If the Starhopper just Isn't Enough SpaceX

If the Starhopper just Isn't Enough SpaceX - Printable Version

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If the Starhopper just Isn't Enough SpaceX - Yazata - Jul 24, 2019

If the Starhopper's long-awaited first untethered flight later today just isn't enough to satisfy you, SpaceX has an entertaining warm-up act: today's launch of a (used) Falcon 9 lofting a (used) supply Dragon to the Space Station. The booster will return and attempt one of those exceedingly cool propulsive landings at Cape Canaveral.

Here's NASA showing off the Apollo50 logo on the Dragon capsule, but what caught my eye were the two Space Station mission marks indicating that this particular capsule has been there twice before.

https://twitter.com/NASAKennedy/status/1153985460076781570

Scheduled for 6:24 PM EDT/3:24 PM PDT, provided that weather holds.

It will be livestreamed here:

https://www.spacex.com/webcast

NASA will have a livestream too. It may or may not be SpaceX's feed and hopefully they will have some video from the Space Station of the capsule arriving.

https://www.nasa.gov/nasalive

RE: If the Starhopper just Isn't Enough SpaceX - C C - Jul 24, 2019

The Green Slime will have to wait another day to finally make it to a space station.

RE: If the Starhopper just Isn't Enough SpaceX - Yazata - Jul 25, 2019

On again today with an instantaneous launch window (it has to launch on time to catch the Space Station in orbit) at 6:01 PM EDT/3:01 PDT/10:01 PM UTC). The Space Station needs its Green Slime! (I expect that's how many astronauts would describe whatever it is that NASA gives them to eat.) The previously-flown booster (B1056) will attempt another landing back at Cape Canaveral. Should be livestreamed at SpaceX.com.

Edit: "Weather looks bleak". Might be scrubbed again today due to weather.

And for Europeans who like to stay up late, they may or may not make another attempt to fly the Hopper. Unclear when/if that will happen, but it should happen around 8:00 PM CDT (6:00 PM PDT, 9:00 PM EDT and 1:00 AM Friday UTC). Labpadre will be streaming it. Everyday Astronaut might be too. SpacePadreIsle might have a stream and even SpaceX.com itself might join the fun. (You can find the other urls by Googling.)

RE: If the Starhopper just Isn't Enough SpaceX - C C - Jul 25, 2019

(Jul 25, 2019 08:04 PM)Yazata Wrote: On again today with an instantaneous launch window (it has to launch on time to catch the Space Station in orbit) at 6:01 PM EDT/3:01 PDT/10:01 PM UTC). The Space Station needs its Green Slime! (I expect that's how many astronauts would describe whatever it is that NASA gives them to eat.)

Or that Nickelodean slime they're sending up, which looked green to me in a preview video (but I guess it comes in other colors, too). I can't grok what that stuff is even about on Earth, much less in terms of a space experiment. But apparently everybody who has ever watched Nickelodean has seen it before. Kind of like me being only person on the planet that "anime" goes zoom over in terms of being a fan.

RE: If the Starhopper just Isn't Enough SpaceX - Yazata - Jul 25, 2019

The launch went beautifully (so SpaceX is one for two, so far today) and the Cargo Dragon (full of Green Slime) is on its way to the Space Station. B 1056 came back home and nailed its landing on its lovely landing pad. (That's SpaceX's 44th successful booster recovery they say.)

RE: If the Starhopper just Isn't Enough SpaceX - Yazata - Jul 26, 2019

(Jul 25, 2019 09:50 PM)C C Wrote: Or that Nickelodean slime they're sending up, which looked green to me in a preview video (but I guess it comes in other colors, too). I can't grok what that stuff is even about on Earth, much less in terms of a space experiment.

Sadly (or thankfully, depending on your point of view) they aren't sending Green Slime to the Space Station as food for the six astronauts up there.

I didn't know what it had to do with science either. But a little research pointed out that Green Slime, or a version of it, is a Non-Newtonian Fluid.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-Newtonian_fluid

While probably 0% of kids have any idea what a Non-Newtonian Fluid is (I didn't know either), probably every kid knows about Green Slime. So the idea seems to be for the astronauts to video record some demonstrations of the behavior of the stuff in zero G, so that kids can appreciate its properties and maybe even get a few kids interested in fluid mechanics.

BTW... did you ever see that Mythbusters episode where Adam walked on water? Or rather, on a mixture of water and cornstarch, a material known as Oobleck? It's an interesting Non-Newtonian fluid where the material behaves like a solid when it's impacted, but if it isn't getting impacted it behaves like a liquid. So Adam could walk on its surface as long as he kept stepping rapidly and forcefully, and the suface responded in kind of rubbery manner. But Adam sank to the bottom if he just stood there.

Silly Putty is another Non-Newtonian fluid that's sold as a children's toy (Or used to be, I'm not sure if it's around any more).

So they are trying to be sneaky, teaching kids something about science without their catching on that it's supposed to be boring and hard. You know, I'd kind of like to see those Green Slime videos when they come from the Space Station. I've gotten myself interested.

If you really want Green Slime, Flubber (another Non-Newtonian fluid) might what you are looking for.

These Non-Newtonian fluids are actually kind of common in the biological world. (As every kid will happily exclaim, 'Eeww! Snot!')

RE: If the Starhopper just Isn't Enough SpaceX - Yazata - Jul 27, 2019

Green Slime has arrived at the Space Station:

https://twitter.com/NASASpaceflight/status/1155091992977846272

RE: If the Starhopper just Isn't Enough SpaceX - C C - Jul 27, 2019

(Jul 27, 2019 07:32 PM)Yazata Wrote: Green Slime has arrived at the Space Station:

https://twitter.com/NASASpaceflight/status/1155091992977846272

Luciana Paluzzi is still alive, but Robert Horton won't be involved in rescuing the space station. I had forgotten that the crazy 1968 monster film even featured astronauts planting explosives on an asteroid bent on colliding with Earth. Decades before that trend of at least a couple of asteroid impact movies in the 1990s. (The 1933 serialized novel "When Worlds Collide" has everything beat time-wise, but that involved a couple of large rogue planets of interstellar origin rather than mundane solar system affairs of asteroids and meteors.)

RE: If the Starhopper just Isn't Enough SpaceX - Yazata - Jul 28, 2019

Here's the last time the Earth encountered Space Slime

OK, it's not green slime... but it's carnivorous slime which is even better

(From The Blob)

[Image: the-blog-movie-remake.jpg?w=931]

RE: If the Starhopper just Isn't Enough SpaceX - Yazata - Jul 29, 2019

Here's a 1 minute 44 second video of B1056 returning to Cape Canaveral after delivering slime to the Space Station

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1155567236716740608