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A supply rocket carrying cargo and experiments to the ISS exploded shortly after liftoff. NASA and Orbital Sciences (the company operating the rocket) have not released any information about what may have caused the incident, pending further investigation.
The mission was unmanned, and all personnel are safe and accounted for. The extent of the damage to the launch facility has not yet been determined.
Phil Plait, author of the Bad Astronomy blog speculates that the 60s-70s era refurbished Russian engines the vehicle used will come under heavy scrutiny.
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ISS Resupply Rocket Explodes Shortly after Launch
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ANN JILLIAN'S HAIR makes LONI ANDERSON'S HAIR look like RICARDO
MONTALBAN'S HAIR!
(Score: 5, Informative) by VLM on Wednesday October 29 2014, @12:30PM
Are there even any new rocket designs or are we recycling old stuff from the "golden Age of Space Exploration"?
From a non-technical non-mechanic non-engineer point of view, cars have either not changed since the 50s or are unimaginably different. So your question has no real answer, or rephrased you can pick an answer and get plenty of anecdotal evidence.
From being a space fan since before the shuttle (barely), engine chamber pressures never went above 1000 psi pre-SSME and post-SSME its still unusual but hardly the brick wall it once was. Another interesting aspect of the SSME program was it basically pushed technology to and beyond the limits at the time, which was highly unusual. maybe a first. Ever since the V-2 simplicity and reliability were the key metrics while the SSME was a pure performance hot rod, never really been tried as a dev strategy before for engines. Unsurprisingly it was an expensive PITA that took decades to optimize. Its still a hell of a hot rod engine today, just turns out that "commuter cars" don't want or need hot rod engines. Although the R+D done for the hot rod is slightly useful for the commuter car engine.
Materials sciences have improved. Basic metallurgy with alloys like Li-Al that were not out of the lab until at least the 80s (at least not in public, anyway) and composites and adhesive tech (again, what went on in area 51 with the F117 and stuff that's still classified doesn't really matter).
Machining technology has gone thru a bit of a revolution. I would imagine some poor SOB made each turbopump impeller by hand on a manual milling machine in the 60s. Now you just download gcode from the CAM program and the machining center roars for a couple hours and assuming no misteaks, magically a pump impeller appears.
This kind of stuff is where general public quotes like "we couldn't build a Saturn 5 F1 main engine today, even if we wanted to". Its Exactly like telling a 2014 combine harvester factory to churn out a couple horse powered threshing machines. They'll be all like "WTF we don't even have woodworking tools in this factory anymore, and todays crop of engineers have no idea how to design horse powered machinery". It would be a hell of a lot cheaper to build a modern engine than to redevelop all the antique tools and techniques to make a F1. Here's another example... believe it or not, technology was so crude in the 60s that the best way to make lunar lander crew cabin parts as light was possible was chemically etching sheets of metal. Holy F. Now a days you'd make something out of a composite thats lighter and stronger and stiffer and cheaper. So yeah we can't make a 1969 model lunar lander, but why you'd want to is a mystery when even a half ass attempt at a 2014 lander would outperform it and be safer and be more reliable and be cheaper.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by LoRdTAW on Wednesday October 29 2014, @01:10PM
You would be surprised how far back machining automation goes. In the 1800's they used mechanical automation using cams, gers, chains and belts. Here is a chain making machine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q18V5oq5b-g [youtube.com]. That design is easily a hundred years old, perhaps even older. I remember seeing one on how its made and it is awesome to see nothing but a spinning shaft will all sorts of cams gears and chains all timed together to orchestrate the simple operation of making chain. This was done for many other operations including turning(lathe) and milling. I grew up in a machine shop and my grandfather was a master tool and die maker who did a lot of press work and my father ran a machine shop with 5 CNC centers (3 turning, 2 vertical mill). Both businesses under the same roof. My grandfather always disliked CNC as it was his belief that the precision and repeatability was less than that of a proper mechanical cam programmed machining center. He came from a time when machine programs were a bunch of cams and gears hung on the wall in groups according to the job.
CNC started back in the 40's/50's too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_numerical_control#Earlier_forms_of_automation [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 1) by WillAdams on Wednesday October 29 2014, @03:14PM
I began a timeline for CNC when researching a presentation at the local library:
http://www.shapeoko.com/wiki/index.php/CNC_History [shapeoko.com]
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Wednesday October 29 2014, @05:14PM
You know I forgot that the loom was one of the first truly automated machines. Funny how the punch card lasted as long as it did in terms of a storage medium for programs.
