The Space Thread - Launches, Events, Live Streams, Governments, Corporations, drama in Spaaaaaaaaaaaace

[The Un-Clit]

YWNBB (You Will Never Be Bond)
https://youtube.com/watch?v=bZeD_htKyG8

First Bond movie my parents took me to the theatre to see. Still my absolute favourite Bond movie, even though it was Roger Moore at the height of 'Goofy' Bond and the amount of cheese in this movie would make even ADF sick, but I was such a little space cadet at the time I believed every bit of this was only a couple of years from being viable, U.S. Space Marines with laser rifles and all.

I honestly believed we'd have a lunar colony and bases on Mars along with the Soviets and I could become a literal space cadet by the time I was grown up. NASA let my generation down so badly.

 

[mindlessobserver]

Patrick Boyle breaks down the spaceX IPO. Honestly this is one of his best videos ever. I remember @Null mentioning a year ago that he would be interested in some sort of finance guy youtuber breaking down something pants on head retarded about the economy in a dry boring tone. This one certainly fits the bill.

The tl;dw, Elon Musk absolutely cucked the big banks while also setting absurd valuations and pricing contracts that probably made some very smart people with math degrees question their sanity.

 

[mlanguishi]

First Bond movie my parents took me to the theatre to see. Still my absolute favourite Bond movie, even though it was Roger Moore at the height of 'Goofy' Bond and the amount of cheese in this movie would make even ADF sick, but I was such a little space cadet at the time I believed every bit of this was only a couple of years from being viable, U.S. Space Marines with laser rifles and all.

I honestly believed we'd have a lunar colony and bases on Mars along with the Soviets and I could become a literal space cadet by the time I was grown up. NASA let my generation down so badly.

I think the first Bond movie I saw, and I don't think I saw it at the theater (I think that was Golden Eye, and I really didn't like it. It didn't help that half the surround system was off and was insanely jarring), was A View to Kill.

The best scifi bond scene ever was without a doubt in Never Say Never, which bizarrely enough wasn't even a totally in-canon Bond movie at the time due to producers infighting. This is probably the only good scene in the movie though

 

[The Un-Clit]

I think the first Bond movie I saw, and I don't think I saw it at the theater (I think that was Golden Eye, and I really didn't like it. It didn't help that half the surround system was off and was insanely jarring), was A View to Kill.

The best scifi bond scene ever was without a doubt in Never Say Never, which bizarrely enough wasn't even a totally in-canon Bond movie at the time due to producers infighting. This is probably the only good scene in the movie though

https://youtube.com/watch?v=vUc4GkMN1qs

That 'never say never again' shit was so strange I am amazed the movie came out but I'm with you on the 'Domination' scene. When I saw that as a kid I wished SO bad for that video game to be real some day. Of course by the time it was practical to do in the mid-90s I was a father myself. I never got around to looking for a homebrewed replication of the game (minus shocking joysticks) but I know several were made from the time of the 5th gen consoles and the first 3D accelerator cards for PCs onward.

 

[mlanguishi]

That 'never say never again' shit was so strange I am amazed the movie came out but I'm with you on the 'Domination' scene. When I saw that as a kid I wished SO bad for that video game to be real some day. Of course by the time it was practical to do in the mid-90s I was a father myself. I never got around to looking for a homebrewed replication of the game (minus shocking joysticks) but I know several were made from the time of the 5th gen consoles and the first 3D accelerator cards for PCs onward.

It reminded me of the Nuke War game in Robocop. Always figured there'd be this 3d holographic display between players at some point. Too bad it never worked out.

The Bond one of a semi-3d holographic display is probably do-able now, but I think what kill all those types of games is nobody really does much in person games across a table anymore. The Robocop 3d one would probably still be impossible without volumetric. It's funny how BTTF2 and many 80s movies thought full 3d projected images were probably easier to do than flying cars. The Bond one would've been doable with some sort of Pepper's Ghost, and that might've been what they used filming it.

ETA: And to bring a space theme more back, how they thought the X-30 National Space Plane was a clear and easy successor to shuttle. I am still pissed they just canceled the X-33 due to.. I guess the carbon fiber fuel tank issues? Seemed to be a knock out idea there.

 

[Gimmick Account]

Pepper's Ghost, and that might've been what they used filming it.

