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CarlBar

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  1. Like
    CarlBar reacted to Uttamattamakin in Success SUCCESS for Starship, now land the thing and make HLS ASAP. (and other Space News)   
    In Re Starship. 
    If I were to summarize it BRIEFLY.  Again as a brief summary it cannot be a full nuanced thing.  That would be watching the video. 

    He said... Starship SUX 
    JUST KIDDING.  

    He looked at the overall mission architecture of Artemis and was critical of how complex it is compared to Apollo.   For starters Apollo was able to get the humans and a lander to the moon on ONE rocket.    While Artemis requires TWO big complicated systems to do it.  SLS is to launch the people.  While Starship HLS is to land on the moon.    Right now the plan for Starship HLS is for it to be a specaialized lunar starship, big as it is, landing on the moon.    The problem is can they really land as depicted on the moon.  (Consider that in the last couple of months two relatively short landers both have fallen on their side after landing on the Moon)
     
    Then there is the need for many launches of Starship tankers to fuel up the Starship HLS to get it to the Moon.  A problem will be propellant boil off and the Starship can't get to the moon by itself without those fueling missions.    So there are real questions of how many Launches it will take to tank up Starship HLS.  

    NOw if you want to understand my attitude towards Starship you can get it by watching the video starting here. 
    About 29 minutes in he really gets to it.    Starship has to successfully launch full functional HLS to orbit, and also several tankers to orbit, AND also do the DEAR MOON mission somehow... All by 2026.  Keep it real do you see that happening.  I hope it does. I really do.  
     
    He's joking a bit with the rockets up in the corners here and there ... but the ones along the timeline he isn't joking about. 
     

     
     
    THat is a brief summary of his video.  Please watch the whole thing if you want all the nuances it's the only way.   He's also not the only one AT ALL who sees Starship as an HLS failing.  Something which is of crucial interest to the USA. 
     
     
    NOTE YES the former admin was critical of NASA and Blue Origin as well.  He thinks that Artemis as now planned should be cancelled.  Then revert to a more straightforward approach to the Moon.   As I understand the former NASA admin's plan... basically we skip this first Block of SLS and advance to the heavier versions of it that would be able to lift a lot more people and cargo to the moon. Yes yes not like Starship but SLS is flying now, it is able to get people around the Moon, now.  Artemis 1 was a unmanned test of a manable system.  
     

    https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/01/former-nasa-administrator-hates-artemis-wants-to-party-like-its-2008/
     
    2029 is when the PRC is planning to land if not sooner.  

    Starship and others will have a long term role ... but we have to get there.  There is no such thing as ownership in space BUT there is something close to it in the outer space treaty. One can claim a ... safety zone of reasonable size around ones assets on a body like the Moon.   Legally to land in that zone they'd have to coordinate with you... for safety. 
    https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/space_portal_michelle_hanlon.pdf
     
    WHERE I AM COMMING FROM on all of this. 
     
    If Starship does not meet the deadlines, then it has failed Artemis and in my mind that is mission fail.  
    GAME OVER.   Shackelton crater belongs to the Peoples Republic of China. 
    Play the March of the volunteers
      At that point getting Starship up to launch Starlink satellites is ... honestly... who cares. 
     
    I don't blame him for being afraid as some people will attack. 
     
     
  2. Like
    CarlBar reacted to wanderingfool2 in Success SUCCESS for Starship, now land the thing and make HLS ASAP. (and other Space News)   
    Attached the transcript.
     
    I mean it's a nice enough talk, but I think a general issue about his talk was that it lacked a lot of the insight of someone who has been following the program itself...i.e. prior to being invited to talk he wasn't aware of they were doing the landing the way they were etc.  He didn't even realize they would be refilling Starship in orbit, etc.
     
