Grasshopper always did something roughly equivalent to a last second suicide burn, why would Falcon be any different? But that's "slowly lowering itself to the deck". Only for a brief moment, but the key is, getting the velocity down. It clearly had the velocity down. But something went wrong.
First off, where did you get the impression that Musk said anything like that? Secondly, where did you get the impression that the person you're replying to said anything like that? They never said "land at the same place".
Probably some truth to this. Russia has been a thorn in OPEC's side for a long time. And they got the perfect opportunity here to hit them when they were weak. Now they've got Russia losing income *and* not able to get foreign investment. The net result, if Russia's isolation and weakness continues, is that future projects will be delayed or cancelled, existing production dries up, Russian hardware wears out, etc - and overall Russia becomes a smaller player in the global oil market.
It's clearly not the only factor in the oil slide, but OPEC seems more than a little content with the price slide. And I don't think there's any love lost between the Saudis and the Russians on non-economic issues either... they seem to be on opposite sides of most international conflicts.
It'll stabilize the fall at the very least, to be sure. But the rest of the oil industry is trying their hardest not to give ground - they don't want to undercut their future on projects that can take years to develop and stay in operation for long periods of time. Most wells (or non-well projects such as surface-mined bitumen) have much longer lifespans. Fracked oil and oil shale will be what gives way most, but the exact nature of where the market will head is yet to be seen.
It is hard - extremely hard. Stability is only part of the problem, hover offers a lot of other problems that don't crop up when the craft is facing strong and roughly steady G forces. But landing like that gives mass benefits. And small mass benefits on one stage means very large benefits for your payload capacity delivered to space. So if you can pull it off, it's a big win.
Landing *anything* that's been to space on a barge has never been done before.
Landing a full-size *first stage* that's delivered a payload to space *anywhere* has never been done before (far, far harder problem than landing a crew capsule, they're massive, hard to control, and imbalanced).
The thing is nearly as heavy as the Space Shuttle, much larger, a much more unstable shape (due to the nature of rockets), has only stubby grid fins for manueuvering, is controlled by a computer with no ability for real-time corrections by a pilot, and was landing on a barge barely larger than itself. And was created on what's by comparison a shoestring budget. Let's not pretend that this isn't a massive challenge.
I know it's the nerd-equivalent of being a hipster to berate anyone who expresses any support for SpaceX, but for god's sake, look objectively at the nature of this challenge for a minute. One can hate Elon, but these engineers are not exactly picking the low hanging fruit, and they've still achieved very impressive results thusfar.
(The real question will be, of course, whether they can actually refurbish these first stages cheaper than they can build them... most people assumed the Shuttle would be dirt cheap to refurbish, after all...)
It tells us at least that the rocket didn't impact it moving at hundreds of meters a second. Sabot-launch a streamlined wineglass out of an high power air cannon at a chunk of granite and yeah, you'll almost certainly break off chunks of it.
We can say pretty assuredly say that it got to its final landing stage, was slowly lowering itself to the deck... and then "something" went wrong.
All we can say is, if the ship is fine, just some equipment damaged on deck, then this was a very low speed impact. Sounds more like the rocket falling over than anything else. Why? Not a clue. But I guess we'll find out. Maybe Musk's plan of "have it weigh itself down and then we'll weld it to the deck afterwards" wasn't a good one.
Nobody's going to be taking anything from a nuclear armed state. The most I think anyone would ever dare do is covertly support breakaway rebel movements, but even that would be extremely provocative.
That said, there probably will be an upsurge in internal rebel acticity in Russia as they lose their ability to pay off local tribal leaders with oil money like they've been doing extensively of late....
Putin, the election rigger? Oh please. It's clearly legitimate that 99,5% of Chechnyans voted for "The Butcher of Grozny". Turnouts of over 100% in some precincts in Grozny, well, people were just *that* excited to get to vote for him!
"Somewhat improved properties over plain plastic" is nothing on the order of hand-laid composites, or having properties like a metal, or anything of the sort. That you can print a very mildly-conductive plastic (which this stuff in the article is not) or mildly reinforcing fibers (which the stuff in this article is not) in some extrusion printers is making a mockery of what people *actually* want to print (actual metal, actual strong fibers, etc). And it's what people who didn't know any better were thinking of when they saw this article.
Yes, very good, that was my point. But you are still not getting a cookie.
Just because one *can* make plastic composites with significantly improved properties (for example, carbon fiber panels) doesn't mean it has relevance to 3d printers in general, and it certainly doesn't have any connection to what Makerbot is demoing here. Alumide is all about appearance, plain and simple. And it's not even a metalic appearance, it's more of a sandy appearance.
Very cool
I'm so glad to know that someone's working on this 3d printing technology!
Little roving glue guns are never going to be the future. But this sort of technology could be.
You're speaking in theoreticals. I'm speaking in facts. Alumide is *not* a conductor, and it is *not* unusually abrasion resistant vs. other hard plastics. Yes, it's possible to make plastic composites that have improved properties. For an extreme example, look to CFRP. This is nothing of the sort. The average grain size for Shapeways' alumide, for example, is 60 microns, so we're talking extremely tiny particles. Alumide's tensile strength is 48 MPA (typical of a hard plastic; metals are usually in the hundreds to thousands). The Shore D hardness is 48 (plastics range from 0 to around 120). The melting point is 172-180C (common rigid plastics are usually 70-260C; metals range into the thousands). And yes, despite the presence of aluminum dust, the resistivity is 3e14 ohms (plastics are broadly in the range of 1e12-24; bulk aluminum is 3e-8).
It's a plastic and it behaves like a plastic, plain and simple. This isn't some theoretical. If you can make a PCB out of this stuff, you can make it out of common everyday plastics too.
Somebody ought to cross ball point pens with coat hangers so that the pens will multiply instead of disappear.