There's some apparent mask effects and wobble so I think it's just an ordinary overlay.
Since the players are looking end-on from pretty far away there's really no reason to bother with any holographic-type stuff. Eye tracking if you really wanted to. I've seen transparent displays that'd be suitable at trade shows, I guess it could finally be a use case for one. And the zapping would be trivial, of course.

 

[thefreshmaker]

Orion is arguably the same concept as the Apollo CM but modernized. Why not do that with the LEM as well?

Since we're already flying a modernized CM why not just modernize a LEM?

Apollo's goal was "land the cheapest minimal viable product so that (an American) man can kick the moon". Artemis' goal, and the overall American/Artemis Accord's signatory's space policy goal is to pave the way for a permanent habitation of and future commercialization of other planets. Essentially a further development of Skylab, Mir and the ISS on the Moon and hopefully Mars/the Solar System.

An Apollo CM analogue is fine for this because it's just a ferry between Earth and the Moon, it only has to be occupied for relatively short periods and to transport crew. It's a tried and true style of platform whose mission is not meaningfully different.

An Apollo LEM analogue is completely unfit for purpose because it has no cargo capacity and cannot be used to begin construction of/continuously service a Moon base. Blue Moon has a cargo capacity and the ability to make return trips (with reduced cargo capacity). The Chinese program is much closer to Apollo, in that they are developing a short-term mission to gain experience on the way to a future Chinese version of Artemis.

 

[Evan Kor]

Patrick Boyle breaks down the spaceX IPO.

I don't trust what he says since he has Stage 4 Musk Derangement Syndrome.

Edit so this doesn't sound like some spam comment: Patrick Boyle really hates SpaceX as he's shown in previous videos so its very difficult to take anything he says about the company or its founder as anything other than just petty smears. He's like Legal Eagle in that he's probably smart in his field but lets his own personal biases destroy any chance of objective analysis. If he made a video about Firefly Aerospace or Rocketlab, he might be honest and have a good analysis but there's no way he could make a truthful video about SpaceX or Musk.

 

[mindlessobserver]

I don't trust what he says since he has Stage 4 Musk Derangement Syndrome.

Edit so this doesn't sound like some spam comment: Patrick Boyle really hates SpaceX as he's shown in previous videos so its very difficult to take anything he says about the company or its founder as anything other than just petty smears. He's like Legal Eagle in that he's probably smart in his field but lets his own personal biases destroy any chance of objective analysis. If he made a video about Firefly Aerospace or Rocketlab, he might be honest and have a good analysis but there's no way he could make a truthful video about SpaceX or Musk.

Yes, but, I dont think hes wrong. The SpaceX valuation is absolutely idiotic. Starlink is currently the only division of the company making any money. The fact that a huge pile of the cash raised by the IPO is being used to roll Twitter (X) into SpaceX is also a huge red flag. A rocket ship company putting the largest social media company on its balance sheet to leverage out the private loans used in the purchase of Twitter to take it private is....wild honestly. Twitter was taken private, turned into X, rolled into SpaceX and then the private equity was paid off using the SpaceX IPO which makes X a public company again by one degree of separation

That is definitely shenanigans. The point about all this equity moving around being a game of hot potato or "pass the hat" is salient. As is the insistence that retail investment get a huge chunk of the hat. Someone has to end up holding the bag when the music stops after all.

 

[thefreshmaker]

The SpaceX valuation is absolutely idiotic. Starlink is currently the only division of the company making any money.

Starlink is the only division making money, but that's moreso due to the short-term goals of SpaceX. If they weren't burning so much cash on Starship and just spent more on mass producing for the low/mid end launch market they'd be making green but that's death for SpaceX. Someone else would take the position as the first/only interplanetary passenger and cargo line in 20XX. The valuation is funny money in a funny money world, but the fundamental product is a real one.

Non-SpaceX launches are almost a rounding error. Not even Amazon has that reach, at only 25-30% of total US packages delivered. There's only ever going to be more and more and more demand for orbital and deep space launch capacity. I'd hazard a guess that we're still in the Roundhay Garden Scene of spaceflight.

 

[Hatewerfer]

Someone has to end up holding the bag when the music stops after all.