    One of the things as well, he goes on what is publicly stated by the government officials; while internally I'm betting they know a lot more but just aren't releasing it (like the meeting updates he alludes to were all once classified...like we know that SpaceX actually has an estimate of worst case vs best case scenarios, but ultimately that is a closely guarded secret and still changing as they work out optimizations or changes in design to the spacecraft)
     
    While I do find a lot of his topics interesting, in a case like this it feels like someone who has had limited time to prepare and has formed his opinions regarding it about what he could learn in a limited timeframe; while he does mention politics as well, I don't think he fully understands that without the essentially made up public announcement date there wouldn't have been that funding.
    000.txt
  3. Agree
    CarlBar got a reaction from dalekphalm in Success SUCCESS for Starship, now land the thing and make HLS ASAP. (and other Space News)   
    Cool your jets, i get the frustration but getting angry won't help. I'll be doing my own big reply at some point, but too unwell to focus that long atm. Ughhh stomach bug:(.
  4. Like
    CarlBar reacted to Uttamattamakin in Success SUCCESS for Starship, now land the thing and make HLS ASAP. (and other Space News)   
    Take care of yourself. 
     
    @wanderingfool2  I get it you take Elons words and Space X press realeses as gospel.  I am going by what I saw in the data. The line that they almost got to orbit but for not having a payload makes no sense.  NONE.   Surely they would've factored that in. 
     
    @manikyath That's because here's what happens.  

    I post news from reliable sources. 
    Then people come at me with Got'em energy about something not relevant while explaining that what Space X is doing is "revolutionary". 
     
    Meanwhile I just want them to not let down Artemis and don't care about anything else. 
  5. Informative
    CarlBar got a reaction from Uttamattamakin in Success SUCCESS for Starship, now land the thing and make HLS ASAP. (and other Space News)   
    @Uttamattamakin Meant to get round to this thread again but the Hyperloop thread took all my energy. needed a breather after that but will try to get this written up quickly.
     
    Let me start with the "why didn't Space X build off an enlarged Falcon 9".
     
    There's several factors.
     
    First and foremost you cannot literally scaleup somthing and expect it to work perfectly, and when your pushing the limits of what is physically possibble with the technology your working with, (which Falcon 9 absolutely is doing), it adds a lot of risk factors. Thats why a lot of design upgrades over the years in other rocket programs have seen a failure or two in their first few flights of an upgraded stage. Upscaling or otherwise significantly modifying a stage can be almost as tricky even on a conventional rocket as designing something completely new from the ground up. Thats why traditional US rocket development has focused on a single stage being modified at once, (the Arianne series ha also done the same at times AFAIK). It reduces the risk factors to a single stage making troubleshooting and improvement easier as your not fighting two different sources of failure at the same time.
     
    But of course Faclon 9 isn't a conventional rocket, it's lower stage is reusable. When you upscale a lower stage without significant modifications to the upper stage you pretty much allways end up with the upper stage separating at a higher speed and/or altitude. It has to otherwise your throw weight to orbit wouldn't increase. Falcon 9 simply can't handle returning from those higher speeds and altitude without major design modifications, (which carries extra risks). And even with all that they probably wouldn't get any increase without first building a bigger barge to land on as return to launch site would rob them of most of their extra payload.
     
    The superheavy booster in terms of performance really is just the Falcon 9 concept scaled up and modified to address all of this, yes there's Methlox and catch instead of landing legs as well, but i'll get back to those. Ignore them for a moment to look at the rest of the design and it really is them doing all the modifications needed to make a really enlarged falcon 9 style booster work. Even the change to stainless steel is heavily driven by it. With Falcon 9 style construction they'd have had to add a thermal coating to the exterior of the rocket to handle the higher thermal loads on the return, stainless steel handles the heat better so they can avoid that. Even some of the other changes to the thrust characteristic, grid fins, e.t.c. are to address area's where a scaled falcon 9 would run into structural or other issues because of how loads would scale too much with an increased design size. But then why the new upper stage you ask? Well thats where we get to the meat and potatoes of why they went with a clean sheet design.
     
     
    And that brings us to the second reason to go with a clean sheet design. Yes, they probably could have made a scaled up Falcon 9 booster work with some compromises along the way. But it wouldn't have solved the other reasons they had for building starship. And no i'm not talking Mars. Mars is mostly Elon PR speak again. Yes it's an aspirational goal, but at best it's third or fourth tier priority for SpaceX right now. They'll include Mars relevant stuff, but not at the expense of their other priorities. Their first major Priority is getting Starlink fully built out. Despite what they've managed to do with Falcon 9 so far it just isn't capable enough for doing the whole thing. The full capabilities are going to require larger individual satellites in some parts of the network, and the cost per satellite with falcon 9 is too high even with the smaller less capable V1.5 and V2 Mini types they're launching on Falcon 9. Their Second more understated goal is t open up space ventures to even more private entities, thus allowing them to make money from a wider array of customers increasing both the absolute size of the revenue stream, but also how stable that revenue stream is.
     
