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Actually really cool to watch the strut compress.

Funny how that front wheel has a chain, gear cassette, struts and other stuff, though, just like the back wheel. But then again, as noted by @Shepppard - this is the Internet, and it must be true.

*engineering

That was quite a lot of stress the strut held up to

As was mentioned above, the cost of the fuel is a non-starter. Currently SpaceX uses a Kerosene / Liquid Oxygen fuel mix.

After the anomaly (the space industries way of saying accident) in June SpaceX did a complete vehicle review. They are now using a more advanced technique to cool the LOX which means for a denser LOX liquid in their tanks, which ultimately means they have more oxidizer on board for their flights now.

Coupled with the LOX improvements they have made upgrades to the engines which means 30% greater efficiency. Basically the horsepower per engine has increased.

This means they can get their payloads to orbit plus have more then enough fuel left over in stage 1 to return it to land.

The greatest efficiency comes from returning the stage(s) and then reusing them in future launches (not proven yet). ALL launchers (u.s, soviet, indian, ESA, Japan, etc) ditch ALL of their hardware into the ocean when getting payload to orbit. Bye, bye multi million dollars worth of engines and hardware.

If SpaceX can turn that scenario on its head and reuse those stages and MORE importantly the engines they will cut their costs per launch by a substantial amount. Ultimately that means cheaper per pound cost to get material into orbit.

All of the media uses the word "explosion" when describing the June anomaly which is funny because there was never an ignition of onboard fuels.

The LOX tanks have smaller Helium tanks inside them. The helium is released during launch. The helium rises in the LOX quickly, expands and pressurizes the tank to ensure the LOX is "squeezed" into the pipes in order to keep up with the turbo pumps.

One of the struts holding a helium tank inside the LOX tank failed. The helium tank shot up and blew threw the top of the LOX tank and took a good part of the top of the stack off. The engines actually fired for a few seconds after the anomaly and then sputtered out. The rest of the vehicle at this point is still fairly intact.

Without proper structural integrity the vehicle started to veer off course, dynamic pressures built up and the vehicle was essentially ripped apart by those forces.

At 3:20 the Helium tank rips off its struts. At 3:27 the remainder of the vehicle disintegrates:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuNymhcTtSQ

SpaceX mentioned that in June, the dragon capsule continued to relay telemetry until it smacked into the ocean. If the Dragon had better software onboard it would have detected the anomaly and recovered with chutes. Elon said that software would be active on Dragons from now on.

Needs more boosters...

[edit] and struts...

I'm particularly fond of grey mullets. http://www.struts.co.uk/party-fancy-dress-shop/fancy-dress-sales/ladies-and-mens-wigs/mens-character-wigs/80s-fancy-dress-grey-mullet-wig

You can afford...being the prime question here.
Most cars these days (read: not performance cars) are made on the cheap.
Forged connecting rods, and billet valves / cam shafts / high tensile head bolts are not cheap, therfore they dont go into the vast majority of modern engines.

Putting a turbo on your engine alone would vastly increase compression ratios, stressing just about every internal part in the car. The poverty pack econo-cars can not handle any more than about 4-6lb's of boost before things start heating up, warping, and shaking themselves apart violently.

Cost to get things up to spec?

erm....well a good set of H beam forged con-rods can cost you anywhere from 600 upwards (generally upwards...a lot upwards), and thats just the part, not including installation. Getting the valves reworked, vavle springs, cam shaft....thats ~2k+ if youre doing it on the cheap.

Then you need an intercooler to take the heat out of the intake air (as the turbo compresses intake air, and therfore heats it up) so as to keep the economy levels up....and piping to go with it, your looking at another 1k at least.

Then you need an ECU mod, piggy back if you can get away with it, around the 1k figure, otherwise a full standalone can cost upwards of 1.5k.

Then you need to program and tune, upwards again of 1.5k.

To turbo a non-turbo economy engine povery-pack car, you are looking at LEAST 5k+, and thats doing it on mega budget, you wont get any reliability or safety out of it.

Before you even get to put the turbo on, which itself is about 300-1.5k depending on what turbine you purchase, you also need a turbo manifold to redirect all of the exhaust gas into a turbo, and have an outlet pipe that allows waste-gate dumps into your exhaust. So you also need to get your cat-back system redone too, which is about 700-1500 to get it done right.

Doing it right? Start counting from 10k....and keep going.

Doing it right would be to upgrade the breaks (bigger discs, bigger calipers, bigger master cylinder), the suspension (coilovers), and doing some serious chassis strengthening to take the increased loads (front/rear sway bar upgrades, front/rear strut tower bars etc..)

Its not cheap unfortunately

Thanks
In reply to this comment by eric3579:
*quality

I could strut to this.

>> ^Fletch:

Cherry-picking history and regurgitating logical fallacies seem to be all you Repugs have in your arsenal nowadays. It's pitiful.

We can always count on the gop-bots to bring the stoopid.
Your argument is so much stronger without this foamy cruft.



You're certainly aware of how effective this is at painting the rest of your argument as the same kind of "us-vs-them" garbage (regardless of its merits) so it comes across as so much chest-puffing and strutting about. That is to say, when you argue like this, you're obviously not arguing for effect - you're showing off for your friends.

Awesome...because people in Cosplay did more than strut.

Flying's such a huge part of life there of course you know there's no way to get around it. Very tragic. And since I have a close relative there I'm always concerned. One thing: I'm always puzzled why nobody has come up with an effective retractable or retract/inflatable pontoon. Those things are worse than wire struts as far as drag is concerned. It's like a freaking flying pontoon boat. I've tried to fly model float planes and they are the worst ever.

>> ^deathcow:

We just had a float plane land on the ground here in Alaska... after clipping another plane and killing a family of 4 onboard : (
http://www.adn.com/2011/07/31/1994251/plane-in-collision-that-killed.
html
Pics of plane coming down if you click on the family and go to pic 3 or 4

Tags for this video have been changed from 'walking, strutting, skipping, winning' to 'walking, strutting, winning, skipping, magnificent' - edited by calvados