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00:34
hey @geoffc , NSF L2 forum guy spotted on the site. do you deserve props for that?
1
A: What is the new horizontal test stand at SpaceX's McGregor, TX facility meant to test?

T.J. TarazevitsThe new test stand is for the full Falcon Heavy. Every merlin is tested on the stand before being combined into a full F9 stage. It is reasonable to extrapolate this out to the three core FHeavy. The benefits of a 3 core test are unclear. The Falcon Heavy was planned to have cross feed capability...

 
2 hours later…
02:28
@briligg I think he meant 2 URL limit per post? Maybe for low rep folk? Not NSF L2. Or how did you know he is NSF L2 member?
The links go there. Is there a limit like that for new users? didn't know that.
anyhow, he identified his home as r/SpaceX in response.
he's tearing up the road with SpaceX answers
02:45
r/Spacex is a sub-Reddit. I am not a Reddit fan.
oh that's what it is. I don't do Reddit either but snippets i've seen have been sometimes amazing.
03:14
Reddit is like looking through a garbage dump. It's just trash everywhere you look, but every once in a while you find a microwave that still works and you wonder why it's there.
3
 
1 hour later…
04:41
@briligg @Mark Adler They guy in charge of landing big stuff on Mars? The best job description since Wernher von Braun. I'm interested in astronomy and spaceflight because I like to learn how intelligent people solve hard problems. I didn't follow my heart but instead got a master in business and economics, so I don't get to see any of that in my professional life.
05:33
@LocalFluff He does have an amazing job.
Wernher von Braun's job title is pretty unbeatable though. Nazi death-squad officer-turned most brilliant rocket scientist in history.
He was extremely against the violence and atrocities however, he protested against them vehemently. (Or so he said.)
06:16
@duzzy That was brilliant :')
06:29
@VedantChandra Maybe not so awesome right now with overtime hours piling up. We'll hear from him later today, it seems: blogs.nasa.gov/ldsd/2015/06/08/…
The flying saucer guy!
On LSD.
06:43
Someone with the necessary privileges please create an event on 1 p.m. EDT/7a.m., Tuesday, June 9 with the title, "NASA to Hold Briefing to Discuss Status of ‘Flying Saucer’ Test". Link to presser: nasa.gov/newsaudio
 
8 hours later…
14:55
@BrianTompsett-汤莱恩 < i'm curious about these characters after your name. What are they?
@briligg It's my name in Mandarin. "Tang Laien" It was an experiment that failed - I wanted to see if I could have a different profile on chinese.stackexchange.com from other sites but it updates the all-site profile. Now it won't let me change it back for 30 days. I read a posting in meta.SE that implied I could show different profiles. I must have read that wrong.
Hm. So how is Tang Laien Brian Tompsett?
@briligg Cannot be answered without long explanations. Chinese is not a phonetic language so it is not possible to write western names that have phonemes different from chinese in chinese characters. Even if your name was writeable in chinese characters culturally they would not recognise it as a name. Chinese names have a specific syntax, and family names must be taken from a fixed set of name characters. (i.e. No new family names can be created).
I had a feeling it wouldn't be simple, but i had to ask.
@briligg So a westerner must have a specific chinese name when they are mentioned in spoken or write chinese. If you let a translator do it for you they "make up" a name for you. Sometimes this is inappropriate or quite rude. The only way to ensure you have a reasonable name when writing/speaking chinese is to choose one yourself
15:05
How did you choose them?
@briligg Took me two years of work with a Chinese native speaker to get the right name in sound and in characters. "Tang" in close in pronunciation to the first Syllable of my family name. "Tom". "laien" sounds like "Brian" with a chinese accept. It also translates into a name on google translate, and the characters are the same as used by Cho EnLai a famous chinese leader, and hence would be auspicious
@briligg ... but thanks for asking ...
:D well, it's interesting...
@BrianTompsett-汤莱恩 yeah, i get Tom Ryan when i plug the characters into google translate. Sounds like a movie star name.
@briligg Yup. If someone called out is "Tom Ryan" here in a chinese accent it might sound like me. Clever eh?
15:38
posted on June 09, 2015

Like most moons in the solar system, Tethys is covered by impact craters. Some craters bear witness to incredibly violent events, such as the crater Odysseus (seen here at the right of the image). The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on April 11, 2015.

 
5 hours later…
20:21
ASDS OCISLY is approaching the Canal entrance. NSF Stalkers are on the web cams trying to get a glimpse.
 
2 hours later…
22:51
@VedantChandra No, the test 2 SIAD was the same size as for test 1. They might try with full size SIAD for test 3 tho (so far, they have funds for 3 tests, but they might require more of them because of the main chute problems)
Anyone has a link to the post-launch press conf.?
Looking at the deployment video it looks to me like it failed for similar reasons that overly inflated balloons pop... too much expansion
but that's then a lot better than during the first failure
erm, first success ... with a failed main chute
That's IMHO a perfectly solvable problem.
(e.g. Apollo and now Orion chutes were intentionally designed for slow reefing, tho with supersonic speeds it might require two separate canopy geometries with rehooking in subsonic regime ... possibly also variable size apex hole)

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