Photo
That's a pretty sweet photo!
Elon Musk's private spaceflight company SpaceX successfully launched its unmanned, mouse-laden Dragon 'craft in the early hours of this morning. The commercial cargo ship is carrying 2.5 tons of supplies destined for the International Space Station, NASA said. SpaceX rocket lifts off from Cape Canaveral. Image credit: NASA …
Good. Two major advantages.
1) They'll finally be able to 3D print things enclosing a vacuum, such as vacuum tubes or barometers. Obviously they'd need to leave the ISS door ajar during this procedure, and make other arrangements for breathing - details, details... Sales of 3D Printed in Spaaaace vacuum tubes to discerning audiophiles are expected to reach $3.2 Billion, nearly six such tubes, by October.
2) In zero g, they'll finally be able to 3D print little things that are floating inside other slightly larger things, without the inner unsuspended part falling down while being printed. There may be minor issues with the unsupported middle bit drifting during the printing process, but we mustn't let such trivial practicalities obstruct our view of the future.
Such 3D Printers in Space are the future!! Someday very soon, perhaps by January 2015, everything we buy, everything!!, will be custom manufactured by 3D Printers in Earth orbit.
This message brought to you by the 3D Printer Hyperbolic Claims Association, a leading source of 3D Printing information.
Sales of 3D Printed in Spaaaace vacuum tubes to discerning audiophiles are expected to reach $3.2 Billion, nearly six such tubes, by October.
JeffyPoooh,
You may mock, but there's a huge difference. The vacuum in space is analogue, whereas the artificial vacuums created in machines on earth are inferior digital. Space-vacuum sounds much warmer with infintely better sonic spacing (if you'll pardon the pun).
Just because you can't hear the difference, that doesn't mean that those of us with properly trained ears and set up systems can't.
I'd also imagine that space is the ideal place to manufacture oxygen free cables.
Marvel's Fantastic Four are about to be pushed out by Musk's Mutant Mice, after being exposed to cosmic rays there should be a new race of mutant hybridised mice that can print stretchy, invisible, supertough, flaming objects.
The ISS will become their orbiting base. Twenty mice allows for failures and other properties.
More than a dozen comments, and no one asked if two of those twenty were Frankie and Benji? Are y'all actually waiting for the dolphins to do a double-backwards-somersault through a hoop whilst whistling the "Star Spangled Banner" before acknowledging what it means when MICE start fleeing the planet en masse?
WTF? Doing it in decimal is silly -- at least get rid of the imperial measure.
Otherwise, if you have to stick with an outdated system, say what it really is: 57 feet, 8 6/16th inches (nearly!). See how stupid that is?
Is this just to placate the Americans who come on this site who don't know what metric means? (And, come to that, the UKIP-voting nob-eds that think pounds and ounces are still a good idea?)
"WTF? Doing it in decimal is silly -- at least get rid of the imperial measure.
Tell that to the Americans. AFAIK they are one of only two countries in the world with the Imperial system (the proper name for this system of unit, which Americans don't seem to like it being called for some reason).
The other is some pestilential hell hole in Africa.
"What are the four towers around the launchpad? They look like mobile phone towers but I doubt the mice needed really good reception in the minutes before launch."
AFAIK they are lightning conductors. I think they have cables strung between them to attract away any lightning bolts in case of thunder during the launch period.
They're water towers for the sound suppression system - those jets of water that spray over the flame trench, they come from here. By muffling the thunderous acoustic battering of the engine somewhat, they prevent damage to the rocket and the pad.
Also, they're lightning rods.
It really lit up the sky. The crickets and frogs went nearly silent down for about a minute after it got above my local horizon, and then quieted again (only a bit) when the thunder arrived a few minutes later.
The Falcon 9 is different than other launches I've seen from the Cape. It has a bright orange flame (kerosene) without all the heavy smoke of solid boosters or the blue flame of hydrogen launches. However, I was able to observe a hint of a comet-like coma around the second stage from the highly expanded exhaust. I haven't seen that in a day launch.
After the second stage dwindled to a star (about 4 minutes into the flight), I switched to teh interwebs and watched SpaceX's streaming video to see if the flight finished alright. (Too many launchers have stage separation, faring separation, or upper stage engine problems to stop watching after the first few minutes.) After a while, the feed started weaving in glimpses from the (I think) liquid oxygen tank between the visual and IR monitoring of the second stage engine. There was almost no sloshing, which surprised me - all the anti-slosh baffles included in propellant tank designs led me to assume rocket fuel splashed all over during a launch. Nope, the surface just quivered like a tray of water on a bass speaker. Only when the engine cut off did the LOX float everywhere.
Interesting launch, glad I was in town to catch it.
There were plans to control the stage and manouvure it but it was not equiped with legs so I think a landing test was not being considered for this flight. Bear in mind the first time they tried to land a stage it had no legs and went into a spin that destroyed it. It was thought at he time that the legs would act as fins to stabilise the rocket during it's descent and this seems to have been borne out in the subsequent attempts.
Rather than just packing a couple of mice and waiting a few weeks, they actually count them up beforehand. Saves loads of prepackaged, sterilized mouse food. And you'll know where to look for them (and how many of them to look for, and after). Smart people.
The Russian experiment with sex-crazed Geckos failed frozenly!
Do the Americans think they can outsex the Russians using warm-blooded horny little buggers called Mickey, Minnie et al?
Heaven help the Space Station if they get loose - or are they all infertile or the same sex?