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How is SpaceX planning to solve the problem of replacing the heat tiles on the reusable second stage that crippled the Space Shuttle?
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Oct 3, 2017 05:33
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Nobel Prize in physics goes to the detection of gravitational waves; Weiss, Barish, and Kip (motherfucking) Thorne: http://www.cnn.com/2017/10/03/world/nobel-physics-prize-2017/index.html?adkey=bn Pretty much expected that it was going to win one in the next few years. They're starting to have serious problems narrowing down the number of specific awardees for collaborative work, though.
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Oct 3, 2017 12:03
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qkkl posted:How is SpaceX planning to solve the problem of replacing the heat tiles on the reusable second stage that crippled the Space Shuttle? Using a newer higher temperature material that costs less and lasts longer and doesn't need to be applied in such little tiles so there is far fewer seams https://www.spacex.com/news/2013/04/04/pica-heat-shield
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Oct 3, 2017 12:09
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:Going back to space stuff space X is apparently phasing out every rocket design except their ultra ultra heavy BFR "big loving rocket" I'd buy SpaceX carrying that out more than Blue Origin right now, but I still think SLS is closer and will be more readily available faster. But drat if I'm not cheering for SpaceX
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Oct 3, 2017 12:32
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CommieGIR posted:I'd buy SpaceX carrying that out more than Blue Origin right now, but I still think SLS is closer and will be more readily available faster. But drat if I'm not cheering for SpaceX Space seems like a domain that needs multiple organizations working on it. It would be best if everyone succeeds and also some foreign governments and foreign companies. It seems like if all their dreams came true and everything worked perfect and underbudget and every dream project was approved, the actual projects that would get done would be extremely different for nasa, amazon and musk. Like all the teams are working on "make a better rocket" but they all seem to want to do different stuff eventually with those rockets and that is super good for everyone.
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Oct 3, 2017 14:12
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:Space seems like a domain that needs multiple organizations working on it. It would be best if everyone succeeds and also some foreign governments and foreign companies. It seems like if all their dreams came true and everything worked perfect and underbudget and every dream project was approved, the actual projects that would get done would be extremely different for nasa, amazon and musk. Agreed, and I hope Blue Origin succeeds, but at least SpaceX and NASA have proven themselves.
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Oct 3, 2017 14:19
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CommieGIR posted:Agreed, and I hope Blue Origin succeeds, but at least SpaceX and NASA have proven themselves. I think thanks to NASA there is a lot of really mature space technology that is just sort of sitting around in papers or "nasa flew this once" that basically just needs someone with enough dollars to come and build it in a factory instead of as a bespoke handmade one of a kind prototype. Like the picaX stuff for heat tiles that space X uses, pica was a nasa thing from the 90s they flew like once then said "this is great" and then never used again. So it just took money to pick it back up and keep improving it. I think there is a lot of stuff where all you need is enough dollars and the ideas are already 90% of the way there. Like most things spaceX does is really actually innovative and new, but a ton of it is tested ideas that worked and then never were used for anything larger scale.
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Oct 3, 2017 15:03
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The medicine/biology Nobel prize this year went to the people who discovered the genes that control circadian rhythm in various species including humans. In practical terms, this matters a lot more than the gravitational wave discovery (which is very cool!). Here's a quick explainer of the discovery along with some of its significance.
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Oct 3, 2017 15:08
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 Waymo is laying the groundwork for a 2017/2018 launch of an autonomous car program in Phoenix. https://arstechnica.com/cars/2017/10/it-sure-looks-like-waymo-is-getting-ready-to-launch-in-phoenix/ quote:Waymo, Google's self-driving car company, is laying the political groundwork to launch a truly driverless car service. On Monday, the company announced a new partnership with several non-profit organizations. Looks like they're going full steam ahead on marketing self-driving vehicles to the public: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hbd8N3j7bg quote:Ted and Candace This initial program is free of charge, ride as much as you want and clearly designed to gather data, feedback and also coax the public into acceptance. Goons in Phoenix can signup now! https://waymo.com/apply/ Waymo FAQ posted:Who can ride in the cars, where, and how often? So they won't be fully autonomous to start, but that's still moving a lot faster than many people expected they would.
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Oct 9, 2017 21:50
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Phoenix is perfect because it's sprawling and can't be navigated without a car; many places don't even have sidewalks. I imagine a lot of the moral cowards who still live there spend a lot of their lives shuttling themselves and others across that blasted waste.
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Oct 10, 2017 01:14
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I'll honestly say: self driving cars became a thing way faster than I imagined. I kinda assumed highway driving was in the bag and we'd move to more and more "advanced cruise control" for the highway until we basically had self driving cars but nope, we just went right to it.
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Oct 10, 2017 14:54
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An article talking about the obvious looming problem for millions of people who drive trucks for a living and a subject that has been part of my keen interest since something like 9 automated trucks convoyed across Europe last year: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/10/american-trucker-automation-jobs quote:“The only human beings left in the modern supply chain are truck drivers. If you go to a modern warehouse now, say Amazon or Walmart, the trucks are unloaded by machines, the trucks are loaded by machines, they are put into the warehouse by machines. Then there is a guy, probably making $10 an hour, with a load of screens watching these machines. Then what you have is a truckers’ lounge with 20 or 30 guys standing around getting paid. And that drives the supply chain people nuts,” he says. This is specifically an interest of mine because I have driven through, and utterly loathed, hundreds of tiny, pop. >300 towns between the greater metropolitan areas of states, and wondered how they existed. After settling on an explanation of a combination of benefits, local factory work, and trucking, I can't really see any way for any of these places to continue if the trucking goes.
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Oct 10, 2017 15:35
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i am harry posted:I have driven through, and utterly loathed, hundreds of tiny, pop. >300 towns what a strange thing to say
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Oct 10, 2017 16:01
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The best part of self driving trucks is how we're going to forcibly unemploy a couple million men with lots of guns and meth. poo poo's gonna be awesome.
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Oct 11, 2017 00:21
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There's an entire genre of songs about how lonely and tough these jobs are. I think we'll be okay. If structural unemployment gets too high we can always reduce the workweek. People will say you're insane for saying that but we did before!
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Oct 11, 2017 00:44
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Reducing the work week is actually a crazy good solution to a lot of issues, but it turns out that paying people for working less is almost a harder sell than paying people to not work at all. But also, a job being bad isn't going to stop people from being pissed off that it's gone. Tons of rage is directed at the loss of jobs that are/were objectively awful, but paid well and required basically no qualifications.
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Oct 11, 2017 00:49
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Trucks going away will be like the 6th or 7th time a new technology totally replaced the current technology that the shipping industry relied on in the last 200 years and the fact it seems like it's going to be an issue this time seems entirely based on the fact that the US is a poo poo garbage country to it's workers and the fact is even if self driving trucks totally falls through and never becomes a thing at all america will continue to be a poo poo garbage country to it's workers anyway and the truck drivers will be just as screwed anyway. Like "the US is going to treat it's low skill workers badly soon!" is not a thing that seems to actually rely on inventing or not inventing any new technology.
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Oct 11, 2017 04:04
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Save the canal!
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Oct 11, 2017 05:48
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Maybe if we just stop making new things capitalism won't hurt us! Narrator voice: it did.
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Oct 11, 2017 15:17
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Arglebargle III posted:Save the canal!
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Oct 11, 2017 15:43
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Guavanaut posted:Self piloting narrowboats would be a cool thing, but I don't know how they'd work the locks. Didn't donkeys pull boats through the locks until some shockingly late year? They could invent robo donkeys.
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Oct 11, 2017 15:44
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Donkeys pulled the barges, later replaced by steam and screw, but the locks were (and in most cases still are) operated by hand, except for some boat lifts like the Falkirk wheel, which wouldn't be a suitable replacement for most locks. A donkey can pull about 150x its own weight on iron rails, but almost 1000x on a barge, so they stayed on well after the rails had gone with locomotives.
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Oct 11, 2017 16:08
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:Trucks going away will be like the 6th or 7th time a new technology totally replaced the current technology that the shipping industry relied on in the last 200 years and the fact it seems like it's going to be an issue this time seems entirely based on the fact that the US is a poo poo garbage country to it's workers and the fact is even if self driving trucks totally falls through and never becomes a thing at all america will continue to be a poo poo garbage country to it's workers anyway and the truck drivers will be just as screwed anyway. Like "the US is going to treat it's low skill workers badly soon!" is not a thing that seems to actually rely on inventing or not inventing any new technology. So the decline in trucker wages starts in 1980. Gee what happened that year? And who do truckers vote for regularly? The Teamsters used to keep those salaries high. Oh well.