I remember the old CNC machines we had had punch tape readers. My father would hand write the programs and send them out to be punched onto tape. We used to have a carousel in the main office with dozens of square plastic tubes each with a program tape inside. The tubes had a job name, number and manufacturer. Then by the late 80's he moved to all serial lines for DNC. He had a switch box in his office next to his PC that he could select one of four machines, two sharing a serial line since they were right next to eachother. Long serial cables ran to the shop floor from his desk and he could upload a program right from his desk. During that phase he moved to CAD/CAM.
(Score: 3, Informative) by mcgrew on Wednesday October 29 2014, @01:45PM
I guess I'm not moderating in this thread, because I must point out that you're dead wrong about cars. You were apparently not alive in the 1950s and also know little about automotive technology.
In the 1950s, production automobiles had no seat belts, air bags, disk brakes, electronic ignition, or fuel injectors. There were no front wheel drive vehicles. Cars had a quarter or less the mileage, and usually lasted less than five years without falling apart. Windows had cranks rather than motors. Cars had no air conditioning. Their radios had vacuum tubes. There was no such thing as cruise control or remote locking and unlocking.
The fact is, little about today's cars is anything at all like a 1950s car. The rest of your comment was accurate, and it applies to cars as well as spacecraft.
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 3, Informative) by VLM on Wednesday October 29 2014, @02:37PM
Yeah but those are all detail / tech / mechanic / under the hood / economic things. The right pedal is still the accelerator, the steering wheel does its thing, most cars still use physical keys, they burn gas from a gas pump, oil lube, anti-freeze cooled, two seats in front and two in back and a trunk behind that and an engine in the front. Mostly made out of good old steel. Radios are still the highest tech most complicated user interface in the car. They still leak weird fluids on your garage floor occasionally. Its not really all that different.
You do have a point with popularity of manual transmission. I have maybe 50 miles experience with a manual and that puts me ahead of maybe 95% of the driving population.
I could contrast cars with bigger UI changes... phones, computers, TVs and attached devices (cable boxes, video games, streaming boxes)... Conceptually a late 1950s dude introduced to a OTA TV could probably tune in channel 4 just like the old days, but good luck getting him set up with netflix and a streaming box, that would be entertaining to watch.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 15 2014, @07:43PM
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(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday October 29 2014, @03:00PM
Windows had cranks rather than motors. Cars had no air conditioning. Their radios had vacuum tubes. There was no such thing as cruise control or remote locking and unlocking.
Hey, I have a 2009 Corolla with only one of those things (A/C). (Okay, the radio probably doesn't have vacuum tubes either.)
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 1) by Darth Turbogeek on Wednesday October 29 2014, @08:47PM
Just being a bit pedantic here - the Mini came out in 1959 and Citroen have had FWD since the at least the 30's. FWD was very much a thing in the 1950's,
Actually, the things that didn't exist in the 50's was computer powered EFI, and remote locking. The rest actually did, just not in say your average GM car - absolutely everything else did exist. What has happened is that all of the various tech has merged into one design. Point to something on a car that is not ECU controlled, I can almost certainly point to it's existence and even beginning to get into mainstream. So to be honest, you arent right.
Now if you said Body control computers, ECU's and the like, I'd agree. But the mechanicals? Not by a long shot.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Kymation on Wednesday October 29 2014, @05:17PM
When I started on a new job back in 1975, I was shown the company's first CNC machine. It was being sold as scrap. The controlling "computer" was two racks full of relays and delay lines.
They had a whole row of newer CNC machines, most of them with DEC PDP controllers. Other than the electronics, they were pretty much indistinguishable from modern machines.
Oh, and turbopump impellers were not made by hand. Each impeller blade was individually manufactured and tested, then the pump assembled and tested. Three-quarters of the impeller blades failed the test. The margin of safety was zero. It took us forever to build a turbopump that didn't blow up during testing.
I should probably have mentioned that my new job was at Rocketdyne, where they were building the SSME. Or trying to; as I mentioned, they blew up a lot. I am still amazed that we didn't blow up any engines in a live shuttle launch.