    And thats why they didn't just do a clean sheet for the booster, they also developed a new and much more ambitious upper stage to pair with it. There's a limit to how far you can scale the booster without also scaling the upper stage, and the existing upper stage from Falcon 9 is very weedy compared to the Booster. There's just a limit to how low cost they could get things on a per launch basis with it.
     
     
    Now i did mention i'd come back to the Methalox and the Catch System. I'll address the Methalox first as it's the bigger and more complicated part to explain.
     
    First things first, the reason they're going to MethLox really has nothing do with mars. It's a nice thing to have as an aspirational goal helper, but any version thats actually going to land and take off from mars is going to have to be a custom model, (like HLS), so it's not a requirement on the base starship, it just eases things a bit when designing the modified version.  The real reason they moved to it is just how much better a propellent it is than the alternatives.
     
    The main reason it's taken this long to become a thing is entirely down to the fact that as i've noted a huge amount of rocket designs throughout history have been the same as the previous one with one stage modified or occasionally changed out. RP-1/LOX and H2/LOX where good enough, (without being the best they could do in a given stage most of the time), that switching away from them never felt justified from a risk PoV.
     
    You can see just how good the propellent is from just how much of an improvement Vulcan Centaur  is over preceding designs despite the BE-4 engine being effectively 2 generations or rocket engine tech behind in some respects. Despite such a hyper conservative design its still dramatically better than preceding engines for a first stage booster.
     
    There are some additional factors beyond that, for example the steady shift from 3 stage to 2 stage designs, where the benefits of MethaLox as a first stage propellent become more pronounced.
     
     
    The catch system is a whole other thing though, i get why they're going for it, one of the biggest problems for Electron and Falcon 9 is the turn around time of transporting the boosters from wherever they land back to the launch pad, and catching it in mid air also lets you lose weight you'd need in the form of landing legs. But of all the things they're doing this is the one i'm most sceptical of. It's a cool concept with a lot of very practical benefits, but it's also doing something really ambitious. I think it's completely  plausible they could do it, it's certainly not forbidden in any way, i'm just not confident enough in their ability to turn possability into reality to not feel a large amount of concern over it. Someone at some point in the future WILL make it work, but i'm not sure it's going to be SpaceX with Starship.
     
    Before i continue on to my last point of this post, (which has now taken way too long), i want to point somthing out. I can't remember if it's somthing you've said, so don;t take it as aimed at you if you haven't, but i see it often enough i want to address it. Specifically i see a lot of claims that SpaceX haven't even started on the modifications they need to make for HLS. This isn't strictly true. we haven't seen a full scale HLS mockup or anything, but several modified sections with features that only really make sense for HLS have been spotted. SpaceX doesn't just prototype Starship stuff with full size ships, somtimes they'll buiold a small segment like a nosecone, or a couple fo barrel sections, or a thrustpuck with new features they want to experiment with. We haven't seen anything that is likely HLS related since they moved production into the starfactory, but that might just be because they're keeping it all indoors away from prying eyes.
     
     
    Now i want to come back to the Methalox and a general point regarding spaceflight risk management. Yes Methlox represents a significant risk factor, (alongside a number of other risk factors in Starship), but that doesn't mean the old way of doing things wasn't also high risk, they just moved the majority of the risk from the launch vehicle to the payload. Harsh volume and mass limitations mean payload have to be either very low capability or very harshly engineered with all the risks that came with it and often large cost and time factors. The Ultimate example to date was of course the James Webb telescope. They had to make everything fold up so much whilst keeping the weight extremly low and it made several aspects fairly high risk as a result. Getting it to the point where they were willing to launch it took enormous amounts of time effort nad money as well because of how much they had to do to keep the size and mass down.
     
