the nozzles "jets" as opposed to "rockets", but it's all semantics I guess, since a rocket is technically a type of jet, and thrusters on spacecraft are often casually referred to as jets.
    1
  780. Green slime makes me think of Alanis Morrissette...
    1
  781. You can do zero-G by renting a Cessna 150 and nosing it over into a parabolic arc, no need for a jetliner. Of course the cabin is too small to really float around, but you'll feel it, alright. Just pretend you're in a Gemini capsule.
    1
  782.  @Eric-kn4yn  Pretty high tech for the early 1940s. It's a really good thing the Germans spent their money and effort on things like missiles instead of nuclear weapons.
    1
  783. I'm happy to see that the knowledge from the Space Shuttle program is apparently being put to good use in a private space program, which is ostensibly one of NASA's main reasons for existing. STS was the very first of its kind, and while it failed to be economical and had safety shortcomings, it achieved a number of remarkable technical feats and 3 decades of real flight data was obtained, which is now available for industry to put to good use. I hope this heat shield system works out.
    1
  784. There is video of the inside of a Saturn V fuel tank out there, showing those massive F1's sucking the kerosene down like a swimming pool drain from hell.
    1
  785. The concept of using aerodynamic forces to change an orbit plane goes back a very long way, and was considered to be used for the canceled X-20 Dynasoar program and is described in the literature from the early 60s.
    1
  786. I love these anomaly breakdowns. If you haven't done so yet, you should do a video on the GPS launch that blew up over the launch pad back in the 90s, showering burning solid propellant all over the employee parking lot and melting cars.
    1
  787. I think the APAS system also allowed for two shuttles to dock to each other, allowing for rescue scenarios.
    1
  788. I read about this a few years ago on The Atomic Rocket Main Page website. It's awesome and scary, as is the open cycle gas core reactor. Do NOT use these things anywhere near a planet people live on. There is a saying on that site, "Any spacecraft propulsion system powerful enough to be interesting is also a weapon of mass destruction".
    1
  789. Yet another installment ion the Scott Manley Bathrobe series!
    1
  790. 6:12 Is that the new Moonraker expansion they've been keeping secret?
    1
  791. Americium I pronounce as am-er-EEE-see-um
    1
  792. Congratulations!
    1
  793. When this kind of mistake happens, that guy and several others involved all get fired.
    1
  794.  @tatianaromonov1416  Who exploded?
    1
  795. These little things are the kind of thing that can kill astronauts on long missions to places like Mars. In concept, a spacecraft is such a simple vehicle; you fill a can with air and food, stick an engine and some sensors on it, man it, and launch it into space. Since the early days when Clark and Heinlein and Asimov wrote about this stuff we have learned, and keep learning, so much about the space environment and how it interacts with spacecraft equipment and crews, but we still miss things like this in designing the devices. These RWA's were tested rigorously by the vendor, under the watchful eye of NASA and other customers, and passed every test, and yet there was something going on that nobody had ever though to model. If we are going to start sending people into deep space, or even long duration missions to the Moon or near-Earth solar orbits, we need to make sure the mission can absorb the weird things nature will throw at us. These unknowns, and the risk incurred, is part of what makes spaceflight so expensive.
    1
  796. Cannon shells carried by aircraft are made of mildly radioactive depleted uranium. A-10, AV-8B, for example.
    1
  797.  @epincion  At >500 km they will last quite a bit longer than that.
    1
  798. If you want to pay Lockheed Martin to start building civilian aircraft again, they'll be happy to do it. So put up or shut up.
    1
  799. China acts like they are a forward looking modern nation, but sometimes they remind us that they are in fact a brutal communist dictatorship that tries to control all information.
    1
  800. Elon Musk has irritated the powers that be with his recent non-space related purchase, so of course his space operations will not be punished by the completely professional and non-politicized government agencies. I know this because the Disinformation Governance Bureau has warned me against knowing otherwise.
    1
  801.  @TheEvilmooseofdoom  Looks like I got one on the line. Took you long enough.
    1
  802. So, basically, Sandra Bullock's reentry in Gravity was not entirely implausible.
    1
  803. "567 million dollars or whatever that is in Euros" lol Scott you're such an American now!
    1
  804. In Soviet Russia, missile launches you.
    1
  805.  @neithere  And I hate propagandists.
    1
  806. Not to be confused with Pennywise, the comet that comes back every 27 years.
    1
  807. I root for them, if for no other reason that I want more reasons for that beautiful 747 to keep flying.
    1
  808. Using contests like this find the smartest or best people reminds me of the 80s film The Last Starfighter where aliens were using an arcade game to find the best human candidates to be fighter pilots in an interstellar war that threatened Earth, but which no humans knew about.
    1
  809. "Vibration induced relaxation of threaded components" Try safety wire?
    1
  810. So what's up with the Voyager simulator? Was it written in FORTRAN or some other 70s format they can't support or emulate? How hard would it be to write a new one? Or is it a hardware simulator that can't be fixed due to lack of old parts stock?
    1
  811. Brits invent steam catapults. Number of CATOBAR carriers in service: 0 Brits invent Harrier jet / Pegasus engine. Number of Harriers in UK service: 0 Brits build successful launch vehicle. Number of British launch vehicles in use: 0 This list could go on. Come on, UK, ya got the stuff, but ya gotta follow through!
    1
  812. Don't forget Mentos and Diet Coke!
    1
  813. The powers that be aren't interested in producing enough power; they are more interested in reducing energy usage and thinning the population. Feeding us bugs and forcing us into smaller housing and the like.
    1
  814. Dee. John Dee. (Cue 007 theme)
    1
  815. Nothing that can't be solved with a Grizzly hover tank.
    1
  816.  @annapierce8666  It's actually a reference to Activision's Battlezone game in the 90s, which was itself based on the early 80s arcade game.
    1
  817.  @iridium8341  Not really what?
    1
  818. Artillery shells often use fuses with miniature electronics in them, going back to antiaircraft shells in WWII, which had tiny radar sets in them. Of course, these devices are purpose built for that kind of abuse and only have to operate for at most a couple of minutes. Not sure you could build a useful orbital payload that can take that kind of treatment.
    1
  819. I've worked on some systems that were carried over from decades ago, and it's true about documentation falling by the wayside over time, especially when you're talking about things like FORTRAN or other older code and hardware systems. If you're an old expert, aka a "greybeard", on these things you can get paid good money working part time after retirement for your experience. People who worked on space systems in the 1970s are certainly in that category. Sometimes I wonder about programs that have been going for as long or longer than the average human lifespan. The Sidewinder missile, for example, or my favorite: the C-130 Hercules, which was designed and built in the 1950s and they are still producing brand new ones today. I wonder how many engineers and technicians present when the first plane was rolled out are even still around today? Lots of changes in avionics and engines since then, but the basic airframe design is the same. I wonder if the original drawings are stored away somewhere.
    1
  820. Just wait until the start bringing back Martian potatoes someday. They'll call them "Watneys", and they'll be expensive, but don't ask how they were fertilized.
    1
  821. 8:40 That's where Ripley tosses the Xenomorph queen out.
    1
  822. I took my check ride in the early 90s using one of those. The cockpit in the Cessna 150s had no computers or GPS or video displays. Things have changed so much I'd have to take a lot of training to catch up on everything, except basic flying skills. Flying the airplane is really the easy part, like riding a bike. Map reading, radio procedures, and keeping up with regulation changes is the hard part.
    1
  823. What's cool is watching the plume impinge on the opposite fairing.
    1
  824. Also similar to a Redstone, which is an evolution of the A4. The engine looks kind of like the A4's as well.
    1
  825. Everyone is referencing a condition in KSP known as the Kraken. Orbiter also has (or used to have; it's been a while) a bug where two docked objects, upon contact with the surface of any planet or moon, would immediately by flung off into deep space at very high speed, relativistic IIRC, and also spinning at jet engine speeds. If you taxied a Delta Glider on the runway over to another Delta Glider and tried to dock them nose to nose while sitting on the landing gear, for example, BOOM off you'd go into the void.
    1
  826. Question: does the spacecraft have a name? Is this the first American manned spacecraft without a name?
    1
  827. I'm looking forward to a Manley / Degrasse Tyson Smackdown event livestreamed in the near future. Let's get ready to rumble!!!!
    1
  828.  @quillaja  Maybe they could bring an English textbook so they understand how to use "extra" as a prefix instead of a stand-alone word?
    1
  829.  @websitemartian  Only those who lack maturity.
    1
  830. Units unclear. Is this a metric mouse or an English one?
    1
  831.  @DUKE_of_RAMBLE Also NASA is absolutely a US government agency.
