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

  1.  @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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  2. 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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  3. 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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  4. "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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  5.  @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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  6. 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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  7. 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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  8.  @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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  9. 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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  10.  @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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  11. 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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  12.  @221b-l3t  At least submarines can surface. A 747 cannot "surface" and escape Jupiter, it must fly forever.
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  13.  @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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  14. SpaceX launches more rockets than Blue Origin makes announcements.
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  15. I want to see images of the crash sites where the Saturn stages and LM ascent modules impacted.
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  16.  @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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  17.  @Lethgar_Smith  Yes. In fact it's already happened.
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  18. 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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  19.  @mathewferstl7042  Why's you post it then?
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  20. Extra points for doing some math on this joke.
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  21. 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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  22.  @fruitbouquet5479  "Gonna have to call in an expert." Brings in Alien Hair Guy.
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  23. 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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  24.  @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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  25.  @trespire  Speak for yourself!
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  26. A lot of ships end as artificial reefs.
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  27.  @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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  28. 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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  29. 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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  30. 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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  31. 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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  32. It made me reflect on things.
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  33. Wiping out its own launch pad set the N1 back a very long way.
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  34.  @Sableagle  "I read your book, Ryan. Your conclusions were all wrong. Halsey acted shtupidly."
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  35.  @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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  36. The degradation of sites like this and Arecibo is heartbreaking.
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  37.  @jetseekers Do you doubt the effectiveness of a tachyon pulse modulated deflector array?!
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  38.  @dx-ek4vr  Thank you for your valuable contribution to this discussion about sonic booms.
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  39.  @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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  40.  @YouTube_username.  You're missing the part about partial pressures. Also, wrong thread to hijack, this one is about Atlas.
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  41. @ 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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  42.  @pattheplanter  That's like saying you didn't have sex because you wore a condom.
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  43.  @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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  44.  @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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  45.  @YoursNKR  Basically, a fire extinguisher.
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  46. Pringles, maybe. Monster. Campbells Soup. Folgers Coffee. Pennzoil. Lots of ad revenue potential here.
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  47. 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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  48. If you look up "colony drop" in TV Tropes, Skylab is given as a real life example lol.
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  49.  @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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  50. 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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