Calvin19

Good share, lots of new info there. Thank you.

Very true. Going over the cause of that and the millisecond by millisecond timeline of the disintegration is very interesting. No explosion at all. The thing just fell apart, like throwing a can of gasoline out of a car down the highway. Yeah, there is fire, but not an 'explosion'.

From the beginning the team was adamant about the vehicle NOT 'exploding'. That it just went dark, and they saw wreckage and parachutes coming down. It sucks what the media gets wrong EVERY TIME something happens. Of course, the team also called it an 'anamoly'. 100% accurate way to describe it, but still. gimme a break. Yeah Scaled... you experienced an anomaly. Your F*^&#^@ spaceship disintegrated.

Hmmm... a replacement? "Space is tough" is the basic subject here. It will be centuries before we can go to space without fire, without being strapped to a 'firecracker'. The amount of energy it takes to get a human into space is staggering. The amount it takes to get a meat bag into ORBIT? shit bro... Maybe you meant a more reliable replacement firecracker to be strapped to, but it will still be a firecracker. None of us in our lifetime will see people go into space belted into anything but a giant can of hellfire. It's simple... we gather the PERFECT amount of chemical potential energy in the densest form possible, put it in a metal can and pump it through tubes and turbines and finally an engine bell, all the while this fluid is putting so much force on these moving parts that it makes the heat and load on a PT-6 turbine engine look like a pinwheel on a stroller. Another few comments talked about hating on the moneybags that are able to afford a ticket on SS2. For space to work out, we need a lot of money. These people have money, and if they want to throw it at space I'm all for it. But space is tough... Do they understand the risks? do they understand the difference between paying for a helicopter tour of Na Pali vs paying for LITERALLY another R & D flight to perfect a reliable space vehicle? Maybe those people are nerds too, maybe they are just like us and have an 'understanding' of the epic engineering that goes into it and really, truly, want to touch the face of god. Being able to pay for it and passing the minimal physical and psychological requirements does not give them the right to be an astronaut. Blind acceptance of risk is one thing, understanding the risk, the why, the beauty, is another thing entirely. For anyone to say that the motivation of these more successful people to buy a ticket on SS2 (or any CSV) is inferior to our desire to do the same is unhealthy. We don't know them or the complex individual way they see their reality. Sure, there are some that just have the money and said 'why not?'. And hopefully an eye opener like this SS2 wreck will cause those less devoted, less understanding people to back out. Because they don't deserve it. A good friend that works for Ball Aerospace building the JWST told me that the recorded failure rate of the rocket that will (in a few years) launch the single most expensive, complex and important piece of machinery ever built by man into space is 1/50. One chance in fifty of the rocket failing. He said that that is the risk that must be taken, because this MUST happen. If a 1/50 chance of death on one rocket ride to space was the number I was given, and I had to make the choice. I would sign up in a second. I'd sign up twice. "The exploration of space is worth the risk of human life" Any exploration is, really. "Ad Astra Per Apera"

LOL the N-1 was Johnny-Come-Lately 60's tech and was a massive failure for the Soviet space program. It was the Russian equivelent of the Saturn V, with an even larger first stage. When it blew up at about 12K feet during testing (yep), it effectively ended Russia's chances of beating the USA to the moon. Its explosion is often named as either THE biggest, or one of the biggest explosions ever created by man without the use of a nuke. The NK-33 was not itself a bad rocket engine, the N1 rocket itself was the problem. Beautiful machine, just flawed to the core. Clustering 30 engines and using dominantly balanced throttling to control pitch and yaw instead of proven gimbaling or plume-vane control just did not work out very well for them. And from an energy release standpoint the N1 pad failure was the largest non-nuclear 'explosion' in history. Like you said this is the or one of the biggest, the rub is in how you define it. It was an uncontrolled release of energy, but not an explosion in the sense of a bomb where force is perpendicular to the epicenter or the speed of expanding material is even remotely uniform. Rockets are tough. multiple enormous and complex vehicles stacked up on top of each other, each subsequent part completely dependent on the flawless function of the previous. Space is tough. It's the tyranny of Tsiolkovsky.

Hell of a bump, but I searched for the lost ship here and I have to agree. I'd Like to see it either way. hell of a song though. The Marc Robillard cover is pretty good too.

What about the ME163?I'm pretty sure it's been retired. It did have some nasty habits - like dissolving its pilots or causing them to spontaneously combust. That was due to the use of hydrogen peroxide as fuel. Not the happy 2% that we use on cuts and scrapes but at 80% H2O2. That stuff is pretty reactive with all kinds of things like human tissue and explosively decomposes. One benefit of high test peroxide is that it's pretty easy to clean up if it's spilled and doesn't start reacting yet. Just add water and dilute it. Unlike hypergolic fuels like hydrazine and such... I worked for a year for a 'rocket' company and we used 91-96% HTP as a monopropellant. My main job was running the H202 concentration lab. In anything over 70% it gets pretty fun. I'll try to dig up some videos. A few times I took 100ml from a 95% test batch out back of the hangar and dumped it on a tumbleweed to watch it Instantly explode. In the lab I was normally required to wear a full haz suit and supplied air respirator/hood. But while cooking back to back batches I would only need to be in the clean room for 2 or 3 minutes than sit and wait out in the lounge for a couple hours, then back in for two minutes, then another few hours. I would skip the suit sometimes and would always come out with what looked like white paint overspray on all exposed skin and face. The pure H2O2 in even microscopic air suspension from the vacuum distillation leakage would be enough to make any organic surface decompose rapidly. Once another worker accidentally dropped a dirty metal washer in a 55gal drum of 50/50% H20/H202 raw mix and it slowly boiled off over the course of a week or two. The whole time the drum was hot to the touch. I would much rather be working with H2O2 than hydrazine obviously, but H2O2 is pretty nasty. Also, some people have a windproof lighter or matches in their survival kit. I just carry a few viles of 95%HTP. -SPACE-

