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

This is all very impressive watching the process of the tests and hops. But what impresses me most is the mundane down to earth nature of the build, or at least how it seems that way. I know that fabulous amount of design and research is going into these craft and tests. But they are welding it in open sided sheds in an arid climate. The engine arrives on a flatbed trailer and it moved into place with a loader. Everything I've seen before this has been Nasa style clean conditions that slowly dropped to Formula 1 style build spaces. The fact they can work successfully in the way they are shows how mature and robust the technology is. That is such an impressive statement. I know that once they've finished the rough and ready design phase they'll maybe revert to some higher build and cleanliness standards when paying customers satellites are at risk. At the moment they're just blasting ahead to build test fail and try again. But still hats off. I guess that's the way it has to be for reusable craft, robust and tolerant.
 
Looks like the next hop could be imminent! Maybe at 7pm (ish)


edit: Or not. Something needed fixing by the looks of things but the pad and roads are cleared again. Fingers crossed it still happens.
 
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Malevolence said:
Missed it live, but...


Lift off is @16:30 and the views from a launch into polar orbit and the booster landing back on the pad are amazing.
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Brilliant! Still love seeing these landings.

Going to go watch an episode of TNG now then get my telescope out, the moon is looking good tonight :D
 
TNA said:
Bliss, bliss I tells ya :)

They keep making progress. What’s their next challenge if you know?
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I'm not sure on the order of things exactly, but I believe SN5 is likely to hop again. After that SN7 should be cryo/pressure tested due to a new stainless steel variant being used and then maybe another 150m hop for SN6. SN8 is the next big test in the works as it "should" be the one that does the high altitude hop.
 
bliss said:
I'm not sure on the order of things exactly, but I believe SN5 is likely to hop again. After that SN7 should be cryo/pressure tested due to a new stainless steel variant being used and then maybe another 150m hop for SN6. SN8 is the next big test in the works as it "should" be the one that does the high altitude hop.
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Thanks, I look forward to SN8 then :D
 
Elon Musk has said that the first Mars colonists should be prepared to die there for a number of reasons, but the reality is also that they will almost certainly be blind by the time they reach Mars.

https://www.sciencealert.com/we-fin...-in-space-and-it-s-bad-news-for-mars-missions

Going from 20/20 vision to 20/100 in just 6 months is pretty severe. If either theory as to the cause of space blindness is found to be correct, then there's no way to fix this without constant artificial gravity.

This goes back to the thought that human space colonisation may not be entirely human after all in the all biological sense.

Quite freaky thinking about it!
 
mrk said:
Elon Musk has said that the first Mars colonists should be prepared to die there for a number of reasons, but the reality is also that they will almost certainly be blind by the time they reach Mars.

https://www.sciencealert.com/we-fin...-in-space-and-it-s-bad-news-for-mars-missions

Going from 20/20 vision to 20/100 in just 6 months is pretty severe. If either theory as to the cause of space blindness is found to be correct, then there's no way to fix this without constant artificial gravity.

This goes back to the thought that human space colonisation may not be entirely human after all in the all biological sense.

Quite freaky thinking about it!
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We will find a way around it eventually. I mean I can’t see that stopping humans from going to Mars this century. Eventually we will make artificial gravity ships, maybe like the one in 2001 Space Odyssey.
 
They should be pushing to send robots and stuff to Mars powered by AI first not humans. The humans going there will be no use to anyone when they can't see anything due to being blind!

Also on Mars the gravity is over 60% weaker than Earth so blindness will occur on the planet as well.
 
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