** The Official Space Flight Thread - The Space Station and Beyond **

[VaderDSL]

On the plus side, they are proving time and again they can get the stage down just where they say it will.

 

[Glaucus]

@thedroneship on twitter rofl.

 

[Glaucus]

Successful mission and that was the last f9 v1.1, not long till the next drone ship attempt 6th of Feb.

 

[uvarvu]

Elon musk says the leg didn't break. It simply didn't lock into position so the rocket stage would have fallen over on a ground landing, too.

 

[Glaucus]

Wow that was close indeed. Sure does look like that would have landed fine, if the leg actually locked into place. Video in link
https://www.instagram.com/p/BAqirNbwEc0/

Despite the explosion there's a large chunk left.

 

[StriderX]

I'm curious, whats the advantage of reusable rockets compared to a reusable two/three stage space-plane (Cargo variant of Skylon)?

 

[Glaucus]

I'm curious, whats the advantage of reusable rockets compared to a reusable two/three stage space-plane (Cargo variant of Skylon)?

Skylon doesn't exist yet, although it's single stage to orbit.
When it does exist as it's single stage to orbit it has a small payload due to all the extra mass it has to haul up.
So it would never be able to achieve the same as a big rocket.

Skylon will be good for getting people up, or light weight stuff, it will never be able to get 100ton+ payload into orbit, reusable rockets for getting infrastructure, fuel etc up. Falcon 9 can't get anywhere near 100tons up, but they're working on a Big ******* rocket.

 

[Cosimo]

SpaceX Falcon 9 launch from Space Launch Complex 4 at Vandenberg Air Force Base carrying the Jason-3 spacecraft:

 

[Cosimo]

The SpaceX Falcon 9 Booster landing fails in rough sea conditions:

 

[Cosimo]

Tim Peake has a coffee...

 

[Khrest]

The SpaceX Falcon 9 Booster landing fails in rough sea conditions:

I'm prepared to give them that one. The landing looks flawless and suggests they have nailed that part now following the successful one at the Cape. The leg giving way is just part of the learning experience but the hard part is now done..

 

[sityeuropa]

The star found that dims by up to 20%. They now say they don't think it is a large swarm of comets.

Since 1890 it has also dimmed gradually.

The KIC 8462852 light curve from 1890 to 1989 shows a highly significant secular trend in fading over 100 years, with this being completely unprecedented for any F-type main sequence star. Such stars should be very stable in brightness, with evolution making for changes only on time scales of many millions of years. So the Harvard data alone prove that KIC 8462852 has unique and large-amplitude photometric variations.

http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=34837/



Any ideas people?

 

[Khrest]

Dyson Swarm, a la Iain M Banks Culture series

 

[Trig]

The SpaceX Falcon 9 Booster landing fails in rough sea conditions:

Not sure if thats camera angle but one of the legs doesnt look right when its on the way down...
Perhaps time to surround the landing pad with airbags so if the unit falls over it doesnt have a rapid unplanned disassembly issue...

 

[Cosimo]

A look back at Tim Peake's spacewalk:

 

[Cosimo]

Tim Peake shows the loo...

 

[Cosimo]

John McCullough, NASA’s Orion Vehicle Integration Manager, gives an update on the progress of preparing the spacecraft:

 

[Cosimo]

Timelapse showing the beginning of Tim Peake's mission:

 

[Cosimo]

Some great pictures from Tim Peake:

Aurora:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/timpeake/albums/72157663612677991

Night:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/timpeake/albums/72157663434436265

Earth:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/timpeake/albums/72157660209464584

 

[Cosimo]

That Dragon 2 hover test using eight SuperDraco thrusters carried out last November: