SpaceX News

Point out news stories, on the net or in mainstream media, related to polywell fusion.

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paperburn1
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Re: SpaceX News

Post by paperburn1 »

Just to clarify.
Apollo used 7 miles to the pad as a range safety.
I do not know what spacex used on 39A.
I get the impression the camera was two or three miles away maybe four at tops. your correct The maximum ballistic range of the .50 BMG cartridge is around 7,000m
Craig Harrison has uprooted the Canadians for the longest sniper shot on record, 1.54 miles! Not only did he beat the record by 150 ft., but took two shots that each killed a Taliban machine gunner.

But I do not subscribe to the sniper or drone ideas.
The veterans video clearly has a metallic boing sound that precedes the flash bang by one or two seconds that is clearly audible on the video. and both spacex and nasa are interested in what made that noise. That is why they have requested any and all video because their feeds show nothing.
with as much telemetry they had on the spaceship I am greatly surprised at the lack of high def video. something I think will be remedied in future launches.
And as for the drone thingy it is most probably a piece of the fuel defuel assembly .
I am not a nuclear physicist, but play one on the internet.

Tom Ligon
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Re: SpaceX News

Post by Tom Ligon »

I spent some time trying to track down which launch pad this was. The explosion happened at SLC-40. Pad 39A is being modified for Falcon Heavy.

The delay between the first flash and the onset of the bang corresponds really nicely with the distance to the corner of the NASA HQ campus, just east of the Visitors Center, and a likely place to set a camera. The view from that location seems to mesh with the location of the spherical tank and the towers at pad 40.

If I have the camera location right, you have to be cautious about interpreting stray sounds. That's why they need audio (and preferably video) from another site. The little noise I picked up about 6 seconds before the big bangs start sounds suspiciously like a car door slamming. If there is something 2 seconds before the big bang, I've not spotted it yet, but again, it could be foreground noise. The likely location of the camera is a rather large parking lot, or near it.

Typically the facility has a nice load of tourists. I don't know if they are currently picky about cameras, but when I visited we took lots of pictures, which included visits to several pads out that way. Hopefully somebody got something.

Meanwhile, I edited a copy of the video to move the onset explosion noise to correspond with the first flash, a 12.2 second offset. This makes the sound line up really nicely with the visual effects.

While the original video is supposedly 60 frames per second, I don't think that information survived YouTube posting. My editor shows 60 frames per second, but the image only updates every other frame, so what we're working with is essentially 30 FPS. YouTube postings are almost never really true. The original is probably much better.

ladajo
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Re: SpaceX News

Post by ladajo »

Tom,
I fully agree, having been on the ground around the pads there, that a moderately skilled dude cpuld make it to layup, and then to position, especially over a couple of days. The gators would be an issue, but outside of mating and nesting season a much lower issue. The real sportyness would come on the exfil. Lots of ground to cover with some excited folks trucking around. Plausible, however challenging. I am not sure it could be completed until the following morning considering a probable 5 to 6 mile movement. We used to do this stuff at Stennis, and covering the 15 mile buffer zone, with much more concealment could take two to three days before you were on target, ready to rock. And the beat feet would take the night, and advantage of confusion allowing some serious 'get-away-sticks' action. I guess all in all plausible, but risky for sure. Maybe not worth it. The best mission is the one no one knows happened. Meh.
The development of atomic power, though it could confer unimaginable blessings on mankind, is something that is dreaded by the owners of coal mines and oil wells. (Hazlitt)
What I want to do is to look up C. . . . I call him the Forgotten Man. (Sumner)

Tom Ligon
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Re: SpaceX News

Post by Tom Ligon »

ladajo wrote:The best mission is the one no one knows happened
A .50 BMG round leaves a hole you can't miss. Through lots of stuff, which could include half an inch of steel. So if that's what happened they'll find the evidence. If it happened, it will be found.

So that changes the motive for getting out undetected. The reason would simply be to avoid getting caught. But the overall intent would be to have everyone know what happened. If a sniper took out that rocket, a message was being sent. Again, it was an Israeli payload. And it was intended to provide Internet in Africa. So one or two people probably didn't like it.

But I still rather expect the stray bang is automotive in origin and the problem will turn out to be that rockets are tricky and somebody made a boo-boo.

