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Space exploration: Where do we go from here?

This is adorable.

Perseverance has a stick figure family of all the Mars rovers:

jjngr2uvitj61.jpg
 
BassAle said:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11214-020-00765-9
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You know the other thing that's pretty amazing- how far we have come WRT space rated memory. The radiation requirements in space, especially around Mars, is MUCH worse than it is here (gotta love the magnetic field we have). So to be able to store all of that data is a significant undertaking.

Makes me wonder if they have changed the data format some more to get more info in a smaller memory space, too.

All of this advancement does help all of us on a commercial basis.

Let alone the solar, and power storage, etc.
 
SN10 tested today. It bailed on an earlier test in the afternoon, but got off the ground about an hour ago.

Got up to 10km, hung there for a little, belly flopped down, leveled out, and landed. Sort of. It was not exactly straight up and down. About 5 min after it landed, it then blew up.

So that's 3 ships that ended as write offs.

I know people will say that it was not a big deal- as it did what it was supposed to do, and that sticking the landing was not a big deal. I disagree- I'm betting that future tests were planned for all 3 of these ships, and those tests were lost, or the test plan would at least be delayed as more ships are built.

Looked good for a little while. Got the flight wanted, just didn't stick the landing.
 
MichVandal said:
...
Looked good for a little while. Got the flight wanted, just didn't stick the landing.
Click to expand...

Manned spaceflight is hard. NASA made it look easy for decades.

The loss of these unmanned spacecraft isn't good for the bottom line, but it is fantastic for solving the problem and making future spaceflight better.

It took Musk and SpaceX a few years to work the kinks out of their self landing boosters, they'll get this worked out as well.

I just don't think the '50s style aluminum shell is a practical design, but, I'm not a rocket scientist and I don't work for SpaceX. So ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
 
aparch said:
I just don't think the '50s style aluminum shell is a practical design, but, I'm not a rocket scientist and I don't work for SpaceX. So ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Click to expand...

Saw some analysis about that, turns out that stainless steel is an underrated material. Also, the look is mostly the high pressure tanks- as that's the structure. Saw some other videos where the tank loses pressure, and the whole rocket just collapses. Anyway, when SpaceX announced that they redesigned the ship to stainless steel as opposed to carbon fiber or other exotic materials- they got a lot of questions, too.

It's pretty funny that a fictional rocket ends up being the design for interplanetary space travel.
 
aparch said:
Manned spaceflight is hard. NASA made it look easy for decades.

The loss of these unmanned spacecraft isn't good for the bottom line, but it is fantastic for solving the problem and making future spaceflight better.

It took Musk and SpaceX a few years to work the kinks out of their self landing boosters, they'll get this worked out as well.

I just don't think the '50s style aluminum shell is a practical design, but, I'm not a rocket scientist and I don't work for SpaceX. So ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Click to expand...

All spaceflight is hard.

Is it possible to neutralize the remaining combustible components on landing? That way you are at least only looking at a large paperweight that can fall over rather than a bomb.

Also, this part is never going to be returning with people, right? The people will do splash downs or cool Jetsons spaceplanes or something?
 
Kepler said:
All spaceflight is hard.

Is it possible to neutralize the remaining combustible components on landing? That way you are at least only looking at a large paperweight that can fall over rather than a bomb.

Also, this part is never going to be returning with people, right? The people will do splash downs or cool Jetsons spaceplanes or something?
Click to expand...

Since they have to have fuel to land, there's no real way to neutralize the combustible components as it lands.

And while this is not going to be returning to work- if the goal is to make X amount of force, for Y seconds, turning engine on and off the whole time, then simulate it coming down, and landing- that can all be done on the ground. And then repeated the next day on the same engines. Which also tells me that landing the craft is a big deal.
 
Nice.

A piece of the Wright brothers’ first airplane is on Mars.

NASA’s experimental Martian helicopter holds a small swatch of fabric from the 1903 Wright Flyer, the space agency revealed Tuesday. The helicopter, named Ingenuity, hitched a ride to the red planet with the Perseverance rover, arriving last month.

Ingenuity will attempt the first powered, controlled flight on another planet no sooner than April 8. It will mark a “Wright brothers’ moment,” noted Bobby Braun, director for planetary science at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The Carillon Historical Park in Dayton, Ohio, the Wrights’ hometown, donated the postage-size piece of muslin from the plane’s bottom left wing, at NASA’s request.

The swatch made the 300 million-mile journey to Mars with the blessing of the Wright brothers’ great-grandniece and great-grandnephew, said park curator Steve Lucht.

“Wilbur and Orville Wright would be pleased to know that a little piece of their 1903 Wright Flyer I, the machine that launched the Space Age by barely one quarter of a mile, is going to soar into history again on Mars!” Amanda Wright Lane and Stephen Wright said in a statement provided by the park.

Orville Wright was on board for the world’s first powered, controlled flight on Dec. 17, 1903, at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. The brothers took turns, making four flights that day.

A fragment of Wright Flyer wood and fabric flew to the moon with Apollo 11′s Neil Armstrong in 1969. A swatch also accompanied John Glenn into orbit aboard space shuttle Discovery in 1998.
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We photographed another black hole event horizon.

For such dumb monkeys we can be occasionally produce one or two unicorns who are clever.

An idea of scale: that line emanating from the event horizon is a jet of high energy particles ejected because of the gravitational forces of the black hole. The jet burns a path 1,000 light years long through that galaxy.
 
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Monday is the 60th anniversary of the first man in space: Yuri Gagarin.

2y3hbhyoams61.jpg



He was also a goalie.
 
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Guess he took "we're going to the moon" literally.

NASA on Friday selected Elon Musk’s SpaceX to build spacecraft that would land astronauts on the moon for the first time since the last Apollo mission.

The award to SpaceX for the “human landing system” was a stunning announcement that marked another major victory for the hard-charging company that vaults it to the top tier of the nation’s aerospace companies and solidifies it as one of the space agency’s most trusted partners.

In winning the $2.9 billion contract, SpaceX beat out Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin, which had formed what it called a “national team” by partnering with aerospace giants Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Draper. SpaceX also won over Dynetics, a defense contractor based in Huntsville, Ala. (Bezos owns The Washington Post.)

NASA had originally chosen all three companies for the initial phase of the contract, and was expected to choose two of them to build the lunar lander. In other major programs, NASA has chosen multiple providers to foster competition and to ensure it has redundancy in case one can’t deliver.

In a document explaining NASA’s rationale for picking SpaceX obtained by The Washington Post, NASA said it wanted “to preserve a competitive environment at this stage of the HLS Program.” But it added that “NASA’s current fiscal year budget did not support even a single [contract] award.” As a result, SpaceX updated its payment schedule so that it now fits “within NASA’s current budget.”

But in moving ahead with SpaceX alone, it sent a message that it fully trusts the growing company to fly its astronauts for its signature human exploration program — Artemis, a campaign to return astronauts to the moon for the first time since 1972.

“As the first human lunar lander in 50 years, this innovative human landing system will be a hallmark in space exploration history,” Lisa Watson-Morgan, NASA’s lunar lander program manager, said during a news briefing announcing the award. “NASA’s Apollo program captured the world’s attention, demonstrated the power of America’s vision and technology, and can-do spirit. And we expect Artemis will similarly inspire great achievements, innovation and scientific discoveries. We’re confident in NASA’s partnership with SpaceX to help us achieve the Artemis mission.”
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I'll admit it, I am stoked. I may be a complete naif and fool, but I believe in the expertise of the company and its approach.
 
Kepler said:
Guess he took "we're going to the moon" literally.



I'll admit it, I am stoked. I may be a complete naif and fool, but I believe in the expertise of the company and its approach.
Click to expand...

I'm not convinced the retro-looking rocket is the best solution to land on the moon. I need to read up on their re-entry plans with that giant aluminum propane tank.
 
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