Posts by Vulch

Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson backs plan to do a Jurassic Park on extinct birds

Re: Edible?

Dodo didn't taste that great apparently, but if you were a sailor who had been living on salt beef and salt pork for months any change in diet seemed good.

US Navy backs right to repair after $13B carrier crew left half-fed by contractor-locked ovens

Falklands

Around the Falklands event it was noticed that a lot of the photos of troops yomping across the islands showed non-issue kit being carried and worn. Turned out that a lot of units would give new recruits a loan from the slush fund and a shopping list with which shops they should visit. Issue kit was for inspections, the bought stuff for actual use.

Japan's latest Moon landing written off as a failure after ispace probe goes dark

Form with rangefinders.

Their first mission failed when the landing trajectory passed over a cliff and the altitude reading suddenly increased a lot. The onboard computer decided it must be broken and so ignored it, resulting in the lander coming to a perfect hover with the minor flaw that it was still 5km above the ground...

Ukrainians smuggle drones hidden in cabins on trucks to strike Russian airfields

Re: Unintended (?) consequences

Slight correction, checking every truck on the roads in the country and any containers moving by rail.

And almost certainly intended and why Ukraine has published such detail on how this was achieved.

So your [expletive] test failed. So [obscene participle] what?

Re: I wonder where that could have been

I was thinking it sounded like I'd probably worked with the engineer behind "Bob" at some point...

Top sci-fi convention gets an earful from authors after using AI to screen panelists

Re: Where's the boot?

They were already a bit short of panellists as a lot of the usual attendees who would do a couple of panel sessions have decided not to risk travelling to the USA for the forseeable future. A number of people who did get through the vetting process have dropped out since and several also requested a refund of their membership.

NTT creates a drone that triggers and catches lightning – then keeps flying

Thunder*storm*?

Strikes me that lightning is often associated with high winds and heavy rain. How well is a dtrone going to be able to cope with those?

Boeing's Starliner may fly again, pending fixes to literally everything

Who pays?

People who know stuff are suggesting the reflight will be cargo only and paid for by NASA (so letting Boeing off the financial hook) due to the next Cygnus freighter having been dropped or otherwise bent out of shape sufficiently to make it currently unflyable. That leaves a big hole in the resupply schedule, so an extra cargo flight is more use than a crew exchange.

SpaceX Crew Dragons swapped so ISS crew can go home early

Re: For a given definition of "early"

With a bit more blaming Boeing, apparently the new Crew Dragon wasn't intended to fly until August as the February crew rotation was expected to be the first Starliner operational flight. The new Dragon isn't so much delayed as not possible to finish it safely six months early.

SpaceX resets ‘Days Since Starship Exploded’ counter to zero

There's still propellant on board (and quite a bit this time judging from the frost lines on the dangling booster) and the booster is quite warm so some of it is boiling off. They vent to stop it going pop through the engines and through the QD plate. It's the QD plate was doing dragon impressions this time although it's not clear what was igniting it. It has dedicated vent lines for use during fuelling so once they are able to put the booster straight back on the launch mount they will be able to use those rather than venting to atmosphere.

First launch of Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket slated for January 10

Re: Busy day

And now moved to saturday apparently.

Re: 1:00-4:00am local time

It could be something as simple as getting the launch done before the work day starts in the nearby industrial area. That area has to be evacuated when SpaceX is due to land a booster back at LZ-1 or LZ-2 which are just north of the BO pad, so it's likely that it would need to be evacuated for a New Glenn launch which has the potential for a much bigger boom than would happen with a nearly empty Falcon 9 booster.

Busy day

SpaceX Starship IFT-7 is currently due up at around 22:00 UTC the same day.

Christmas 1984: The last hurrah for 8-bit home computers

The Box Of Delights

Curemtly available on iPlayer for the next 11 months.

SpaceX hits 400 launches of Falcon 9 rocket

Re: Male bovine excrement.

Three months ago. Booster fell over on the drone ship just after touchdown.

Tech support world record? 8.5 seconds from seeing to fixing

"I'm trying to play some music on my computer but it's not working". Wander in to the office, turn up the volume knob on the external speakers, "Seems OK?"

Boeing launches funding round to stave off credit downgrade

Awaiting decision

Other than switching the provisional first operational Starliner flight to SpaceX, NASA has yet to announce what work will be needed to get Starliner certified. They may well require another test flight, probably uncrewed, although it may be part funded as a cargo run. It's another looming hole in Boeing's finances.

The Astronaut wore Prada – and a blast from Michael Bloomberg

Indeed. Took NASA a very long time to work out there were only a couple of photos of Neil Armstrong on the moon because the two suits were essentially identical. Later missions used the red stripe for the commander, Shuttle EVAs assigned the red stripe to one of the astronauts leaving the second one plain. On a few occasions there were three astronauts on EVA and the third wore a blue stripe on their suit.

