handol

Dynetics submitted the highest bid, but it looks like their bid couldn't have one at any price.

  However, notwithstanding these aforementioned positive attributes, I find that Dynetics’ technical approach suffered from a number of serious drawbacks,  and I concur with the SEP’s conclusion that these drawbacks meaningfully increase the risk to Dynetics’ successful performance of this contract.  Of particular concern is the significant weakness within Dynetics’ proposal under Technical Area of Focus 1, Technical Design Concept, due to the SEP’s finding that Dynetics’ current mass estimate for its DAE far exceeds its current mass allocation; plainly stated, Dynetics’ proposal evidences a substantial negative mass allocation.

https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/option-...

It's not Dragon, it's a variant of Starship.

The three proposals they were selecting between: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/nasa-selects-blue-origin-dyneti...

Then came the fad of the bright blue, "plugged in but turned off" indicator on consumer electronics that had to be taped over if you wanted to sleep in the same room as the device.

What's clever about it? They cheated, got caught, got fined $20 billion dollars, and spend some time in prison. It sounds pretty dumb to me.

I'm not an expert on this, but 'ran out of money' doesn't sound like a real explanation for the collapse of a government. That state has the authority to make money, it can't simply run out of it's own currency.

This is a fascinating project. How do you actually generate a hogel? Are you positioning a reference surface? An SLM?

But, they have an actual holographic device.

It's a bench top display projecting directly into the camera. Similar to the one presented below, which provides a bit more context about how the display works.

https://light.princeton.edu/publication/hil-holography/

Pleasantly surprised to see this is actually about holograms, and not a volumetric display misusing the term.

It looks like those cylinders are representing the launch towers, a few meters taller than the stacked Starship sitting on the launch mount.

Isn't that all about modeling thermonuclear weapons?

There have been successful falcon 9 landings that looked like they hit the ground harder than that. I suppose either Starship will need to be more gentle when it sets down, or the legs will need to be more capable.

I wonder how fast the debris it kicks up off ( and digs out of ) the asphalt will be moving.

That basic description already fits hall-effect thrusters. I think the idea here is not a new electric thruster but bleeding off plasma from a fusion reactor to power a rocket.

> Also, how is this better than existing ion thrusters? Isn't it just a bigger ion thruster?

Besides just operating on a different principle, the theoretical exhaust velocity is about ten times higher than the highest actually flown ion thruster.

So flying the same mission with this thruster would require significantly less propellant. But you don't get to throw something out the back of the spacecraft faster for free. Kinetic energy scales as the square of velocity, so ~10x exhaust velocity is going to mean ~100x power draw.

Sure there are, but we don't have enough surface area on this planet to replace industrial meat production with sustainable farms without a vast decrease in output.

I was really hoping that would be about using this ant swirling phenomenon to drive machinery.

I think the idea is that two is redundant for the final design, but these test articles don't have the high power maneuvering thrusters. Without those they need to use the backup engine to manage the rotation.

Hey that looks familiar. I helped push it inside when it arrived. Still had that new car smell when I took my turn sitting in it.

You just load up the map for the kind of lobotomy you want to simulate and say good bye to loneliness.

> the Tesla truck will function on extraterrestrial world's with a pressurized cabin so I could be completely mistaken

I suppose that's true, in the same way it's true of all electric cars. But a pressurized cabin and an airlock is a pretty massive change.

I was thinking I would get bored waiting for it to charge for 10 minutes. But if I can spend half the time plugging in cables, and half the time unplugging them, problem solved.

Sure, it's a hard-landing or crash-landing. The vehicle was obviously under control but not making enough thrust for a soft touch down.

I'm sure there's some cost in cleaning up the scrap and repairing any damage to the facility. But it's a prototype, and I think this was the only flight planned for this one.

I thought the raptor was going to use a spark plug.

It completed the high altitude flight test

> for what purpose do they serve?

It feels good to scoop the goop out of your ears after a hot shower.

Sounds like the point was pocket the money, and he did a good job at it.

I don't know that they're building a charging network for Cadillac owners so much as making sure their dealerships are capable of selling and servicing electric cars. You can't do many test drives if you can't charge the cars.

Who did you sue?