The Astronomy Thread
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Tuco
I got Tuco'd!
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Oldbased
> Than U
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Extremely good test!
They knew hot staging may damage the booster and the flip may put excess stress loads on any damage done but it did split safely for main ship and get the flip in but damage was too great to risk further flight of booster 1 and Starship appears to have been fully successful for gathering data on the heatshield.
Overall I'd say this was a success and only 2nd flight.
They knew hot staging may damage the booster and the flip may put excess stress loads on any damage done but it did split safely for main ship and get the flip in but damage was too great to risk further flight of booster 1 and Starship appears to have been fully successful for gathering data on the heatshield.
Overall I'd say this was a success and only 2nd flight.
Oldbased
> Than U
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So long Starship. May your reentry sacrifice give them the data they needed.
Debris cloud on reentry from NOAA weather past Puerto Rico.
Oh and the booster cloud in the Gulf of Mexico?
Projected preflight trajectory was pretty much spot on.
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Sanrith Descartes
Von Clippowicz
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It still burns my ass that NASA is incapable of doing what Starman Musk is doing.
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Cybsled
Avatar of War Slayer
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It isn't so much that NASA is incapable, but that isn't their current directive. The shift to private industry post-Space Shuttle for LEO stuff started over a decade ago. NASA was then tasked with deep space stuff, so you had stuff like SLS. And ultimately the stuff that gets budgetary approval by Congress is the stuff that scratches the back of enough different states and districts.
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Sanrith Descartes
Von Clippowicz
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It's just for me growing up, NASA was something to be looked at it wonder. They put a man on the moon (well maybe 
). Aside from Hubble and Webb, what have they really done in the last couple of decades.
). Aside from Hubble and Webb, what have they really done in the last couple of decades.
Cybsled
Avatar of War Slayer
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It's just for me growing up, NASA was something to be looked at it wonder. They put a man on the moon (well maybe
Lots. Ignoring the stuff that observes Earth mostly, you've got off the top of my head:
1) Kepler - helped locate tons of exoplanets pre-Webb
2) All the Mars rovers and Mars missions - Spirit and Opportunity, Mars Recon Orbiter, Phoenix (the polar lander), Curiosity, Perseverance and its helicopter buddy
3) Juno probe (Jupiter)
4) New Horizons (Pluto)
edit: Oh ya, also forgot the Hyugens Titan Probe - first time we saw lakes and rivers outside Earth!
Then you've got cool shit like Dragonfly which will basically be a large helicopter probe that will fly around Titan and is scheduled to launch in a few years
Part of the reason SpaceX even got its chance is they made a decision years ago to try to outsource the crewed LEO stuff to private industry and let NASA focus more on the deeper space stuff. That was their solution to retiring the shuttle and they didn't want to keep paying Russia for Soyuz seats any longer than they had to.
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Aaron
Goonsquad Officer
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NASA has done a lot of good shit, as mentioned above, but the thing to remember is that most of this shit is multi-decade stuff. Take the New Horizons probe. The first stages of planning go back to the early 90s. Then you have years of preliminary design before it gets the green light, then years of final planning and building, then it's launched in 2006, takes a decade to reach it's destination, then another decade of working the data. That's three decades of work.
James Webb started planning in 1996, and so on. A lot of the stuff we are seeing being done now and over the past 10 years were planned in the 90s when NASA was a very different beast, and diversity hiring not a main feature. Now think about the stuff that is in planning now by diversity hires and won't be operational for another 20 years. Is it going to work as well and for as long as the stuff we have now that is from the 80s and 90s? Who knows.
James Webb started planning in 1996, and so on. A lot of the stuff we are seeing being done now and over the past 10 years were planned in the 90s when NASA was a very different beast, and diversity hiring not a main feature. Now think about the stuff that is in planning now by diversity hires and won't be operational for another 20 years. Is it going to work as well and for as long as the stuff we have now that is from the 80s and 90s? Who knows.
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