DeltaV
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Re: SpaceX News

Post by DeltaV »

Tom Ligon wrote:While the original video is supposedly 60 frames per second, I don't think that information survived YouTube posting. My editor shows 60 frames per second, but the image only updates every other frame, so what we're working with is essentially 30 FPS. YouTube postings are almost never really true. The original is probably much better.
At ~30 frames/s, ~5 frames to cover ~400 ft gives ~2400 ft/s or ~M 2.2. Too fast for a ducted fan. But, there seems to be some extra "stuff" on the right side of the duct exterior.

I'm thinking limited "supersonic dash", with the fan axis more-or-less perpendicular to the velocity vector, not that the fan would be doing much in that state. The object's linear L-to-R climb, post-deflagration start, behind the fireball, does suggest a recovery from the expected altitude loss...

paperburn1
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Re: SpaceX News

Post by paperburn1 »

http://www.uslaunchreport.com/home.html
is the people that made the video, perhaps they have a higher quality version you could experiment with.
I went to there web site and did not find a download of the video. I think you have to pay the fee to get the youtube HD video. "YouTube Red "its called.
Your object doing a supersonic dash could just be an artifact of lens compression and it would be moving much slower if that was the case.
I am guessing 12 seconds from flash to boom so 2.5 to 3 miles? Do they let people that close?
The information on the boing noise was from Spacex itself.
As part of their internal investigation, Musk and SpaceX are asking the public to help them zero in on a mysterious noise.

"Particularly trying to understand the quieter bang sound a few seconds before the fireball goes off. May come from rocket or something else," Musk wrote on Twitter.
And as I believe you said before " space is hard"
I am not a nuclear physicist, but play one on the internet.

DeltaV
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Re: SpaceX News

Post by DeltaV »

SpaceX_AMOS-6_1Sep2016_4KVideo_Snapshot_Trio.jpg
SpaceX_AMOS-6_1Sep2016_4KVideo_Snapshot_Trio.jpg (171.3 KiB) Viewed 12839 times
Tom Ligon wrote:Deja vu all over again ... my old buddy the Organic Air Vehicle!
Tom...
Let go of the mouse.
Put your hands on top of your head.
Interlace your fingers.
Stand up.
Walk backwards, away from the computer. SLOWLY!...

DeltaV
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Re: SpaceX News

Post by DeltaV »

In supersonic dash mode, if the object had contra-rotating fans (no longer generating significant lift) they could still be angularly accelerated/decelerated both differentially and in unison to provide a modicum of attitude control via their angular momenta, where the flight control system would need to compensate for gyroscopic effects.

I think I see a hint of a shock wave above, but it's very faint, if there. A professional image-processing expert should enhance the video and post the results, but I guess none of them care about the possibility of attacks on US rockets by nefarious entities. I've just been amateurishly playing with freeware, all trial and error.

paperburn1
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Re: SpaceX News

Post by paperburn1 »

Supersonic propeller driven drone? No, just no. It hurts my head to think of all the forces and power requirement needed to even break Mach in a propeller driven vehicle. While parts of a propeller can exceed that speed it would require the whole blade to do so and radial shockwave and the lateral shockwave could find a harmonic .... no just no.
It must be some other artifact making it appear to be faster than mach.
Yes I know the TU-95 blades go faster but they also have two propellers on each hub that spin in opposite directions at the same speed. The effect is a perfect destructive interference from the sonic shockwaves that ripple down the blades.(more of that famous crude but effective russian engineering) The force from the shock-waves (moving in exact opposite directions) exactly cancel each other out at the hub.The have to spin at exactly the same speed or lateral shock waves would overflex the blades. Also the Tu-95 does not exceed the speed of sound . If you go faster than mach then radial shock waves becomes a factor and power requirements are unbelievable.
tanstaafl :wink:
I am not a nuclear physicist, but play one on the internet.

Tom Ligon
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Re: SpaceX News

Post by Tom Ligon »

I think there was a propeller-driven racing plane designed for the Reno Air Races, intended to break Mach 1. I don't recall hearing that it ever actually flew, though. They predicted it would make a supersonic crack from each blade tip, plus a big one from the fuselage.

