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Kaiser
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Postby Kaiser » Tue Jul 21, 2020 2:20 pm

How is it that none of us noted that today was Apollo 11 lunar landing day.
Present day I've been on the moon for 51 years, my only friend is the S Band radio

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Postby robbiestoupe » Tue Jul 21, 2020 9:13 pm

So nobody remembers/was alive for Haley’s comet? I think I’ll be 83 when it comes around again, so I may be able to say I’ve seen it twice.

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Postby DigitalGypsy66 » Wed Jul 22, 2020 9:14 am

I remember it, vaguely. I'll be 87-88 the next time it passes by. Hopefully, I'll still be around.

My work building has a time capsule that's due to be opened in 2058, and I'm pretty sure I'll be the only one with a reasonable chance of being alive when it was buried in 2008. We'll see....

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Postby willeyeam » Wed Jul 22, 2020 9:22 am

So nobody remembers/was alive for Haley’s comet? I think I’ll be 83 when it comes around again, so I may be able to say I’ve seen it twice.
I could swear I remember standing outside our old house in 95-96 watching it but that obviously wasn't it since google tells me it was last here in 86. Wonder which one I'm thinking of

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Postby shafnutz05 » Wed Jul 22, 2020 1:07 pm

So nobody remembers/was alive for Haley’s comet? I think I’ll be 83 when it comes around again, so I may be able to say I’ve seen it twice.
I could swear I remember standing outside our old house in 95-96 watching it but that obviously wasn't it since google tells me it was last here in 86. Wonder which one I'm thinking of
Um...Hale-Bopp? :lol:

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Postby willeyeam » Wed Jul 22, 2020 1:13 pm

Could be it - fits in with the mmm-bopp 90s timeline

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Postby Shyster » Wed Jul 22, 2020 8:08 pm

SpaceX on Monday successfully launched the ANASIS-II South Korean military communications satellite. The first stage booster landed on the Just Read the Instructions droneship, and for the first time the GO Ms. Chief and GO Ms. Tree recovery ships each managed to catch one of the fairing halves. It's a little difficult to get a sense of the scale of those fairing halves, but each is 13 meters (42.6 feet) tall, 5 meters (16.3 feet) wide and weighs around 1,000 kilograms (2,205 pounds). They're huge, and a fairing set costs something like $10 million, so recovering them can save a lot of money.


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Postby Kaiser » Wed Jul 22, 2020 8:10 pm

Those fairings cost the same as their entire first successful launch.

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Postby RonnieFranchise » Wed Jul 22, 2020 11:37 pm

Saw the recovery ships in Morehead City a couple weeks ago.

Also finally was able to get enough of a Break in the clouds to see the comet tonight.

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Postby Shyster » Thu Jul 23, 2020 6:14 pm

Roscosmos today launched the Progress MS-15 resupply mission to the ISS on a fast-track approach. The Progress conducted a successful automatic docking two orbits and about 3.5 hours later, although per the tweet below a software glitch saw the Progress drift off course on the approach. The automatic-docking system was able to recover at the last second and successfully dock to the Pirs docking compartment without an abort or manual intervention. The Progress is carrying supplies, consumables, and new equipment, including waste containers, components for the station's water system, food, and clothing for the crew. The station will now have enough supplies on board to last well into 2021.

When this Progress departs in a couple months, it is supposed to take the Pirs docking compartment with it and act as a tug to pull the Pirs into the atmosphere to burn up. The Pirs docking compartment needs to be removed from the ISS to make room for Russia’s long-delayed Nauka science laboratory, which will be berthed to the same port to which Pirs is currently mated. The Nauka module will in turn have its own docking port to take the place of Pirs for future Progress and Soyuz missions. That plan depends on Nauka launch schedule and is subject to change, however, so Pirs might stick around longer.


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Postby Shyster » Wed Jul 29, 2020 6:01 pm


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Postby Shyster » Wed Jul 29, 2020 7:50 pm

The impending tropical storm will likely impact the return of the Dragon crew capsule from the ISS. I believe SpaceX and NASA were aiming for Sunday, which is around the time the storm is on track to be over Florida. Delays are not a problem, and there are options to come down off either the Gulf or Atlantic coasts, although the Atlantic coast off of Cape Canaveral is the preferred location. This will be the first crewed water landing in 45 years; the Russian and Chinese capsules both return over land, as will the Boeing Starliner.