    1
  832.  @johndododoe1411  Getting those engines detached is one thing. But then you need parachutes, impact protection, flotation, and someway to protect the delicate RS-25 components from corrosive seawater. All of that costs money and a mass penalty. Also, more development time. If it were as simple as it sounds, they'd have been doing this with lots of rocket engines over the last 6 decades, starting with the F1 engines on the Saturn V.
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  833. 6:25 Scott "um akshully's" the world.
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  834.  @scottmanley Nice!
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  835. "Fat Earth Theory" aka the J2 effect
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  836. Volcanoes, because Venus wasn't enough of a hellscape already.
    1
  837. 3 hours to get from the hatch to the Soyuz docking port, wow. You'd think they'd have a quicker way of doing that. After 3 hours of just trying to get there you must be exhausted and so done with that suit.
    1
  838. This is actually my second time getting rickrolled today. When I was at work my friend edited a hotlink to redirect us all to the video. This time I saw it coming but I went along anyway for the lulz.
    1
  839. Please never use the phrase "cast some shade" or "throw some shade" ever again. Also, no "clapping back" or "breaking the internet" please. Bonus points for the Back to the Future reference though.
    1
  840. In the end, computers are dumb and there's nothing like having Neil Armstrong at the controls to save the day when landing on an alien world.
    1
  841. The German rocket scientist physically holding back the range safety officer from wrecking his wayward rocket. Sounds like a scene from Dr. Strangelove.
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  842. Are we not going to talk about Spock's use of a high delta-V jetpack to visit the heart of V'ger?
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  843. The Japanese launch facility is the most James Bond thing ever.
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  844. Something about those ships, they look so cool with all those antennae on them.
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  845. 00:25 also looks like Dr. Snuggles' rocketship.
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  846. You keep calling it a "spacecraft". It clearly is an aircraft.
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  847. This is cool but I'm not sure about your software. At 100km above Jupiter the horizon is clearly curved as I'm looking at it. I know some virtual cameras have barrel distortion and other things that make the scenery look less than realistic.
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  848.  @bobroberts2371  With a young hottie named Helen Mirren playing the Soviet spaceship skipper. Great movie.
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  849. It's really to get just one important man to trouble spots as fast as possible. Hence they'll name it the Chuck Norris Space Transportation System.
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  850. Or they just wanted it to look cool.
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  851. Had they landed in the US, they'd have been treated well. https://www.history.navy.mil/research/library/online-reading-room/title-list-alphabetically/u/uss-kearsage-rescues-soviet-soldiers-1960.html
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  852. Scott, some people run away from danger, you ran towards it. You're a good guy.
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  853. I saw an interview with a lady whose car was crushed on the Bay Bridge under that concrete. I think they had to cut her legs off to get her out. She said she saw the car in front of her get crushed and then her windshield exploded in her face.
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  854. When I got my private certificate in the 90s it was in one of those "rickety" old Cessna 150s (which was not at all rickety, but a well-maintained trusty airplane), and it didn't have any of that electronic whatnot you've got there. It was all old school dial gauges, and traffic separation was done by eyeball. It's been a while since I've flown but I would find that thing distracting and, as you've found, misleading. VFR has the word "visual" in it for a reason, after all.
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  855. I always imagine the crews in the two cockpits fighting each other over who gets to fly.
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  856. Port and starboard navigation lights; don't recall seeing those on space vehicles before. Do the shuttle orbiter have any lights at all even?
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  857. That shot at 11:08 is beautiful, the blues and purples.
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  858. I think Freeman Dyson was involved in the TRIGA design when he was working for General Atomics during the Project Orion days.
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  859.  @martinilopez1  Wow, who pissed in your cornflakes this morning, chief?
    1
  860. Welp that answers the question I asked in the earlier video about these graphics! Now that's what I call service. BTW my first computer was also a Timex/Sinclair 1000, which I still have and last I checked still works.
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  861. 17:29 Blue Origin and that feather-in-a-circle symbol. Are they Led Zeppelin / Robert Plant fans?
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  862. Shipping data around by jet net. Like Battlestar Galactica's network on a huge scale.
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  863. Over on the Orbiter forum there was a megathread for Reaction Engines/Skylon which started many years ago. After a period of giddiness updates slowed down and eventually it kind of faded. I always thought this thing was a long shot. Air-breathing rockets were studied at least as far back as the 1960s. There was a now mostly-forgotten company called Marquardt Corporation that was into all kinds of crazy high-speed propulsion ideas, they did some development work on liquid air cycle engines, a design which actually compresses air into liquid form to feed a rocket engine. As for the SABRE engine, I was hoping you could explain why in the illustrations of the Skylon it always has that weird curve to it, like the front is pointing at the ground when sitting on the landing gear. Kind of like a macaroni-shaped jet engine.
    1
  864. Regarding the purchase of the Finnish satellite by Ukraine, there may a question of international law there. If Ukraine is using the satellite for military intelligence and a Finnish entity owns and controls it, then it may look as if Finland is an active participant in the war.
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  865. When mentioning kluges in space, you can't forget the makeshift repairs to Skylab, basically saved the entire program.
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  866.  @danielpassigmailcom  Yes, but launching Hubble could've been accomplished with any number of existing expendable rockets, same as any other satellite. Your point is taken, though, STS had a pretty hefty payload capacity.
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  867. The lineage of the Delta rocket family stretches back to the old Thor rockets, of which the Thor D became known simply as "the Delta". Lot of history there.
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  868. 19th!
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  869.  @stolearovigor281  lol. According to the cast members of The Expanse their prop suits were horribly uncomfortable. Maybe NASA wants better props with air conditioning? Also, Birds Aren't Real, Finland is Fake, and....aliens...or whatever.
    1
  870.  @stolearovigor281  Oh wait, you were serious? Ha ha, you're an oxygen thief!
    1
  871.  @AndreLuis-gw5ox  Why don't you send them yours? Surely they'll hire a yes man like yourself.
    1
  872.  @raphwalker9123  Cool, tell us how science works.
    1
  873. "Mom, can we get a Crew Dragon Falcon 9?" "We have Crew Dragon Falcon 8 at home." Crew Dragon Falcon 9 at home: 17:54
    1
  874. Getting rid of VOR is stupid. GPS is vulnerable, you need something old school to fall back on. My opinion, not to confused with your opinion.
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  875.  @luma8212  Yes, most manned spaceflights since Yuri Gagarin have been tests to see if humans could do this or what happens if humans are sent there and so on.
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  876. This is cool and all, but when do we get our centrifugal wheel already? According to Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke we're at least 20 years behind on that. I mean, will this thing even have a Howard Johnson's in it?
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  877. Boeing is a study in how decision made years ago lead to a series of humiliations today. I hope the new guy straightens them out.
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  878.  @General12th  Why would Blue Origin hope for SpaceX to fail? They are not currently in direct competition but each is helping to grow the broader space industry and thus they both benefit. I don't understand why people automatically assume it's a race between the two. Musk is more likely racing against the Chinese Communist Party to establish a civilian presence in space before the CCP militarizes it, while I would assume Blue Origin's main rival might be Virgin Galactic or some other space tourist outfit.
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  879. Yes, I hate it when people jump to the conclusion that it's aliens. But it's equally important to know that you can't always automatically rule it out and just ridicule everyone who looks into the possibility. Alien life is one of those scientific possibilities that we believe is true somewhere, sometime, after all. The technical difficulty of achieving interstellar flight is such that I would think it more likely to be an unmanned probe than an actual crewed vessel, and the tumbling and apparent lack of activity would suggest that if it were some sort of space vehicle it is likely dead and powered down. The apparent outgassing activity would likely mark it as a rocky natural object. But you never really know until you get a close enough look and gather more data. It would be difficult to chase it down because of its high velocity, but if it were an actual starship I would expect it to be going much faster. So it's still probably a rock.
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  880. A better idea would be to place the turkey in a solar oven just prior to deorbiting. It can bake in a solar-heated oven chamber, rotating to make it even, for as long as you'd like, as long as you're in a solar orbit that stays in the sun.
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  881. Getting hit by a meteor has got to be amazing bad luck.
    1
  882. I do not have any kind of phobia about water or diving, but this kind of stuff is so risky that I wouldn't want to do it with experienced Navy guys and the best equipment. James Cameron's dives were a lot safer but still too risky for me personally. No way in hell would I ever get into something like the Titan, especially after a few minutes talking to its boss and the guys who used to work for him. I feel bad for the paying customers he took to their deaths, but they do bear some responsibility for not taking a good hard look at the risk they were taking.
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  883. If we build a rocket in Philadelphia we have to call it the Hoagie. The second design is the Cheesesteak.
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  884. Landing on the Mun is not easy.
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  885. Explaining the hoverslam maneuver and then telling us to fly safe...
