Giant flying water tower - aka Rocket prototype

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Just because I think it's pretty cool, here's a video of SpaceXs prototype rocket doing a short hop flight.


My personal favourite bit is the way the rocket engine slices through the test stand like a giant cutting torch near the beginning.
 
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I assume that the fire above the rocket engine nozzle isn't meant to be there!

Quite impressive how the whole thing is balanced on a gimbled rocket engine.
 
I'm not sure, it's a very complex engine so it's possible it's a vent for some purpose, but it is a little disconcerting.

What makes it even more impressive is that the engine was mounted off center as the design is going to have three in a triangle near the center. Despite that it manages to float around with a distinct UFO feel to it.
 
Your video led on to the following one.

Even after over 40 years in industrial engineering I have never seen how these are made before. And the speed they are made at is amazing!

 
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Your video led on to the following one.

Even after over 40 years in industrial engineering I have never seen how these are made before. And the speed they are made at is amazing!


It's odd isn't it, most people call the steel balls ball bearings. But theyre not ball bearings until they're coupled with a bearing.
 
As children, when we had some for ollies, (marbles to the posh people), we called them bollies.
They could smash a glass ollies to smithereens! :LOL::LOL:
 
This is also worth a watch.


Have the sound on, and wait for the pressure wave at the speed of sound.
 
As children, when we had some for ollies, (marbles to the posh people), we called them bollies.
They could smash a glass ollies to smithereens! :LOL::LOL:

How funny in Geordie land we called them bollickers!!
 
The latest version was planning to take off, fly thousands of meters into the sky, dive to the floor and pull up in an elegant swoop to nail a perfect landing. It was openly acknowledged it was an ambitious goal and it'd probably miss some of those goals.

And then this happened.


They have a spare ready to go.
 
In case anyone wants more info on what they were seeing and why it went wrong at the end:
 
I was listening to a podcast a while ago, and the contributor said "getting to space is easy; it's staying there that is the hard part."

He went on to explain that 80 - 100km straight up is defined as "space", but you need to accelerate to something like 30000 km/h horizontally to maintain an orbit.
 
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