    Starship represents such a huge increase in payload volume and mass, (both are going to be at least 5 times that of existing launchers, and may well be even greater), thats it going to make an enormous amount of things possibble that were impractical previously because of either the risk or the sheer cost to develop of the payload. Building a telescope with greater capabilities and a lower cost than the Webb will be relatively straightforward once Starship is functional.
     
    The launch vehicle is going to be higher risk till it proves itself, but it's going to allow for very conservative and safe payload as a result of the enormous jump in capabilities. And that even if the cost per KG to orbit wasn't lower would have a dramatic effect on the ability of various entities to do stuff in space.
     
     
    Before i vanish, found this in the time i've been working on this post, (about a month, took some big breaks), try not to start laughing at the failure sound :p.
     
  6. Funny
    CarlBar reacted to Obioban in Google will no longer back up the internet, kills off cached pages   
    Google canceled something?

    Impossible.
  7. Like
    CarlBar reacted to Uttamattamakin in Success SUCCESS for Starship, now land the thing and make HLS ASAP. (and other Space News)   
    Hey spacefans.  Space X used a Falcon 9 to send the lander IM-1 made by intuitive machines to the Moon.  Launch looked good so far so good.    This new probe is the first lander to use a cryogenic methalox based engine.  
     

     
    SpaceX launches Intuitive Machines IM-1 mission from Florida - NASASpaceFlight.com
     
     
    This follows the failed attempt by a Blue Origin launched probe made by Astrobotic.  While the Vulcan Centuar did deliver it on trajectory for the Moon.  A faulty valve on the probe caused an explosion which did not destroy the probe but which did lead to it not having propulsion to reliably manuver. 
  8. Funny
    CarlBar reacted to StDragon in OpenAI unveils "Sora." A prompt-based short video generator with amazing results   
    Can't wait to animate this. All this AI technology just for the lulz.


  9. Agree
    CarlBar got a reaction from Sauron in Sam Altman seeking 5-7 TRILLION in backing for Open AI CPU Creation   
    Most of the stuff you see called AI atm isn't AI at all. It's an Expert System. A program designed to do a specific task and highly flexible within that, but incapable of stepping outside it.  And some things being called that don't even qualify as Expert Systems. They're a step down from that.
  10. Like
    CarlBar reacted to Mark Kaine in Sam Altman seeking 5-7 TRILLION in backing for Open AI CPU Creation   
    these systems are totally ok, a logical evolution,  its just absolutely disgraceful to market them as "AI", they're dumb as bread lol.
  11. Agree
    CarlBar got a reaction from Mark Kaine in Sam Altman seeking 5-7 TRILLION in backing for Open AI CPU Creation   
    Most of the stuff you see called AI atm isn't AI at all. It's an Expert System. A program designed to do a specific task and highly flexible within that, but incapable of stepping outside it.  And some things being called that don't even qualify as Expert Systems. They're a step down from that.
  12. Like
    CarlBar reacted to StDragon in Sam Altman seeking 5-7 TRILLION in backing for Open AI CPU Creation   
    Neuromorphic computing
     
    The world's first supercomputer capable of simulating networks at the scale of the human brain has been announced by researchers from the International Centre for Neuromorphic Systems (ICNS) at Western Sydney University.
     
    DeepSouth uses a neuromorphic system which mimics biological processes, using hardware to efficiently emulate large networks of spiking neurons at 228 trillion synaptic operations per second - rivalling the estimated rate of operations in the human brain.
     
