Well of Souls Forums

SpaceX launched (and landed) the first Block 5 Falcon 9: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQEqKZ7CJlk Lots of changes for improving reuse, and for certifying the vehicle to carry people. This should be the final version, with only minor fixes and changes moving forward. (The improved cameras were nic...

As far as I'm aware, the star itself being the cause has been ruled out. A star can only change brightness by changing size (which is far too slow) or by changing temperature (which is too slow and doesn't match spectral observations). A star that rapidly dims without major changes in its spectrum ...

Krulle: energy input equals energy output. Dust heats up when it absorbs sunlight, and will reach equilibrium when the radiated EM equals the absorbed EM, but with a peak in the IR instead. We're seeing a lot of light being blocked without seeing the expected re-radiated IR that a cloud of dust woul...

Just watched the video for that VTOL electric plane again. Is it just me, or did they choose a really inefficient setup for forward flight? The wing is right at the back, so the forward fans have to work to hold the nose up. Surely this would seriously affect flight time? Wouldn't the ideal plan be...

A 1 g rechargeable lithium ion battery would be capable of the same output for around a month (self discharge aside). Even a supercapacitor should be able to manage a few days. High energy density/low power density power supplies can have some uses in spacecraft, but this one's a bit too low in powe...

Something to consider...energy weapons have effective ranges in the range of light seconds, but that's the range at which they can inflict significant damage to an armored ship. What's the range that they can puff a bit of vapor from the stealth coatings, thermally damage them, or just deliver a pul...

Likely not story-relevant at all, but: is there any serious in-universe speculation about stable "layers" or "bands" in hyperspace, with the jumps used by ships being only a shallow entry into a transitional area, or is that as much the realm of crankery and fiction in the Outsider universe as hyper...

As far as I'm able to determine, yeah, they're using quantum entanglement to deliver a random encryption key, and then using that random encryption key to send the message through more conventional means. But I'm not sure how they're going to use quantum mechanics to tell if someone is trying to ea...

hi hi Your's is a stupid post. Wow, ad hominem, classy. And in any case, the Guardian article still doesn't explain how they are using quantum mechanics to make hack proof communications. Also, the part where they say "allowing users to send messages securely and at speeds faster than light," is fa...

SpaceX is getting a bit more aggressive with their first stage recovery maneuvers, with less waiting around in case something's gone wrong. With their latest launch, the first stage pitched back and did the boostback burn just seconds after separation, while still inside the second stage's exhaust ...

SpaceX is getting a bit more aggressive with their first stage recovery maneuvers, with less waiting around in case something's gone wrong. With their latest launch, the first stage pitched back and did the boostback burn just seconds after separation, while still inside the second stage's exhaust p...

As for Eagleworks, technically I believe that capacitor thing should be sort-of workable. I just doubt that you'd get measurable thrusts with the setup I've heard of (admittedly they're testing for photon displacement instead). In fact, I suspect that you'd need a very large and light configuration...

Judging from the article, they ran some tests and didn't find any evidence one way or another. And this, ladies and gentleman, is how we know it was an EM-Drive test! Seriously, every actual EM-Drive test ever. And they for some strange reason never manage to come up with a measurement setup that m...

SpaceX is starting to make this look easy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jEz03Z8azc Another satellite sent on its way to GEO, another first stage brought back, this time with video from the stage on the way in. This one omitted the boostback burn again, and probably was another three-engine landi...

Better video of the landing now available, three separate angles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHqLz9ni0Bo Judging from the lighting, the overall burn took roughly 10-15 seconds. I'm pretty sure the three-engine segment couldn't take more than a few seconds of that, or it would have reversed dire...

SpaceX stuck another Falcon booster landing on the barge Of Course I Still Love You , this time from a much higher peak velocity (the JSAT payload being launched into a Geostationary Transfer Orbit). Note that due to the low margins available for landing, this one did a ballistic arc to reentry wit...

I still dont understand why we want to bother going to Mars in person anyway. Let the rovers go down in the gravy well. Use the people to man stations on the moon and start up some manner of resourcing and manufacturing capacity. Even that can be largely auto or tele-operated. Because it's there. M...

hi hi As noted above, the block buy lowers the incremental lower end Atlas V launch costs to less than $100 million/ - The source Mjolnir cited. It is important to note that the line item for the ULA contract includes maintenance and facilities for all of their rockets, including the larger more ex...

Not to mention the fact that the Merlin gets its excellent thrust to weight ratio at the expense of specific impulse. As long as it can achieve orbital insertion of the payload, this is perfectly reasonable. You'll never get good Isp from a chemical rocket because pure chemical rockets just can't a...

hi hi I got the numbers from Former ULA CEO Michael Gass, and the ULA's 2014 launch contract. 164 million is the cost for a low end Delta rocket, not a low end Atlas rocket. No, it is the cost for an Atlas V 401, according to ULA's current president and CEO , figures he gave in testimony to Congres...