Comments by "Stephen Villano" (@spvillano) on "Scott Manley"
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I'd have gone with clean room environment and vacuum chamber assembly to avoid gas pockets. But then, I'd also not have used expired carbon fiber or a viewport that was rated for 2/3 of the intended depth.
Worse, no xray inspections, ultrasound, etc after each mission. Just acoustic monitoring for popping, which if that happened, it was already beginning to fail and one won't make it to a safe depth.
Way too many corners cut, turned a cube into a sphere and the ocean dutifully refined the size of that sphere.
What should have been done is proper environmental control for assembly, proper selection of components and then, use the damned thing as an ROV for a hundred missions minimum, cut it apart to examine everything and build a new one based upon lessons learned from the first one. On the third, then consider carrying passengers.
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Well, all of the TPS tiles have been silica based. The earliest, so delicate that one could, with a badly sprained hand, crush them easily by accident and were about as waterproof as the Titanic currently isn't. Later versions improved greatly on strength, which even now remains not much to write home about and waterproofing - which has improved tremendously.
Discussing the things, as Scott mentioned, ITAR can be a royal pain in the gonads, with prosecution being quite aggressive and the regulations being so nebulous in some areas as to literally leave it open enough that one could cite someone for an ITAR violation for discussing the chemical formula for pure water.
And given my military background initially involved intimate involvement in nuclear weapons, suffice it to say, we had a keen idea on ITAR regulations. That dated back to when even PGP encryption was considered a weapon.*
*Entertainingly, an allied foreign nation had ordained that encryption, especially VPN's were unlawful within their nation as they considered the technologies weapons. Citizens and residents were rather stuffed, but banks explained patiently that there were three chances that they'd engage in unencrypted financial transactions, slim chance, fat chance and no chance and that they'd cease doing business within said country.
Policies swiftly changed for some odd reason.
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Those ribs would also impart additional linear strength to the tank, which at the time were problematic when depressurized. A few early missiles would collapse from their own mass if depressurized.
I do wonder though, how much hydrogen was retained in the foam, as hydrogen is infamous for infiltrating pretty much anything. Still, better inside than outside to slam into the stack as it's speeding through the atmosphere!
Rockets are easy. Make a bomb, have it explode slowly in one direction, add steering components, there you go. Making one that doesn't explode in all directions, that part's hard. ;)
Space is easy, surviving in space, tricky. There's a reason it takes an hour to open a hatch and the checklist is heinous, for good reason!
Getting back alive, trickiest of all. The Russians do it by making a spacegoing tank - I can't think of any US spacecraft that could enter the atmosphere inverted, but the Russians survived multiple times of service module failed separation resulting in inverted entry.
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Oh, but we've got high speed data now. And a half second and change lag round trip...
Used geosynch birds in the military at times, typical lag ranged from 550 ms - 650 ms round trip.
Maybe they'd prefer a cooler locale than earth orbit, say, Mars, where lag ranges from 4.3 minutes to 24 minutes. Ignore that sunny thing getting in the way on occasion or when the planet's facing the wrong way, Harry Potter's magical cue stick will fix that.
Hey, I'm feeling nice, usually I call it Harry's marital aid, in somewhat less family friendly terms.
There are around a thousand things I can think would go well in space, a data center for earth is decidedly not one of them - not even in LEO, where it'd need to be boosted back up fairly frequently or that data center would get decidedly toasty briefly, then go offline in chunks.
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Well, there are videos of after of both prompt criticality accident victims, thankfully, they'll remain classified indefinitely.
What that level of radiation did to those men was beyond what a horror film could ever show.
I do seem to recall a 6 ton design yield test, can't recall the test name and I doubt there'd be a video released on that silly design.
Still, were I asked to fire a Davey Crockett device, "Sir, did you just say that you want me to toss a whatlear whathead close to hand grenade distance?! Sir, I really need you to urinate into this specimen container for analysis, because you have to be fucking high".
We jokingly called them what they were, nuclear hand grenades.
The test, obscene. Fired the damned thing, had men run right into ground zero's fallout.
Actually met some of those veterans, studied for life through the VA.
Ignored for life - those downwind of above ground nuclear testing. Properly named Downwinders, there's a Wikipedia article on them.
I was born a week after Czar Bomba detonated. I still have a higher background gamma count than my children and grandchildren.
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Where something similar might work is, if we suddenly went into "Mars or bust" mode, dozens to hundreds of probes, a constellation of comms birds in orbit, one data center on the surface, where one has the thin atmosphere and even the lithosphere to help reject heat would make more sense.
