Dragon 2

[woodenhead]

13 hours ago, Ozexpatriate said:

As you suggest, there's no conspiracy to hide the past and origins of US rocketry.

 

Your comments made me think of an alternative reason that there's not a clear narrative in most easily accessible information sources. I don't think it's choreographed. I think it is because the story is very complicated.

 

I don't disagree, it's complicated on many levels.

 

And the Americans and Russians and everyone else who has gotten into space would have done so eventually, perhaps like many things all the war did was accelerate the speed it got there.  Rockets and Nuclear had all sorts of peaceful uses but it takes a military need to catapult something into reality, the Shuttle started with the Air Force too.

 

https://history.nasa.gov/sts1/pdfs/explore.pdf

 

I'd also forgotten about this craft - on it's 12 flight too.  SpaceX feel like the only team in town right now above even Nasa, but there are a whole host of companies developing technology.  Sadly, in the comments for this rocket there are a lot of comments about what it looks like, in fact so much so that it drowns out any sensible commenting, trolls perhaps.  They clearly also haven't invested so much in the marketing as SpaceX, I think they used an iphone for the camera - single camera view all the way up and all the way down.

 

 

 

[rockershovel]

These things never happen in isolation.

 

In the later 17th and 18th Century, it was the development of greatly improved sailing ship technology that led to the possibility of shipping marketable products over intercontinental distances, or transporting and supplying armies and navies over comparable distances, and navigating well enough to find your way there and back. 

 

In the 19th Century, it was the development of steam power, the telegraph, the railway and the first attempts at electricity. Further improvements to navigation led to the Race To The Poles. 

 

In the 20th Century, internal combustion power, viable electric power, flight and telecommunications and ultimately, nuclear power. By the 1940s all the main powers were working on rocketry, to varying extents. However the Germans definitely led the race to produce consistently high quality engineering. The Japanese understood this and made great efforts to recruit people from the German automotive and aviation industry, abandoning their British and American based systems (with the notable exception of the production engineering techniques they had learnt from Detroit). 

 

I don’t doubt that the Americans would have made it into space, sooner or later; but without Von Braun’s input as to the feasibility of the rocketry required for the moonshot, I doubt that this would have become a priority. Near Earth Orbit is the commercial zone, in terms of applications like GPS and telecoms. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Ozexpatriate]

2 hours ago, rockershovel said:

In the later 17th and 18th Century, it was the development of greatly improved sailing ship technology that led to the possibility of shipping marketable products over intercontinental distances, or transporting and supplying armies and navies over comparable distances, and navigating well enough to find your way there and back.

Besides Harrison's chronometer (or similar), copper bottoms and the use of foodstuffs with vitamin C like citrus or sauerkraut, to which "greatly improved 17th or 18th century sailing technology" do you refer? (All of these were rapidly adopted in the second half of the 18th century.)

 

By 1760, Euro-centric conflict had already grown global.

[Reorte]

18 minutes ago, Ozexpatriate said:

Besides Harrison's chronometer (or similar), copper bottoms and the use of foodstuffs with vitamin C like citrus or sauerkraut, to which "greatly improved 17th or 18th century sailing technology" do you refer? (All of these were rapidly adopted in the second half of the 18th century.)

 

By 1760, Euro-centric conflict had already grown global.

 

The development of the three masted ship rig maybe? And the techniques to build ships of that size routinely? Just a guess though, I don't know just what impact that would've made (must've been some to have developed though).

[Ozexpatriate]

5 hours ago, woodenhead said:

I'd also forgotten about this craft ...

I wouldn't ignore Jeff Bezos as the investor in Blue Origin. Elon Musk is certainly wealthy, but Jeff Bezos is much more so.

 

Both remain very involved in their primary business (Amazon for Bezos and Tesla for Musk) but I suspect Bezos remains as interested in Blue Origin as a "passion project" as Musk is in SpaceX.

[woodenhead]

1 hour ago, Ozexpatriate said:

I wouldn't ignore Jeff Bezos as the investor in Blue Origin. Elon Musk is certainly wealthy, but Jeff Bezos is much more so.