*** Useless fact of the day - the F16 uses hydrazine in its emergency power unit, and servicing it/preparing for emergencies with it/dealing with spills has been a monumental pain in the butt for the Air Force.[/quote that -SPACE-

Are they trying to not contaminate the shuttle with contact by humans? After reentry, and the thing is hot, is some parts of it off gassing something toxic? By the picture you can see a portable AC/Ventillation plugged into it. Looks like they are trying to cool something down, or keep it cool. I for one welcome our new alien overlord! My somewhat educated idea is that it's a combination of not wanting to contaminate it with organics as well as protecting the team from the nasty shit that a lot of long-life onboard rocket engines use. Tetroxide is nasty stuff, and it is still used in a lot of aviation and spaceflight applications. Some military aircraft use it as EPU fuel. very high energy density and controllable/predicable applications. Of course the top secret nature of the project does not give us enough info to do anything more than loosely speculate. -SPACE-

I like freaking people out and put a cookbook called "Natural Harvest" by Paul Photenhauer on our coffee table when hosting dinner parties.... I have a copy of the pro-creationist "the collapse of evolution" in this pile for just that reason. I know the authors and the famous promotors personally. It's not important why.

Re-print. Sadly. I do have some original playboys with Carl Sagan interviews and a signature.

1 up to 10^7. But I'm just a pilot. God Damn Fermi.

Reading. :-) Trying to find the ideal coffee table banter starters. This collection is to replace the last books I had there; Wind, Sand and Stars Earth Afire Old Man and the Sea Xenobiology 4th Edition 9 Billion names for God World War Z Infinite Jest various Tom Robbins and many others. Disappointed with OS Card's latest books, I guess I'm not 19 anymore. Second picture is my good friend Ravi. Yesterday he did his first single-seat aircraft flight. It was also his first Viper flight. The D models are all grounded so they had to improvise with training new pilots. Last time him and I went flying together it was in a Luscomb and he didn't even have his private. I doubt he will ever be able to let me in on this kind of fun, but the pride/epic jealousy I have for him will have to suffice.

I'm unusually(?) preferential toward fit/skinny and I would hit that any sober day of the week. -SPACE-

Do you fly it solo? -SPACE-

I wouldn't be jumping much either! Looks like a rocketship. Full trapeze? any foils? -SPACE-

I never was a gamer, but I think I have spent enough time on this linked page with my astrophysics and exobiology 101 books open to hold my own with the world record marathon gamers manipulating pixels on a screen. http://www.as.utexas.edu/cgi-bin/drake.pl (thread title from Phil Hellenes' blog)

Hard learned. Through many losses, failed dreams, introspection, philosophy, regret, hope; Always go. Even if you are broke, tired, broken, hopeless, or devastated. Always go.

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/missing-jet/girlfriend-mh370-passenger-something-being-covered-n198046 Deep sigh.... It sucks losing someone you love. I know. But a completely possible scenario does not -always- equal reptilians assuming control of earth. I have said before that I am surprised that this has not happened before(...but it has, Air France 447, only there were a few parts that made it easier to find). She is correct in thinking that the constant GPS positioning and remote recording is possible and even feasible. I believe that she is incorrect in thinking that 'someone' is negatively interfering with the investigation.

hahaha.. yeah. They don't simulate a crash very well though, after the computer determines the airframe was compromised it gives up. It just don't do long or large negative, I can't remember what we were simflying back in ~2003, I think a 727. Doing rolls over the golden gate bridge. and landing(crashing) on the carrier.

That's awesome!!! I love flying the sims. Every other year I get to tag along with my friend who flies 57/67for UA. My favorite thing to do is ask the sim tech to give me full runway and taxiway ice conditions, 0% wheel traction. Then just drift around the airport and learn the spool-up/down lag. It's REALLY hard. Flying is fun too, I suppose. But I haven't had a commercial ticket in a while. I'm fairly confident that if there was some un-imaginably implausible situation where I had to land jet I could do it to the point the plane would be usable again. Hand flying a A319 through minimum on ILS is tough.

They do have jurisdiction over all navigable airspace within the US. This includes a paper airplane flying in that airspace. Not that the FAA is a perfect organization, but I don't think that particular side of them (airspace regulations) is out of hand. I really don't like advocating for them, i'm not on their side.

Apologies, I just replied/quoted the last reply in the thread. Was not replying to you specifically, more reinforcing it. Just poor format choice on my part. Flow batteries are promising things for sure. But the OP article title as well as most of the contents were intentionally misleading. This is annoying, and it seems like some thread participants are still confused on that. Or trolling.

Sounds like cold fusion. I've got enough chemistry background to opine that there's no potential energy in salt water that can drive a car 240 mph. I smell something fishy. Wikipedia article on flow batteries: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_battery And yes, their claims are so outlandish that I even looked for an article on Snopes. Witchcraft or not? http://www.seas.harvard.edu/news/2014/01/organic-mega-flow-battery-promises-breakthrough-for-renewable-energy OP linked click bait. A battery does not power a car the same way a fuel tank does not power a car. The energy contained in a ("salt water") flow battery powers the car the way the fuel contained in a fuel tank powers a car. Don't perpetuate click bait psuedoscience.

Ooh! An electric Moller Sky Car! I like it!