Comments by "possumverde" (@possumverde) on "Scott Manley" channel.

  1. 1) They know. The facility is much smaller than their ultimate goal and was only meant for subsonic testing of the concept in general. (Edit: iirc, they were aiming at getting the velocity of the payload to mach 1 prior to releasing it but never intended for it to be supersonic while traveling in the atmosphere.) 2) The tumble was expected due to the subsonic speed of the rocket and the lack of optimization in it's design (again due to this being a test of the idea in general.) 3) The footage of the seal was recorded at a high frame rate and played back at one much lower. The seal initially goes outward due to being pushed out by the rocket. Had more been shown, you would see the seal getting pushed back inward by the pressure very shortly after the rocket passed through. Also, their vacuum wasn't as near to being as complete for this test as they plan on it being in their next phase of testing (and I'm pretty sure that they actually have other venting built in to open at launch in order to avoid having everything coming in violently through the relatively narrow launch tube.)
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  2. Actually, the Orion drive is probably viable. If they ever work out how to ignite fusion warheads without having to use fission warheads in the process, it'll be quite clean and theoretically allow for near light speed travel. Slowing down is the tricky part. You essentially have to flip flop the ship and start detonating against the the direction of travel. The only reason the project died was the contamination issue from the fission and the ban on nuclear testing in space. The actual mechanism was shown to be sound.
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  3.  Beardless Guy  By anyone other than a youtuber who relies heavily on being a contrarian for their content?
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  4. You can actually work it out with maths. Pick an altitude. Then, work out the distance to horizon from that height. Next, work out the horizontal length of the horizon that falls within our central vision (roughly 12 to 15 degrees to each side of center depending on the person) by working out the circumference of a circle with radius equal to the horizon distance and then determining the length of 12 to 15 degrees of that circle. Once you have that, calculate the drop for that distance due to curvature. Then, work out the angular size of an object the size of that drop at the distance to the horizon. Finally, look up the smallest size the human eye can resolve and compare it to the angular size of that drop. If that angular size is equal to or greater than what the eye can resolve, you will notice curvature. I don't remember all the formulas needed but they're all easy to find online (there are online distance to horizon and angular size calculators available.) Granted, that uses only central vision (though curvature would be noticeable in that range long before peripheral vision could clearly notice it), doesn't include refraction (on average, it causes ~5% difference at sea level) and other environmental factors, and assumes nothing above sea level in your line of sight, but it will be a fairly accurate estimate.
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  5. It shouldn't need a second payload. With the right materials, they could probably use some sort of CVT (continuously variable transmission) or one of it's various "cousins" and/or a dynamic counterweight set up to mitigate any instabilities caused by the sudden removal of the payload.
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