Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream, NASA's mighty booster is going to let off steam.
Happy Artemis Day everybody! NASA preps its monster rocket for testing
A fair bit happened in the world of space this week, with NASA showing off its mighty booster as Boeing looked set to end 2019 with a jaunt to the International Space Station. The American space agency gifted card-makers with something new to flog this time next year, as it declared 9 December as "Artemis Day" by showing off …
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Tuesday 17th December 2019 15:31 GMT Stevie
100%
Hahaha. Good one.
Nope, it has to do with the nominal designed working <whatever> of <whatever>, and engineers designing stuff to work outside that safety envelope for a bit (guv). In the case of the shuttle, it would be the rated thrust specification.
Hence "Take the reactor to 110% Mr Christian and be quick about it or we'll never catch the Red October".
Or so I'm told. My original thought was that it was due to the problems of using calculators that work in metric but that once they've had the mode changed, no-one can figure out how to put them back in Imperial Units because the inch-thick manual has been lost for yonks.
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Tuesday 17th December 2019 13:37 GMT Vulch
Also SpaceX
Falcon 9 launch in the early hours of the morning sent a comsat on its way to GEO. The first stage made its landng on Of Course I Still Love You, but both fairing catchers (first time two have tried, last launch they both set out but had to return to port because of weather) narrowly missed.
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Tuesday 17th December 2019 15:26 GMT Stevie
Bah!
Wait, Artemis gets a day named for it because it is being tested?
Fuck that. I declare today "Annoying perl thing I dreamed up to be thoroughly useful but which keeps crashing thanks to some stupid only-onna-Tuesday bug in a library file" day.
When it flies, *then* the rocket can have its day.
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Wednesday 18th December 2019 03:11 GMT Kharkov
Embarrasing Moment Incoming...
Somewhere between now & 2021, NASA is going to have an SLS standing straight & tall on the launch pad, with the public taking notice for the first time (Right now, the average American doesn't know SLS even exists) and you can bet that Elon-who-must-not-be-named will have a Falcon Heavy or even a Starship (What, he couldn't just call it 'Coolname'?) sitting on the launch pad next door, possibly with a sign saying, "This costs less than 150 million dollars and has flown several times." leading to... a rather unfortunate series of comparisons, beginning and ending with, "Why does one cost 10x more than the other?"
And then sit back with the popcorn and watch the fireworks...