First time's the charm: SpaceX catches a descending Super Heavy Booster

Re: To the Moon and Mars

Falcon 9 boosters appear to spend less than a fortnight being inspected and refurbished after a flight, during a launch stream a while ago it was mentioned that particular booster had gone through the process in nine days. There is absolutely no need to strip and rebuild engines between flights, even the Shuttle main engines didn't need it although inertia meant they generally were. SpaceX already have a lot (as in hundreds of reflights) of experience in reusing rockets.

A look under the hood of the 3D-printed, Raspberry Pi powered 'suicide pod'

I'd suspect it's something you'd get fitted while you were still fine and would need a reset every so often. Miss too many resets due to failing mental states and zap.

Axiom Space puts a brave face on claims of dire finances

Re: Commercially funded UK mission?

Unlikely to be the same as last time with Helen Sharman's Juno flight, the Russian Space Agency eventually picked up most of the tab for that for propaganda purposes after approaches to commercial sponsors mostly resulted in "Nah".

SpaceX aims high with Polaris Dawn mission

A perigee of 190km and apogee of 1400 km. If I'm doing the sums right, add the diameter of the Earth to get the major axis of the elliptical orbit.

What do Uber drivers make of Waymo? 'We are cooked'

Needs a catchy name

Something like "Smart Cars" although I think that's alreadt taken. Maybe just write it backwards, "Srac Trams"? May need a bit more work...

SpaceX grounded after fumbling Falcon 9 landing for first time in years

Scott Manley probably, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJjRpeO5FXs

Incidentally permission to restart flights has been given by the FAA and one took place about an hour ago. The booster has landed safely.

Re: FAA over reaction?

Originally the landings were described as "experimental" in the FAA licence applications so if they didn't work that was still in accordance with the licence. After 267 straight landings they're no longer experimental so a crash like this is outside the licence conditions so must be investigated. On the plus side, reliable sources have said the cause is trivial to fix and the shutdown may be even shorter than the one after the second stage failure.

SpaceX set to surpass Gemini 11's altitude record with Polaris Dawn mission

Re: Eh?

Not really. For the Dragon the only things carried by the trunk are solar panels and radiators, everything else is in the capsule. That's in stark contrast to the Starliner and Orion capsules which do have a traditional service module containing a lot of the (very expensive) equipment required. eg Starliner is having trouble with the thrusters on its service module, there aren't any on the Dragon trunk.

SpaceX tries to wash away Texas pollution allegations

Re: Seen elsewhere...

Gah, should be "< .113" which I spot after the edit window closes.

Seen elsewhere...

There have been notes that the minimum detectable level for mercury in the tests used is 0.113 ug/l and it is standard to list negligible mercury concentration as "> .113" in reports. This could mean it's just a typo no-one caught until now, and it's also somewhat puzzling where that amount of mercury could be coming from if it isn't a typo.

Report slams Boeing and NASA over shoddy quality that's delayed SLS blastoff

Re: IOW.....

The location in question is the Michoud Assembly Facility which is an Apollo era legacy site. Under NASA ownership it was used to manufacture the Saturn 1 and 1B first stages, followed by the Saturn V S-1C first stage, and then rejigged for the Shuttle ET and now SLS. Administratively it's part of Marshall SFC with part being hired out to Boeing and other bits to LockMart for building Orion capsules.

Materials don't appear from nowhere, and R&D doesn't just turn up as a nicely formatted document on someones desk as if by magic. It's still wages being paid at some point back along the trail.

NASA pushes back missions to the ISS to buy time for Starliner analysis

Re: Options

The various docking ports are also of three different types. The Cygnus freighter that arrived recently uses a CBM port, Soyuz and Progress craft use the Russian style docking ports. Dragons and Starliners use IDA ports and there are, as has been said repeatedly, only two of those on the ISS. Crew 9 cannot dock with the ISS until either the Crew 8 Dragon or the Starliner leave and free up an IDA port.

Boeing's Starliner proves better at torching cash than reaching orbit

Decision time

SpaceX Crew 9 was due to launch this weekend, now pushed back to the 18th due to the recent second stage failure. NASA would like Starliner gone by then as it's tying up a docking port and, if it's still there, it means Crew 8 have to leave before Crew 9 launches and they really like having both crews on the station for a week to do a proper handover. Additionally if Starliner is deemed unsafe then Crew 9 will launch with just the commander and copilot to free the other two seats for Starliner crew return. That has research time implications as the mission specialists have been trained on the experiments due to be run during their stay, and also political implications as one of the crew that would miss the flight is a Russian Cosmonaut which would leave that side of the station understaffed.

Boeing Starliner crew get their ISS sleepover extended

Re: This is unacceptable!

Falcon 9 due up at 04:21 tomorrow (saturday) morning, second flight due sunday. Should be clear by wednesday. Split line to a redundant sensor leaked a bit of LOX which caused problems with the TEA-TEB ignition fluid (not clear if it froze or just thickened like diesel) so the engine did a 'hard start' when the TEA-TEB finally got into the chamber.

Re: What are the astronauts doing?

