Messiah: Halleluiah!!

 art, awesomeness, models, news, Nuclear Pulse Propulsion, nukes, rockets, science fiction, spacecraft  6 Responses »
Apr 172015
 

Finally done modelling this thing. Took long enough!

2015-04-17d 2015-04-17c 2015-04-17b 2015-04-17a

The multiview layout drawing generated from the model would take a good deal of effort to clean up proper, but it’s needed for the “Nuclear Pulse Propulsion” book. Now that the model is very nearly complete (I need to convert each part, individually, into a separate STL file… bleah), I can devote more time to other stuff, including potentially getting back to work on NPP. But before I let the Messiah go entirely… anyone interested in large format blueprints based on the layout drawings?2015-04-17h

 Posted by at 1:34 am

M-o-o-n, that spells “moon”

 art, awesomeness, news, photography, science, spacecraft  5 Responses »
Apr 162015
 

The USGS has recently released new maps of the moon based on Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter data, both photographic and radar altimetry. They are things of beauty, and only 472 megabytes!

Image Mosaic and Topographic Map of the Moon

I think I might try to coax the rectangular portion out just on its own and have it printed off in large format. That’d look spectacular.

 Posted by at 10:55 am

Falcon 9 Landing Video

 AARRRGH, Hmm..., news, rockets, spacecraft, youtube  21 Responses »
Apr 152015
 

Taken from a bit of a distance, this seems to show the vehicle leaning pretty substantially as it lands. Looks a lot like the first landing attempt. Balancing that pencil seems to be a bit of a challenge.

I wonder if a wider, shorter, *squatter* booster would have made sense. Shape it like the old Phoenix design, the ROMBUS, the Nexus. Then tipping over wouldn’t be nearly the concern, though drag would be much higher.

 Posted by at 2:55 am

Falcon 9 Landing: Oooh, so close…

 AARRRGH, awesomeness, blather, history, Hmm..., news, rockets, spacecraft  18 Responses »
Apr 142015
 

Launch was great, landing was great. *Sticking* the landing… well, not so great.

Well, I guess now the program will be put on hold, Congress will get involved, there’ll be years of hearings and political posturing before another attempt is made… oh, wait. No, this is a private effort. Never mind, they’ll fly again in a month.

Here’s the cool thing: Unless the barge was trashed (I have no data on that)… NOTHING WAS LOST. It was an entirely successful launch! Even though the first stage booster was destroyed on landing… it was gonna get lost *anyway* if they didn’t try to recover it. So…w ell, ok, maybe they lost the cost of the landing gear, but that’s not exactly a lot.

Were this a NASA vehicle, the *landing* would have been the metric by which the launch was measured. Like if a VentureStar went into orbit, delivered its payload to the ISS, re-entered, and then pancaked onto the runway when the landing gear failed to lock. And then the program would be terminated.

 

 Posted by at 2:07 pm
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