The Astronomy Thread

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Zaara

I'm With HER ♀
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1nthxpna7sw91.jpg
 
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Captain Suave

Caesar si viveret, ad remum dareris.
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As my cousin who works on flight simulation has put it, landing these boosters "Is like trying to balance a burning pencil on the tip of your finger... in a hurricane." Fucking amazing that it works at all.
 
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Sanrith Descartes

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As my cousin who works on flight simulation has put it, landing these boosters "Is like trying to balance a burning pencil on the tip of your finger... in a hurricane." Fucking amazing that it works at all.
Watching that shit really shows you that hiring people because their IQ is above 150 is more important than their skin color or orientation.
 
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Gravel

Mr. Poopybutthole
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It's funny, because people would much rather watch rocket landings now as opposed to the takeoffs.
 
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Mudcrush Durtfeet

Hungry Ogre
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Want a real dose of clown world? NASA had working prototypes of this tech back in the mid 90s;



Of course the illumined galaxy brains that run NASA canceled it in favor of a retarded design that would never fly in any form.
It was a single stage to orbit craft. It is barely possible (in theory) to build such a thing, but the payload is miniscule. Cancelling it was a good idea. The prototype was one third scale and completely unable to reach orbit. It did verify that you could build it and it would lift off and not explode.
 
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Lambourne

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Because the way physics works, rockets actually get more efficient the larger they get. There was a serious proposal for a reusable SSTO craft in the 70s that was basically a giant cone 96 feet across that could lift 50 tons to orbit and return to land vertically using aerodynamic drag and jet engines for touchdown. It would be unmanned or optionally have a detachable, shuttle-like crew module on top. It'd be similar in total mass to the Saturn V.

It'd have been huge but SpaceX Starship is going to be almost twice as heavy.

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Mudcrush Durtfeet

Hungry Ogre
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Because the way physics works, rockets actually get more efficient the larger they get. There was a serious proposal for a reusable SSTO craft in the 70s that was basically a giant cone 96 feet across that could lift 50 tons to orbit and return to land vertically using aerodynamic drag and jet engines for touchdown. It would be unmanned or optionally have a detachable, shuttle-like crew module on top. It'd be similar in total mass to the Saturn V.

It'd have been huge but SpaceX Starship is going to be almost twice as heavy.

View attachment 441141
Lol at jet engines for touchdown.
 
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Big Phoenix

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It was a single stage to orbit craft. It is barely possible (in theory) to build such a thing, but the payload is miniscule. Cancelling it was a good idea. The prototype was one third scale and completely unable to reach orbit. It did verify that you could build it and it would lift off and not explode.
Good thing they canceled it and dumped a billion dollars into the X-32 which never even produced a prototype at all.

Where would we be today if that had gotten a billion dollars of funding in the mid 90s instead?
 

Mudcrush Durtfeet

Hungry Ogre
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Good thing they canceled it and dumped a billion dollars into the X-32 which never even produced a prototype at all.

Where would we be today if that had gotten a billion dollars of funding in the mid 90s instead?
Maybe we'd have a pitifully low payload to LEO SSTO spacecraft. I kinda doubt it, though. Probably we'd have another 20billion boondoggle like the SLS.

Might have caused SpaceX not to exist which certainly would not be a plus.
 
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Big Phoenix

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Maybe we'd have a pitifully low payload to LEO SSTO spacecraft. I kinda doubt it, though. Probably we'd have another 20billion boondoggle like the SLS.

Might have caused SpaceX not to exist which certainly would not be a plus.
Yeah dumping resources into a concept thats proven to be the future of spaceflight 30 years ago would have been a totally bad choice over the concept that never made it to the prototype stage.