Being mildly serious, they are dealing with most of the routine cleaning and maintenance issues leaving more time for the regular crew to run the various experiments on the station. Crews on the usual 6 month stint get training on the experiments that are expected to be running during their stay while crews supposedly on short visits only get the standard station training, so it makes sense to release the specialists from fans and filters duties. Apparently it takes about 2.5 full time crew equivalent to keep the place running.

Reported elsewhere, it looks like the thruster problems only occur when they're in a cluster. Test a single thruster in isolation and it's fine, put them in a group like they are on Starliner and heat leakage from a firing thruster affetcs the others in the group. Boeing simulated the clusters rather than test fire an actual physical set...

Asda kisses Walmart goodbye with half a billion dollar tech breakup bill

Re: Surprising...

Indeed, Associated Dairies originally.

Raspberry Pi stock surges after London IPO

By law where? For a company registered in England and Wales the Companies Act 2006 states the directors are...

"to promote the success of the company for the benefit of its members as a whole". It sets out six factors to which a director must have regards in fulfilling the duty to promote success. These are:

• the likely consequences of any decision in the long term
• the interests of the company’s employees
• the need to foster the company’s business relationships with suppliers, customers and others
• the impact of the company’s operations on the community and the environment
• the desirability of the company maintaining a reputation for high standards of business conduct, and
• the need to act fairly as between members of a company

A tale of two missions: Starliner and Starship both achieve milestones

Re: "before toppling over into the ocean"

Post-flight comments from SpaceX say the booster was spot on target, the ship landed 6km away from the aim point.

European Space Agency's Vega-C rocket a step closer to returning to flight

Re: a pair of fuel tanks for the rocket had been misplaced,

They hadn't been entered in the asset tracking database and got sent to landfill by mistake when a building was renovated.

Hm! Boeing union just ran whistleblower rights training

There has been talk of splitting Boeing into three, civilain aircraft, military aircraft and space. The Military and space divisions are the nes that can't be allowed to fail from a political point of view. It would be politically unfortunate for the civilian division to go under, but the pieces of it could be regathered under new management and a lot of image reshaping.

Starlink suffers 'degraded service' from solar storm but emerges intact

Re: What would it cost ...

NASA has asked for proposals to reboost Hubble, ideally at no cost to themselves. One possibility is for Polaris 2, a private flight being paid for by Jared Isaacman using a SpaceX Dragon capsule, to do a reboost and some servicing work. Depends partly on how well Polaris Dawn does this summer and then NASA giving the go-ahead.

Has Windows 11 really lost marketshare to Windows 10?

Re: what happens next?

eee pc with a new BoB?

Boffins suggest astronauts should build a Wall of Death on the Moon

Already been done in zero-gee by one of the Skylab crews.

NASA solar sail boom demonstrator reaches orbit

Re: Sadly

Heavens Above have just added it in the "Satellites" -> "10-day predictions for satellites of special interest" section of their front page.

Good news: HMRC offers a Linux version of Basic PAYE Tools. Bad news: It broke

Re: "for businesses with fewer than 10 employees."

It's tied into accounting requirements from what I remember of running a very small company. 10 employees is the limit for micro-entities which only need to file abbreviated accounts each year and are not required to have them audited. Any more than 10 and it starts getting more complicated and you'll probably be using an accountant or payroll services company to deal with it.

World's first Neuralink patient enjoying online chess, long Civ 6 sessions

Hang on...

*Enjoying* Civ 6? Fake news obviously...

Justice Dept reportedly starts criminal probe into Boeing door bolt incident

Re: And another one today

Or 97 horsepower omnibuses.

Ruggedized phone group takes the Bullitt, calls in PWC as administrative receiver

Generally no AR-Core

I favour ruggedised phones, but whenever I go looking for a replacement one of the most common comments in reviews is "Why won't this do AR?". Apparently there are a lot of augmented reality apps aimed at architects and builders but no rugged phones that will run them. Maybe not a huge niche selling to architects wanting to show their clients the Shiney (tm) new building in what's currently a muddy field, but it is a market someone could capture.

NASA solar sail tech is ready – now who's up to use it in a mission?

Re: Sail or parachute?

It can indeed. There have been outline programmes based on that sort of thing. You can also do it using Earth as the gravitational anchor and have a satellite hover almost over the poles. You can't quite get it over the north or south pole as the sail has to be tilted but it has been investigated for long term observations of the Arctic and Antarctic.

Musk claims that venting liquid oxygen caused Starship explosion

Essentially it's practice for a tanker launch, except there's nothing to transfer the surplus propellants to yet and it's easier to dump the excess overboard while the ship is still under thrust. Not having something to weigh down the upper stage also means the first stage flight profile isn't representative, a big lump of concrete would have done but the ships don't yet have functioning payload doors.

NASA science bound for Moon after successful Vulcan Centaur launch

Problem after separation

Astrobotic are reporting a problem with the Peregrine lander following separation and systems activation.