For this, heat rejection, ridiculous size that'll be an instant Kessler syndrome, absurd lag, don't get me started on restocking reaction mass as it's exhausted, just for the top few problems that come to mind says, "a great big nope". Add in Murphy's Law with space weather, yeah, Murphy says, as soon as you deploy the panels, Sol will have a tiff and now half of your panels got crispy.
But, great scam.
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@jasonwalker9471 not quite, cosleeping, crib padding, infant positioning, not using a damnable pillow, as all are risk factors. They've recently detected genetic markers that suggest respiratory drive is lower and can potentially fail if the infant falls too deeply asleep as well.
Tons of research, little so far to show beyond the suggestion of one set of genetic markers maybe.
Way back in the mid-80's, our youngest was diagnosed with SIDS, we were loaned a world of monitoring equipment to monitor her breathing, laughably, our cat alerted us several minutes before the alarms would go off. We'd be standing there checking, the alarm would finally go off, the cat already having warned us by meowing and pacing. Would that we could figure out what alerted the cat!
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Hydrogen bombs used and still use lithium deuteride, which fissions down to tritium, which is fused with the already present and extremely angry deuterium. First attempt was infamous, as one common isotope of lithium was thought to not be of use in a fusion reaction, but to their astonishment, was quite useful. That test, Castle Bravo, where the crew inside of the shot cab, where the bomb is detonated from were trapped from detonation time until early evening, when the hottest fallout isotopes had decayed to a safe enough level to be able to run, while wearing sheets to limit contamination to the helicopter for evacuation.
The sheets were left on the ground as they boarded the bird.
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That stage is obviously no good. All of the other ones were good, that one isn't. So, upon return, SpaceX will replace that stage free of charge so that SpaceX can re-run their mission with working equipment.
Largely, to avoid a collision risk.
Seriously though, I'm with Scott, there's liquid also leaking, which suggests it's a LOX leak, likely from a ruptured line or connection. Shake and rattle you (along with vibration) that much, you'd fare far worse.
I'll always fare better though, as I actively avoid the propulsion stack when it's in use. Dad may have raised a dummy, but he didn't raise no fool!
I'll see myself to the door...
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Chet Carson no, man never walked on the moon. Shuffled, hopped, jumped, fell a hell of a lot, to the point where the team that built the spacesuits were near having massive coronaries. Walked, not at all.
Walking just ain't in the cards for creatures evolved under 1G, trying to move around under 1/6th G.
I've even said as much to Buzz Aldrin, which was greeted with a snort and nod. To which I gave a scout salute, as a full hand salute would've been inappropriate, neither of us being in uniform.
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@PureAmericanPatriot actually, I understand quite well. Not entirely certain though, as to which comment you were replying to.
Remember though, tolerances are for loading, shear, vibration, etc and can be cumulative, so typically there is some degree of excess to avoid unforeseen conditions, such as an engine thrusting out of spec in a multi-engine stage, in particular, the sudden change in load dynamics with an engine cutoff that was unanticipated.
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@charleshill9778 that's a different percentage than originally quoted, so how about some actual numbers and citations?
That asked, NASA has always, from day one, given contracts to contractors and gasp! paid them. That was quite well established back after Apollo 1 burned with the flash in the pan with the Phillips Report on one vendor underperforming. As the hearings at the time were on the Apollo 1 accident and that report was beyond irrelevant, it went nowhere. Oddly though, that vendor eventually was not the one making the CM and SM when we got to the moon, Grumman made the LEM, North American Rockwell made the CM and SM. With Grumman jokingly sending Rockwell a towing bill for Apollo 13 and Rockwell replying how they towed Grumman's LEM repeatedly to and from the moon... ;)
NASA designed some things, contractors built and completed designs or even used their own designs throughout the programs. As they well should, each to their level of competency.
The space shuttle being Boeing and Lockheed made, not NASA built.
SpaceX blew apart their own launch pad. NASA only blew up Wallops Island a few times. :P
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Well, a pure electric engine is possible. It'd have a bit less thrust, say around 1/80000th the thrust of an argon engine, but one could be made. It'd also be known of as an immense waste of energy, effort and equipment, as the heat from the damned thing would provide more thrust and still be far, far, far less than say that argon engine. As in, the Pioneer anomaly was detected after a decade... Solar sails would be more efficient and far faster, which still isn't saying much.
Still, there is the EM drive, powered by its free lunch system that ignores the laws of thermodynamics. And after all, who, other than Mother Nature can refuse a free lunch? On just needs to get an Alder Wand...
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