efaardvark

Best compilation I've seen so far.  Gotta say, after the pretty wild first test this one went much, much better.  Not perfect of course, but that's fine at this point.  Gives me hope they might someday actually get 'Ship working as intended.  That would make the next couple decades so amazing!  It was only 13 years between the Wright Flyer @ Kitty Hawk and the first commercial cargo (mail) delivery after all, and only ~30 until the Boeing 247, the first commercial airliner.

Yesterday was one of my twice-yearly trips to the middle of nowhere in the California desert. 

Got a short weekend this week, courtesy of OSIRIS-REx delivering pieces of Bennu to Earth.  24 hours on-call the day before then 10 or so hours on-site Saturday leading up to the reentry of the capsule containing the sample.

100F temps lately means replacing the A/C air filter in the car gets top priority on today's todo list.  Having to choose between breathing oven-temperature air or air that smells like moldy socks is not a choice one should have to make.

Totally me..

Up way past my bedtime on-call for the (successful!) Chandrayaan-3 launch.

Cool APOD (astronomy picture of the day)

Who needs fantasy when we have stuff like this in real life?

Reincarnation.  Isekai.  Separately or together, I don't care.  Just make it stop.

Couple of meetings today to discuss testing for JAXA’s LEV for their SLIM mission.

Mostly done but for the last-minute rushing around to finish before the open house this weekend.

We're setting up for the annual open house at work.  This weekend!  Saw a Mars Sample Return vehicle mockup already unpacked as I was leaving & by the end of the week I'm sure they'll have models of all the rovers and a number of spacecraft set up as well.  All part of the (somewhat) controlled chaos that is public outreach.

Hope it isn't super hot this weekend.  A few years back before the covid shutdown we had a weekend with over 40,000 visitors!  Parking was a nightmare and the temperatures got up over 100F, provoking real health concerns since the JPL campus simply isn't set up to accommodate so many people.  (Normal employee count is more like 6000.  Even less now that a lot of them are still doing the work-from-home thing post-covid.)  We had to start requiring tickets to limit the visitor count for safety reasons.  Tickets are free but limited in number and tied to specific times to keep the visitor count at any one time from getting out of hand.

This.  So much this.

As usual Scott Manley has put together a timely compilation of the available data on the event. Though I'm sure the full analysis of the telemetry will require a bit more time before we know the root cause of the booster/starship failure, I think it's clear from video from the launch coverage that the pad is going to need major redesign and repairs before the next launch attempt, and it is quite likely that the debris from the pad at least partially contributed to the failure of the booster as well.

Pretty… chunky launch.  Flamey end of vehicle not stay pointed at ground.  Starship not go to space today.

Seriously, at least one chunk of the pad looked to be about truck-sized, and rose to the level of the bottom of the starship before falling back down.  I’m betting that several of those dark engines were due to debris impact.  I’m surprised there wasn’t catastrophic damage done to the booster at launch as a result of the rapid unscheduled excavation.  Stage zero clearly needs a bit more design work.

Wherein Neuro accuses Kiara of drinking too much chat juice, among other things... 

Getting close now to the first Starship orbital test.  April 17th is the latest guesstimate.  Waiting for government clearance and official maritime & aviation notices to go out, maybe as early as tomorrow/Monday, for the date to solidify but from what SpaceX has been saying they're as ready as they'll ever be for this launch.  FAA bureaucrazy is all that they're waiting on now.

Elon Musk said, "Success is one possible outcome."  Not sure what SpaceX considers success on this one however.  Elon said that if it doesn't blow up and take the launch ring with it he'll consider that a success.  You never know for sure but engineering-wise enough real-world testing of engines and systems has been done so far to pretty much assure it'll meet Elon's definition.

There's still a couple other key points of concern however in my mind.  I'd like to see it at least survive past "max-q", or that portion of the ascent where the vehicle has gone supersonic and aerodynamic forces on the vehicle are the most intense.  That's pretty straightforward to model, especially given modern computing methods.  SpaceX has a lot of data from their Falcon 9 on that as well so I'd be kind of surprised if that turns out to be the point of failure.

On the other hand the reentry scenario is one of those areas that is dynamic, extreme, and very hard to model on a computer.  If something is going to break I'd expect that would be where/when.  But even in that case I'm sure they'll get some good data for the next try.

Recovering the booster with the "chopsticks" is another area of concern, though NOT for this first flight.  That's another big question mark in my head that'll need to be proven out at some later date but it won't be part of this first orbital test.  Sounds like they'll instead try to "land" the booster upright in the ocean off the coast.  I'd like to see that happen as well.  I'd imagine that chances are good there, again because of SpaceX's Falcon 9 history.  Apart from size the physics is very similar and the landing zone is the Gulf of Mexico, not some tiny droneship.  (Not sure if they plan a recovery operation.  I suspect not since Starbase is already pretty full of parked space vehicles, including the next booster.)

Regardless how it all turns out I'm sure it'll be interesting.  That much at least is guaranteed.

From my cheesehead brother…

Never trust Pekora.

Watching Relativity’s first attempt at launching their 3D-printed rocket..

https://youtu.be/_YAlOGZM32U

The Hololive / Backrooms crossover is both more terrifying and more entertaining than either of the originals. 

None shall pass!   

(Another example of appropriate use of technology - in this case 3D printing and rare-earth magnets.)

Seriously, can we stop with the let's-make-everything-isekai program?

Taking a break from anime this week.   I miss Carl Sagan.