SpaceX Tuesday...

[Beati Dogu]

Maybe one day, but the priority now is to get a functional system into orbit as quickly and as inexpensively as possible.

Elon fired a bunch of people from Starlink back in 2018 because he wasn’t happy with the pace of development. They wanted to build more test models apparently. As has been said, some of the same people he fired went across town (Starlink and Project Kuiper are both based in Seattle) and now work for the competition. That includes Rajeev Badya, the former VP of Starlink and now the president of Project Kuiper.

[loudlashadjuster]

rxe said:

I was thinking similar. What would it add to the cost of a satellite to put a few 10s TB of storage into each one? Akamai and the like could be hosted on the satellite.

Main problems with adding any more electronics, especially with the kind of performance needed for any normal dc-type workloads, are heat and power.

The equipment to fill just one 42U rack can easily suck 8 kW or more. I believe that satellite designers already have a hard time managing thermals with mostly very modest computing power onboard. Can’t imagine dumping multiple additional kW is trivial.

And then there is the power. Unfeasibly large solar arrays? Or a blanket of reactors orbiting the planet?

Can’t see it, personally. Comms, yes. Storage and compute? Nah.

[MartG]

Dragon approach and docking live https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LpVs2bNSJo

[MartG]

[Smiljan]

That was some superb footage Mart wasn't it!

[MartG]

Smiljan said:

That was some superb footage Mart wasn't it!

It certainly was

[anonymous-user]

I had the stream on whilst watching the season 2 finale of “For All Mankind” (fantastic by the way) which was very fitting. Snapped this as Dragon and the ISS approached Cornwall

[MartG]

Made me chuckle...

[anonymous-user]

Outstanding!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/science-environment-...

[Beati Dogu]

The Millenium Falcon at nearby Disney World looks on at its namesake, the SpaceX Falcon 9's vapour trail on its way to the ISS.



More pics:

https://twitter.com/WaltDisneyWorld/status/1385621...

[MartG]

[Beati Dogu]

Rare image of the Falcon 9’s second stage taken by astronaut Thomas Pesquet, who happened to notice it below them on a parallel course.



It really shows how large that vacuum engine bell is as well They’ll deorbit the stage into the southern Indian Ocean off Australia after a while.


Original image:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/thom_astro/511383218...

[anonymous-user]

Demonstrates how tough it was for the early guys.

No hands on docking now, it's all done by lasers, camera's and computers.

You have to hand it to Elon Musk and Space x

Edited by anonymous-user on Sunday 25th April 21:05

[frisbee]

digimeistter said:

Demonstrates how tough it was for the early guys.

No hands on docking now, it's all done by lasers, camera's and computers.

You have to hand it to Elon Musk and Space x

Edited by digimeistter on Sunday 25th April 21:05

At least until the pilot climbs into a passenger seat and it crashes into a space tree!

[Beati Dogu]

Ouch. Too soon. The Russians have done automatic docking for decades.


It's a bit full up on the ISS at the moment.



The booster that launched Crew-2 came back into Port Canaveral yesterday. Still showing the initials of the astronauts they wrote in the soot from its first flight.

[RizzoTheRat]

I thought they normally load a Progress up with rubbish and send it to burn up when a new one arrives? Is there a specific reason they've got 2 Progress and a Cygnus docked at the same time?

[Beati Dogu]

Just part of the usual resupply routine. They seem to keep them attached until they need to free up the port or there's a gap in the schedule.

In the meantime all 3 are store rooms / waste disposal areas.

[eharding]

Beati Dogu said:

The booster that launched Crew-2 came back into Port Canaveral yesterday. Still showing the initials of the astronauts they wrote in the soot from its first flight.

I wonder if the crews will start autographing the interior of the Dragon capsules - seems to be a tradition where longer-lived artefacts related to some space programmes attract graffiti from the crews - one of the hatches on is ISS, and a doorway at one of the Russian ground facilities from which cosmonauts depart as examples (as per Scott Manley's latest video on the Stowaway movie).

[MartG]

SN15 static fire expected in a few minutes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_u0-0TiDkQU

[MartG]

In other news, it appears that Blue Origin have launched a legal challenge to NASA's selection of SpaceX for the lunar lander contract