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SpaceX first to launch a private rocket into space! Woo!
Mojo_Jojo
We are only now beginning to understand the full power and ramifications of sexual intercourseRegistered User regular
We are only now beginning to understand the full power and ramifications of sexual intercourseRegistered User regular
Oddly there's no thread on this and it happened a good few hours ago.
SpaceX was founded by one of the PayPal founders and has been developing partially reusable spacerockets. This is the fourth attempt at getting something up and they've finally done it. What is strange is that this story hasn't really been picked up anywhere, a private company putting something in space is very big news as it opens the way for a whole lot of cool stuff.
BBC news article
So, hopefully this is going to spur a renewed interest in space and the government space agencies (NASA, CNSA, the ESA etc.) will stop becoming horrible black holes of money that achieve nothing. NASA are actually looking at using one of SpaceX's rockets for use in their own missions, although ideally we'd get a situation where there is private space exploration rather than just having private companies supplying governments.
Launch Video
SpaceX was founded by one of the PayPal founders and has been developing partially reusable spacerockets. This is the fourth attempt at getting something up and they've finally done it. What is strange is that this story hasn't really been picked up anywhere, a private company putting something in space is very big news as it opens the way for a whole lot of cool stuff.
BBC news article
So, hopefully this is going to spur a renewed interest in space and the government space agencies (NASA, CNSA, the ESA etc.) will stop becoming horrible black holes of money that achieve nothing. NASA are actually looking at using one of SpaceX's rockets for use in their own missions, although ideally we'd get a situation where there is private space exploration rather than just having private companies supplying governments.
Launch Video
Homogeneous distribution of your varieties of amuse-gueule
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As I mentioned the last time we had a thread which got on to Mars colonisation, travelling to Mars and back with a standard crew of eight or so entails a very high chance of somebody needing invasive surgery just from the statistics. So you need a surgeon (as you can't use robots with remote control due to light taking several minutes to travel between Mars and Earth), actually you need two in case the surgeon is the one who needs surgery. And then you've got problems with the blood, as once you cut somebody without any gravity the blood will pour out over their skin. So we need one of those big rotating spaceships, which means we need to assemble it in orbit.
Essentially, we're a long way off. Why this is still amazing though is for things like getting huge solar panels constructed in space. Much like fusion power I'm pretty sure we've got all the science for that sorted out, we just need to fix the engineering (which is a major obstacle, but should be achievable with enough investment). And then hurray, as we get to have one of those whatjamacallits where everything fundamentally changes as we've got unlimited energy and can afford to "waste" it (much like how computers changed the world once we were able to start "waste" bits on things like user interfaces).
Also you don't need solar panels in space, you really just need large-ish parabolic mirrors and then you build your collectors on the ground.
Plus, everyone knows it's high time we scrapped the airforce in favor of Prometheus's Hammer.
Well, you'd need a lot of diamonds, obviously.
Critical Failures - Havenhold Campaign • August St. Cloud (Human Ranger)
if it's parabolic? No. The optimum focal point would be fairly close to the mirror and will disperse in to harmless light a short distance away. So it's rather impractical as a death ray.
I wish I could get a job in the commercial space flight industry...but I'm not in the proper location, have no engineering/technical experience... So that's probably not going to happen.
I better be able to go in to space before I die. MAKE IT HAPPEN SPACEX!
relatively close I mean. To make it focus on something on the earth from LEO the mirror would have to be fairly huge in order to be effective.
From what I recall, it's not as effective. Plus this strays from the original point that a Parabolic lens used as a solar collector won't accidentally become a death ray if hit by a piece of space debris, a-la Futurama.
You're reflecting about the same amount of sunlight and focusing it on about the same area so it's about as effective. On earth it gets steadily less effective as you try to push the focal point further out because the light has to travel through more air so you can't focus it as well.
SpaceX is playing right into their hands!