Re: you might think some generic assemblies
"Perhaps Elon Musk could be invited to give a quote"
"Concerning, if true"
Posts by Steve K
1566 publicly visible posts • joined 4 Apr 2008
NASA boss balks at billion-dollar estimate for recycled Moon rover
Tuesday 4th August 2026 08:46 GMT
Re: you might think some generic assemblies
I don't think it's quite that simple wehn comparing equipment for different destinations.
An electric motor destined for the Moon and one for Mars (or Titan for tha matter) will have to deal with differing thermal conditions once on the surface.
That might mean that internal components/lbearings/ubricants etc. are actually quite different.
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Wednesday 11th March 2026 13:03 GMT
Re: Maybe
You wouldn't hae the inertia in EVTOL blades to help either.
A Robinson R22 (very light) helicopter has conventional blades (but with low inertia), but even with that if your engine fails and you don't dump the collective pitch to keep rotor speed up within a second then your rotor speed is irrecoverable and you will plummet.
Tuesday 10th March 2026 22:01 GMT
Re: Maybe
“ Craft with powered lift don't get much option different from a ballistic trajectory”
Not true with helicopters, which can autorotate as long as they keep sufficient inertia in the rotor system to flare on approaching the ground.
A blade delamination/loss will of course lead to a ballistic trajectory in a variable number of parts.
This is not quite true of most E-VTol Designs, which will generally tolerate a loss of more than one rotor as long it’s not on the same corner. However a loss of power in most E-VTOL designs will not permit autorotation due to rotor size, and a ballistic recovery system (deployed at the right height) may save the day.
That said, it is still going to be the preserve of the well-off due to the necessary certification and regulation. There is also likely to be a “last mile” issue, since they can’t just land (and recharge) where they want.
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Monday 27th October 2025 12:54 GMT
Re: Genius-Level Procurement In Whitehall SW1......
"half a billion a pop"
I don't think that's the cost of the aircraft on its own - that's the lifetime cost of maintenance/spares etc. along with the airframe/engine (£80-£100 million, I think).
If you drop one in the sea then you don't have to pay the remaining maintenance any more (not that it's a good use of funds to do so...), or you get extra spares for the remaining fleet.
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Disk Insertion?
I wonder whether it was triggered by the floppy (oo-er missus, fnar,fnar) disk insertion event?
I recall back in the very early 1990s as a trainee Accountant I was assigned to a piece of work in a department using Macs, which had that particular event set up with a similar sound file triggered.
One of the other things I learned about Macs that day was where the volume control was.....
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Re: Is anybody surprised?
It’s what Douglas Adams envisioned as the “Reason” program back in 1987.
Give the program the outcome you want and it will come up with a justification for it, which sounds plausible but you don’t know why.
In the novel, the bank manager approved a loan for a sports car (promptly crashed by the character…) following a request generated by Reason, but wasn’t quite sure why…..
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Sunday 17th August 2025 04:43 GMT
Comments
The new Word comment system is dreadful, but at least you can (for now) revert back to Classic comments as long as you haven’t got any new-style comments in the document.
The new comments feature spans the hell out of collaborators on the document, and you can only change the focus of the comment you are editing by hitting Ctrl-Enter or the “Send” button. Who looked at that comment system and said “Yep, that is superior let’s ship it and make it the default”