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  886. Well, they have pressure gauges. I'm thinking of the scene in 2010: Odyssey Two when the US and Russian astronauts board the Discovery over Jupiter and the American opens his visor and smells rotting meat from the powered-down galley, and starts to panic when he thinks it might be the bodies of Discovery's crew.
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  887. If you can't navigate using a compass, a map, and a watch you really shouldn't be in a cockpit to begin with.
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  888. Not a win, but not quite a loss. If they manage to navigate the ship back and recover it successfully at White Sands I'd say they broke even at least. I agree that had a trained crew been aboard they likely would've been able to identify the problem and take steps to counter it sooner. Certainly the attitude control jets banging away and wasting propellant would've been stopped quick and gone to manual control with a pilot aboard.
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  889. Also, I was expecting to see a bunch of MCAS jokes in the comments. Was not disappointed. Internet lol
    1
  890. Back in 2007 or 2008 I remember telling people that no matter what NASA was planning with Constellation, the next administration was going to cut it and change it to something else. And now, again, we see the same thing happening to Constellation's successor. If you want something to happen, you need it to have a shorter timeline, preferably before the next president gets elected. That's the basic reality for a government agency like NASA. It's not the 60s anymore, nobody is trying to beat the Soviets to the moon, and the president who started the current program was not loved and admired before being tragically cut down like Kennedy was. Even, then, remember, after Apollo 11 the writing was on the wall for major cuts and Apollo was dead within a few years.
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  891. Delta IV Heavy, sure, and don't forget about the other hydrogen powered rocket attempting to launch: the Delta V! (aka SLS)
    1
  892. The engine exhaust at landing was pretty bright green. Is that normal?
    1
  893. Read George Dyson's book about it, it's fascinating stuff. If you can't use them at a distance from the Earth than what's the point?
    1
  894. Delta II, Delta IV, and Atlas V are more reliable than Falcon 9. Landing your rocket is nice, but delivering your customer's payload without blowing it up is even nicer. Keep trying, SpaceX, you'll get there and someone needs to innovate, but in the meantime we still have rockets we trust.
    1
  895. Fly Orbiter instead.
    1
  896. People make comments on the internet about these things all the time as if they know something the engineers don't. It's like that false story about the Soviets using pencils instead of an expensive ink pen in space. It makes a poster feel smart for pointing this out online to a bunch of other people to give you likes and thumbs up, and they are all equally as ignorant as the poster is. Sometimes this makes me hate the internet. Then I remember that there are people like Scott using the internet to cut through the ignorance and set things straight.
    1
  897. Wait a minute, the heat shield is made of Bakelite? Like my grandfather's old telephone? Huh. Learn something new every day...
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  898. Excellent report, Scott!
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  899. Build a replacement telescope such that the whole back half of the satellite is one of these "life extender" devices. That way, when it's time to fix it, you just send up a new life extender and discard the old one. No need to risk lives and the whole program becomes cheaper. Plus, every time you launch a new "life extender" you can upgrade with new technology, new sensors for the telescope, etc., just by docking and plugging in.
    1
  900.  P Davis  Except that some pilots didn't die from blowing up, they died from being exposed to leaking propellants in the cockpit. I read one account where the pilot was found half melted in his seat. I'm going to guess that was likely an agonizing death.
    1
  901. "Sorry, Muon, no one wants to mate with you." Haha Muons are incels.
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  902. Will the new s come with the cool Tron rave lighting kit? 6:05
    1
  903. I'm old school, so I don't trust an all-glass cockpit with no backup mechanical instruments. Especially with a wonky electrical problem.
    1
  904. Just wait until SpaceX and these other companies start their constellations of JunkSats.
    1
  905. Not sure I'd want to be the first person to ride one of these things.
    1
  906. Lots of "whoosh" in the replies here lol
    1
  907. All of this is cool, but when do we get a centrifuge?
    1
  908. Gonna be watching close Monday morning!
    1
  909. Turning nuclear warfare into a drinking game? Sounds legit.
    1
  910.  @Markle2k  The AIM-47 missiles were upgraded versions of the AIM-4 Falcon, which was used by the awesome F-106, and which were later developed into the larger and heavier AIM-54 Phoenix used by the F-14.
    1
  911. The fact that Venus has such a slow rotation rate might be an advantage for a solar-powered fixed-wing aircraft if it can stay in sunlight for very long periods of time, which would reduce the need for heavier batteries.
    1
  912.  @zotfotpiq  Take your political crap somewhere else, troll.
    1
  913. Another 60 pieces of space junk were successfully inserted into near earth space.
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  914. "Good news everyone!"
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  915. "Would make a pretty good heat shield if you think about it." Oh you mean a MEAT SHIELD? This would also be the most metal heat shield of all: a heat shield made of people. Cue Dethklok music.
    1
  916. So is no one else gonna bring up the Battlestar Galactica intro? BTW, Scott, when I was a little kid we had toy VIpers from the 1978 show, and I seem to recall that the wings could fold up like the ones in that sim.
    1
  917. What is that hanging in the cockpit? Fuzzy dice?
    1
  918.  @scottmanley  It's like the aerospace equivalent of a "brain in a vat".
    1
  919. There is a school of thought that finding life on Mars, or anywhere else in the Solar System, would be a bad sign, since it would indicate that the "Great Filter" is ahead of us instead of behind us, especially if the life is advanced to, say, the level of vertebrates. All philosophical stuff to me. The science of dating rocks is cool, though.
    1
  920. Katy Perry, Scott? I guess we'll let it pass, since you are a known Joy Division fan.
    1
  921. Meade is out of business? Wow, that's like losing Pontiac.
    1
  922.  @m10lover  Only the ones with diplomatic immunity. The ones like this guy are unprotected spies and go to prison where they belong.
    1
  923. Never seen the show, but I used an M-16 rifle with body armor on and I'm wondering how awkward it would be to operate that rifle in an Apollo suit.
    1
  924. Well, the engineers who work in the space business are almost all Scott Manley-types of geeks to varying levels.
    1
  925. For a real halftime show they should land a Falcon 9 first stage on the football field.
    1
  926. In the movie Apollo 13 one of the astronaut's wives is crying as she sees the Saturn V launch. When I saw the recent film "Apollo 11" I was sitting in the movie theater hoping no one would notice me quietly tearing up. Watching the Saturn V do its thing never fails to be emotional. In many ways it's more than just the most awesome flying machine ever built; it's the ultimate symbol of engineers saying to the world, "Yeah, we got this."
    1
  927. Fascinating.
    1
  928. Thanks, 2020. Well, maybe they can use some of the demolition money to start a rebuild fund.
    1
  929. Fascinating stuff, love the high speed video of the ignition tests. IIRC the US was pretty far ahead of the USSR on solid rocket technology for a while, which is one reason why Buran was all liquid. In one of the STS history books it is explained that during competition for the SRB contract one company proposed building the SRB factory in Florida right next to KSC, so that the SRBs would've been one big cylinder instead of segments. That would've avoided the whole O-ring problem. It also meant they could've built them with a larger diameter if desired, since the diameter and length of the SRBs as built was limited by the need to transport them by rail. Doesn't necessarily mean they had a better product; there may have been other engineering problems with their plan, but it is an interesting alternate scenario to think about. There was also a proposal to replace the SRBs with LRBs (liquid rocket boosters) that would burn kerosene and have wings to fly back to the launch site and land on the runway.
    1
  930.  @RobertLutece909  I was careful not to say that. It's easy to take the cynical view but it may be that the segmented boosters were a more desirable option for reasons other than politics.
    1
  931.  @RobertLutece909  Thanks for the lecture, but you're still missing the point: you are making an assumption that the decision was based solely on money and politics, which may be true, but there may also have been engineering reasons, or even program goals, as well.
    1
  932. I didn't know I needed the word "poliest" in my vocabulary until now.
    1
  933. The music at the end tho
    1
  934. The ejection seats on the early shuttle flights were even crazier, and as later analysis turned out, almost certainly suicidal, since the seat likely wouldn't get you clear of the SRB plume. John Young said that if he had known about the body flap uncommanded movement during liftoff of STS-1 he would've ejected then and there; good thing he didn't or he and Bob Crippen would've been killed.
    1
  935. Ouch!
    1
  936.  @quillmaurer6563  My understanding is that the fins help stabilize the launch vehicle for a brief period of time after launch, after it gets going fast enough for them to matter up until the air gets too thin to help much. Since the gimbaled engine steering proved to work so well, it was planned to delete the fins on future versions, and few if any launch vehicles have fins since then.
    1
  937. "People are cooler than rockets." Well...gonna have to think on that one for a while...
