It’s quite simple. The private corporations own the legislators and the regulators. They in turn run the government according to the needs of the corporations.
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May we assume you’ve cleared that statement with Mr. Musk?
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“Oh, them? They’re just non-playable characters; they don’t count.”
Fucking sociopaths and their fucking enablers…
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So thinking about this the other day, I saw on the news 5 of the 33 engines failed. That is - not good. But also, I didn’t realize they were taking the Russian approach of just slapping more smaller engines into a rocket - vs the earlier US approach of building bigger engines.
The Saturn V had 5 engines in the main stage. The would be Russian equivalent was the N1 had 30 and was the most powerful rocket until the Space X launch. But it also never had a successful flight (the 2nd flight crashed back onto the launch pad and destroyed it). My friend used to joke that the Russians basically just kept slapping V2s together to get more lift. Maybe the N1 would have succeeded eventually had the lead scientist not have died, or if the Russians wanted to throw more money at the project.
So anyway, it will be interesting to see if Starship heavy will work as a concept eventually or not. 33 engines means 33 points of failure.
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By the end of the flight, prior to explosion, it may have been 7 or 8 that had failed.
One advantage they have over the Soviet N1 is a much more advanced computer system that can help quickly react to and compensate for engine failures, although there’s certainly some upper limit in how many can fail while still reaching orbit. Pretty amazing that the Soviets managed to have any level of control at all on their insanely complex system given the state of 1960s computer technology.
For what it’s worth this thing did manage to fly much higher amd longer than any of the N1 attempts.
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Thx for that!
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pocket protectors will never not be cool.
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Taming the F-1 engine was an enormously difficult, time consuming and expensive task. Achieving stable combustion in such a big engine chamber pushed Rocketdyne to the very limit and a very large number of engines blew up on the test stand. But the US had the resources to keep building them.
The Soviet Union was screwed over in good part when Valentin Glushko, probably the finest engine designer in the World, fell out with Sergei Korolev over the selection of fuel for the N1. Glushko wanted to use large engines burning hypergolic fuels which are stable at room temperature, but produce lower thrust per kilo and are unbelievably toxic and corrosive. Korolev wanted to stick with kerosene and liquid oxygen which had worked on the R7.
The two geniuses split once and for all. Korolev still had to develop a rocket, but had no engine - so he went to Kuznetsov who were able to deliver an astonishingly advanced - but small engine. So the N1 had to use 30 of them.
Glushko, licking his wounds, went on to build the RD270 hypergolic engine for Chelomei’s UR500 rocket - better known as the Proton. He then designed the monstrous RD270 which was about as powerful as the F-1 on the Saturn V but never flew because the giant UR700 rocket was then cancelled. He then turned his hand to the RD170 kerolox engine - the most powerful single liquid fuelled engine ever built - for the Energia boosters; and the Soviet Union’s first liquid hydrogen engine, the RD120, for the Energia core. Oh and the RD170 was reusable - long before SpaceX came along.
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I think it’s safe to say they all failed. At least they failed their saving throws…
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Lots of debate here over whether or not the rocket explosion constitutes a setback or an expected part of the process.
But I think even the most ardent of Space X’s fans might accept that what happened to the launch pad is one bastard of a problem…
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I don’t think they will but I do admire your generosity. I rather think they’ll say this was expected, planned for and a total success, and besides, that’ll buff out.
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“They’re saving time by using the rocket to excavate its own flame trench! Pure genius!”
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Wait wait - so while they were concentrating on reusable launch vehicles, they forgot to make reusable launch pads?
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And as it burned it hurt because I was so happy for them
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It must have been a purposeful oversight (“why spend money building a fire trench when this thing might blow up on the launchpad anyway”)
Kind of amazing they didn’t think about how the surface underneath the rocket would react to being exposed to 15 million pounds of thrust.
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I’m no rocket surgeon but I’m real sure the answer was going to be “badly.”
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Something about equal and opposite reactions, I dunno…
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Throwing up debris from a destroyed launch pad seems like a way to increase the odds that it damages something and doesn’t get off of the pad.
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