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Thread: Falcon X

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    Default Falcon X

    Finally the flying car becomes a reality!
    No not a Ford .. Elon Musk's person Tesla Roadster car will be a flying car one way or the other.


    Either it will be flying between Earth and Mars permanently or it will fly off in pieces all over Florida.
    Everybody is hoping the first scenario is the one that happens, but even Elon thinks that his personal car has a good chance of ending up as confetti.

    They're going to do a full static engine test of the rocket this week. This is the rocket equivalent of warming up tyres before a quarter mile race. Or a bogan smoking up a Ford XC's tyres before leaving the Broady K-Mart car park.

    I liked the description he gave:
    "For the Falcon X heavy we take three Falcon X rockets and strap them together.
    We thought this would be really easy, but it turns out that it is really hard and we had to make a lot of changes, we're not even sure it will work."

    Space-X is taking all the risk on the rocket, but it's NASA's launch pad and if it is damaged by a (large) explosion then it is likely to set back American human space flight by a couple of years because that's the pad NASA will use for the job.
    It's hard to believe it's been seven years since the last space shuttle.

    They plan to launch it in about 2 to 3 weeks depending on how the static engine test goes.
    Time to plan a visit to see Uncle Sam. I've got to see one of these things fly.
    Even more dramatic is that they are going to bring all three first stages back and land them. Two on land based pads and one on the sea barge.


    (Now every time I see this, it makes me laugh thinking about Sheldon Cooper).



    In true American style, I hope they build a Falcon XXL.
    Last edited by trash; 10-01-18 at 12:35 PM.
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    Well they(Musk) still have a lot to catching up to do if they want to match that massive thing on the left that was first lauched over 50 years ago.

    I reckon if Musk blows up the pad, it's no big deal. NASA has no significant rockets or great plans for the future due to lack of funding.
    Musk will just build a new pad or NASA just gives it to him (if it survives) because it is obvious that they would save big bucks if they send up all their stuff with Musks reusable Falcons in the future and then have more money for the actual projects.

    Big difference to NASA and Musk is not only the reusability but the Falcon concept is designed for mass production, like the car

    ...but not being sure it will work at all doesn't sound good.
    Pretty sure Werner von Braun never thought and designed that way.
    Last edited by Uncle Fester; 10-01-18 at 03:59 PM.
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    If it's like it's namesake, then perhaps it will be Fix Or Repair Daily......................................runs... .hides!
    I'm out of my mind, but feel free to leave a message...

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    Yes, it's disturbing how much 1960's technology can lift compared to modern rockets.
    And with just five engines. The Russians had no chance of getting their heavy equipment to the moon.

    Lots of little engines have the advantage of safety and redundancy and easier to manufacture and operate.
    What they lack is brute force that comes with big balls

    The heavy lifters that are going to move big pieces of equipment to the moon or mars and going to need big engines.
    I'm looking forward to seeing a saturn V style rocket with four strap on first stages.

    If they're going to do a test flight,It would be nice to put a very small deep space probe onto a very large and simple upper stage with a balls or bust Xenon on motor.
    Take a tiny prob and get it out of earth orbit with a big third stage and go flat stick to jupiter and then burn all the conventional fuel for highest velocity, dump large the upper stage and go full throttle on the ion engine. See how fast you can get some thing to fly.
    Keep the probe simple. Very simple. Give it an RTG for power, a couple of cameras for giggles and some accurate clocks for navigation and a couple of other sensors for in flight entertainment. No big antennas, use lasers for communication. All the effort put into speed and miniaturisation.



    It's still a slow breakthrough interstellar probe, but
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    Quote Originally Posted by nomeat View Post
    ................

    ...but not being sure it will work at all doesn't sound good.
    Pretty sure Werner von Braun never thought and designed that way.
    I dunno mate. He may not have thought that way, but in practice? Boy, they took some chances.

    Find the Science Channel series called Moon Machines. The episode on the Saturn V is an eye opener......some of the problems they encountered and some of the weird solutions were rather incredible....AND with slide rules.
    The fact that there's a highway to hell and a stairway to heaven says a lot about the anticipated traffic flow.

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    Quote Originally Posted by enf View Post
    I dunno mate. He may not have thought that way, but in practice? Boy, they took some chances.

    Find the Science Channel series called Moon Machines. The episode on the Saturn V is an eye opener......some of the problems they encountered and some of the weird solutions were rather incredible....AND with slide rules.
    What's wrong with slide rules, all our greatest innovations where done with them

    Computer simulations are great but maybe they also make people today 'brain lazy'. Simulations only go as far as the programmer designed them for.
    I think computers have weakened our ability to think outside the box, which IMO is required to really discover something new.
    In the last 30 or so years we haven't really invented anything great, just improved (often thanks to computer simulations) on what was
    invented before.


    Thanks for the heads up on that show. Will look into it, love historic technology docos, especially when it is about unconventional solutions.
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    Quote Originally Posted by nomeat View Post
    What's wrong with slide rules, all our greatest innovations where done with them
    I wouldn't be able to use one anymore at all....wouldn't have a clue.

    Quote Originally Posted by nomeat View Post
    Thanks for the heads up on that show. Will look into it, love historic technology docos, especially when it is about unconventional solutions.
    Six Episodes dealing almost exclusively with management, the designers and the technicians. When Kennedy announced the Moon program they had nothing...

