[ExI] musk catches one

[Darin Sunley]

The commies were trying to do 30+ engines with strictly analog plumbing,
not to mention QA standards somewhere between "ok" and "yikes".

I strongly suspect there's a fair bit of electronics managing those engines
that the Russians couldn't even have imagined at the time.

The lesson of SpaceX, more than anything else, is that real-time
high-powered computers can make systems controls do almost anything.

On Sun, Oct 13, 2024 at 1:42 PM spike jones via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Keith Henson <hkeithhenson at gmail.com>
> Sent: Sunday, 13 October, 2024 12:19 PM
> To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
> Cc: spike at rainier66.com
> Subject: Re: [ExI] musk catches one
>
> >...Elon does not like power satellites, but he is enabling them.
>
> Keith
>
> >...PS  Catching the rocket with arms is new, but everyone who read SF
> long ago knew that rockets should land tail first.
>
>
>
>
>
> The control system guys were talking about it back in the long time agos
> too.  There were a lotta papers on it at the control freak conferences: a
> first stage with all those expensive boosters could be recovered that way,
> and might result in so little damage, the same first stage could be fueled
> up and fired again without extensive rework.
>
> Elon's multiple booster approach (33 methane burners) in the Starship
> turned out to be the right answer as well.  The commies went down that
> road, while NASA went for the five biggies instead.  That the 33 motors
> approach works best is a surprise to me, but if you do the reliability
> numbers, it is the way to go for private industry and profit-driven launch
> technology.
>
> Keith is this a great time to be alive or what?
>
> spike
>
>
>
>
>
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