    Key Benefits of DeepSouth:
    Super-fast, large scale parallel processing using far less power:  Our brains are able to process the equivalent of an exaflop — a billion-billion (1 followed by 18 zeros) mathematical operations per second — with just 20 watts of power. Using neuromorphic engineering that simulates the way our brain works, DeepSouth can process massive amounts of data quickly, using much less power, while being much smaller than other supercomputers. Scalability: The system is also scalable, allowing for the addition of more hardware to create a larger system or scaling down for smaller portable or more cost-effective applications. Reconfigurable: Leveraging Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA) facilitates hardware reprogramming, enabling the addition of new neuron models, connectivity schemes, and learning rules—overcoming limitations seen in other neuromorphic computing systems with custom-designed hardware. DeepSouth will be remotely accessible with a front end that allows description of the neural models and design of the neural networks in the popular programming language Python. The development of this front-end enables researchers to use the platform without needing detailed knowledge of the hardware configuration. Commercial Availability: Leveraging commercially available hardware ensures continual improvements of the hardware, independent of the team designing the supercomputer, overcoming limitations seen in other neuromorphic computing systems with custom designed hardware. Custom chips take a large amount of time to design and manufacture and cost tens of millions of dollars each. Using commercial off-the-shelf configurable hardware means that the protype would be easy to replicate at data centres around the world. Artificial Intelligence: By mimicking the brain, we will be able to create more efficient ways of undertaking AI processes than our current models.  
    Now this is interesting research to watch out for. Brute-force AI is probably where it's not.
  13. Funny
    CarlBar reacted to SimplyChunk in Sam Altman seeking 5-7 TRILLION in backing for Open AI CPU Creation   
    It does when you got lots of it all in one place 😉 
  14. Funny
    CarlBar reacted to leadeater in Sam Altman seeking 5-7 TRILLION in backing for Open AI CPU Creation   
    Does money "work" at all? 🙃
  15. Agree
    CarlBar reacted to Skipple in Sam Altman seeking 5-7 TRILLION in backing for Open AI CPU Creation   
    I... what? This has to be a mistake. $7 trillion is more money than the entire US Federal operating budget. It's a quarter of the US GDP. The concept doesn't make sense sense. Like, $7 trillion on a future evaluation I can maybe see, but what could possibly be the scope of a project could that costs $7 trillion?
  16. Like
    CarlBar reacted to manikyath in Sam Altman seeking 5-7 TRILLION in backing for Open AI CPU Creation   
    i'd love to have 7 trillion as well.
     
    i think this man has been around big numbers he forgot their meaning..
     
    SpaceX quoted their first generation of falcon 9 rockets to have cost 300 million to develop
    NASA quoted that if they had developed such a platform using their own strategies, it would have been in the 3.6 billion category
    SpaceX estimates that starship will cost between 5-10 billion to develop
    nvidia spends 7.34 billion on R&D each year
     
    so.. what this man is suggesting, is that his endavour will cost the same as:
    - nvidia funding their R&D for the coming 950 years
    - spacex developing starship, estimating they double their original budget at 20billion
    - NASA copying SpaceX's homework and making a falcon bureaucracy edition.
    - still have enough money left over for spaceX to throw away and re-invent falcon 9 not once, not twice, but 11 times.
     
    please.. someone quote me to tell me that the order of magnitude got lost in translation somewhere...
  17. Like
    CarlBar reacted to manikyath in Success SUCCESS for Starship, now land the thing and make HLS ASAP. (and other Space News)   
    gotta love scott manley.
    is this the space equivalent of a kid losing his RC helicopter over the hedge, and the neighbor bringing it back? 😄
  18. Like
    CarlBar reacted to dizmo in These beer-drinking Colorado friends designed a controller to make pinball more inclusive   
    I think a lot of people have the desire but not the ability. For example this group has programing knowledge, clearly the tools required with the mechanical eptitude, and one owns a bar, so they're good with money and likely have some to spare for the cause. Their friend is also the one affected. Seems like everything lined up. 
  19. Like
    CarlBar reacted to manikyath in These beer-drinking Colorado friends designed a controller to make pinball more inclusive   
    sometimes all it takes for inclusivity to actually happen is;
    - someone needs to realise the problem exists
    - that someone needs to be willing to spend an afternoon to think about a solution
     
    the unfortunate thing is that
    - people very often refuse to realise problems may exist for people other than themselves.
    - people often dont get past stating "something should be done about this" before going on about their day.
  20. Like
    CarlBar got a reaction from Biohazard777 in Student arrested after sending private joke over snapchat before boarding a plane, message was viewed by security as he was connected to public Wi-Fi   
    My experiance is that a random report usually gets mentioned in the press as having come into the police regardless of who handles it. Though since it was passed to a foreign nation maybe it would get reported differently.
     
     
    Whilst thats true, if it was one of the friends, given the context i'd expect the spanish authorities to at least be considering charges against them. Since their not i suspect they probably don't. MI5/MI6 may not share info publicly, but i imagine they and the spanish authorities have communicated. And the judges comments seem to indicate he believes the claim.
     