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Oct 11, 2017 17:29
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SpaceX is launching a mystery: https://spaceflightnow.com/2017/10/14/regulatory-filings-suggest-spacex-plans-november-launch-with-mystery-payload/ Information found in federal regulatory filings suggests SpaceX plans to conduct a Falcon 9 rocket launch as soon as mid-November with an unidentified payload that has so far escaped public disclosure. It is unusual for such a mission to remain secret so close to launch, and there has been no public claim of ownership for the payload — codenamed Zuma — from any government or commercial institution. SpaceX did not respond to questions on the mission Saturday, but an application submitted by the launch company to the Federal Communications Commission says the flight will use a Falcon 9 booster launched from pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The existence of the mission was first reported on NASASpaceflight.com Saturday, but the FCC filings are public record. SpaceX must apply for special authority from the FCC to authorize the company to use telemetry transmitters and receivers to track the Falcon 9 rocket in flight. Two filings concern the secretive launch next month, one for the Falcon 9’s liftoff and climb into orbit from Florida’s Space Coast, and another for the first stage booster’s planned return to Landing Zone 1 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station for refurbishment and reuse. The launch could occur as soon as Nov. 10, according to information in the FCC applications. The identity and the purpose of the Zuma payload remain secret. With rare exceptions, U.S. government agencies have claimed ownership of the country’s top secret spy satellites. The National Reconnaissance Office began acknowledging launches of its missions in the 1990s, but the spy satellite agency does not typically reveal details about its programs. The NRO has two more missions on its manifest this year — codenamed NROL-52 and NROL-47 — launching on an Atlas 5 rocket Sunday and a Delta 4 booster in December. Two mysterious satellites launched by Atlas 5 rockets in 2009 and 2014 did not fit the mold of most U.S. government spy missions. Known only by the names PAN and CLIO, the satellites were not claimed by the NRO or any other agency. They were built by Lockheed Martin for an undisclosed U.S. government customer, and climbed into geostationary orbit more than 22,000 miles above the equator. PAN parked alongside commercial communications satellites over the Middle East, intercepting voice and data traffic to support U.S. intelligence-gathering and military efforts in the region, according to documents released by Edward Snowden and published by The Intercept in 2016. CLIO is suspected to have a similar eavesdropping mission. But Zuma’s owner — commercial or government — has not been revealed, and Falcon 9 launches into high-altitude geostationary-type orbits populated by communications satellites typically use more of the rocket’s propellant reserve, requiring landings on vessels at sea, and not on land. Earth-imaging satellites that fly in lower orbits normally launch into polar orbits providing more global coverage. Such payloads flying on Falcon 9 rockets usually take off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, but launch trajectories to the northeast from Cape Canaveral have been used for some NRO satellites in high-inclination low Earth orbits, most recently in May when a Falcon 9 rocket launched from Florida placed a secretive payload 250 miles above Earth for the government’s spy satellite operator.
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Oct 16, 2017 02:35
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:SpaceX is launching a mystery: Tesla comedy launch confirmed.
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Oct 16, 2017 09:22
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I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
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Elon gonna go straight up Bilbo Baggins on us.
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Oct 16, 2017 22:00
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blowfish posted:Tesla comedy launch confirmed. At some point elon did say that the first thing launched with the BFR would be "the dumbest thing you could think of" so it's honestly totally possible he'd launch a car for a commercial or something.
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Oct 17, 2017 13:10
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:At some point elon did say that the first thing launched with the BFR would be "the dumbest thing you could think of" so it's honestly totally possible he'd launch a car for a commercial or something. Maybe he should focus on properly launching the Model 3 instead.
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Oct 17, 2017 13:37
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:At some point elon did say that the first thing launched with the BFR would be "the dumbest thing you could think of" so it's honestly totally possible he'd launch a car for a commercial or something. He's going to launch with a smaller rocket inside?
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Oct 17, 2017 14:18
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He's selling a seat to Donald Trump
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Oct 17, 2017 14:37
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Solkanar512 posted:Maybe he should focus on properly launching the Model 3 instead. GOD drat! So Tesla fired ~700 people allegedly for performance reasons. But it smells of a cost reduction measure. If so, there are probably more layoffs coming...
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Oct 17, 2017 19:04
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Morbus posted:GOD drat! They were also pro-union.
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Oct 18, 2017 00:31
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Interesting bit of tech news. Net Neutrality related. Apparently Verizon's actively trying to silence Net Neutrality Discussion over on Tumblr. Reports coming in from various users* state that if you follow the 'Net Neutrality' tag on Tumblr, after ~20 minutes it automatically un-follows and removes it from your dash. Tumblr is owned by Oath (Yahoo + AOL merged into Oath), and Oath is owned by Verizon. Verizon being one of the major companies that's been fighting to kill off Net Neutrality for as long as anyone can remember. David Karp, the CEO of Tumblr, was VERY outspoken towards Net Neutrality and in fact met with Tom Wheeler to push for it back in 2014. More recently though he's been silent on the issue and many people wonder if it isn't because of pressure from higher up the corporate ladder. *Disclaimer - I don't use Tumblr myself, but one friend has mentioned it to me and a quick search shows a discussion about this mentioned over on Imgur. https://imgur.com/gallery/HYgoF khy fucked around with this message at 01:53 on Nov 28, 2017 |
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Nov 28, 2017 01:48
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Nov 28, 2017 06:27
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I'm not sure what to think with tumblr. Yahoo is a super transparently awful company so it feels authentic they would mess with something like this but tumblr's also had long standing problems with randomly unfollowing stuff for no apparent reason so that seems authentic too. Like it feels hard to say if it's "tumblr is a terrible company so they did an immoral thing" or "tumblr is a terrible company so they didn't make their software right".
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Nov 28, 2017 13:44
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