SpaceX / flat Earthers

[billvon 2,400]

So the second Starship test went somewhat better than the first one.  All 33 engines started and remained running until just before staging, and the second stage made it to its (sub)orbital trajectory.  But during boostback on the first stage, engines started failing again, and something started venting, and the entire stage exploded about 20 seconds after boostback began.  The second stage lost telemetry after SECO and they terminated it.  

Which means they proved out the new launch pad, the boost phase for the first stage, and the boost phase for the second stage.  Hot staging worked and they were able to test the second stage engines in vacuum and zero-G.  Obviously they have a few more things to fix, but they made a lot of progress.

Never ones to pass up an opportunity to misunderstand something, the Flat Earthers are explaining that the first stage hit the 'firmament' and exploded, thus proving the Earth is flat and the sky is a dome.

https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fx5tboetr6b1c1.jpg

[wmw999 2,122]

22 minutes ago, Slim King said:

Not sure one comment on Twitter speaks for ALL FLAT EARTHERS .... There are many flat earth opinions on all of this.

I can hardly wait.

Wendy P.

[jakee 1,255]

39 minutes ago, billvon said:

Never ones to pass up an opportunity to misunderstand something, the Flat Earthers are explaining that the first stage hit the 'firmament' and exploded, thus proving the Earth is flat and the sky is a dome.

https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fx5tboetr6b1c1.jpg

This is exactly why I think most of the leading flat earthers are just taking the piss.

[billvon 2,400]

11 minutes ago, wmw999 said:

I can hardly wait.

Wendy P.

It's not SCIENCE if you can't QUESTION it!  And we should look both sides of a story to be fair and balanced.  Sure, the Earth might be round, but we should teach kids both theories and let THEM choose!

[ryoder 1,384]

1 hour ago, billvon said:

Never ones to pass up an opportunity to misunderstand something, the Flat Earthers are explaining that the first stage hit the 'firmament' and exploded, thus proving the Earth is flat and the sky is a dome.

https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fx5tboetr6b1c1.jpg

I saw a documentary about this. It was called "The Truman Show".

[Stumpy 256]

2 hours ago, jakee said:

This is exactly why I think most of the leading flat earthers are just taking the piss.

This has been my suspicion for a while. No one is THAT dumb.

[wolfriverjoe 1,340]

1 hour ago, Stumpy said:

This has been my suspicion for a while. No one is THAT dumb.

Wanna bet?

I don't doubt that some of the 'leading experts' in the Flat Earth idiocy know that it's a lie and are just running a scam to fleece the fools.

 

But the degree of stupidity that embraces flat earth, 'moon landing faked', 9/11 'truthers' and (last but not least) all the Covid garbage (Covid is fake, vaccines have 5g chips, vaccines will kill everyone and on and on) is deeply depressing. 

If you want to see HOW stupid people can be, go through the Herman Cain Awards on Reddit.

https://www.reddit.com/r/HermanCainAward/new/

The only positive feature is how many are learning the hard way how wrong they were.

[billvon 2,400]

2 hours ago, Stumpy said:

This has been my suspicion for a while. No one is THAT dumb.

Oh but they are.  It's a spectrum, but at one end are definitely people who honestly believe that the Earth is flat, and the "round earth conspiracy" is just another conspiracy meant to keep them down, like the "vaccines work" conspiracy, the "Biden won" conspiracy and the "we landed on the Moon" conspiracy.

In my life I've known some brilliant people.  Lindy just launched her space exploration mission to an all-metal asteroid.  Andrea won a Nobel Prize in astrophysics.  Andy invented most of the technology that allows your cellphone to work.  And since IQ is a roughly Gaussian distribution, for every Lindy, Andrea and Andy there are three people as dumb as they are smart.  

[jakee 1,255]

8 hours ago, Stumpy said:

This has been my suspicion for a while. No one is THAT dumb.

Unfortunately (whether it was the original intention of the leading flat earther's or not) there are plenty of people who believe them. Like with the guy who blew himself up in a homemade spaceship. He'd been trying to launch himself into space from his backyard for decades - but when he ran out of every other form of funding he started saying he wanted to do it to prove the earth was flat and raised enough money to blast off in his last rocket.

[wmw999 2,122]

My sister in law just posted this on FB; it's very topical to the discussion... 

Wendy P.

[Phil1111 911]

11 hours ago, Stumpy said:

This has been my suspicion for a while. No one is THAT dumb.

Oh come-on! We see proof of that regularly from all around up. Hell the recent polls show almost 1/2 of American voters are "THAT dumb." i.e. republicans. Even in SC.

Its not a big issue as flat earthers have to be available to flip hamburgers and serve coffee. The latest starship launch is proof that the US leads the world in engineering. The stupidly huge size of that rocket and its capabilities are a quantum leap in capability. China only last week managed to land upright a rocket stage.

[wolfriverjoe 1,340]

2 hours ago, wmw999 said:

My sister in law just posted this on FB; it's very topical to the discussion... 

Wendy P.

Better yet:

 

[Bigfalls 110]

3 hours ago, wmw999 said:

My sister in law just posted this on FB; it's very topical to the discussion... 

Wendy P.

If the earth is flat, what is on the other side, Australia?  If people think the earth is flat, maybe their head is up Uranus.

[billvon 2,400]

12 minutes ago, Bigfalls said:

If the earth is flat, what is on the other side, Australia?  If people think the earth is flat, maybe their head is up Uranus.

It's turtles, all the way down.

 

[kallend 1,623]

37 minutes ago, billvon said:

It's turtles, all the way down.

 

 

Depends on which theologian you believe.  Could be just one turtle and  4 elephants.

[billvon 2,400]

15 minutes ago, kallend said:

Depends on which theologian you believe.  Could be just one turtle and  4 elephants.

Pratchett is a poser!

 

[kallend 1,623]

1 hour ago, billvon said:

Pratchett is a poser!

 

Heretic!

[David Wang 48]

the shutdown sequence for the booster engines and the stage separation were amazing. We're closer to making sci fi a reality.

[billvon 2,400]

14 minutes ago, David Wang said:

the shutdown sequence for the booster engines and the stage separation were amazing. We're closer to making sci fi a reality.

Yep.  Now they just have to figure out how to restart them safely for the boostback.