Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Monday January 20 2020, @09:23PM   Printer-friendly
from the big-kaboom dept.

SpaceX completed the last big test of its crew capsule before launching astronauts in the next few months, mimicking an emergency escape shortly after liftoff Sunday.

No one was aboard for the wild ride in the skies above Cape Canaveral, just two mannequins.

A Falcon 9 rocket blasted off as normal, but just over a minute into its capsule catapulted off the top 12 miles (20 kilometers) above the Atlantic. Powerful thrusters on the capsule propelled it up and out of harm's way, as the rocket engines deliberately shut down and the booster tumbled out of control and exploded in a giant fireball.

The capsule reached an altitude of about 27 miles (44 kilometers) before parachuting into the ocean just offshore to bring the nine-minute test flight to a close and pave the way for two NASA astronauts to climb aboard next time.

Everything appeared to go well despite the choppy seas and overcast skies. Within minutes, a recovery ship was alongside the capsule and preparing to pull it from the water.

"I'm super fired up," Elon Musk, the company's founder and chief executive, said at a news conference. "It's just going to be wonderful to get astronauts back into orbit from American soil after almost a decade of not being able to do so. That's just super exciting."

NASA astronauts have not launched from the U.S. since 2011 when the space shuttle program ended.

[...] Last month, meanwhile, Boeing's Starliner crew capsule ended up in the wrong orbit on its first test flight and had to skip the space station. The previous month, only two of the Starliner's three parachutes deployed during a launch abort test.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 3, Informative) by deimtee on Tuesday January 21 2020, @10:56PM (2 children)

    by deimtee (3272) on Tuesday January 21 2020, @10:56PM (#946570) Journal

    The beam isn't concentrated enough to hurt you at ground level. The collection area gets about 400 w/m2, that's about one third the power of sunlight.
    A 10GW station would have a collection area of 6 km diameter. The beam has to travel from GEO, even keeping it to 6km beam width is going to require good focusing. Turning it into a death ray just isn't possible.

    The main advantages are 24/7 availability and you can use a cheap wire grid with rectifiers at the intersections to collect it. Stick the grid up on poles and you can graze animals or grow crops under it.

    --
    If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +1  
       Informative=1, Total=1
    Extra 'Informative' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   3  
  • (Score: 3, Informative) by ElizabethGreene on Tuesday January 21 2020, @11:38PM (1 child)

    by ElizabethGreene (6748) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday January 21 2020, @11:38PM (#946592) Journal

    A couple of numbers put this into perspective.

    The land based receiver for a 10GW orbital solar power station is about 27km2. That is 6km diameter as parent said.
    For comparison, a 1 MW terrestrial PV plant is about a hectare, 0.01km2. Scaling that up to 10GW is about 100km2 of just PV panels, ignoring the other infrastructure. The big win isn't from the space though. It's from the uptime. The Terran panels lose roughly 12 hours a day from the rotation of the Earth. An orbital station loses less than an hour and a half.

    We'll need to field test the receivers to see if we can use them as nature parks or if they end up as barren desertified wastelands. The projections lean toward the former, but I want to see it before I believe it.

    • (Score: 2) by deimtee on Wednesday January 22 2020, @01:51AM

      by deimtee (3272) on Wednesday January 22 2020, @01:51AM (#946620) Journal

      Few points.
      The eclipses are not an everyday thing. If the SPS's are in GEO then their orbit is inclined at 23° to the ecliptic. The eclipses only happen through two short periods twice a year - spring / autumn equinoxes - and they last about 20 minutes.

      Terran panels lose a lot more than 12 hours a day. Depending on location and climate terran panels produce a maximum of about 8 hours a day equivalent. Most of the time it is less than six.

      IMHO if the land under your receiver is unusable then your receiver is obviously missing too much energy.

      --
      If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.