The Astronomy Thread

Oldbased

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I mean the company is named Virgin and their ships named as such as White Knight. How far can it possibly get?
 

khorum

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Another 60 starlink satellites was supposed to launch on a falcon 9 doing its fourth flight tomorrow morning but it got scrubbed to Sunday.

The first crewed dragon flight is looking like it's sticking to that May 7th launch:

 
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Tuco

I got Tuco'd!
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Another 60 starlink satellites was supposed to launch on a falcon 9 doing its fourth flight tomorrow morning but it got scrubbed to Sunday.

The first crewed dragon flight is looking like it's sticking to that May 7th launch:

Pretty pumped for the first crewed SpaceX flight, not really because it's spacex but because it'll be the first USA manned mission in almost ten years. Which is shameful that it took this long.


Meanwhile the jackholes in the ULA should probably be taken to court and, if I got my way, the executives would be executed on boeing/lockheed's front lawn.
 
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Ukerric

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Another 60 starlink satellites was supposed to launch on a falcon 9 doing its fourth flight tomorrow morning but it got scrubbed to Sunday.
Scrubbed again, rescheduled for Monday.

 
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BrutulTM

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Is this the 4th launch? So there will be 240 up there? I heard they're thinking of doing an IPO on starlink. It would be tempting to put a grand or two into them just in case they change the world. It's hard to see how it won't be transformational tech if it works and they have a huge advantage over any of their competitors because of SpaceX.
 

khorum

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They might be prioritizing the transatlantic connection, which would chop up to 12ms off transatlantic forex trading. Irony of ironies, not only will this make starlink an IMMEDIATE self-funding exercise from the HFT folks, it would make the UK __THE__ undisputed forex trading hub for European markets for the foreseeable future----just as the Brits are exiting the EU and relieving them of the EU's ridiculous regulations.

So if anything look at HFT outfits or EU futures bridging funds to benefit the soonest. Depending on how Boris Johnson plays this out, if they get locked into a US trade pact AND starlink between London and NY is done, the UK is poised to be the global financial superpower upon which Hong Kong and Singapore were once modelled upon.

I dunno how to timestamp these youtube embeds... the HFT "killer app" for starlink starts at 5:18ish tho

 
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Ukerric

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Is this the 4th launch? So there will be 240 up there?
239. They had an initial batch of 2 test satellites, but 3 of the first launch failed and have/will soon de-orbit.
I heard they're thinking of doing an IPO on starlink.
They're thinking about it, apparently yes. It would gives them a good cash infusion for their other projects, and it probably allows them to bring in Google who had already invested in SpaceX mostly for that satellite constellation.
It would be tempting to put a grand or two into them just in case they change the world. It's hard to see how it won't be transformational tech if it works and they have a huge advantage over any of their competitors because of SpaceX.
Their main competition (Branson) is currently scheduled to use Soyuz rockets. But they're already looking at potentially... get launched by SpaceX as well.
 

Ukerric

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Scrubbed again, rescheduled for Monday.
Launch successful, landing... not so successful.

You see a nice view of the droneship landing platform, you hear the controller calling out "landing gear deployed" then nothing for 10s... and a small cloud of vapor/smoke coming out from just outside de camera...
 

khorum

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NASA's mandated design freeze on the block 5 means whatever went wrong would have to be fixed in production. That would've been the 4th landing for that rocket so whatever failed had to have been stresses/metal fatigue on components missed during refurbishment.
 
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Ukerric

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NASA's mandated design freeze on the block 5 means whatever went wrong would have to be fixed in production. That would've been the 4th landing for that rocket so whatever failed had to have been stresses/metal fatigue on components missed during refurbishment.
People noticed (I did as well) some stuff tearing out of the 1st stage just before re-entry burn. This is the point where it falls off (just next to the left grid fin):

 
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LachiusTZ

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Looked like leaked something that froze. It grew over the course of a couple seconds.

Love the diversity at the end of the video.
 

khorum

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People noticed (I did as well) some stuff tearing out of the 1st stage just before re-entry burn. This is the point where it falls off (just next to the left grid fin):

Those fins are eight feet long and six feet wide and whatever broke off was foreshortened on the video so it's probably even bigger than that. Still doesn't seem like anything structurally critical or it wouldn't have survived the stresses enough to land a few feet away from the barge.
 
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Oldbased

> Than U
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Didn't they already do this before? I remember the mole not digging already in the past and they gave it some lube, a magazine and a push or something. I know I read that months ago.
 

meStevo

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Didn't they already do this before? I remember the mole not digging already in the past and they gave it some lube, a magazine and a push or something. I know I read that months ago.

Yeah, but on Mars no doesn't mean no.
 
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Gavinmad

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I imagine the time frame is due to the communications lag and the need to carefully calculate every single command.
 
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