[AR] Re: SpaceX monster
- From: Norman Yarvin <yarvin@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 24 Aug 2021 11:47:50 -0400
On Mon, Aug 23, 2021 at 07:22:40PM -0700, roxanna Mason wrote:
Right Norman, Musk gives inspiration to all amatuers to start small but
aspire to be big. Though not getting as big as Musk, I went from a
backyord amarture stuffing match heads into a CO2 cylinder to making 6
figures a year testing rocket engines for private companies and even NASA.
The only requirement is passion, the rest will fall into place. Oh, and
Ignore the naysayers including on aR..
That's exactly the sort of mindless boosterism I'd like you to refrain
from posting. No, you don't just need "passion": you need to be in
the right place at the right time, and have the right skills. One
person's good luck (and/or innate talent) does not extrapolate; other
people's "passions" in this arena have resulted in them blowing
themselves up. Naysayers often have good points, even if they're not
the showstoppers that the naysayers make them out to be but rather
things that can be avoided.
And while I'm tempted to call Musk's effort amateur, I do also know
SpaceX recently raised more than a billion dollars, and I presume the
language he uses with money men is different from the language he uses
with space enthusiasts. (Indeed, some of the talk in the third video
in that series would be worrying to money men: it makes his efforts
sound a bit desperate.)
On a technical level, I was a bit surprised to hear Musk talk of
engine "melting" as a limitation on fuel/oxidizer ratio; I'd have
thought that if the engine starts overheating you improve the cooling
system. (He hesitated before first saying "melting"; obviously he
doesn't literally mean melting, just overheating, but "melting" gets
the point across to a general audience better.) He even seems to be
saying it's more of a constraint forcing him to run fuel-rich than
optimizing Isp is.
(That part is about 12 minutes into the video.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t705r8ICkRw
Other related posts:
