| General > General Technical Chat |
| Starship is now Stacked |
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| Gribo:
By your logic, Columbus should have waited for the 747. |
| TimFox:
During the "Age of Discovery" (say, prior to WW I), there were long expeditions (often a few years) to explore hitherto-uncharted parts of the globe, but the only one I can think of where one party overtook another was the "race" of Scott and Amundsen to the South Pole. Of course, both parties knew that the other was doing the same thing, starting at close to the same time. I can only imagine the state of mind of Scott when he finally reached the geographic South Pole and saw a Norwegian flag already there, with a polite letter from Amundsen. There were three important personalities involved in Antarctic expeditions at that time: Scott (Royal Navy) was incompetent: he thought he could learn skiing when he got to Antarctica. He saw no reason to adopt barbaric practices from uncivilized indigenous peoples who lived in cold regions of the globe. There was an important lecture at the Royal Geographic Society about how to navigate at extreme latitudes, attended by both Scott and Amundsen, but only Amundsen learned anything. Amundsen (Norwegian private citizen) was so competent as to be boring. He had previous experience with arctic conditions in Norway and Greenland, had been on one Antarctic expedition already, and found useful materials and practices from the locals. He did not lose any of his company. Shackleton (Merchant Marine, not involved directly in the South Pole part of the expedition) is the interesting character: he learned from his mistakes and also did not lose a man, even in his later failed expedition. |
| Gyro:
--- Quote from: GlennSprigg on August 10, 2021, 01:49:07 pm ---Relatively short Interplanetary flights aside... I've always wondered about the almost 'fruitfulness' of initial/future attempts at Stellar travel, as 10 or 20 years later, newer & fancier machines will overtake them mid-flight!! 8) --- End quote --- That was the subject of the SF short story 'Far Centaurus' by A. E. van Vogt. They arrive to find a completely different advanced civilization that finds them too unpleasantly smelly to be allowed out! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Far_Centaurus |
| ejeffrey:
--- Quote from: David Hess on August 08, 2021, 02:21:52 am --- --- Quote from: imo on August 07, 2021, 10:02:46 pm ---The Russians tried the same amount (~30) of the first stage engines with their Moon N1 rockets in 60ties, afaik. All N1 rockets they fired exploded, however.. --- End quote --- I had the same thought when I learned how many Raptor engines would be used, and even the Saturn 5 had problems and that was only 5 engines. --- End quote --- They have already flow the falcon heavy with 27 merlin engines split across 3 cores. 29 larger engines on a single core is obviously a different situation but I think comparing to a 60 year old soviet rocket with a host of other issues and limitations is probably not very relevant either. |
| rdl:
Speaking with over 50 years of hindsight and no offense intended, the N1 was an incredibly bad design and it would have taken a miracle for it to actually put something in orbit. |
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