Not to derail this thread too much but my wife and I had some good debate about it. Despite things like the gamma ray burst I just can't believe that in the vastness of our galaxy alone some form of intelligent life hasn't been able to survive and be older than us.
Yeah, I don't want to derail it either, but I'm sure that in a universe of infinite frontiers, that there is something out there older and smarter then us.
But a friend of mine and myself call it the odds of minuscule.
There probably isn't a lot of life out there, maybe pockets here and there. And the odds of us finding each other are the same as the odds of filling up the Atlantic Ocean with identical marbles except for 3 or 4 that have a tiny red dot painted on it.
Its the same as the odds of protecting us from a truly life snuffing events, because of the amount of things that happen in an infinite system the chances of it hitting you are pretty small.
In terms of car accidents if this planet had three or 4 dozen people on it, what are the likely hood of getting hit by a train.
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My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Yeah, I don't want to derail it either, but I'm sure that in a universe of infinite frontiers, that there is something out there older and smarter then us.
But a friend of mine and myself call it the odds of minuscule.
There probably isn't a lot of life out there, maybe pockets here and there. And the odds of us finding each other are the same as the odds of filling up the Atlantic Ocean with identical marbles except for 3 or 4 that have a tiny red dot painted on it.
Its the same as the odds of protecting us from a truly life snuffing events, because of the amount of things that happen in an infinite system the chances of it hitting you are pretty small.
In terms of car accidents if this planet had three or 4 dozen people on it, what are the likely hood of getting hit by a train.
Judging by how many people get hit by the ctrain, pretty high
What we know so far is what everybody saw in the video," said Frank Culbertson, Orbital’s executive vice president. "The ascent stopped. There was some, let’s say, disassembly, of the first stage—it looked like—and it fell to Earth."
Culbertson said the failure was observed both visually and through vehicle telemetry, adding that the range safety officer sent a self-destruct command to the rocket before it hit the ground. However, it wasn’t clear if the vehicle exploded as a result of the destruct command or actual contact with the ground.
Elon Musk said this 2 years ago about this rocket and the contract, sums it up perfectly.
That's doing the NK-33 engine a dis-service. Elon is just being a snarky businessman against his competitor. I'm surprised he didn't start with "It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know..." These are top in the upper echelon of thrust to weight ratio for engines and were designed around a technology the Americans never explored. Being that the USSR manufactured hundreds of them and they somehow avoided being scrapped (interesting story) also makes them quite affordable for 3rd party space exploration companies.
The engineering was advanced and efficient even for today. I think the main issue is probably that engines sitting in storage for 50 years is micro-fractures or other undetectable issues resulting from sheer age.
Last edited by Hack&Lube; 11-06-2014 at 09:58 AM.
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Awesome I'll watch that this weekend, yeah obviously he has an agenda saying that, but such old equipment no matter how good it is, is risking more than we need to in order to save money.
That's a neat back line H&L but it sounds like the issue musk had was the age of the material and not the design itself. It sounds to me that he was warning the market
Very good write-up on why Orbital Sciences got the contract and why the constant stream of bad recycled parts are used for launches. Basically it amounts to US lobby money in politics and campaign contributions to key senators responsible for the space program. Also why SpaceX got hobbled the way it did.
Quote:
To guarantee its sweet and automatic profits, the space military industrial complex of today manipulates Senate and the Congress. When they produce a product, they place bits and pieces of the manufacturing process in as many states as possible. The more states, the more congressmen and senators will back the projects of the space military industrial complex in order to “save jobs.”
One project, the F-35 fighter, provides jobs in an astounding 45 states. Senators and Congressmen defend a project like that whether it is needed or not. Whether it is capable or not. And whether it is high quality or not.
...
The space military industrial complex’s Senatorial and Congressional allies spotted a poacher on their turf in SpaceX. They sharpened their knives and tried everything in their power to hobble Musk’s company. For example, in June 2014 three Congressmen–Mike Coffman, Cory Gardner and Mo Brooks—demanded that NASA’s head, Charles Bolden, submit SpaceX to a slanted scrutiny that would give a false impression that SpaceX vehicles are unsafe.
Coffman, Gardner and Brooks portrayed SpaceX as a dangerous, unreliable failure. In a letter to NASA head Charles Bolden, they claimed that SpaceX had had “an epidemic of anomalies.” The list of “anomalies,” they said, included “multiple helium leaks, loss of capsule control, multiple thruster issues, avionics issues, capsule contamination issues, and three consecutive seawater intrusions on ISS Cargo Resupply Service (CRS) missions.”
These “anomalies,” they claimed, “have occurred during nearly every phase of nearly every launch on SpaceX vehicles the agency has funded.” The three politicians insisted that SpaceX “anomalies” “pose a high risk that would inevitably result in costly and preventable failures.”
Since taxpayer money pays for some of SpaceX’s launches, the Congressmen demanded “full disclosure and accountability to the American taxpayer.” They ordered “that NASA publicly release all anomalies and mishap information, un-redacted so that Congress can gain a better understanding of what has occurred and ensure full transparency.”
In other words, the space military industrial complex cabal wanted to tangle SpaceX in the sort of red tape that makes space military industrial complex projects so expensive.
But that’s not all. Elon Musk had developed new rocket engines with new capabilities. Engines that are safer and cost far less than any that have come before them. But to fatten their profit, companies like Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and the company they jointly co-own, United Launch Alliance, stopped developing new engines.
Instead, like Orbital Sciences, they bought old pre-1989 rocket engines from the Russians and refurbished them. It was an antique Russian rocket engine of this kind that apparently did in the Antares over Wallops Island.