    1
  938. Apple Watch? Meh. Stick with the Omega Speedmaster.
    1
  939. Nonsense. Nobody wants to spend time with their family.
    1
  940. 3:18 Looks like Jeff Bezos studied his history.
    1
  941. So if they didn't launch into the same orbit as ISS, how is Sandra Bullock gonna get home?
    1
  942. The Apollo rovers had camera masts on them, but they weren't omnidirectional like the google cams.
    1
  943. 8:00 Oh if only they actually would build that Atlas heavy...
    1
  944. 8:47 Let's hear it for the lady changing the trash bags. Another unsung but necessary employee in any office or operations setting.
    1
  945.  @2handsandwiches  NASA walks on your mom's moon.
    1
  946.  @2handsandwiches  I'll be sure to let you know, there, buddy. Betting on all this conspiracy crap sure seems like a prudent way to go right? I'm sure the people of the future, forever trapped on their flat earth, will look back and see you as the smart one who saw through it all. lol.
    1
  947. "Hungry Hippo" fairing vs. "Angry Alligator" fairing (Project Gemini reference)...hmmm....
    1
  948. That's what the A-10 is for.
    1
  949. Astronauts are trained to fly manually as a very last desperate resort, but the onboard computers are the only system that can operate the engines with the precision needed. The start-up and shut-down sequence of the RS-25 engine is very precise, events have to happen in sequence at exact times relative to each other or the turbopumps may overspeed or something could burn through. That's why there are five computers, and the software code on the Space Shuttle was the most error-free code in history.
    1
  950.  @trespire  Sounds pretty cool.
    1
  951. Butch, Sunni, Boeing, you hear that? Scott says to fly safe. I'd listen if I were y'all.
    1
  952. Dragon models exist for the Orbiter Spaceflight Sim. Done these kinds of maneuvers many times in Orbiter with various vehicles, usually Space Shuttle and ISS. One thing to think about, I don't know how the Dragon's thrusters are configured, but I believe NASA frowns upon letting your hot corrosive jet wash over the station's surfaces. Space Shuttle always set up the approach so that thruster firings would not blast the station, and used orbital mechanics such that as the Shuttle reached the docking port it would come to almost exactly zero relative velocity with no thrust needed.
    1
  953.  @plvmbvm513  My favorite Heinlein book actually.
    1
  954. IIRC the reentry energy management software algorithm was developed for the X-20 DynaSoar in the early 1960s and modified for STS. Had the X-20 been flown we would have seen orbit-to-runway navigation like this about 15 years before STS-1.
    1
  955. A human is just dirt and water that thinks.
    1
  956. Other X-wing pilots, "Oh look, the hotshot redneck moisture farmer who's never flown a fighter in his life walked into our ready room with a flight suit and an opinion, and now he thinks he's going to hit that target with no computer....oh, wow, he did it, waddya know?"
    1
  957.  @craigcorson3036  One can argue that it's being used for construction instead of demolition and therefore allowed. Or, if it's really needed bad enough, renegotiate the treaty. Gonna have to do it someday anyway.
    1
  958. If you anger astronomers, they will demote one of the planets to dwarf planet status. Already happened once.
    1
  959. Very cool, but my favorite has to be the video from the shuttle SRB as it separated, tumbled, and splashed down, complete with sound.
    1
  960. This is the sort of thing that should've existed in the 80s, and we should be far beyond that by now.
    1
  961. So the part that ULA built worked fine, but there was certainly an uncomfortable conference call with Northrop Grumman earlier today.
    1
  962. Was there some years ago, cool place pretty much in the middle of nowhere. I-40 gets you within a few miles and then it's a drive through empty desert to get there. Got some cool photos. Standing on the rim is pretty cool.
    1
  963.  @keiyakins  Ouch! I honestly hope they can put this poor decision-making behind them.
    1
  964. Those crawler-transporters are some of the most awesome machines ever built, I bet the guys who built must've swelled with pride when they saw them fired up and hauling Saturn V's out to the pads. Over 50 years old and no end of work to do. Americans definitely got their money's worth out of that particular piece of equipment.
    1
  965. 6:15 is that Fred Haise wearing an Apollo 13 patch on his flight suit?
    1
  966. Isn't the Tharsis Bulge on Mars thought to be caused by an asteroid impact on the opposite side of the planet?
    1
  967.  william bush  Yeah I still have the plastic card. Helium is considered "exotic gas" and is beyond recreational diving. Professionals only.
    1
  968.  @stargazer7644  Yes I have, and it wasn't as cool as this.
    1
  969. 13:50 who else tried to wipe the dirt off their computer screen?
    1
  970. The spin gravity pointing in the wrong direction reminds me of the Hollywood space stations in movies like Moonraker and Armageddon, where the spin gravity was also sideways to the direction it should've been. Simple stuff that tells you how little thought went into it.
    1
  971. But there was a real F-17; it was the lightweight fighter contest loser and was redesigned into the F/A-18...
    1
  972. I have several Minolta cameras, including a HiMatic. Rokkor was MInolta's lens maker; they tend to be fantastically sharp lenses. It's really a shame Konica-Minolta got out of the photography business.
    1
  973. Sadly, that's Gus Grissom in that photo. Losing some toes would've been a great alternative to what actually happened to him.
    1
  974. "Why was there a toilet in the living room?" I don't understand the question.
    1
  975. What does NK care if people think it's a missile? Not like anyone's gonna do anything about it.
    1
  976. To be fair, they didn't think many people were going to read it anyway.
    1
  977. The last version of Windows that actually worked decent.
    1
  978. There is also the geopolitical angle to factor in: this thing is a giant target that is really easy to disable or destroy in the event of a conflict with any space power, and that club is ever-growing.
    1
  979. That Rorsat program was yet another brilliant nuclear power idea by the Soviets, same geniuses who would bring us Chernobyl a decade later. If you look up that Canada incident, you'll find that only a small percentage of the reactor core material was recovered by the clean up crews, since it is scattered over hundreds of miles of wilderness. That to me qualifies as a serious nuclear accident. Think about that if you are ever hiking the NW Territories and run across a strange piece of metal laying in the woods and there is no life around it for several meters. Probably a good idea to stay away from it.
    1
  980. Super cool.
    1
  981.  tommy aronson  ULA are not "morons". They (Lockheed Martin and Boeing) built two very reliable launchers to the requirements set forth by their customer, the USAF, and those launchers work very well, and build upon 6 decades of experience. If the USAF wanted a fancy launcher that lands itself like Falcon 9, they'd have asked for it.
    1
  982. And don't ever let me catch any of you guys in America!
    1
  983. This looks like the kind of job Ellen Ripley might have been offered if she hadn't gone with the Marines to LV-426 and she needed more money than you could make driving power loaders.
    1
  984. 4:56 I am your host, Deiter. Now is time on Sprockets when we build rockets.
    1
  985. A refuellable Centaur with unlimited restarts? Wow, could've used that decades ago. I'm old enough to remember the "space tug" upper stage for the Space Shuttle that was going to be able to move things between LEO and GEO, effectively extending the Shuttle's operational capabilities vastly. An idea that got delayed and then finally canned after Challenger's loss IIRC. Lots of great ideas for STS went that way, in fact.
    1
  986. Will be cool to finally see humans flying on Atlas again after 50 years.
    1
  987. The ISS crew sees an eclipse of the sun by the earth every 90 minutes. Seeing it from the moon is the same thing only from farther away.
    1
  988. I never knew the orbiters were plumbed for extra fuel tanks interesting.
    1
  989. My OCD kicks in whenever someone mentions "geology" with respect to any planet other than Earth...now back to your scheduled commenting.
    1
  990. I'm not interested in being fair.
    1
  991. Would be awesome if that monster that tried to eat the Millennium Falcon in ESB jumps out and eats DART.
    1
  992. Sounds like the Demon Core nonsense that earned two cocky young men horrible deaths.
    1
  993. @ I am only talking about Superheavy boosters.
    1
  994.  @c4fishfood  No, the Columbia event that occurred with the seats installed occurred just as STS-1 was lifting off.
    1
  995.  @c4fishfood  No, I have it right. On STS-1 the body flap moved and Young said that if he knew it, he would've ejected. The re-entry accident happened years later and there were no ejection seats on the spacecraft.
    1
  996. I almost slept through it, watched, couldn't believe what I was seeing. Amazing work by SpaceX engineers! Sometimes I was I were around to see the early Saturn V launches but at least I get to see this happen.
    1
  997. The fact-to-snark ratio is perfect here.
    1
  998. I remember reading about this back in the 80s. In the case of Shuttle missions, there were a few plans to rescue the astronaut if he got out of control and couldn't return to the ship on his own, up to and including using the shuttle's thrusters to just go scoop him up in the payload bay.