This is not the skinny one I remember, but the same general idea: http://www.popsci.com/military-aviation ... supersonic

Anyone care to show me this shock wave on the audio recording? I don't hear it and I don't see it on the amplitude trace of my editing software. And if a supersonic prop were doing it there would be a staccato buzz of shock waves from the blade tips, although what they would do in a shroud is beyond me. I'd call this a non-starter. Why go thru the bother? You want something to do a supersonic sprint, use a jet or a rocket. Or a $10 bullet. Developing a supersonic flying trashcan would be a $10M effort at a minimum. And why fly it in that attitude?

As for my involvement with the OAV, seriously, it was underway when I signed on at Athena. It was not all that secret ... it was flown in a public place, in an empty field across the road from the hangar. I got to watch it from the door. It was assembled by Larry Jolly, better known for building model helicopters to be blown up or crashed in movies ... you have all seen his work, which includes the engine of the Fed-Ex crash from "Cast Away" that tries to eat Tom Hanks. He cried when OAV crashed, but most of his creations are intended to be destroyed spectacularly, so he got out the tools and had it repaired in a couple of days.
Last edited by Tom Ligon on Thu Sep 15, 2016 5:38 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Maui
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Re: SpaceX News

Post by Maui »

Delta,

What exactly do you think you are proving by applying filters to a few pixels of a lossy video compression? Most of your source is already interpolation of the video's compression. You are then exaggerating that interpolation with filters.

It's unbelievably absurd to me that you are still stuck on this.

Tom Ligon
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Re: SpaceX News

Post by Tom Ligon »

Regarding the lack of HD video, I have to agree. I've got a nice Lorex (FLIR) HD security video system, full 30 FPS 1080p, color in daylight and it sees in IR at night. A four camera system runs about $1100, including the DVR. It simultaneously streams to a cloud storage system if you have adequate bandwidth. It can record sound.

Surely they now have something on order. This ought to be on the must-have list. Hell, every 7-11 has one, usually 8-16 cameras.

DeltaV
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Re: SpaceX News

Post by DeltaV »

paperburn1 wrote:Supersonic propeller driven drone? No, just no. It hurts my head to think of all the forces and power requirement needed to even break Mach in a propeller driven vehicle. While parts of a propeller can exceed that speed it would require the whole blade to do so and radial shockwave and the lateral shockwave could find a harmonic .... no just no.
It must be some other artifact making it appear to be faster than mach.
Etc.

You are not reading very well. Too much eye strain from watching Hillaryus videos?
DeltaV wrote:I'm thinking limited "supersonic dash", with the fan axis more-or-less perpendicular to the velocity vector, not that the fan would be doing much in that state. The object's linear L-to-R climb, post-deflagration start, behind the fireball, does suggest a recovery from the expected altitude loss...
Soooo, that rules out the fan as a propulsor during dash, right?

Tom Ligon
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Re: SpaceX News

Post by Tom Ligon »

DeltaV wrote: Soooo, that rules out the fan as a propulsor during dash, right?
A supersonic dash by an object a meter or two high near the pad is ruled out by the lack of a sonic boom on the audio recording. It would be much louder than a rifle shot. I don't think the microphone could miss it, and it would be distinctive.

DeltaV
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Re: SpaceX News

Post by DeltaV »

Maui wrote:Delta,

What exactly do you think you are proving
I'm not trying to prove anything. I'm amateurishly exploring the available data with public domain tools, hoping some experienced image pro will provide a sounder analysis and post it for us all to squabble over.
Maui wrote:by applying filters to a few pixels of a lossy video compression? Most of your source is already interpolation of the video's compression. You are then exaggerating that interpolation with filters.
If the object in my base image was only a few pixels high, you would have a sounder point. It seems to me that atmospheric turbulence is a much more important factor for an object about 70-80 pixels high (in my screenshot of the VLC zoom). Out of 8 snapshots of the object from the 4K video, the one above is the only one where (in my non-professional opinion) the atmosphere was calm enough to proceed with enhancement. If you disagree, post your own analysis, not just hand-waving. Surely someone reading this forum has the background knowledge to do this the right way. My approach is admittedly intuitive as image processing is not my gig.
Maui wrote:It's unbelievably absurd to me that you are still stuck on this.
It's unbelievably absurd to me that you are so opposed to the possibility that a nation-state, corporation, jihadi murder-cult or advanced hobbyists could bolt a short-duration "booster" (of unspecified configuration) onto well-known ducted-fan UAV technology and briefly push it supersonic to employ an unknown weapon on a thin-walled aluminum booster.

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