Thread for watching rocket launches and shit.
52 posts and 43 image replies omitted.a good time of remember how much the Soviet Union helped ISRO
https://nitter.net/piebyfour/status/1694371935294214611>>21361Up until very recently the US couldn't get to space so were contracting Russians to carry US cargo to space on Soyuz tech. I was pretty surprised to see the actual tonnage space X got into orbit for sure, but anyone who got their government funding could do that.
>>21405>>21405> they simply didn't have anything human rated because they retired the shuttle so they relied on soyuz, the russian trampoline, to get people on and off the ISSso they relied on a civilization state tm, with a rich space history. I'm beyond biased against even the idea of a "private" space program tbh. The idea of funneling public funds for a space program to government-created billionaires is Howard Hughes level shit. Of course a narrow panic program with unlimited public funding will get quick results compared to something like NASA.
>>21406Allegedly SpaceX reduced space mission cost by 90%. Sounds like a classic neoliberal lie. SpaceX will die in a few years.
>>21407I also heard that a bunch of top companies' books are basically lies. Not only that, a lot of them have very fragile basis, like being very sensitive to oil prices or sensitive to the mood of investors.
Apparently it's an open secret that top auditing firms are running cover for the top companies too.
>>21406>>21407>>21408It makes sense that with re-usability of hardware you offer cheaper services, I don't understand why it's so unfathomable, for a higher launch cadence if anything else.
People who didn't believe in private space companies 15 years ago had good arguments because the capital that had to be put in front was so high for a high risk enterprise that was tied to governmental whims with few commercial applications. But now it's just plain denial, it is no secret that SpaceX is loosing money right now because they are launching so much starlink sats but they will have a monopoly on LEO internet constellation for years and years, which will be used by the US military and by most of the boats and planes. Their business model is sound, they are supported by the US government, and they are at the bleeding edge of space tech. Meanwhile almost every country, even Russia or China, who has stakes in space activities is pursuing re usability, sponsoring "newspace start ups", and "funneling public funds for government created billionaires", so they clearly don't think SpaceX is cooking the books and will collapse any day.
>>21410Can't help but think that a government research institution is way more productive than a for-profit rocket and satellite company. They're doing different things for different reasons. Pushing innovation forward including rocket tech is not necessarily profitable and at some point (very quickly) it simply doesn't give a good ROI.
>>21411I somewhat want to agree with you but the data doesn't. In a way it reflects the behavior AES countries in regard to economy, it's clear you need states and governments to organize and pay upfront for the beginning of a space program, because technological and manufacture knowledge are commodities that need to be accumulated in a coherent manner for a full fledged economy to develop and opportunities to appear. For example a cryogenic engine is twenty years of development for a big country, no business can pay for that development… but they can refine and exploit it.
But that's it, planned economies crunched or collapsed, pure state owned space programs ossified or are repeating missions that "only" have scientific value and we are here now, so even an AES country like China is pursuing market based strategy because they chase what works, and anyone looking to the future expects humanity to spread out in the solar system.
Maybe it's just time to not put space industry in a special place full of that cold war glitter and human accomplishment and consider it's now just infrastructure building and commercial enterprise that obeys to market conditions in a capitalist mode of production. We built railroads and locomotives in the past, we're building rockets and satellites now, with capitalism.
>>21412>when you put your spacefaggotry ahead of all elset. spacefag
When the American space program was based on merit and not on personality cult, like in the Eisenhower and Kennedy years, failure was named as failure and success as success – and were followed by actions appropriate for each.
Indeed, when the Navy's Vanguard rocket exploded after takeoff on December 6, 1957, it was named as failure and was followed by giving the chance, without delay, to the competing Redstone rocket team to complete and test their rocket. Of which success on January 31, 1958, is now history.
Thus, only naming this latest Starship explosion – after at least 7 previous explosions of this basic design at the costs of about $3B – as failure can lead to understand the related engineering and managerial problems. You may remember that the launch of this spacecraft was postponed on April 17 due to the discovery of an engineering error. Yet, Space X proceeded with the launch just 3 days later. Sure, their machine exploded again.
Thus, the question remains: Should an intelligent and moral society place the fate of starting Moon and Mars settlements into the hands of a leadership that doesn't fully understand the difficulty, complexity and dangers of this mission, partly, because it spends time with selling cars, digging tunnels for trains, implanting brain devices, buying social media companies and acting in the entertainment industry almost daily?
This is going to sound extremely schizo but is there anyone else here who believes in secret space program conspiracy theories?
>>24695Like what? Obviously there are secret projects dealing with space. Governments aren't trying to hide that fact. Aerospace tech is a big deal for national security.
>>24698I mean the more out there stuff, like anti-gravity/breakthrough-propulsion, secret outposts on the moon or mars or even extrasolar planets. I'm a schizo who unironically believes the Navy and Air Force are the actual source of UFOs and have a secret space program that's not done what NASA and Musk want to but did it decades ago.
>>24699>>24695I don't outright believe in it, but I think the X-Files type shenanigans could be possible.
>>24699If Musk was privy to any UFO shit he wold be chirping about it on
twitter X.
