SpaceX Successfully Launches, Recovers Falcon 9 For CRS-12 (techcrunch.com) 71
Another SpaceX rocket has been successfully launched from NASA's Kennedy Space Center today, carrying a Dragon capsule loaded with over 6,400 pounds of cargo destined for the International Space Station. This marks an even dozen for ISS resupply missions launched by SpaceX under contract to NASA. TechCrunch reports: The rocket successfully launched from NASA's Kennedy Space Center at 12:31 PM EDT, and Dragon deployed from the second stage as planned. Dragon will rendezvous with the ISS on August 16 for capture by the station's Canadarm 2 robotic appendage, after which it'll be attached to the rocket. After roughly a month, it'll return to Earth after leaving the ISS with around 3,000 pounds of returned cargo on board, and splash down in the Pacific Ocean for recovery. There's another reason this launch was significant, aside from its experimental payload (which included a supercomputer designed to help humans travel to Mars): SpaceX will only use re-used Dragon capsules for all future CRS missions, the company has announced, meaning this is the last time a brand new Dragon will be used to resupply the ISS, if all goes to plan. Today's launch also included an attempt to recover the Falcon 9 first stage for re-use at SpaceX's land-based LZ-1 landing pad. The Falcon 9 first stage returned to Earth as planned, and touched down at Cape Canaveral roughly 9 minutes after launch.
Getting kinda old news (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is what I always had hoped for the shuttle program
Re:Getting kinda old news (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually the shuttle spent MANY years as old hat. It after the first 3-4 years it only really made the news 3 times. The two explosions and the last missions.
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You forgot Hubble dude. The Hubble Space Telescope (OK, and parts of the ISS too) was the crowning achievement of the shuttle.
Re:Getting kinda old news (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually the shuttle spent MANY years as old hat. It after the first 3-4 years it only really made the news 3 times. The two explosions and the last missions.
That's too bad because it proved to be a very expensive antique hat, on the order of $500 MILLION PER LAUNCH!!
Much as I liked the idea of the shuttle, in the end the costs were much too high
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Correction.
The Hon. Mr. Rohrabacher asked NASA about Shuttle launch costs.
It cost one billion dollars per flight.
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The Shuttle dropped out of the news after the first few flights, but it never became routine, the "airliner of space" that had been hoped for. It took a standing army of 35,000 workers to keep Shuttle going. And it was never turned around in the originally planned two weeks for the next flight.
We want these SpaceX missions to become old hat and routine.
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Kilograms are mass; pounds are weight
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IIRC (it has been a long time since I studied physics), mass was measured in Newton's. The definition of weight as distinct from mass is that all matter has mass all the time, but it only has weight when that mass is experiencing the force of gravity within a gravitational field.
Thus, I have a constant mass... If I weighed myself on Earth I will weigh more than if I weighed myself on the Moon. Even though my mass remains constant,
Re:Pounds? Don't you mean kilograms? (Score:5, Informative)
IIRC (it has been a long time since I studied physics), mass was measured in Newton's. The definition of weight as distinct from mass is that all matter has mass all the time, but it only has weight when that mass is experiencing the force of gravity within a gravitational field.
the Kilogram is a measure of mass. However, due to the way that scales and the like are calibrated here on earth, it corresponds to the weight as well. Force is measured in Newtons (F=ma), so if you hold a 1kg object suspended in the air, you need to apply 9.8 newtons of force to prevent it from moving.
Re: Pounds? Don't you mean kilograms? (Score:5, Funny)
This post demonstrates that any sufficiently advanced idiocy or ignorance is indistinguishable from trolling.
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No, youâ(TM)re flat out wrong. The kg is the SI standard unit of weight. The N is the SI standard unit of mass and corresponds to 1kg of weight in 1 gravity.
You have it flat out backwards.
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Nah. Pounds measures currency.
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Kilograms are mass; pounds are weight
Pounds can be considered as either mass or weight.
Weight is measured in units of force. By convention, one pound of force is the force created on one pound of mass at Earth's sea level (or something like that.)
On the other hand, kilograms are strictly a measure of mass. However, scales (such as those in a butcher shop or in your bathroom) usually measure the force of gravity on an object (i.e, its weight) but display the equivalent mass (in kilograms or pounds.)
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Pounds can be considered as either mass or weight.
The imperial unit of mass is the slug.
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Named after his massiveness Jabba the Hut?
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Scientists, especially rocket scientists, need to distinguish between mass and weight (force). In SI, it is very clear: mass is in kilograms, weight is in Newtons. Pounds can be mass or weight, depending on what system you use.
In Imperial, traditional use treats mass and weight as interchangeable, both measured in pounds. Scientific use must make a distinction, hence must choose whether a pound is mass or force. If you choose to treat a pound as mass, then the unit of force in your system is the poundal. I
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Pounds are what the US, Liberia and Myanmar use.
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Re: Pounds? Don't you mean kilograms? (Score:2, Insightful)
Because it's American. Europeans coming to a foreign site insulting the local culture is immature and rude. Why do all of you feel the need to do this? We don't visit your websites and insult you for continuing to pronounce Aluminum wrong. Please kindly go invent your own reusable rocket system and then you can feel free to measure its payload capacity with whatever units you prefer.
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The original source first mentions kilograms
CRS-12 will deliver 2,910 kilograms (6,415 pounds) of cargo to the station
https://www.nasaspaceflight.co... [nasaspaceflight.com]
Pretty sure NASA is American...
