Recent content by mfb

Static fire of Super Heavy for Starship's 11th flight (probably at some point in October)

Better Starship landing videos: The red and white colors are from tests - metallic tiles and insulation material from spaces where tiles were removed released stuff that spread over the rest of the heat shield. The next flight will be the last one of the v2 version. The flight profile will be...

Internal reviews in the big collaborations are far more stringent than the official peer review process. I have never heard of a paper that would have been rejected for having problems in its science content. Some get rejected because the reviewers think it's not notable enough for that journal...

Next launch attempt in 3 min: https://www.spacex.com/launches/starship-flight-10 Liftoff!

Shifted by one day due to an issue with ground equipment. Live coverage started. T-40 minutes, although the weather is still a coin toss. Edit: Weather is too bad, next attempt tomorrow if the weather improves.

Countdown for time zone conversion. With only 45% chance for good weather, and possible other issues, a delay is more likely than a launch.

SpaceX report on Starship flight 9 * The larger angle of attack they tested with the booster was too large. * Methane entered the nosecone of Starship (where the header tank is), leading to various problems and ultimately a loss of attitude control. Flight 10 no earlier than Sunday, August 24...

Vulcan Centaur and Ariane 6 both made their third flight. Ariane carried a weather satellite, Vulcan carried a military satellite, its first national security launch. The launches happened to be so close together that Ariane was visible from the northeastern US and Canada just ~10 minutes before...

Chemical pulsed detonation is inefficient. Nuclear pulse propulsion is interesting because you can use the vastly larger energy content of nuclear reactions.

It decomposes just from heating up - try to burn a part and you blow up the whole storage. They calculate a detonation velocity of 9 km/s. Not a property you want for a rocket. I'm surprised its not more energy dense with such an exotic shape. Just 9 kJ/g. For comparison, forming water from...

Static fire of Starship 37 with all 6 engines. After the explosion at the dedicated ship test stand, SpaceX adjusted the orbital launch pad to be able to do static fire tests with ships. These modifications need to be reverted before they can launch the next test flight. SpaceX aims at mid...

Much better video Clearly some issues with the engines. Looks like the front right engine stopped producing thrust almost immediately after takeoff, the front left engine seems to fail a few seconds later.

At 10% the speed of light that's 3 meters, measuring the decay length is trivial. If the decay length is too short to measure (<10 micrometer =~ 30 fs), you try to measure the decay width. In between these two methods there is a gap where you don't have a good direct way to measure the lifetime...

Launch failure of Eris on its first attempt. Lost thrust immediately after takeoff and ended up making a short "hop", exploding when it hit the ground near the launch pad. First orbital launch attempt for an Australian rocket (the UK previously launched from Australia, but with British rockets).

The LHC detectors start just centimeters away from the collision point (millimeters for LHCb). They can get momentum measurements of all decay products, particle identification, measure decay lengths, and more. They can study once-in-a-trillion collision products because they have quadrillions...