 

Both remain very involved in their primary business (Amazon for Bezos and Tesla for Musk) but I suspect Bezos remains as interested in Blue Origin as a "passion project" as Musk is in SpaceX.

and Jeff is on the way to the moon...https://www.blueorigin.com/news/nasa-selects-blue-origin-national-team-to-return-humans-to-the-moon

[rockershovel]

2 hours ago, Ozexpatriate said:

Besides Harrison's chronometer (or similar), copper bottoms and the use of foodstuffs with vitamin C like citrus or sauerkraut, to which "greatly improved 17th or 18th century sailing technology" do you refer? (All of these were rapidly adopted in the second half of the 18th century.)

 

By 1760, Euro-centric conflict had already grown global.

 

The Dutch fluyt, apparently https://www.britannica.com/technology/ship/17th-century-developments. leading to the East Indiaman 

 

I had based the original comment on the fact that the trade to East and West had so expanded, and supporting fleets developed that (as someone else has already pointed out) European nations were able to carry out commercial and military operations on a global scale by 1756, the outbreak of the Seven Years War. 

 

Piracy seems to have reflected this, becoming established by 1650 and following trends in maritime development https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Age_of_Piracy

[rockershovel]

32 minutes ago, woodenhead said:

and Jeff is on the way to the moon...https://www.blueorigin.com/news/nasa-selects-blue-origin-national-team-to-return-humans-to-the-moon

 

So, the next American on the moon will be left behind the dustbin by s Bulgarian driving a ten-year-old Ford Van? 

[woodenhead]

6 minutes ago, rockershovel said:

 

So, the next American on the moon will be left behind the dustbin by s Bulgarian driving a ten-year-old Ford Van? 

Or maybe the various astronauts will arrive on different days despite being dispatched on the same day.

[Ozexpatriate]

4 hours ago, rockershovel said:

So, the next American on the moon will be left behind the dustbin by s Bulgarian driving a ten-year-old Ford Van? 

If NASA and Boeing get their act together it will likely be a woman from the Artemis Program. It's late, over budget, etc.

[newbryford]

4 hours ago, woodenhead said:

Or maybe the various astronauts will arrive on different days despite being dispatched on the same day.

 

I can imagine (some, not all) courier delivery drivers loving a lunar delivery.

They can lob it further over a higher fence.........................

[62613]

22 hours ago, Reorte said:

 

The development of the three masted ship rig maybe? And the techniques to build ships of that size routinely? Just a guess though, I don't know just what impact that would've made (must've been some to have developed though).

We'd had the three-masted rig for at least a hundred years by the 18th century; in fact, most vessels still had two (brigs and brigantines).

 

[Reorte]

50 minutes ago, 62613 said:

We'd had the three-masted rig for at least a hundred years by the 18th century; in fact, most vessels still had two (brigs and brigantines).

 

The two masted ones were the smaller vessels, larger helped the long-distance trade. I was thinking of the full three masted ship rig because I think it was around then it appeared, with earlier three masted vessels not having a square rigged mizzen, unlike the carracks and galleons that came before them. But for all I know that might've been just a refinement, with the earlier ships being the real development, just with a delay for the exploration and trade routes to get established.

[rockershovel]

2 hours ago, Reorte said:

 

The two masted ones were the smaller vessels, larger helped the long-distance trade. I was thinking of the full three masted ship rig because I think it was around then it appeared, with earlier three masted vessels not having a square rigged mizzen, unlike the carracks and galleons that came before them. But for all I know that might've been just a refinement, with the earlier ships being the real development, just with a delay for the exploration and trade routes to get established.

 

It’s not just the masts, but the overall hull design that made the difference. The Fluyt was the first design to really offer a seaworthy ship with a worthwhile hold capacity. 

[newbryford]

Just watching the latest launch procedures.

 

The crew have just been asked to put away the tablet they were "playing on" before final fuelling begins.

It almost sounded like kids being told off!

 

 

 

[Jeff Smith]

Yes, just watching the NASA channel, the commentators are very amateurish but many are specialists not journalists so the information is spot on.

 

T-16

 

[Barry Ten]

T -5

[Jeff Smith]

Was able to see it from my house in Tampa.....up to 1st stage separation, then it disappeared to the East.....