• ℹ️ Heads up...

    This is a popular topic that is fast moving Guest - before posting, please ensure that you check out the first post in the topic for a quick reminder of guidelines, and importantly a summary of the known facts and information so far. Thanks.

The Space Topic

I love seeing amost any man made thing in the sky; from unusual aeroplanes, to rockets, to the space station. They make me inexplicably happy. But when I see those sky link strings floating across I just want to shoot them down. I find them ugly and jarringly unnatural, they inexplicably **** me off.
 
Only seen them the once, last week, and thought them really pretty.
They vanish as they get in full orbit don't they?
Aeroplanes, satellites and rockets are hardly natural, are they?
 
You said it twice sir.
Coincidentally, the space station ( I think) went over about half an hour ago.

What you get to see on the early dog walks.
 
Randall Munroe (creator of XKCD) has solved all of Elon's issues in one comic.

disposal.png
 
It's been a busy couple of days, hasn't it?

New Glenn finally launched. And boy, was that a disappointment. Just saw the booster fly off over the horizon, then cut to telemetry graphics. Stage sep. happened, booster turned round..... then nothing. Lost coms, no telemetry. No explanation.
The comments on the live feed were flooded with variations of "show us the live cameras we KNOW you have, cowards!"
I gave up watching and tried to get back to sleep.

Starship flight 7 was last night. First block 2 ship.
Perfect booster catch, but quickly lost telemetry from the ship. Later seen burning up quite spectacularly.
At least we got to see it.

Oh yeah, and somewhere in amongst all that, a Falcon 9 launched a new moon rover.

ETA: sounds like Space X hit the boom button on Starship while it was still at high altitude.
 
Never knew that the movable hangar for Soyuz launches out of the European spaceport in French Guyana was built by none other than PAX! Which raises the question- if you were stood on it while it rolled back, would that be a credit?🤣
IMG_4831.png
 
DanJB said:
Never knew that the movable hangar for Soyuz launches out of the European spaceport in French Guyana was built by none other than PAX! Which raises the question- if you were stood on it while it rolled back, would that be a credit?🤣
IMG_4831.png
Click to expand...
crazy.....
 
SpaceX’s latest starship decided to cut to the chase and just explode on the ground:

They really are having major issues with this v2 ship. This is why I never bother updating things.
 
Not a great week for rocket tests - yesterday Northrop Grumman were testing a new SRB for the SLS rocket to use from Artemis 9 onwards when the nozzle blew up towards the end of the burn. NASA Spaceflight got some fantastic slow motion footage of the failure:



Looks like it started with flames leaking from between the movable nozzle and the motor case. My favourite part is at 4:23 when you can see individual rivets popping out before the whole thing gives up. Reminds me of something out of Final Destination.
 
I assume you've heard of this Apophis asteroid, that totally won't hit us honest guv in 2029...?
I've just heard that China are sending not just one probe to fly by it, but an entire swarm of cubesats.

Now, I'm not an expert in orbital mechanics, but surely when something is going to pass so close to us, any objects that have mass nearby could potentially change its course? They've often said that one way to alter the trajectory of something that will hit us is to just zoom past it with a probe, or smash in to it like a cueball.

Something tells me this mission isn't purely scientific.
 
I'll watch it, but only ironically. SLS has to be the biggest waste of money in the history of space exploration.
I give it 50/50 that it'll scrub. That sorry excuse for a launch tower keeps leaking hydrogen. What to they expect when it's bodged together form 60 year old parts left over from Apollo, that were already recycled once for the shuttle?
Mind you, SLS itself is bodged together from old shuttle parts.
It's like poetry.... it rhymes.
 
DanJB said:
12 hours until the launch of Artemis II around the moon. I wish I could be excited about the first crewed moon mission in my lifetime, but between the current behaviour of the US and the SLS/Orion being a very expensive dead end it all feels a bit hollow.
Click to expand...
I'm still curious, because it may prompt other countries to do the same shortly afterwards (I think one of the astronauts is Canadian)

I'm guessing that the astronauts themselves aren't as affected by political tension as the general public, because I think I remember hearing that the Russian and Ukrainian astronauts were still getting along in space, even though their governments on Earth were now at war
 
DiogoJ42 said:
I give the launch a 50% chance of a scrub, 45% chance of success, 3% chance of post launch abort, 2% chance of doing a Challenger.
Click to expand...
A repeat of Challenger is unlikely as, unlike the Shuttle, Artemis has a Launch Abort System that will pull the crew module away from any explosions during launch or early ascent. I think NASA are also a lot more conservative now in terms of when launches will be scrubbed, there was definitely a strong level of 'Go Fever' during the 80s as they had committed to a certain number of commercial launches and scrubbing missions would result in costly delays.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top