Hard to criticize SpaceX specifically for that when the entire world economy works on dumb shit like that. It does seem silly, but when they launch as many rockets as the rest of the world combined they can't be considered a mere memestock based on Elon's retarded tweets and general hype, they're actually extremely dominant. And when AI startups are worth insane amounts of money despite never producing a single thing of value, again, SpaceX looks comparatively conservative in its valuation.
tl;dr: shits retarded but everything is retarded and when everyone's retarded nobody is or some shit like that

Chinese are getting pretty impressive these days, but given that there will never be a sensitive US/Western payload flying on a Chinese rocket, SpaceX will always have a baseline level of pretty high demand.

 

[bouquetnine]

The future of space will be determined by who has the most lasers in orbit. Lasers can be used to destroy satellite with ease. A constellation will be required to account for divergence and to ensure coverage.


One day one party will say, "fuck everyone else" and zap everyone else's satellites. And they'll probably do it right before the Kessler Syndrome limit is reached.

 

[Kwisatz00]

The future of space will be determined by who has the most lasers in orbit. Lasers can be used to destroy satellite with ease. A constellation will be required to account for divergence and to ensure coverage.


One day one party will say, "fuck everyone else" and zap everyone else's satellites. And they'll probably do it right before the Kessler Syndrome limit is reached.

Who needs lasers when just sending a small rock at crazy speeds does the same thing without the insane amount of time and resources to make a focused laser.

 

[MerelyAPlateOfSpaghetti]

Who needs lasers when just sending a small rock at crazy speeds does the same thing without the insane amount of time and resources to make a focused laser.

Lasers recharge with sunlight, small rocks need hauled up there in loads. I know we've talked about tungsten rods from god but what about tungsten ball bearings from god? Two hundred 3 pound bearings from space is bound to level any hovel you throw it at.

 

[Kwisatz00]

Lasers recharge with sunlight, small rocks need hauled up there in loads. I know we've talked about tungsten rods from god but what about tungsten ball bearings from god? Two hundred 3 pound bearings from space is bound to level any hovel you throw it at.

Do we have those types of lasers yet, the sunlight recharging ones, in space or easy to put in space? Are they there already?
Or do we have the ability to shoot "space junk" at high speeds. The "junk" being anything that could smash into a satellite in space (rocks, rubbish, frozen turds from ISS, tungsten, even a clump of hair, etc.).
As for shooting shit on earth, I think we have had that pretty well covered for a while. (without lasers though)

 

[Hatewerfer]

Lasers recharge with sunlight, small rocks need hauled up there in loads. I know we've talked about tungsten rods from god but what about tungsten ball bearings from god? Two hundred 3 pound bearings from space is bound to level any hovel you throw it at.

The "junk" being anything that could smash into a satellite in space (rocks, rubbish, frozen turds from ISS, tungsten, even a clump of hair, etc.).

I'd say deliberate choices of projectile for damaging satellites is probably as complicated a business as choosing projectiles for killing people. I doubt you'd need tungsten given none of them have any significant ballistic protection, something that transfers more force to the light structure of a satellite at the extreme closing speed may be better. But then again, a projectile made of some sort of plastic that deforms and dumps megajoules of force into a satellite will create a billion fragments that can't be tracked, while a big radar reflective sphere of metal may be less kessler-causing (which doesn't mean much once people start deliberately blowing up satellites).
And when it comes to dropping tungsten from space, just drop explosives, or better yet use ballistic missiles that are specifically designed to do exactly that and cut out the middle man of accelerating heavy shit to orbital velocities. Unguided tungsten spheres dropped from space would be just as dumb as the original concept, probably more so since they'd slow down more than a dart shaped projectile. We abandoned using flechettes from aircraft a long time ago (the Lazy Dog darts were used in Vietnam, and are actually a concept that makes a lot of sense to me in some circumstances), and they're a lot more efficient in atmosphere than dropping down from space.

 

[Gimmick Account]

I believe the idea of tungsten is that it can sink re-entry heat and the high density makes it a great kinetic impactor. Explosives would require tonnes more payload plus extra tonnes for heat shielding. For the same mass as one bomb you could hit a dozen cities or more with tungsten rods. And they'd have a tiny profile making them very hard to intercept. And even if you could intercept them, it is a rod of tungsten. You can't hope to simply disable it like you can something with guidance and a fuse or a nuke assembly or whatever.

You obviously don't need tungsten for satellites. A box of Tic Tacs would be sufficient.

Edit: yeah suborbital missiles are the relatively fast-response ground-based option that makes sense. But if you are putting a platform in orbit, rods or whatever can sit there until you need them and when you push the button nobody will detect a launch. It's a cool concept but an asshole idea.
Edit again: okay I googled it and apparently a constellation of roddy roddenberries would have half the time to target of an ICBM too. So they do hypothetically make sense as bunker busters for targeting ICBM sites etc specifically.

 

[Hatewerfer]

I believe the idea of tungsten is that it can sink re-entry heat and the high density makes it a great kinetic impactor. Explosives would require tonnes more payload plus extra tonnes for heat shielding. For the same mass as one bomb you could hit a dozen cities or more with tungsten rods. And they'd have a tiny profile making them very hard to intercept. And even if you could intercept them, it is a rod of tungsten. You can't hope to simply disable it like you can something with guidance and a fuse or a nuke assembly or whatever.

You obviously don't need tungsten for satellites. A box of Tic Tacs would be sufficient.

Edit: yeah suborbital missiles are the relatively fast-response ground-based option that makes sense. But if you are putting a platform in orbit, rods or whatever can sit there until you need them and when you push the button nobody will detect a launch. It's a cool concept but an asshole idea.

If someone has a giant station full of 10 ton rods of tungsten you best believe that'd be constantly tracked by ground based radar, and your tungsten rod would be detected when it starts moving on a ballistic trajectory. Sure it's hard to stop them from destroying stuff, but if you hit them early enough then you can damage guidance equipment and they go off target. And that station needs be be just hit by a single pebble sized projectile to be effectively destroyed, a problem when you've spent billions on heavy lift launches to send massive tungsten rods up to dock with your Bond villain station.
Also hitting a target with that thing is gonna be a pain in the ass, you'd need to be at a polar orbit to cover the entire planet (more delta V required to launch those big rods up there into polar orbit, not fun), and even if you're happy just covering a certain latitude you're still gonna have to wait for very specific times to launch your kinetic projectiles unless you're putting massively heavy and expensive propulsion units on them, so whoever expects to be hit by the big doom rod is going to be aware of those times too. Alternatively you could have a whole bunch of these stations, but that's so much money that you might as well start budgeting up the death star.
Hard to secretly set up something like that in LEO, given the insane size and quantity of launches that are going to be required. Meanwhile you can secretly develop insane inertial guided ballistic missiles that require no external guidance, can't be jammed and can be launched with dozens of decoys without anybody knowing the real details. Given how poor of a performance current anti missile systems seem to have the tech used for 1960s ICBMs seems more than capable even today to allow striking whoever you want without the need of Dr. Evils wet dream space station, and having them submarine launched makes them just as unstoppable and undetectable as almost anything else that can be thought up.
I can't imagine the force is even that much, I've read some numbers but it's been a while and I don't trust some of them, but it'd be interesting to see some real calculated numbers comparing launch weight to energy on target comparing kinetic to explosive projectiles, which is largely an academic question anyway since if you're using space based weapons you're at nuclear war territory anyway and nukes are clearly superior in basically every single way.

 

[Gimmick Account]

You wouldn't toss logs out of a dedicated station. You'd spread them out individually with a small amount of station keeping hardware and some deorbit engines. They'd probably be foot-wide assemblies at most, put up secretly by unregistered missions, and probably never transmitting.

 

[Hatewerfer]

You wouldn't toss logs out of a dedicated station. You'd spread them out individually with a small amount of station keeping hardware and some deorbit engines. They'd probably be foot-wide assemblies at most, put up secretly by unregistered missions, and probably never transmitting.

Problem there is if one goes wrong, you're in for a real bad time once it decays from the required low orbit or fails to propel itself to a higher parking orbit when station keeping thrusters get low on fuel. If you have a power or propulsion failure on a satellite normally it sucks, but when your satellite weighs many tons and is specifically designed as a kinetic weapon then you may be starting wars you didn't want to when it reenters into another country.
I'm sure it could be done, but it's so impractical I'd leave it to the world of science fiction rather than real discussion. Now if they could figure out refining fuel on the moon then there could be some wacky potentials of moon-earth launched kinetic munitions given the incredibly low delta V required compared to taking off from Earth and the extremely high travel speed coming down, but travel time is a significant downfall there and I doubt if there's anything in sufficient quantity accessible on the moon that could survive that particular insane reentry. Fun thought exercise though.