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Postby Shyster » Thu Jul 30, 2020 5:13 pm

Successful launch today for the Mars 2020 mission, which is carrying the Perseverance rover and the Ingenuity helicopter drone. . The mission should touch town in the Jezero crater on Mars in February 2021. Scientists speculate that the Jezero crater was a lake about 3.9 billion to 3.5 billion years ago.


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Postby Shyster » Sat Aug 01, 2020 4:53 pm

Rocket Lab has announced that their investigation concluded that an “anomalous electrical connection” caused the failure of the July 4th Electron launch. The company's internal accident investigation board, working with the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, determined that a faulty connection led to the premature shutdown of the engine in the Electron’s second stage. Rocket Labs believes the connection was loose, which created electrical resistance that led to heating and thermal expansion of the electrical component, which eventually caused the connector to pull part. That caused a loss of power to the electric turbopumps that power the engine. Fortunately, the electrical loss did not affect the second stage’s instrumentation and telemetry, so Rocket Lab was able to get plenty of data even after the loss of power to the engine.

There are no plans to make major design changes to the Electron, and Rocket Lab plans to resume Electron launches from New Zealand in August. After that return-to-flight mission, Rocket Lab plans to perform its first launch from Launch Complex 2 at Wallops Island, Virginia.

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Postby tifosi77 » Sat Aug 01, 2020 8:04 pm

Successful launch today for the Mars 2020 mission, which is carrying the Perseverance rover and the Ingenuity helicopter drone. . The mission should touch town in the Jezero crater on Mars in February 2021.
That seems........ quick? I thought Earth-to-Mars was like an 18 month trip.

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Postby Kaiser » Sat Aug 01, 2020 8:07 pm

it takes between 6 and 8 months at the closest launch window, which comes around every 22 months.

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Postby Shyster » Sat Aug 01, 2020 8:28 pm

Scott Manley put out a video after the first Mars launch on the three missions headed to Mars and also on how the interplanetary transfer windows work. Unlike you sometimes hear, the launch window is not determined by when Mars and Earth are closest. It's the amount of delta-v required in order to send the spacecraft to the other planet and also to show down again once you get there. You can plot these on what are called "pork chop plots" (because they sort of look like pork chops), which is a concept I first ran into while playing Kerbal Space Program. Because the amount of fuel available is usually a major limiting factor, you usually want to pick the launch date and departure time that will require the least fuel and also meet other requirements, such as ease of communications.

This concept only applies for direct transfers—which are basically just Hohmann transfers. If something like gravity assists are needed (which is usually the case for when you want to get beyond Mars or closer to the Sun than Venus) then the timing becomes even more complicated.


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Postby Shyster » Sat Aug 01, 2020 8:33 pm

The SpaceX Crew Dragon has undocked from the ISS and is flying freely. It's currently in the process of conducting a series of thruster burns to slowly distance itself from the station. Splashdown will be tomorrow off the Florida panhandle, with the waters off Pensacola targeted as the primary site.


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Postby tifosi77 » Sun Aug 02, 2020 2:17 pm

15-ish minutes away from reentry, nosecone secure, things are looking good so far.

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Postby tifosi77 » Sun Aug 02, 2020 2:38 pm

Me: "I'd have given the mission the callsign 'Hoser'."

Mrs Tif: "I have not heard them say it 'Doug and Bob' once."

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Postby tifosi77 » Sun Aug 02, 2020 2:43 pm

Out of reentry blackout, first WB-57 IR images online.

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Postby tifosi77 » Sun Aug 02, 2020 2:49 pm

Everything is awesome.

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Postby Kaiser » Sun Aug 02, 2020 2:54 pm

Chicka chicka guess who's back

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Postby tifosi77 » Sun Aug 02, 2020 3:10 pm

Annnnnnd the recovery is being photobombed by boatloads of 'Florida Man' yahoos.

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Postby Shyster » Sun Aug 02, 2020 3:19 pm

:face:

Florida gonna Florida man.

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