Space stuff
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Are you professionally involved in rocket launches @pechelman and if so, what are you doing (if you may speak about it)?
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I can generally talk about it @endo, been working on rockets since 2004. The Starliner launch is personally significant because I did the mechanical design from the very beginning (along with a small team of ~4 others) for the structure that supports it on top of the rocket for nearly 7 years. It's mostly visible in that picture above with the large ring and white looking struts (which are remove before flight protective covers). I since left that position ~7 years ago and have been working on another large rocket, but I'd rather leave any names and specifics out of it for now to ensure I don't overstep terms of employment.
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fascinating @pechelman what can you say about the postponing of the Starliner launch?
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This is a pretty good summary of the situation. There's a valve on the launch vehicle causing some concern.
https://spacenews.com/rocket-issue-scrubs-launch-of-starliner-crewed-test-flight/ -
@mclaincausey i think hard sci fi is defined by a lot of explanation and not by how realistic it is but you are right, there's a lot of stuff going on that's a bit Fantasy like. But I loved all the political stuff and what he thought could happen to humanity in case of contact with aliens.
The Netflix show is okay but I think they rushed a bit and it's a lot different from the book which I don't mind but when you watch it I would try to see it as a separated thing
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@FlavourFade said in Space stuff:
@mclaincausey i think hard sci fi is defined by a lot of
explanationzero gravity pegging. -
next to impossible without a system of harnesses, grips, and pullies that would make the most extreme domiatrix blush. -
@Matt I like the way you think
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I want to watch that one too.
How about a debate: what should be the stacked ranking of space exploration objectives? Here’s a try that isn’t super well thought out:
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survival: I think we need to eventually be able to live off world and colonize the solar system to de-risk a number of threats to our civilization
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scientific discovery: I think that a lot of answers that could help with technological advancements will come from understanding our universe. So this includes experiments and instruments in space, and then the ancillary tech advancements that enable and accompany space exploration. This includes things like manufacturing in space free of the constraints of gravity, which overlaps with:
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commercial concerns: there is money to be made and each nation and alliance will benefit from being ahead of the game; in this sense this is also a national security concern
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My take is that it's not clearly any one of those 3 as listed @mclaincausey, but a mix of them.
Space is key to our survival, but in the sense we have to move hazardous and polluting industry off the Earth's surface and use the abundant natural resources available from space to help preserve this planet and its population. There is no better place we know of yet than Earth. From this effort of moving people to work and live in space to benefit Earth, huge advancements will come relating to scientific discovery and also commercial opportunity.
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@pechelman I don’t disagree that it’s all 3 and more, but there is probably a relative priority between all of these concerns right?
I think this is important because it requires political will and capital to carry these things forward, and framing the “why” is how you establish the will.
During the Cold War, we were able to use the USSR to generate that will and carry exploration forward over significant objections to those investments.
Is sending multimillionaires and billionaires into low earth orbit* going to sustain enough willpower to accelerate our progress long-term, or do we need a framing that resonates with a broader swath of the population?
- speaking of that, my wife did an eclipse party for Virgin Galactic “astronauts “ in 2017 in Idaho. Pretty sweet!
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I don't see these as mutually exclusive as written; they each beget and enable the others in their own way. Survival, and perhaps more than just "survival", is continued growth and development of our species is what I would say is the ultimate goal, but this will be enabled by the other two at first, and are therefore all imperatives.
I also don't see an either/or choice between sending privileged people or otherwise chosen individuals to space to generate support/interest or to develop this interest with the population. Both need to be done in parallel to be successful. In some cases, the former may help generate the latter (just read or listen to what Shatner has said after his flight and tell me that isn't inspiring). It does seem like this is actually happening right now in industry and culture which is very exciting.
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That’s the second time you’ve read mutual exclusivity that wasn’t intended in what I’ve written, so perhaps I’m not expressing myself clearly.
The point isn’t to pick one of these benefits, or to abandon commercial space flight, so much as to tell a story that resonates with the broadest possible audience and generates political will in a highly Balkanized / polarized political climate that frankly is vulnerable to cynical class-based populist attacks. You hear this a lot, where people again take a mutual exclusivity that isn’t legitimate: “why are we investing in space exploration instead of addresssing problems here?” (we can do both) or decry exploration, now that so much of it is privatized, as an elitist activity: “these wealthy people just want to escape environmental devastation off-world and leave the rest of us to suffer” (you have to start somewhere).
The reason I think this is important is that I think we need more public investment in these areas. Organizations like NASA and ESA matter. People being interested in space is one thing. People being interested enough in space to be happy to see their tax dollars supporting exploration is another. That kind of investment requires public will as opposed / in addition to relying on the whims of a Musk or a Bezos to do this stuff.
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Here is another video on Black Holes by one of my favorite content creators on YouTube. This one is about Gargantua from the film Interstellar
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thanks for sharing @mclaincausey !
We had Suni and Butch around during our design reviews. It really drove home that our work was to keep them safe. I still have their photo hanging up on my bookshelf as a reminder.
While they may not have been able to "capture the flag" everyone should be pretty proud about one quote from the article; "Once Starliner is up, the United States will have two independent orbital-class crew spacecraft in service at the same time."
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Aurora Borealis touched down….in St Louis!
X33 seemed the appropriate timepiece
