The valuation seems high to me. I've been told that valuations should be around 3.5x revenue; at $615m, that should mean that DSC has sold $175m of razors last year. I would be astounded if that were the case.
895 karma · joined January 13, 2012
Notice that when the trunk detaches, the craft immediately starts pitching over.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bhW2h08zhY
Couple of points of interest: There were a couple of puffs of smoke from the engines that might be a sign of premature shutdown. Having one engine out would cause uneven thrust which will cause the vehicle to rotate or tumble. The test continued successfully, so if an engine did indeed die, we can assume that another was also intentionally shutdown to balance the thrust. The remaining engines would have fired for a little longer to make up for the lost ones.
The engine chambers are the first entirely 3d printed production rocket motors in the world. They're printed in inconel using Direct Metal Laser Sintering. This is the first time that so many of them have been fired in an actual mission scenario. The tech is so new and untested that special shields were built round the motors to isolate the rest of the vehicle in case of an explosion. I'm very interested to see how they held up.
There was some pretty severe tumbling during the drogue and main chute deploys. While easily survivable, this would have been quite uncomfortable for any passengers inside. I wouldn't be surprised if SpaceX tweaked the deployment sequence a little to help reduce this.
Good job, SpaceX... I can't wait for the In-Flight abort test later this year!
I think Russia might disagree with you. Wikipedia describes the Proton launcher as "one of the most successful heavy boosters in the history of spaceflight."
While the rocket is running, the acceleration caused by the motor causes the propellant to pool at the bottom of the tank where the outlet is. As soon as you stop the motor, the acceleration stops and the liquid starts floating around inside the tank. If you tried to restart it now, you would get an unstable mix of propellant and pressurizing gas which might not allow the rocket to startup properly.
To restart reliably, you need to apply a force to the tank to force the liquid back down to the outlet. During Apollo, this was done with many small solid rocket motors called Ullage Rockets. These would fire for just a few seconds just immediately before the rocket was restarted. The force was just enough to get the propellant down to the outlet in time to be sucked into the turbo pumps before ignition.
The capsule looks nice; big curved windows and no RCS thrusters tell us that this is not an orbital capsule.
The 1st Stage reuse concept is interesting; the ducting near the capsule connector is quite novel. There are 8 large spoilers that protrude into the airflow to help slow descent. I wonder if these can be modulated to give some kind of stability control?
It's interesting to note that although the capsule landed successfully, they make no mention of what happened to the launcher. I presume that it failed to land, but I didn't see any smoking wreckage in the background of the capsule landing video, so maybe it made it down in 1 piece? I'm sure they would have told us if it had.
Anyway, a good day for the US space industry; Blue Origin finally have something cool to show and have proved that they're not just purveyors of vaporware. I'm looking forward to seeing what else they can come up with.
Don't forget that this is not the first fatality associated with this engine. In 2007, 3 people were killed in an explosion during a static test at Mohave Air & Space port.
What's interesting is that the SS2 engine fuel was swapped out very recently for a new thermoplastic polyamide solid fuel for better performace. Maybe this new fuel was not tested as well as it should have been?
SpaceshipTwo is considered the 'simplest' and 'safest' of all the upcoming manned commercial vehicle. It has many features that should help keep it reliable. For example, instead of a real liquid rocket engine, it uses a hybrid engine; it has almost no moving parts apart from a valve or two. No turbopumps or gimbals or much mechanical stuff to go wrong. It only goes suborbital, so it does not need a heatshield because there's no re-entry. The landing system uses wings & wheels similar to any commercial jet. This stuff is mature and tested.
In fact, the only novel thing about SS2 is it's wing-feathering system. It's lets the craft to descend vertically still under the pilots control. I wonder if (and this is complete speculation) there was a problem restoring the wings to their 'atmospheric' flight position which prevented them from landing normally.
The consequences for commercial manned spaceflight will be quite severe, I think. I imagine that many Virgin Galactic customers will cancel their pre-orders. The flight test program is dead in it's tracks at this point; even those who don't cancel will be unlikely to fly for many more years while investigations and improvements are concluded. Other manned providers such as SpaceX and XCor will likely be extra cautious before allowing people to fly in their vehicles.
The image of manned commercial spaceflight will take a hit. If the 'Safest' of the commercial vehicles can crash before it even enters service, I worry that many potential customers will be put off. It never hurts to remember that Spaceflight is a dangerous business.
It's a sad day to top off a bad week in spaceflight. :(
But then again... I think they're hurting for money; SLS is proving much more expensive than planned. And they have a lot of project managers who remember the Shuttle Era when it cost upwards of 600million per mission to launch the thing. These guys are super keen to avoid a repeat of this situation again if at all possible. SLS is already going to cost around the same per mission due to its reduced launch rate. The commercial-crew program was supposed to provide 'cheap' access to LEO; If NASA is forced to buy Delta4 Heavies for each CST100 mission, the cost is gonna be almost as much as shuttle/SLS!
