Space and Science BS Thread

The problem with that is my company supports the launch and the de-stacking operations both with 24 hour support. You would think these entities would be on the same page about what is happening. They are not.

 

That's ... not good. Hope they're not yanking y'all around too much.

 

That was a response to BO on poster. Not disputing the poster, just their qualifications as “competition”. However, a complicated process can be a sum of individually straightforward events. One of the major goals of Spacex is moving launches from the extraordinary to the ordinary.

 

Also, re poster, no LEM is in harmony with “the best part is no part” since it eliminates carrying one, un shipping and docking/transfer to it, or having the 3 separate rocket motors it required(leaving 2 behind) rather than the one set for Starship who’s nozzles function from earth orbit to the lunar surface and back again. How those nozzles are affected by landing on that surface vs a drone ship would be a better question. The hatch height might be dizzying but at 1/6 gravity wouldn’t require a massive lift capacity. Given the goal of establishing a permanent base then other options become reasonable. Duplication of Starbase 1 facilities but modified for Lunar use comes to mind. Not as primary missions but keeping those in mind. Having a crane handy seems a good idea.
It’s one thing to point out flaws in a competitors plans but shows desperation when their own projects are so woefully mismanaged.

 

Gotcha.

I’ll dispute the poster. It’s hilarious that BO’s graphic has “12 days later” between fueling. Maybe 12 hours once they have a few sets of Boosters and Ships

 

Once in gear I’d expect some of those to fuel drone ships ferrying equipment and and multi-use hulls to the Lunar base as well both ahead of and following the initial landing. Capturing unused fuel from those hulls that stay and/or using one or more of them for tank farm duty, especially liquid O2 will be a priority I would think.

 

The way I see it we have a very brief window to leverage our knowledge of spacefaring and combine it with the speed/flexibility afforded by private investment over government contract work. Spacex just has a better chance of succeeding at this ahead of China than BO/Boeing since Boeing seems mired in something sticky. It would be better if BOB were to somehow work in tandem and produce things they are better suited for than Spacex but they have yet to demonstrate what those “things” might be. Failure at this point could leave the US just where Canada landed after the Avro Arrow. I could almost wish a Boeing were to fail similarly and soon and their best and brightest to land on more fertile soil instead of being hamstrung as they seem to be. Maybe with Lockheed/Martin or some other company poised to take that step.

 

It would be nice to see LockMar mirroring SpaceX in steps to reusable rockets, but with their own designs.

 

History allows us to understand why Schmitt is smiling so broadly... Cernan doesn't look pleased at all.

https://twitter.com/NASA_Johnson/status/1426294994378309645?s=20

 

https://arstechnica.com/science/202...ts-astronaut-after-incendiary-russian-claims/

 

Yeah, she had to step up when the NASA Administrator didn’t.

Shameless accusation to deflect their screw up with Nauka.

The sooner we can severe ties with the Russian space program the better. They don’t want to be partnered with the US and the others involved w the ISS, they’d rather be with China, Iran, N Korea and that ilk.

 

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1426310814840066066?s=21

and

https://twitter.com/nasa_lsp/status/1426308875825909766?s=21

Lefties rule

 

As someone in the aerospace industry I can tell you that the best and brightest do not wait until a company collapses before they leave. They're quite often the first to see the problems and the first to grab better opportunities because they're confident in their abilities. It's the pensioners that kill companies. I've worked with several Boeing pensioners after Boeing shut down a factory in California. They were some of the biggest idiots I've worked with, incapable of doing the job they'd done for 20-29 years without someone holding their hand.

 

The arrogance of youth has spoken. It must be true.
Personally, I’d rather work with someone who has 20 years of experience than a kid right out of school.

The first has knowledge far beyond the second. Quite often because they learned things as they evolved. Not just what a necessarily incomplete book covers.

 

It’s not likely to happen soon enough anyway since like Detroit Auto it’s deemed too big to fail. Too much wealth tied up in the market and retirement plans so there’s no realistic threat able to force a culture change. They’ll just keep on doing things as they have but with less and less enthusiasm. There is still an abundance of talented people but that dead weight you mention drags them down at all levels. Bezos picked the wrong mule for his cart. It didn’t seem a bad idea to use existing tech and wharehoused components but maybe that requires too many compromises in order to make them fit. In construction it’s almost always easier/faster/cheaper to gut and start anew than to force new mods to mate with old structures/systems.

 

Both can be true, arrogance is not a monopoly of youth nor is age proof against complacency. Maintaining flexibility while acquiring that hard won experience is not easy. My experience with all ages is that most are more willing to point out flaws than to go out on a limb with a suggestion but might refrain depending on the percieved reception. That’s a weakness that allows flawed systems to stay in the pipeline. Suggestions, even flawed ones, if aired without fear of ridicule while still encouraging criticism, spur imagination and solutions which leads to better design. A divide between management and design can also cause a catastrophic breakdown. Boeing apparently suffers from both kinds of rot.

 

The arrogance of youth... I've only been working in the aerospace industry for over a decade...

Meanwhile I've worked with a guy who worked at boeing for 29 years. He was PISSED because they shut down 6 months before he could retire. I met him at the shop I was working that hired him because of his "experience". I was having to show him things that they would teach you in a textbook in the first chapter. The type of things that most people would learn in the first month. After months of working with this guy I finally figured out why he was so incompetent, despite him saying he was a lead while working at Boeing. At Boeing they have one way of doing things. They'll give an employee a work order. That work order will be in a folder, with step by step by step instructions with pictures. You could pull some random guy off the street, hand him the folder, and he will be able to do it. And despite 29 years of this, he absorbed absolutely NOTHING skill wise. He was a moron, going for a pension, but on paper he was more experienced than a kid coming right out of school. Mean while the high school dropouts were running circles around this "experienced" guy.

And this was not an isolated incident. My next shop I worked with 2 ex Boeing employees with pretty much the exact same results. My current company has hired Boeing employees in the past, and they say that is now a disqualifier for them. They are not a company that encourages critical thinking. They tell you to do exactly what they say, when they say it, and don't deviate from that at all.

 

p
yes, eventually Boeing will probably get a bailout, but that will only do like it's done for the automakers, postpone their inevitable death.

I think Bezos's problem is direction. Spacex told their engineers "We're building a reusable rocket, it's up to you to figure out how to make it work" Blue Origin told their engineers "NASA wants to take people back to the Moon, it's up to you to figure out a way how"

 

While I understand your point, when you are processing flight hardware, it's not in the best interest of the hardware for the technician to be willy nilly figure it out as you go. The engineer writes the work order, 2nd engineer reviews, quality reviews and then it gets worked. Diagrams assist, and the document clearly states if the actions must be worked in order or not. Then, the actions are performed with an engineer present.

I do see the other side, the lack of critical thinking. Just saying a lot of these guys aren't trained to think outside the box. So they don't.