    1
  999.  @Skyprince27  No, the CSM main engine was also a single point failure. That's why the Apollo 13 accident was so dangerous: if it had happened after they had entered lunar orbit they'd not have had enough delta-V to reach home and would've perished. The heat shield was another single point failure. Any given aircraft or spacecraft has a number of failure modes for which survival is almost impossible.
    1
  1000.  @Skyprince27  So Bruce McCandless was stupid?
    1
  1001.  @Skyprince27  Oh, you had friends who worked in blah blah blah. There are any number of parts on a jetliner which, if they fail, everyone probably dies. Fortunately, these are very sturdy parts and unlikely to fail, which is why flying is so safe. For a spacecraft such as Apollo, where every ounce of performance must be wringed out of the system, the number of single point failures is going to be much higher and more risk must be accepted.
    1
  1002.  @Skyprince27  Wow, sorry you can't handle a discussion and immediately go to name calling. I won't block you. I like you.
    1
  1003.  @JMurph2015  You are correct, but there are still a few, particularly some airframe parts, but they are so sturdy as to not need redundancy. Jetliners are very safe.
    1
  1004.  @ronaldgarrison8478  75 m/s is the maximum delta-V, which is the total change in velocity. You'd only be going that fast if you pointed in one direction and fired the jets until the tanks run dry. Most of the time you'd be using the unit you would just be speeding up, stopping, speeding up, stopping, rotating, etc. The more delta-V your jetpack has, the more times you have move around in different directions. If you're working outside that's a good thing, and more delta-V means more safety, because your ability to fly back to the ship or station if you get detached is increased.
    1
  1005. That footage of the F-8 Crusader doing that funky chicken dance right above the pavement is pretty anxiety-inducing stuff.
    1
  1006. The funny thing is I'm an American and thanks to watching's Scott Manley vids I had started pronouncing it mee-thane.
    1
  1007.  @TheEvilmooseofdoom  Your statement is so silly it really makes me wonder if you're trolling.
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  1008.  @TheEvilmooseofdoom  Don't forget to like your own post.
    1
  1009.  @EFCasual  Which is what, exactly?
    1
  1010.  @EFCasual  You know the whole "dictator is a good idea" thing is a joke, right?
    1
  1011.  @EFCasual  Of course you are. Pro-dictatorship types are disturbingly more common these days. Well, see you on the field some day, sweetheart.
    1
  1012. I like the fins on the first stage. Fins just look right on a rocket. Saturn V has fins. As God and von Braun intended.
    1
  1013. Beautiful photos. I give props for the JWST joke.
    1
  1014. Movies I would not want to watch aboard a spacecraft: Alien Aliens The Thing (1982) Event Horizon IIRC, when he wrote 2010: Odyssey Two, Arthur C. Clarke mentioned that the crew of the Leonov watched Alien on their way to Jupiter and immediately regretted it.
    1
  1015.  @scottmanley  Nice. One of the greatest horror films ever in my opinion.
    1
  1016.  @josephc.9520  The Luftwaffe was the organization used to carry out the ruling party's attack on UK civilians, and it was led by Goering, the regime's number 2. It's hard to cheer on someone's tech achievements knowing full well they intend to use them against you and yours.
    1
  1017. 4:25 that ring looks like ice that formed around an umbilical port fitting of some sort and is only now starting to thaw and break free.
    1
  1018. By tomorrow morning some lower court judge will order the administration to reverse the decision and spend even more money on SLS.
    1
  1019. Canceling SOFIA for JWST? Fail. JWST is a giant money sink that will probably fail to deploy properly after it's been launched, while SOFIA is a fine example of a working observatory. (Also it's a fine example of the kind of quality Boeing used to put out.)
    1
  1020. I love these technical SM vids.
    1
  1021. Hope they apply all the lessons learned to the next generation of helicopter drones. Make the nav system bulletproof, and take measures to avoid prop strikes at any cost. Just one accidental contact and the rotor is shot for good, no way to fix it. Great mission, Ingenuity people, you all deserve a raise.
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  1022. The funny thing is the movie "Alien", despite its tagline has tons of sounds external to the spacecraft.
    1
  1023. Cool. Now let's explore the Film Event Horizon and discuss the possibility of using a small black hole to open a portal to hell.
    1
  1024. They brought spiders aboard Skylab back in the 70s. My theory: they let Skylab burn up because the spiders were gaining superpowers.
    1
  1025. Calling Isaac Arthur...
    1
  1026. The remarks about the parachute concerns, indeed this whole episode, is why being involved in manned spaceflight is a whole different ball of wax from unmanned. If your uber expensive Mars probe fails because somebody used the wrong units, it sucks, you feel huge disappointment, money and time was wasted, maybe you even get chewed out for it, but then you find a new program and get back to work. But go watch the videos of faces of the people in Mission Control during the Challenger or Columbia accidents, and read about how some of those involved never got over the guilt and stress of those awful days. It's a serious responsibility to work on systems like this.
    1
  1027.  @empty5013  Vsauce
    1
  1028.  @jorgegonzalez-larramendi5491  pork ever stormcloud digit digit digit
    1
  1029. There is a much more plausible novel called "Moonfall" by Jack McDevitt, in which the moon gets struck by a comet and some fragments fall to Earth and wreck some stuff. I wonder if they stole the name from that book.
    1
  1030. If I were Textron's leadership I would totally rebrand ULA as Cessna and put the old school Cessna logo on future rockets.
    1
  1031. Being Senator makes you more respectful...lol wut.
    1
  1032.  @appropinquo3236  Studies were done looking at using Saturn hardware as part of the STS booster system. There's a ton of documentation out there about the development of STS if you dig for it.
    1
  1033. "The impact crater happened to be on the side of uh, a grabbin'" What was that last word?
    1
  1034. I'd like to see an astronaut pointing lasers at the ground to see if it's visible here.
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  1035. So NASA might not actually advance or launch anything of note, but at least it will be loyal to the Party.
    1
  1036. This
    1
  1037. Starliner actually works though, albeit with expensive bugs. It's not a bad design, it's bad management and QC issues.
    1
  1038. Red Green approves.
    1
  1039. I agree with you, but there will always be some killjoy to get in your face and tell you you really didn't get to space and that Europeans do it better because metric or whatever. Haters are everywhere, ignore them.
    1
  1040. Someone set us up the Mun!
    1
  1041.  @Richard-bq3ni  Wow, thanks for the link, that's cool stuff.
    1
  1042. I love these kinds of videos, it's the video equivalent of a well-written article from Flying or Air & Space Smithsonian magazine.
    1
  1043.  @RoganGunn  That's not a Khan reference, it's a reference to the episode where the transporter splits Kirk into a good Kirk and an evil Kirk.
    1
  1044.  @RoganGunn  Oh yeah I see it now.
    1
  1045. Well, SpaceX did launch a Tesla car into solar orbit, so it checks out.
    1
  1046. Correct me if I'm wrong but my understanding was that Apollo's use of a lifting reentry upon return from the Moon was required in order to be survivable; a ballistic reentry at translunar velocity would either destroy the heat shield and/or kill the crew by excessive Gs. For a LEO mission, ballistic reentry was a fallback option, say, from a Skylab mission.
    1
  1047. Maybe you could roast coffee in zero-G by achieving orbit and then using a solar lens for heat, like a big magnifier. The sun should pretty intense at that altitude.
    1
  1048.  @stolearovigor281  wut?
    1
  1049. Scott, you should tell us about that massive record collection you have there, and play that Stratocaster for us sometime!
    1
  1050. Government bullshit. Does every astronaut with a handheld camera need to get a NOAA license, too? How about passengers on space tourist flights? Government has the power to tell you not to take pictures of a planet from space? Bullshit.
    1
  1051. Awesome, best explanation I've seen or read anywhere. Now, for some craziness, off to Bionerd's channel!
    1
  1052. Wannabe astronauts out there cutting their legs off now...
    1
  1053. Scott, maybe you could look into the other training simulator, the "LEMS" or Lunar Excursion Module Simulator, which they have at the Virginia Air and Space Center in Langley, VA. I can't find much info on it but I think it was tethered to a big crane so that the pilot can't roll it over. I've seen it up close. The pilot stands up inside the tiny booth of a cockpit and it's not as big as the LLTV.
    1
  1054.  @shawnmiller4781  Not sure, maybe. The museum is on a street near the water.
    1
  1055.  @shawnmiller4781  Oh okay, I see what you mean now.
    1
  1056. Houston: "Remember, you're not allowed to eat the cookies. The fresh, yummy-smelling cookies you've just baked after breathing canned air and eating meat-flavored toothpaste for 5 months, you MAY NOT eat them. Yeah?" ISS crew: "Um...Right. Okay." Houston: "Good. Now, how many cookies did you bake, exactly?" ISS crew: "20 cookies...no wait, 10. We baked 10 cookies. Only ten. Honest."