So if NASA were smart and daring, they'd choose SpaceX and SierraNevada and save mountains of cash... but NASA being NASA, they'll probably choose Boeing and be forced into paying through the nose for launches for another 30 years.
Boeing CST100 is the most conventional of all the 3 designs. It's probably the 'safest' bet but also the most expensive to operate. This is because it still requires an Atlas or Delta rocket to launch. Atlas is likely out because its russian-sourced motors are currently out of fashion. That leaves Delta; which is the most expensive of the currently available launchers. Also, CST100 uses a traditional 'SplashDown' recovery that requires a flotilla of helicopter-capable naval ships to be on standby for every mission. This is not cheap. That said, I'm sure it will work as-designed and will be fairly reliable. But all this comes at a cost; and IMO if NASA are smart, they can get more functionality for less money from the other providers.
Lets see: SpaceX has the advantage of using their own launchers. These were already much cheaper than Atlas and Delta, but soon we're promised that they'll be reusable. This can slash the cost by a further factor of 10 again. Such possibilities are hard to ignore. Furthermore, the Dragon2 capsule does not require a naval recovery and can land on a simple slab of concrete anywhere you'd like. There are other fringe benefits too... Dragon2 is re-usable, you could potentially just refuel it, put it back on another rocket and launch it again within a few days. Also, Dragon2 uses a novel pusher-type launch-escape-system that's integrated into the capsule instead of being jettissoned on each launch. These things add up to considerable savings. NASA would be foolish not to choose SpaceX as one of their 2 choices... Price-wise, SpaceX is probably the cheapest of the 3, however the risks are fairly high; there's a lot of new tech that needs to be proven. But the potential rewards are so high and SpaceX's track-record of acheiving their promises is so stellar, that NASA surely must give them a shot.
That leaves SierraNevada. They're kinda the wildcard in this competition. They have this wacky spaceplane that looks like it came from the 60s. If you ask any astronauts which one they'd pick, I bet they'd all say SierraNevada. Why? Astronauts are often test-pilots. Test pilots like to fly things. This is the only one that can be 'piloted' in the traditional sense of the word (with wings and surfaces). It has several advantages: Easy and fast recovery; just land on any runway. Reusability; no need to build a new one each time. Pusher-style LES. Also, it just looks plain cool. And it has one big disadvantage: It's designed to launch on the currently-unfashionable AtlasV rocket. If SierraNevada can convert this thing to launch on a Delta or a Falcon, I think they'll have a good enough price advantage over CST100 to make them the 2nd-choice after SpaceX.
Having said all this... space hardware gets built on the whims of politicians. Even with the best planning, there's still a good chance that some politician will point at the pork-barrel and fuck it all up.
I can only assume that MS are going to insist on a sequel with all of the 'NextGen' trappings we've come to expect from them. Minecraft2: MasterChief Edition. With Kinect! And day1 DLC! And product placement... (Use the new MTN DEW powerup to double your building speed! Feed your animals DORITOS to improve their stats!)
Good for Markus and the Mojang guys though... they built a multi-billion-dollar empire out of nothing. It's real indie-games success story. An inspiration to the rest of us! Congrats!
Another thing to bear in mind is that game development is not the same as Game Programming. There are many skills that must combine in order for a game to be successful; Code, Art, Design, Audio, Biz, etc. Many gamedev sites focus on one or more of these disciplines; very few offer useful discussions on all of them.
The best site for game developers is probably www.thechaosengine.com . They have forums for all of the major disciplines and they manage their S/N by requiring members to vouch for each other before being allowed into the main industry forums.
For those who have no idea what the hell this is about, this will just confuse you more: http://www.somethingawful.com/hosted/jeffk/cliifyintarview/i...
PAUL STTEEVE, he'll kick yuor shit, unreale
However, I don't agree that you're entitled to more money for your unpaid overtime. From the mails, it looks like they notified you in advance that TOIL was off the table and therefore it was your responsibility to work hours that you deemed reasonable for your salary. I'm sure the company was very pleased that you worked so much OT, but it's clear that they did not require you to do so.
I also don't think you can justify keeping the extra months salary that they accidentally paid you. If your bank accidentally paid you a million bucks, you would not expect to be able to keep it, would you? What if you accidentally gave your buddy $100 instead of $10? You'd expect him to give it back, right? Sure, they screwed up; however they came clean about it and asked you to give the money back. They even gave you an extension to help you find the money. It sucks that you had already spent the money, but that was your mistake, not theirs. I think you're just going to have to bite the bullet and cough up the cash, sorry.
I'd chalk the whole think down to experience and move on. The games industry can be a very unforgiving place and now that you've seen some of the things that can happen, you can prepare yourself better for the future. There are many games jobs available in the UK at the moment, but, due to the bad economy, the publishers are all hurting for money. I would expect these kinds of situations to be quite common for the next year or two.