    @Biohazard777 cheers on the update, judges comments are basically my thoughts much better communicated and with the confirmation on the legal side.
  21. Like
    CarlBar reacted to Biohazard777 in Student arrested after sending private joke over snapchat before boarding a plane, message was viewed by security as he was connected to public Wi-Fi   
    That assumes two things:
    1) One or more of his friends reported him
    Maybe, maybe not.

    2) His friends didn't know him well enough
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13006135/Brit-chess-prodigy-20-joked-friends-Im-Taliban-triggering-fighter-jet-escort-easyJet-flight-CLEARED-wrong-doing-Spanish-judge.html
    Sure, a certain number of years =/= someone knowing you well enough...
    But still, it would explain why he thought his friends would perceive it as a joke and nothing more.

     
    https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/brit-chess-prodigy-who-made-31967006
    Good ruling, IMO.
  22. Agree
    CarlBar got a reaction from RockSolid1106 in Student arrested after sending private joke over snapchat before boarding a plane, message was viewed by security as he was connected to public Wi-Fi   
    I didn't say it was smart or in good taste, neither is remotely true.
     
    But ask yourself this, lets say instead of talking via snapchat they'd all been sat on a bench talking in a low voice where normally no one could hear them but for whatever reason someone ends up in a position to listen in. They overheard the joke and rush to security. What do you think will happen?
     
    Answer; security pulls them in questions them, finds out about the joke history does some checking into them via other messages and lets them go, probably with a caution and a reminder to be more careful about where they make such jokes and a note on the bad taste of it. They are very unlikely to be charged, and if they are at the most it will be with wasting police time. Not with fuckign terrorism offences pardon my french.
     
    The issue here isn't that the authorities reacted initially, it's how they've proceeded since then.
     
    As for someone in the snapchat reporting it, that makes this even stupider. Based on the info we have to date, (and the authorities do not seem to be refuting the joke claims at all), everyone in the chat should have known it was a joke. Now if someone in the chat reported it to cause trouble because that would make the joke funnier, by all means nail that person to the wall with wasting police time and the other related charges, but at least the last time i remember this happening it still wasn't a terrorism offence.
     
    @wanderingfool2 addressed most of it above but for the case of saying something in your own home when the authorities are listening. Unless you know they're listening they still would have a potentially shaky case. They definitely can't charge you with what you said you where going to do if there's no other evidence and i'm not sure if they can charge you with wasting police time and related stuff as you had no expectation or good reason to believe the police would even be aware of the joke. I think they not only have to show that you wasted police time, but that you did so either deliberately or through gross negligence. Which a conversation that would normally be private probably doesn't count as.
     
    You'd still have a bunch of legal ohh ahh and need to have a long sit down with the police, but it's not likely to end up as a court case.
  23. Agree
    CarlBar got a reaction from RockSolid1106 in Student arrested after sending private joke over snapchat before boarding a plane, message was viewed by security as he was connected to public Wi-Fi   
    It's a private chat, no normal person should expect that someone is monitoring that 24/7. Thats why you can make jokes like that in the safety of your own home and cannot be charged over them, yes the police could have randomly bugged your house, (we'll ignore the warrants situation), but it's not very likely.
     
    A private chat is absolutely an example of right time and place. I don't necessarily have an issue with someone elsewhere flagging it and them responding just to be safe. But the moment they investigated and determined that yes this was not remotely serious and there's no other evidence of terrorist activity thats it, someone got overcautious in this case no harm no foul.
  24. Like
    CarlBar got a reaction from leadeater in Hyperloop Bankrupt and Busted.   
    Probably not,whilst it's not an ideal material for compression loads you can use it there with the right method of construction and a lot of very careful behind the scenes design and testing work. Oceangate where just really slapdash about the whole thing, and when your pushing a material into an area thats not well understood thats not a good idea.
  25. Like
    CarlBar got a reaction from leadeater in Hyperloop Bankrupt and Busted.   
    US navy built deep diving underwater RoV's with it. In fact the designs are so similar that it looks a lot like they scaled up the US navy RoV design. The issue seems to be more to do with how they manufactured the hull and the safety margins they assigned.
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