#Rocketry

[supplyside]

Soyuz

[prokopetz]

To be fair, a lot of goofy-sounding rocketry/aerospace terminology has a legitimate nomenclatural role beyond just being silly euphemisms.

"Unplanned rapid disassembly", for example, exists as the necessary counterpart to planned rapid disassembly: sometimes a rocket is legitimately supposed to fall apart or blow up, so you need a specific term to emphasise that it wasn't supposed to do that.

Similarly, "lithobraking" was coined by analogy with aerobraking (shedding velocity via atmospheric friction) and hydrobraking (shedding velocity by landing in water), and it does have some intentional applications; the Mars Pathfinder probe, for example, was deliberately crashed into the Martian surface while surrounded by giant airbags, and reportedly bounced at least 15 times before coming to rest.

(That said, aerospace engineers absolutely do use these terms humorously as well, because engineers are just Like That.)

[apoapsls]

*60s Boeing voice* have you ever considered six AJ-260s as a first stage I insist there are no possible engineering problems that could come out of using six AJ-260s as a first stage

[supplyside]

Saturn V

[foone]

on the one hand, rocketry is really hard and it takes a lot of experimentation to nail down a rocket design, this is why we launch so many rocket prototypes, and a good rocket design can stick around for decades because it's proven. like, the russians have launched 430 protons because it WORKS, and even that gold-standard rocket has blown up or failed to make orbit like 50 times. you really can't avoid just having to occasionally blow up a rocket because it turns out something went wrong and in a way you didn't expect, in a way you won't expect until you try to launch it and it goes wrong. That's why you have range officers, after all. They're in a room with a big red button labeled "EXPLODE THAT SHIT" and they slam it the instant the rocket goes wrong in any way, because otherwise you have a missile deciding to go somewhere you can't control, and it's way better to blow your rocket up in mid-air than to have a couple thousand pounds of fuel slam into an apartment block or school for orphaned puppies. rocketry is hard, and the starship is clearly undergoing a rapid development cycle where they're throwing tons of money at it to try and get it working FAST, by building and blowing up a bunch of rockets, rather than doing all the testing on the ground to save money. if they have the money to toss at it (and reportedly the US military is funding this project, and they have some fucking deep project) then it's an effective and fast way to build a rocket. NASA doesn't do that, because they can't. They don't have the money. They have to do cheaper testing methods because they can't afford to just throw millions of dollars away with every failed test.

but on the other hand, it is absolutely hilarious when elon musk's big rocket goes kaboom, because LOL.

[thererisesaredstar]

"Your life must never be plain. You must live with passion!" -Sergei Korolev (1979)

[happybirthday-unusannus]

Rocket launch from Saturday :)

[edwhiteandblue]

September 3, 1917: Captain Robert Truax is born

Robert Traux (1917 - 2010) was an American rocketeer best known for designing the Sea Dragon, the largest rocket ever conceived. Standing a whopping 490 feet (150 meters) tall, it was a proposed two stage, sea-launched orbital super heavy-lift vehicle.

Read more about Sea Dragon here!

[cosmic-perspective]

For those interested in the life of me…

I also like to build model rockets, and today I finished my 4” LOC Goblin. It’s themed after a Nuka Cola Quantum pop bottle from the videogame series Fallout. And yes, the rocket glows just like the irradiated pop!

Now to pack everything up, get a final weight, run a final sim, then drill the motor to set the delay. I present the “Quantum” rocket. Trying for my L1 HPR certification here in a few weeks time.

Wish me and the “Quantum” good luck! If it survives I can use it for my L2 cert down the road. 😬🚀

[gameraboy2]

Estes Model Rocketry, 1977 catalog

[science70]

"Launch Controller", Countdown #45, 25 December 1971.

[void-thing]

BIG DAY FOR SPACE NERDS

THANK YOU MIKU FOR YOUR CONTRIBUTION TO HUMANITY

[astronotmovie]

Standing tall. The Saturn V rocket stands at Launch Pad 39A in preparation for Apollo 11, July 1969. The 363-foot tall rocket was flown between 1967-73. It launched 9 crewed flights to the moon & also Skylab, the 1st 🇺🇸 space station. As of this date, it remains the only rocket to carry humans beyond low earth orbit.

[swedebeast]

So, visiting the parents over the weekend, and after listening to the car radio pops shared an anecdote from his childhood about small rockets, and how some of his classmates used to build rockets as a hobby in 1960's Sweden - jut one or two meter long tubes with fins.

But one of the kids, about 15 years old, decided to ask a professional. So he sent a letter to Werner from Braun in America, at the height of the Space Race. He doesn't get a letter back...

... but about two months later, he instead gets a centimeter thick bundle of instructions and pointers from, and written by, Werner von Braun himself. The kids spend the next two days skipping out on school, and the next rocket they made reached one kilometer up to the sky, and got buried in the ground by a whole meter.

[supplyside]

Starship

[thererisesaredstar]

Haolong cargo space plane unveiled at Zhuhai Airshow (2024)