    1
  1057. For Halloween Scott should go as Captain Ramius from Hunt For Red October.
    1
  1058. The Space Shuttle also used paper covers over the orbiter's thruster nozzles to keep out birds and bugs, which fell off at launch. There was also a constant problem with birds, especially woodpeckers, going after the sides of the external tank and pecking at the foam insulation. All sorts of things were tried to discourage the birds, like fake owls and balloons and so on.
    1
  1059. Flying in a balloon or airship over Jupiter might sound cool at first, but imagine the awful death you'd experience if you fell off the platform. May as well just open your helmet as soon as you lose your hold.
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  1060. STS was imperfect, expensive, and yes, it was dangerous. But it was the first of its kind and it represented several bold technological leaps. And while we like to think of the Apollo-Saturn system as being safer, let's not forget that it killed 3 crewmen even before its first flight, nearly killed three more in Apollo 13, had its share of technical problems, and only flew a handful of times, compared to STS's 133 successful flights and 2 failures, so it doesn't have a large enough sample size to declare it superior. Spaceflight is dangerous. Space Shuttle scared me every time it flew, along with thrilling me, and I'm glad it's retired, but you have to give it credit where credit's due. The ISS is built, the Hubble is still in service along with many other payloads, and future spaceplanes will benefit from the lessons learned.
    1
  1061. Actually lots of people are dreaming of using something pretty like it. Starting with the unmanned vehicles, the X-37 is using shuttle tech and it's in active service with the USAF, so it's more than just a dream. Buran was an example of a shuttle-like side-stacked vehicle that avoided the foam and solid booster issue, so at least in concept it was safer. VentureStar was another spaceplane idea that would've avoided boosters and external tanks altogether. Then there is the British Skylon project, which may or may not ever fly, but it's prompting some advanced engine and airframe research. Had Congress the willpower to go with a "Shuttle 2.0" instead of the SLS, NASA may have been able to solve problems that STS couldn't, such as debris strikes, reusable first stage, and crew bailout options during launch. As for the SRBs, they worked fine as long as you paid attention to the engineers who told you not use them in freezing weather, and after the post-Challenger redesign, that quit being such a problem as well. There was also the idea of swapping them to kerolox LRBs, which would return and land at the launch base after separation, but no money was ever allocated for it. It would've made boost-phase aborts possible and increased the performance of the whole system.
    1
  1062.  @8bviews91  spam
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  1063. That photo at 2:04 reminds me of those crazy iconic photos of guys building the Empire State Building and other skyscrapers a hundred years ago. Tough men getting big stuff done.
    1
  1064.  @cherriberri8373  If you are going to dock with or grapple with it, you need to do it before it loses attitude control completely. Once it starts tumbling there may be no safe way to physically contact it.
    1
  1065. Yeah, no. Actually, the distances, time scales, and staggering energy levels involved in the heavens above us does scare me. And makes me a little sad. There is simply so much universe out there for us to see that even with Dr. Who levels of fantasy technology we simply won't even scratch the surface.
    1
  1066. TANSTAAFL
    1
  1067.  @underwaterdick  Exactly.
    1
  1068. The door problem reminds me of the early shuttle flight where the crew couldn't get the payload bay doors to close due to thermal expansion. The solution was to rotate the vehicle to a different sun angle and let the structure change temperature a bit.
    1
  1069. Putting it in a higher orbit absolutely does not remove the need for station keeping maneuvers, since the solar radiation pressure on a 16 km^2 array is going to have a very large effect on the orbit eccentricity in a surprisingly short period of time.
    1
  1070.  @saundby  Did you work for them before they merged with Rocketdyne?
    1
  1071. This is what happens when you try to fly without Kaylee in the engine room.
    1
  1072. I'm going to need to be convinced that human pilots, likely former fighter pilots, are any more dangerous than an unthinking bot programmed by a millennial neckbeard sitting at his computer covered in Cheeto dust who thinks flying KSP makes him good at space stuff. Boeing and Airbus aircraft have killed people because of software combined with aircraft design flaws or system failures. In at least a few cases, had a trained human pilot not been relying on automation the accidents could've been avoided.
    1
  1073. I used to be a pretty hardcore gamer back in the 90s but ever since then gaming has become mostly MMO which holds no interest for me. Old school games were mostly standalone and didn't usually require an internet connection. Glad to see this. I agree about the old TIE Fighter game from Lucasarts being an amazing game.
    1
  1074. In an abort scenario it's a good idea to keep everything as simple as possible. Capsules, Russian, Chinese, and American, are usually designed so that if you do nothing, it will settle into a heat shield forward attitude, making it inherently safe. You just need to rotate it to cancel out any lift, and just let it hurtle through the sky until the altimeter senses you are low enough to open the chute. This is the simplest way to get the crew safely back to the surface even if the autopilot electronics all fail, if there is no way to tell what your attitude is, if the crew is already unconscious, etc. Just get the thing back to the ground in one piece.
    1
  1075. Now I'm hungry for pork chops.
    1
  1076. I used to have a spotter scope that was used at a gun range to spot bullet holes in the distant targets so you could score yourself, and also for watching wildlife, and it also doubled as a nice scope that you could keep in your car. It even had a mount that you clipped onto the edge of your car window so you could use your car as a tripod of sorts. Plus the image went through a prism and was non-reversed. They maybe aren't the best for astronomy, but they're better than that Vivitar and actually useful for terrestrial observing as well.
    1
  1077. I'm gonna have to watch this again at least once before my brain can properly visualize this.
    1
  1078. Cool, I like the sun shining in across the panel as you rolled the spacecraft. I used to fly Mercury missions in Orbiter a few years back, I should load that up again and have some fun.
    1
  1079. I just can't imagine somebody as active as Scott blowing his spare time on video games.
    1
  1080.  @scottmanley  I don't know where you find the time! I waste mine watching too much youtube lol.
    1
  1081. Rods over Venus! lol I wonder if I'm the only one that remembers that myth.
    1
  1082.  @PRosendo0101  When you read about how Columbia's crew likely died...nevermind. Just don't read it.
    1
  1083. Maybe you should force us at gunpoint. You know, for our own good.
    1
  1084.  @emmata98  Well, then, while you're forcing us to change our units, maybe you can force us to give up our right to self defense, too. You seem to have it all figured out.
    1
  1085.  @emmata98  As long as it's metric self-defense it's okay, though.
    1
  1086. It has to be pointy so that if the warhead doesn't work you can at least use it as a long range bayonet.
    1
  1087. Io, what a place. And somewhere down there Mau's lab is doing horrible things with the protomolecule.
    1
  1088. Don't drink rocket fuel...especially if it's elements from a nuclear thermal rocket reactor.
    1
  1089. Hoaxers incoming, brace for impact! 😄
    1
  1090. I get all my space news from Scott Manley's channel. Fewer ads to deal with here than on actual news sites.
    1
  1091.  @francescozampognaro2544  Yep sure is.
    1
  1092. Why is being sick in the cramped Soyuz better than being sick inside the Mir? Or is it because they'd be sick while trying to dock when they really need to be sharp?
    1
  1093.  @winkus8586  Oh, did I miss something? Did the US military fire a Russian missile yesterday?
    1
  1094.  @winkus8586  Wut
    1
  1095.  @SPrince-t9u  I see. So then, the US went over to Russia and launched a Russian missile yesterday. Got it.
    1
  1096. Must be nice to be where it's cool enough to wear a sweatshirt outside. Cheers.
    1
  1097. The fact is that with the virus restrictions it's not realistic to expect progress on this program to continue apace. It's not national security related so there's no need for engineers to go to work full time on it right now.
    1
  1098. "We've been trained to call them electric engines because the FAA doesn't know how to certify motors." Yet another sterling example of FAA competence.
    1
  1099. The Americans don't think a nuclear jet is impossible. Just decided it was very stupid and dangerous, which is why they never actually flew one.
    1
  1100. 8:31 is that the RTG in the upper middle, with the white cooling fins?
    1
  1101. I knew about Scout from one of those kids' books about aerospace when I was little, I had no idea they were still operating them into the 90s.