Re: Pounds? Don't you mean kilograms? (Score:4, Funny)
There's a joke about that.
"There are two kinds of countries: the kind who have sent men to the moon, and the kind who use the metric system."
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There's a joke about that.
"There are two kinds of countries: the kind who have sent men to the moon, and the kind who use the metric system."
The actual joke is that NASA, the company that landed the men on the moon, now mostly uses the metric system, and was partly using it back then.
In fact, the guidance computers of the Apollo missions were programmed in metric, but displayed/input in English [doneyles.com].
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There's a joke about that.
"There are two kinds of countries: the kind who have sent men to the moon, and the kind who use the metric system."
The actual joke is that NASA, the company that landed the men on the moon, now mostly uses the metric system, and was partly using it back then. In fact, the guidance computers of the Apollo missions were programmed in metric, but displayed/input in English [doneyles.com].
IIRC, the USA was the second nation to switch to the metric system. However, it does not forcefully proscribe its usage. For science, metric notation is used for most everything. Even in standard measurements, they are all officially determined by metric values.
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Because it's press releases for the unwashed masses. NASA, and the ISS in particular, operate entirely in a pure metric environment. Heck, this is the same for the other and related agencies. You walk into JPL and ask where the washroom is, you're likely to hear something along the lines of 5 meters down the hall, and to your left.
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Because the journalists at techcrunch.com don't know what a kilogram is.
Thankfully NASA does. https://www.nasaspaceflight.co... [nasaspaceflight.com]
Musk (Score:2, Interesting)
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Is there anything that guy CAN'T do?
Convince the current POTUS not to be a racist, bigoted asshole?
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Actually, Elon failed to convince him not to be a fossil-fuel boosting climate change denier.
It's a completely different rich guy who failed to convince him to be a racist, bigoted asshole.
On that last note, I find it really sad that only the black guy felt the need to cut ties; in my opinion, it shows you that none of them have any principles unless it hits close to home.
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Crap. "It's a completely different rich guy who failed to convince him to NOT be a racist, bigoted asshole."
There are days where I really wish Slashdot allowed post editing, if only for a few minutes or so. And didn't stop me from posting a corrective child comment for a while.
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To make the US internet good.
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SpaceX plans worldwide satellite Internet with low latency, gigabit speed [arstechnica.com]
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Break out of the computer simulation?
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Is there anything that guy CAN'T do?
Make an engaging presentation.
He does well, but you can tell he's not a natural public speaker. There are a lot of long pauses while he gathers his thoughts.
The main reason his presentations are successful is because the material is so damn interesting. He also has a lot of very good slides prepared. Otherwise, his presentation style is lackluster.
Couple of clarifications to the summary... (Score:2)
First the obvious, the Dragon will be berthed to the station, not to the rocket. That was done in Florida prior to launch.
Secondly, this is likely the last new Dragon 1 pressure vessel that will be launched. Given that they splash down in rather corrosive salt water, there's significant effort to re-manufacture the capsules for launch, and the pressure vessel is a portion of that.
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No, but if you land a jet on an aircraft carrier, that's generally referred to as aircraft recovery.
6,400 pounds (Score:1)
When you talk about "space things" you don't use pounds, you use the metric system. http://edition.cnn.com/TECH/space/9909/30/mars.metric.02/
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True! But since we're monkeys with ten fingers we invented a decimal counting system that we all learn as children. That pairs really well with a measuring system that is ALSO base 10.
If your counting system is base 10 and your measuring system is base... um, 32? Or is it 5238? 12? Anyway, anything other than base 10, it makes everything difficult.
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And yet we do have a base-10 numbering system, so designing our units and prefixes around that makes a lot of sense. As do units that don't require dozens of arcane constants to convert between them.
There are very good reasons why all scientists and nearly all countries switched to SI units long ago.
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There is nothing universally good about the number 10, we only think that because our monkey ancestors gave us 10 fingers. A more advanced alien species might have 12 tentacles and think our base10 system is retarded.
A base 10 number system *is* retarded compared to a base 12 system. Even the illiterate medieval craftsmen who came up with many of the half-assed pseudo-duodecimal measurements used in the imperial system could sense that. With Roman Numerals making arithmetic almost impossible anyway, why not?
However, given that we ended up standardizing on base 10 Arabic numerals, all of that became moot. Trying to mix half-assed base 12 with base 10 is FAR worse than just using base 10 for everything. It's willfully cho
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No base is retarded, they all can do the same thing.
Not true; more factors are better. 12 can be evenly divided four ways, but ten can only be evenly divided two ways. Moreover, dividing by 3 is more useful than dividing by 5.
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Worse than /pedant; incorrect pedant.
For real-world applications, you need to count both divisors and ignore the N/1: 10/2, 10/5 vs. 12/2 12/3 12/4 12/6
I actually saw this rocket in person (Score:5, Interesting)
I got to take a private tour of the SpaceX testing facility in Texas a few weeks back, I was a few feet away from the team installing the flight computers on top of the Stage 1 in the hanger in McGregor a few weeks back.
Amazing stuff to see in person, and really emotional to see the same Stage 1 launch today and land.
(On another note, the people in the hangar were listening to Katy Perry as they were working. Sorry guys, I had to.)
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Did they have "Firework" on repeat?