Talk-Polywell.org

I do have to say it doesn't look like a fuel or LOX ignition. The detonation is near-instantaneous and is nearly 50 feet across in one frame (1/30th of a second). Kerosene doesn't burn that color, and LOX would need something to burn, which, given the steel construction and sparse umbilicals, I just...

People are ignoring the possibility that this is a Shkadov engine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_engine instead of a Dyson sphere. If interstellar travel takes millennia, then no spacecraft is reasonable to get to another star system. Instead, you build lots of small solar sails hanging over ...

I have an HP 2015dn laser printer for which this is the well-known standard fix for problems. Apparently HP used very cheap (read lots of impurities) solder to mount the components on the printer's motherboard, so they are prone to bi-metal oxidation and cracking. So, the solution is to throw the mo...

So, successful launch of SES-9, but over an hour and still no word on whether they stuck the landing. There's stories out there saying "Space-X confirms successful landing" and others that say, "Space-X confirms loss of vehicle on landing." Friggin' Schroedinger's rocket at this point.

Perhaps they should also be considering small islands downrange for potential landings instead of the barges, given that their very first land attempt succeeded. I know there are a few sparsely populated islands south-southeast of Vandenberg that could have potentially been used as a landing site. I...

(Hey, if they are bold enough to hack decades worth of security clearance applications for US federal employees and contractors...) To be fair, it turns out that the "Hack" of the OPM was due to the fact that admin passwords were GIVEN to a Chinese outsourcing firm by government employees. Yet anot...

Shotwell just said during the conference that Dragon did survive the event as they received telemetry from it after the loss of the craft. Makes me wonder if they attempted to signal it to deploy parachutes and recovered it. In fact, the conference just ended with her reiteration that they received ...

jnaujok wrote:The failure begins at the top of the vehicle, near the capsule itself. It looks like either the tank failed, or the structural component failed.

Elon Musk wrote:There was an overpressure event in the upper stage liquid oxygen tank. Data suggests counterintuitive cause.

Nailed it.

Just found this video from the BBC and stepped through it frame by frame. https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews/videos/vb.228735667216/10152912226907217/?type=2&theater Apparently, my first impression was totally wrong. The failure begins at the top of the vehicle, near the capsule itself. It looks like ...

I happened to have it streaming on two separate displays, one with a minute and a half delay. When I re-watched on the delayed stream, it was clear that one of the engines suffered a catastrophic failure, with what looked like an engine bell or maybe a protective fairing falling away from the vehicl...

The capsule still retains the regular Draco thrusters in clusters around either side of the Super Draco ports. Those thrusters are used for most of the orbital maneuvering on a typical ISS approach or similar mission. I see the Super Dracos more for something like orbital maneuvers to a much higher ...

He's completely forgotten doppler shifting of the signal. You proceed to Alpha Centauri at .9C (4.7 years) The light from Earth (looking through a telescope at a laser clock) tells you that Earth has only seen about .5 years go by. This is because as you look at the clock, you are red shifting it (s...

The guy has degrees in Neuroscience. He knows every single symptom he needs to present to be ruled as "mentally incompetent". He also knows that the doubly jeopardy law will protect him if he's found "innocent by reason of mental defect." This guy is waiting to write a book about how he fooled the s...

Are they "wild game ranches" or is the game domesticated? If what you're talking about is like a wild game preserve, where a large tract of land has a 12' high fence around it and the game is left to itself, it's hard to see how to call that domestication. I believe most of them are in what you wou...

If this is true, has anyone else tried to domesticate these wild North American animals since then, and with what results? I'm not aware of any attempts. Actually there are several dozen wild game farms here in Colorado that raise the "wild game" for the various specialty restaurants in the Aspen, ...