    1
  1102.  @adamc1713  Yeah, that's true, but the fact is that STS really was kind of dangerous. When it was designed the idea was to limit it to a catastrophic accident about once every 1000 flights or so, which is totally unacceptable by commercial aviation standards, and that turned out to be wildly optimistic. The actual accident rate was about 1 in 60, with almost no hope for crew survival or rescue during most of the flight. Now that may be acceptable for a test plane with test pilots, like an X-15 type program, but for a vehicle that is to be the core of the nation's space access and which risks 7 people at a time, that's too much to ask. Especially since the Shuttle had a huge public profile and had the emotions of millions of Americans (and quite a few American friends and partners) riding on it, watching 7 people die live on TV is unsustainable. Would've been better had, say the USAF operated it and kept it mostly hush hush, SR-71 style. I'm just rambling now, of course, the real world did not and does not work that way. Friend of mine worked on the Challenger mission that failed. To this day he still feels guilty even though he had no part in the mistakes that caused it. That's a heavy load to bear.
    1
  1103. Launching from water sounds like a good idea. Anyone remember Sea Launch? Surprised no one else has set up a similar program.
    1
  1104. Savage
    1
  1105. @Wolfman Actually, no space missions at all would be even cheaper and safer. No need to know anything about rocks on Mars or whatever. Why take any risks at all? Let's spend all our money on alcohol and entertainment instead.
    1
  1106.  @5Andysalive  And that's only because Stalin didn't get around to imposing his own measurement system.
    1
  1107. Turbine spinup sounds are always good.
    1
  1108. For a big telescope, dispense with the Starship entirely and just build a Starship-derived expendable upper stage for the Starship booster. Get the maximum size mirror up there.
    1
  1109. I think Proton is maybe the least ugly Soviet/Russian design. The ones that work, like Soyuz, are hideous, and so are the ones that don't like N-1, aka The Inverted Snow Cone of Fail.
    1
  1110. Careful what you ask for. The next comet you see could do us all in. 2020 ain't over yet.
    1
  1111. Spinning objects: the reason Explorer 1 transitioned to the lowest energy state was because the energy was dissipated through heat. The flexing of the metal antennae creates heat, which radiates into space slowly over hours and days. When you do the math it winds up spinning around the lowest energy axis. To make it easy though, just think of it this way: if your satellite is shaped like a frisbee and spins like one, it will be stable. If your satellite is shaped like a telephone pole and you try to spin it longways it will end up tumbling end over end.
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  1112. If I wanted to ship goods to orbit cheap I'd call SpaceX. If I wanted to fly myself to orbit and live to tell the tale, I'd probably call Boeing and spend the extra cash.
    1
  1113.  @jackkevillemedia  Go right for the ad hominem. I like your style.
    1
  1114. I knew spaceships were made from wood, learned it playing Spelljammer back in the day ;-)
    1
  1115. This looks pretty cool, but I'm distrustful of anything that needs an app to work.
    1
  1116. If you could hear it, you'd hear the Universe screaming.
    1
  1117. When Scott Manley and Curious Droid each drop a nuclear video on the same day.
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  1118. What did Buran use, and how did it compare to the Rockwell Shuttle?
    1
  1119. The Space Shuttle hoped to do a launch every two weeks, not reuse the same orbiter every two weeks, just have a new mission on the pad every two weeks. Closest they got was almost once per month, right before Challenger wrecked. Reusing the same rocket in two weeks is pretty awesome.
    1
  1120. Whenever people wonder why we need really big Saturn V launchers I always think of Skylab and how launching things that big requires a really big launcher. ISS is much bigger, with more interior space and lots more mass, but because the modules had to be small enough to fit on Shuttle or current Russian launchers none of them have that cavernous open space inside. Had we gone on to develop the reuse of the shuttle external tanks as orbital modules we could've had stations that would dwarf Skylab's interior.
    1
  1121.  @kazioo2  Always gotta be one...
    1
  1122.  @PerfectInterview  still an Atlas
    1
  1123.  @lancelotlake7609  still Atlas
    1
  1124.  @marcoav313  Canceled? No.
    1
  1125.  @JarrodFLif3r  Still Atlas
    1
  1126.  @JarrodFLif3r  Yep. Atlas with a Russian engine. Personally, I wish they'd have found an American replacement engine and kept the Atlas program alive, but what can you do.
    1
  1127.  @JarrodFLif3r  Well, that was the 90s, when the Americans and Russians were friends for a while. Too bad that didn't last; now we can't use their engines anymore.
    1
  1128. 1:17 Penn State?
    1
  1129. The naked engines look cool, one of the reasons the Saturn V looks cool.
    1
  1130. ​ @thoughtlesskills SpaceX has been launching the most national security payloads lately, which benefits the public. And your description of a Tesla as a "trash car" belies your political disposition. A year ago people like you loved Teslas. The car's design hasn't changed, only the alignment of the company's founder, so why trash the car? Illogical, but then again what should we expect from the likes of those who vandalize and smear feces on cars owned by innocent people. Immature behavior.
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  1131. Memory banks unloading Bytes break into bits Unit One's in trouble and it's Scared out of its wits Guidance systems breakdown A struggle to exist To resist A pulse of dying power In a clenching plastic fist (a figurative fist, of course) It replays each of its days A hundred years of routines (okay, 15 really) Bows its head and prays To the mother of all machines All machines 1001001 SOS 1001001 In distress 1001001
    1
  1132.  @jonseilim4321  You trust a communist dictatorship, guess you fucked up in life choices.
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  1133.  @geraldmartsy2165  One accident does not a failed design make. Seems like it's working pretty well now. Besides, Rutan is an aircraft designer, he didn't build the engine.
    1
  1134.  @scottmanley  And the guy I want piloting it is Marco Ramius. "Some things in here don't react well to bullets."
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  1135.  @geraldmartsy2165  Okay, well fine, then it still turned out to be a good idea.
    1
  1136.  @AREA_50.1  Cold gas thrusters do not produce fire though; they are literally just gas released through a nozzle, usually nitrogen. You may be thinking of monopropellant thrusters, which use a single fluid as fuel, fed through a catalyst bed that causes it to ignite and burn in the combustion chamber before passing though the rocket nozzle.
    1
  1137.  @AREA_50.1  Also, thanks for the sub :-)
    1
  1138. So wind sounds like...wind. Shocker.
    1
  1139. Flying an unmanned booster from Boca Chica to Cape Canaveral would also involve flying over populated areas between Flordia's west and east coasts, which would be risky and likely illegal.
    1
  1140.  @chemplay866  Do what?
    1
  1141. I'm okay with a space movie race. The sooner that becomes a thing the better.
    1
  1142. Microwave transformers are scary dangerous.
    1
  1143.  @trolleriffic  Maybe, dunno
    1
  1144.  @davisdf3064  Nuclear lightbulb is specifically the closed cycle design. Open cycle design is nightmare fuel for anyone testing it on the surface of any planet humans wish to live on.
    1
  1145.  @dongurudebro4579  Like the 'Verse from Firefly.
    1
  1146. While I wish them the best of luck and hope they achieve their goals in a timely manner, this thing looks like hot garbage. A big shiny trash can with rocket engines. Waiting for Oscar the Grouch to pop his head out. I certainly hope the final design will at least look the part.
    1
  1147. 2:52 Does China also use APAS docking systems? Are they compatible with US and Russian equipment?
    1
  1148.  @angelarch5352  If we are lucky, we can retrieve the Defiant before she fades away.
    1
  1149. And this would be the first time an Atlas booster is used for manned flight since the Mercury days! The Atlas program is over 60 years old at this point, in the 1950s who'da thunk we'd still be flying something called an "Atlas" today? And that the old Centaur would still be the upper stage?
    1
  1150. A friend of mine was noting that all satellites look a 6th grader's science fair project, now we know why.
    1
  1151. You just know one of those moon caves has a monolith in it.
    1
  1152. I didn't know about the 1950s ASAT program, but I will make an educated guess that it used a nuclear warhead. Because 1950s. Will have to look that up...
    1
  1153. Kilofeet is not cursed at all, makes perfect sense. 1000 ft. HUD symbology in fighter planes displays altitude in kilofeet sometimes. Maybe the instruments in SS1 and SS2 do too.
    1
  1154. So the USA and China will each launch missions to push the rock in opposite directions like two tugboats fighting, while Russia promises to launch an elaborate mission that doesn't get off the drawing board.
    1
  1155. Even before that the Americans were less than happy with the UK's lack of security vetting for the British scientists on the Manhattan Project who turned out to be Soviet spies. That said, it was a dumb idea by Congress to cut the UK off IMO.
    1
  1156. Not only could we send petite women, we could also find small women with no legs, since legs are kind of useless in freefall.
    1
  1157. On the one hand we have the James Bond Villain, Elon Musk. Owns his own rocket company, is a bit eccentric, cool cars, and an exotic accent common to Bond villains. On the other hand we have Lex Luthor, aka Jeff Bezos. Super wealthy, also runs his own space program, behind the scenes is very involved in politics while trying to look like a good guy in public, and of course he is bald, like any self-respecting Lex Luthor would be. What we don't see yet is a 007 or a Clark Kent to bring things into balance...