>>25538First thing coming to mind is Starlink because that's the only mega constellation currently online with 6000+ sats in orbit as of now and between 12,000 to 34,400 planned.
I can't see China doing something of this scale before they have a cheap reusable launcher or Long March 9 ready to regularly launch. And they are still half a decade away from that at best.
>>17685>They'd instead use a Falcon 9 with dragon to get the astronauts from earth to LEO and HLS from there to go to the moon.Incredibly amazing that the Cult of Elon Musk has devotees even here, almost as amazing as thinking that a platform designed to cheaply launch as many Starlink satellites into orbit as possible can somehow be modified into a lunar lander. You cannot look at SpaceX's near-monopoly on the US' launch capacity tell me the lunar lander competition was completely on the up-and-up.
>>24695>>24699Hard no because the "secret space program" is UFO cult bullshit. If this secret technology existed, then capitalists would move to market it as fast as they could. If they had things like anti-gravity during the Cold War, do you REALLY think they wouldn't have weaponized it against the Soviets? The blunt truth of the matter is that Americans by-and-large are incapable of keeping their mouths shut about something like this.
>>19438>>24623The problem is that if you're "too big to fail" in America, you'll get bailed out. There are no real consequences for failure if you're rich enough.
>>28695Extra cynical mode: the repeated SpaceX explosions are a feature not a bug. They desensitize the public to catastrophic errors in these systems so that there will be less surprise or outrage when the first manned mission to Mars explodes on impact with the surface, that kind of thing.
I might be stupid but I still don't understand what problem starship (or even falcon9) is trying to solve
>>30027Isn't the purpose to soak up government gibs while maximizing profit (offering a cheaper service and doing things no one else can) and inspiring-following a vision of futurism. If the vision of the future were different you'd probably get it.
>>30190I love how he openly admits that he plans to have many of his rockets blow up over our heads or on the ground and the regulators are like:
>Yeah, that's fine. Just burn massive amounts of rocket fuel here or spray debris over our heads. if we can't live peacefully and make intelligent use of the resources of our verdant homeworld that gives us everything we could ever need, what makes you think we will fare any better on a barren alien hellscape that has no food or breatheable air and is constantly bombarded with deadly radiation? do you think life on an extraterrestrial colony will be as glamorous as depicted in 1960s sci fi futurism with big transparent biodomes that would never work in reality due to their fragility and lack of radiation protection, or will people just be living underground in a cold stuffy mineshaft under artificial lights breathing artificial air and eating artificial food and never seeing the sunlight and being permanently stranded in this miserable prison-like environment because their muscles and immune systems have atrophied into uselessness from lack of exposure to terrestrial gravity and microbial life? do you think it will feel liberating to live in a world where every single aspect of your life, from the food you eat to the air you breathe is completely under the control of some government or megacorporation and the only escape is death?
>>33038People are so stupid they think we're going to colonize the moon. They think it's like a movie where they go back inside the moon base and suddenly the gravity is turned on. Imagine having to bounce and shuffle like this every waking moment of your life while you're trying to do things. It would be living hell.
And I agree with the rest of your points.
>>33040Looks dangerous as fuck. Probably have to make everything inside padded. Maybe wear autism helmets at all time.
>>33040yeah i doubt we will ever colonize the moon, we might build a research outpost there but it will be like the international space station or the various antarctic research stations where people work there on contract for a few months and then return to earth because living in such an environment long-term is physically and psychologically untenable
>>33060They're doing a flyby
Btw the approach starts in about 45 minutes and the flyby will take about 8 hours
>>19294I work for a space related company and I confirm this sentiment, it is hell and all I can think about is putting money aside so I can flee, it's all a grift and the only real utilitarian goal is mass surveillance. Sabotage all space companies if you can.
>>33082>it's all a grift and the only real utilitarian goal is mass surveillance.Curious what you mean by this. Is it that the companies are grifting the govt dollars using 'SPACE' as a cover to develop mass surveillance? is it that the technologies are dual-use?
>>33082>the only real utilitarian goal is mass surveillancehey now, there is also big military value for the empire in it, not mentioning its usefulness for regime change!
recently learned that simply maintaining starlink will cause as much carbon emission as the entire global plane travel emissions, but if its for allowing the US military and their proxies to have high speed internet to control their drones I guess its all worth it!
>>33083old school surveillance satellites are problematic because they're very expensive and cant maintain constant observation due to (obviously) being in orbit and going all around earth and having limited field of vision, and its pretty easy for the target to know when they could be possibly watched
starlink started to send some surveillance satellites among their constellation, which would have the advantage of being very numerous and everywhere so able to maintain constant surveillance. Ofc you dont easily get optical image as good as the old school spy satellites that are hubbles telescopes pointed at earth (although there are techniques to combine many lower res images to get a better one), but you can maintain constant monitoring everywhere, watch other emissions (infrared and other EM emissions), and the target cant know they are being watched or easily pick out the spy ones among the regular starlink sats
>>33082>its all a grift and the only real utilitarian goal is mass surveillanceits 2026 dumb ass i don't think companies need to use "space" as a way to get mass surveillance funding, they just partner with the CIA or something like palantir or flock.
>>33456Looks like a small nuke, holy shit
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