NASA is Boeing to get to the bottom of that Starliner snafu... plus SpaceX preps to blow up a Falcon 9 It's a been a busy start to the new year in this week's SpaceX-heavy round-up of news for rocket fanciers. NASA and Boeing to find the cause of the Starliner Snafu Boeing's attempt to send its commercial crew capsule, the CST-100 Starliner, to the International Space Station (ISS) famously went a bit wrong last year. The …
I have no expertise in Japanese language/culture, but reading the comments from people who are, there is a custom in Japan called Miai, which is a type of matchmaking (so far, I doubt this is deflecting the creep-o-meter any more than online dating). In this case, it's been incorporated into reality TV - probably as a way for Yusaku Maezawa to offset some of his ticket cost (which is probably a bit steep, even for him).
In summary, more gimmicky than creepy, if I'm reading it right.
Or, the required surgery and happy pills are probably still way cheaper than buying your own ticket. Even if you don't get picked, you're still a 20-something Japanese woman. Some might call that a win.
London to a brick the 'winning' contestant is closer to 20 than 30.
Mine's the one with the Hello Kitty picture on the back and pink fluffy hood fringe. -->
It's going to be tricky for him to go through the established routine:
1. I dropped her off at a nearby island. Honest.
2. Ok I didn't drop her off at an island. She fell overboard.
3. Well she didn't actually fall overboard. She fell through the hatch and then I panicked and threw her overboard.
4. Correction: The hatch fell on her head, and was responsible for the head injuries. Now that you've found the body.
5. And it must have been the sharks that dismembered her body so neatly.
6. One of the sharks must've had a knife, hence the puncture wounds.
7. OK I dunnit.
I can see immediate problems with 1, 5 and 6. Unless Space Sharks of course.
Remember that this flight isn't expected to happen until 2023 at the earliest, so she will have had 3 years to get to know him. If she still doesn't trust him, she shouldn't go. Also, it won't just be him and her. There will be a dozen of so artists along too. And the Starship isn't some cramped capsule.
Really this is just a dating show with 1 eligible bachelor and several prospective women. It's a common format. The Dear Moon flight is a hook.
When my sprogs were still young, we'd sit watching satellites (& the odd shooting star) whizz overhead every couple of mins playing 'first to see ten', great fun.
Now with literally thousands of starlink boxes about to be cluttering up the sky the game will totally lose appeal to youngsters, look up and see a continuous stream of boxes popping in and out of view from dusk to dawn.
SpaceX has responded by trying out a darkening treatment to stop the things looking so gosh darn bright.
I wonder if it was VANTA black?
The IFA Test does not seem totally realistic to me.
"programmed to shut down its engines" AFAIK most RUD events for rockets taking off are not normally preceded by a shutdown of the engines - don't they normally start with a "kaboom"? Even the CRS-7 event where there was an obvious issue before the kaboom (which was a self destruct I think) it looked like the engines were on all the way to the self destruct.
Surely for a realistic test the booster should be made to malfunction in a spectacular fashion to trigger the IFA.
But this Space.com item :
https://www.space.com/spacex-crew-dragon-launch-abort-test-critical-milestone.html
says the IFA will be before the Falcon 9 engines shutdown:
"During Saturday's test, that will happen about 90 seconds after liftoff, after which the Falcon 9's first stage engines will shut down. "
i.e. the opposite of this Registem article which says the early engine shutdown will trigger the IFA.
I'm guessig space.com is the right one.
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Typically the engines shut down shortly after the kaboom, if not shortly before. Where "shortly" is quick enough not to matter.
It worth remembering that the LOX and fuel tanks are kept separate, so the kaboom is more of a slow fire than a well-mixed gas explosion, and much slower than a detonation. It's also worth remembering that SpaceX will have simulated various situations and will be testing what they consider to be the toughest case - and that Boeing consider simulation alone to be adequate.
So would that be a kablooey?
Anyway, in the actual test the Kablooey was much later, after the capsule was well away. It looked more like a self detruct than a break up to me.
I guess thay have done lots of analysis and as you say Boeing are not doing an IFA test at all.
"If it's Boeing, I ain't going." This safety-critical engineer means it, too. And a serious WTF. Spreadsheets? VBA? There's no way that even appears anywhere near anything I do. Pencil and legal pads before that. At least you can document internal logics and maths.
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