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  1158.  @andyheater  They're all over YouTube, and the ones that belong to NASA are public domain so you should be able to download them if you search NASA's website or maybe even write to them.
    1
  1159. PINEAPPLE ON PIZZA?! Reported! Unsubscribed!
    1
  1160.  @Br3ttM  Cool story, bro, but we'd still like a video from Scott Manley.
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  1161. 13:01 The guy on the far right with the dark glasses working on the bomb is Louis Slotin, who later killed himself accidentally with the Demon Core.
    1
  1162. The solution is obvious: the next Japanese lander should be a transforming mecha-style robot of some sort that can land in any orientation, stand itself up, and draw its sword for great justice! Wouldn't that be sexual?
    1
  1163.  @gabedarrett1301  Over this explody pile of stainless steel? Yepper.
    1
  1164.  @Hamachingo  Shuttle never "bellyflopped", it flew aerodynamically at a high AoA gradually decreasing AoA until it was subsonic, by which time the commander was piloting it. Starship is more similar in some ways to the DC-3 shuttle design proposed by Max Faget, although after pitching over it would've landed on a runway as well.
    1
  1165.  @quisqueyanguy120  Also yes.
    1
  1166. For fans of Star Blazers (the American edit of the anime Space Battleship Yamato) a woman named Nova was one of the main characters on the spaceship.
    1
  1167.  @markobaran  So you're saying that if the government spends more money on woke Sesame Street in Iraq, Starship will work better? Makes sense.
    1
  1168.  @countzero1136  Strange; that's the third Atari reference I've seen today...
    1
  1169. Do they have power loaders aboard the ISS? You know, just in case...you never know what ships coming up from the surface will bring.
    1
  1170. "Astronauts are heavily screened". Sure, but you still get the odd Lisa Nowak, driving across country in a diaper with trash bags, duct tape, and pepper spray so she can "just talk to" her lover's other woman.
    1
  1171. The article I read about the Falcon 9 core said that they didn't "lose" it, they fished it out of the water after it fell over. So it sounds like it's damaged and contaminated with seawater but not "lost".
    1
  1172. That Atlas V was capability wasted on BO junk. That's why they through the Centaur into escape velocity just for the hell of it.
    1
  1173.  @kargaroc386  Yes, that was another one.
    1
  1174.  @Mike-oz4cv  Don't argue with me, argue with the Douglas engineers.
    1
  1175.  @44R0Ndin  Don't bother trying to explain this using actual science; as soon as the word gets out that they are "bathing us in microwaves" there will arise a protest movement made up of people who don't understand or care about logic. Same as the antinuclear people and the people who complain about cellphone towers, high tension power lines, and so on.
    1
  1176.  @tredogzs  You hate Musk and you want the whole world to know. How does that make you feel?
    1
  1177. Re: "X" vs. "Twitter", I just split the difference and call it "Xitter". You may pronounce that as you see fit.
    1
  1178. From a technical standpoint, this isn't hard to do, and in fact by now we should've had one or two missions sitting "in the hangar" in case of something like this, since we've been worrying about it and putting it in the public conscience for about 30 years or so now. But politics, bureaucracy, etc. will probably bog everything down as it gets talked to death and likely by the time they determine whether it's going to hit it will be too late to get a mission up in time. Or they'll try, and it'll be a Starliner-style SNAFU where whoever is doing the launching embarrasses themselves and faceplants. Meanwhile, in the target area, they'll drag their feet evacuating... Okay, reading what I just wrote, I guess I am way more jaded than I thought I am. I will stand by my first sentence, though: we know how to do this stuff, and we should be ready by now, for at least a limited number of scenarios.
    1
  1179.  @imaginary_friend7300  A ready-to-go rocket and payload that can be sent to the pad within a reasonably short period of time. Kind of like the Apollo-Saturn IB rescue mission that was kept ready during Skylab missions.
    1
  1180. 8:55 Not familiar with KSP here, so question: pausing the vid at 8:55 the velocity appears to read 2183.2 m/s. That is not even close to LEO speed, in either inertial or earth fixed coordinates. What's the deal here? Is Scott foisting off a suborbital hop as an orbital insertion here, or am I not reading this right?
    1
  1181.  @scottmanley  Interesting. I'm an old Orbiter user, which is a very realistic model. I've simulated all the Apollo missions, recreating each maneuver and trying to get the orbital parameters as close to historical as possible and I've always been pretty close, right down to splashdown time.
    1
  1182. @Nic Berry IN this video Scott says he sees no such docking system.
    1
  1183. Probability of collision math is a weird thing. In reality, the probability this object will hit the earth is either zero or one. We just don't know which one yet, so we come up with probability numbers to score how confident we are at our guesswork.
    1
  1184. Andromeda Strain vibes, anyone?
    1
  1185. The Soyuz system is a proven design, but even the best, longest-running design can still become unreliable if you are suffering quality control problems in manufacturing and assembly. The Russians need to get their act back together. Factory workers drilling random holes in space vehicles is a bad omen when you're climbing up a launch tower to get in the cockpit. To paraphrase Han Solo, "Launching rockets into space ain't like dusting crops, boy..."
    1
  1186. That business of using all those high tech tools to try to find the leak; I can't remember which sci fi book I read it in but they used balloons to find it the same way these guys used tea leaves.
    1
  1187. Hold down bolts stolen from Boeing.
    1
  1188. I see a few books on that shelf that I also own, including the PK Dick collection and Mike Collins' memoir.
    1
  1189. @Don Kuppa Ridiculous.
    1
  1190.  @shaunsandow2073  Sometimes it is needed.
    1
  1191.  @ccoder4953  The Golden Age of Aviation was the 1930s.
    1
  1192. We can do without the corny sexual innuendo, the rest of the Internet is big enough to take care of that.
    1
  1193. 6:29 I thought that guy's truck was gonna get crunched.
    1
  1194.  @veramae4098  I know right? Same as Finland!
    1
  1195. 5:20 "If they'd let a hacker near it" I'm picturing the scene from the first Mission Impossible movie where Tom Cruise is hanging from a cable to hack into an air gapped computer in a high security facility inside CIA HQ.
    1
  1196. ​ @jasonm9336 Oh no, the Bananagate Scandal is upon us!
    1
  1197.  @BennyHesp  My comment about bananagate got deleted for no reason.
    1
  1198. I wonder how well it models things. I'd think that one aircraft with the dorsal intake would have problems at high angles of attack. Been tried in real life. Works nice for stealth bombers, for fighters, not so much?
    1
  1199. That'll use the Vera engine. And the fairing will look like a wool hat with ear flaps.
    1
  1200. 1:18 that shot of the 747 mothership is beautiful.
    1
  1201.  @babayada2015  Scott linked to his video on the subject.
    1
  1202. Eh. It's NASA, what do you expect? Back in 2006/2007 when the Constellation program was the Next Big Thing I remember telling my fellow space fans that the whole thing was going to get canceled the moment the current president left office and the next administration came in, just as George H. W. Bush's Mars program got canned the moment he left office in 1992. Sure enough, the new administration decided they had All Better Ideas and all that money spent on the Ares launch vehicles was flushed straight down the F'ing toilet. But wait, there's more! NASA had enough money to build and launch a single Ares I rocket with a dummy upper stage and ballast payload. Ares had already been canceled but they had to spend (waste) the money so they launched this rocket successfully, despite it having no future whatsoever. As an engineer I can't imagine working on that program knowing your work was all pointless. At least you got a paycheck out of it I guess, like getting paid to paint rocks.
    1
  1203.  @scottmanley  I don't understand what wasting money on Ares I has to do with contracting SpaceX to build something.
    1
  1204.  @scottmanley  Except for the money they blew on that launch. That got spent on launching ballast into the sea.
    1
  1205. I trawl youtube looking for videos about retro tech like that, Jeff Quitney's channel is a great source. Also, the computer museum in Mountain View, CA, has a youtube channel where they actually restore these old computers and run them and write new code for them and stuff. Beautiful.
    1
  1206. On a related note, that photo makes me nostalgic for the Space Shuttle. Warts and all it remains the coolest thing ever flown so far.
    1
  1207. Need to plant a bomb in the laptop. Thief doesn't reset the timer after a half hour, boom. Just kidding. Sort of.
    1
  1208. Dan Brown has entered the chat.
    1
  1209.  @arieldahl  South Africa was known for its fine artillery pieces, though. Fine.
    1
  1210. So it's like building a ship in a bottle, except if it's wrong two people die.
    1
  1211. Why does everything we see in every Scott Manley video look like it's "right out of KSP" or is "the most Kerbal thing I've ever seen"?
    1
  1212.  @ariaspes3842  No US launches have failed in the last two months.
    1