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| Starship/SuperHeavy orbital Flight Test LIVE |
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| Sal Ammoniac:
--- Quote from: coppice on April 21, 2023, 09:53:16 pm --- --- Quote from: Sal Ammoniac on April 21, 2023, 07:40:49 pm --- --- Quote from: coppice on April 21, 2023, 06:40:09 pm ---Take an example. Everyone knows Neil Armstrong, and pilot David Scott nearly died on Gemini 8, when things got out of hand in a docking manoeuvre with an Agena craft, and had to return immediately to Earth. In 1966 you wouldn't have been aware that anything serious had taken place. I was one of those watching the news about anything to do with space travel at that time. --- End quote --- I've watched the news coverage of all NASA flights starting with Gemini III in 1965 and I distinctly remember the coverage of Gemini VIII and the stuck thruster issue. It received prominent coverage on the US TV networks. What the news shows is up to them, not NASA. If the news didn't show the docking and the stuck thruster problem, that's not NASA's fault. NASA themselves published a documentary on the flight of Gemini VIII in 1966 and they certainly didn't hide anything. In fact, this video is on YouTube and you can see for yourself: --- End quote --- Yep, just as I said. That's the story we got, saying nothing the Russian couldn't figure out for themselves. It describes a modest problem, handled smoothly. No big deal, and protection against a recurrence was added afterwards. Only much later did we find out that the astronauts came within seconds of blacking out in a ship spinning out of control, which would certainly have killed them. --- End quote --- What do you consider "much later"? NASA did publish the transcripts of the debriefing of Armstrong and Scott at the time, so perhaps the seriousness of the issue wasn't communicated in mass media, but it certainly wasn't kept secret either. |
| tautech:
Ground zero damage: |
| wraper:
It effing flew away the concrete. |
| Psi:
--- Quote from: coppice on April 21, 2023, 05:19:03 pm --- --- Quote from: Sal Ammoniac on April 21, 2023, 05:02:41 pm --- --- Quote from: coppice on April 21, 2023, 04:12:48 pm --- --- Quote from: Sal Ammoniac on April 21, 2023, 03:50:08 pm --- --- Quote from: coppice on April 21, 2023, 01:58:49 am ---The first fully assembled Saturn V launched successfully. However, you are ignoring a rather long series of precursors which blew up trying to learn enough to bring that about. You are also ignoring Apollo 1, a subset of the full Saturn V, which incinerated its three occupants before even leaving the ground. --- End quote --- What precursors? NASA boldly took an all-up approach to testing the Saturn V. The S-1C and S-II stages had never flown before the flight of Apollo 4. Apollo 1 used the Saturn 1B, which apart from using the S-IVB as its second stage, was not a subset of the Saturn V, and the fire was entirely due to faults in the command module and had nothing to do with the Saturn booster. In fact, the Saturn that would have flown Apollo 1 was used successfully to launch Apollo 5 (the first in-space test of the LM). The Saturn series had a perfect record of reaching orbit. Note that I'm only talking about Saturn here, not the Atlas, the Titan, or any of the other launch vehicles used by NASA for various programs. --- End quote --- So, if you define things narrowly enough, you can spin the line that things went really well. Whoda thoguht? --- End quote --- I'm not implying the Saturn/Apollo program was perfect, just that it had vastly more successes than failures. The Saturn boosters had a nearly perfect record. The Apollo spacecraft, with the exception of the issues that caused the Apollo 1 fire and the Apollo 13 abort, also had an excellent track record. In seven attempts to land on the moon, six were successful. Kennedy's goal was achieved with six months to spare. --- End quote --- I'm not implying SpaceX is perfect, but after a few nasty incidents as they tested and refined Falcon 9, they've had more than 150 launches in a row without a major incident, and will put 80% of all payload into orbit this year. What makes you think the new ship will be any different? They do everything in the public gaze, with various YouTubers documenting every success and mishap. The reason the old NASA looked a lot better is it was working in the cold war, and revealing much less. To kids like me in the west Russia's efforts appeared cleaner, but that's only because we were even less aware of how many touch and go incidents the Russians had. At least we got to see the terror on various astronauts faces as they waited hours for lift off after it was stalled numerous times for incidents during countdown. A LOT of US rockets blew up in the late 50s and early 60s, and they'd only just started to settle down when the first men were sent up. --- End quote --- NASA used to take risks and innovate rapidly, but being funded by taxes they quickly got burnt and learned that having things explode creates public outcry of wasted tax dollars. So they slowed down innovation and spend 10x as much money slowly testing every part to the extremes so launches were likely to work first time and avoid public launch failures wherever possible. Which is pretty stupid, it uses more money and takes longer just to avoid the public *perception* of wasting money. The current slow validate-everything NASA approach is only a valid approach if the first flight must be manned for some reason, and in todays world of computers, AI and automation, that is never the case. |
| bookaboo:
I recommend Scott Manley's channel, I hadn't noticed the chunks of debris at clast off, didn't know the ground water is an issue if they wanted to a chamber. https://youtu.be/w8q24QLXixo |
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