    The Saturn V
    The Command Module
    The Guidance Computer
    The Lunar Lander
    The Spacesuit
    The Lunar Rover

    I'm sure there is a torrent around...but the DVD that they released had a little (not much) trimmed off each televised episode to fit them on.
    The fact that there's a highway to hell and a stairway to heaven says a lot about the anticipated traffic flow.

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    A computer is just an electronic slide rule.
    But it's pointless in reducing a tradesman because we can reduce his tools.

    A carpenter isn't any less a carpenter because he uses a power saw than a hand saw.
    A soldier isn't any less a soldier because he uses a gun instead of a bow and arrow
    A programmer isn't any less of a programmer because he programs in C than assembler.

    A mathematician is no less a mathematician because he uses a calculator. There's no real need to make him do long division by hand

    I find it funny explaining maths to the boy. Everything can be reduced to one simple equation .... NAND.
    He of course thinks I've dropped acid.
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    Quote Originally Posted by trash View Post
    Everything can be reduced to one simple equation .... NAND.
    There you go again, thinking only binary.

    Get out of the box. Try memristor logic


    Analog memory and computing, waitaminute ...maybe a each 'bit' is like a whole slide rule, calculates and then keeps it's result until you change it again.

    ...or if they could run this wafer in analoge mode and use analog computing:

    100TB of slide rules

    Memristor sensors are also popping up, why bother with DA conversion?

    Maybe 2018 not only the year of the electric car but also the memristor.
    Last edited by Uncle Fester; 15-01-18 at 07:21 PM.
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    Quote Originally Posted by nomeat View Post
    There you go again, thinking only binary.
    There you go ignoring reality again

    What it comes down to is.... Is the universe quantised?
    And there is very good evidence that it is... that means EVERYTHING is reduced to only two states, which we call 1 and 0.
    You're memristors at a higher than quantum level.

    Now you can of course take a quantum computing route which is different to conventional NAND gate computing.
    But quantum computer's qubits can be reduced down to what is called a "controlled not" gate. CNOT.
    The difference between a conventional computer and a quantum computer is that quantum computers run both forwards and backwards.
    A conventional computer can only run forwards. Given the output of a NAND gate, you cannot know what state the input gates were.

    0 !& 0 = 1
    0 !& 1 = 1
    1 !& 0 = 1
    1 !& 1 = 0

    If a NAND output is 1 then there is no way to know what the inputs were.
    With a CNOT gate, given an output state, you will always be able to know the input conditions.
    This is a bit hard to understand if you aren't familiar with quantum entanglement.


    So I might ask... what is the lowest order of memristors?
    What is the simplest form of memristor and does it operate and most importantly... can you reduce that component in any way?

    You cannot reduce NAND gates or quantum CNOT gates. Doing so they cease to work.

    On a higher level you can reduce all mathematical functions to "addition". Though the function ADD() can be reduced to an array of NAND gates.
    You cannot reduce NAND gates with ADD() functions.

    NAND gates cannot duplicate the performance of quantum CNOT gates. Q-CNOT gates can duplicate conventional NAND gates, but the performance of conventional NAND gates greatly exceeds current Q-CNOT performance.


    So.... that poses the question. Can NAND or Q-CNOT duplicate memristors? I'll bet that both can do it.
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    Quote Originally Posted by trash View Post
    There you go ignoring reality again

    What it comes down to is.... Is the universe quantised?
    And there is very good evidence that it is... that means EVERYTHING is reduced to only two states, which we call 1 and 0.
    You're memristors at a higher than quantum level.
    The reality is fuzzy and the smaller the scale, the fuzzier it gets until it gets so fuzzy that merely looking at it will change it's state.
    In Nature (the Observation of Physics), logic does not exist because there is no true high and low, no black and white.
    Even a Black Hole is not truly black because something still radiates from it.
    Every particle gets divided into something else. Where do you place the threshold to quantise the Universe?

    High and low only exists for us because we define certain thresholds for practical reasons or limitations in our perception.

    Your NAND gate doesn't know any true highs and lows either. We design it to output a signal close to Vcc when at least one of the inputs is lower than 1/3 of Vcc and an output level near GND when they are all larger than 2/3 of Vcc for example.
    So it is still analog and if you want to define the smallest brick in a logic system then I would call that a comparator, the actual quantiser.

    I could imagine an intelligent species out there that never bothered with boolean because they invented the memristor before the NAND gate. Everything totally analog, just like the the world they are living in.

    The resolution of the memristor would be with the device that can measure it and the memristor's tolerance to environmental factors outside the scope of it's actual function and aging of the held data, which is apparently necessary to warrant it's existence.

    Analog logic(IMO a bit of a misnomer):
    If I want to add the values of 2 memristors, well all I need are the memristors themselves, no CPU, no external RAM, registers or AD/DA conversion.
    A subtraction could be done with a simple transistor, probably better an Op-amp and a log amp for multiplications.
    And where they came from? Their history is also there.
    All calculations done in the RAM itself. Simple and immediate and zero bloatware. That is what I would call ingenious, kind of like the way nature does it

    Obviously we will see a combination of analog and digital logic in practical use.
    We still need to have on/off states for practical reasons, the connections for the memristers are digital and sometimes we like digital read outs.
    Last edited by Uncle Fester; 17-01-18 at 02:28 PM.
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    "Reality is fuzzy"
    Not it is not. Reality IS black and white. It is quantised. That is exactly the point.
    Every particle gets divided into something else. At the level you're thinking, but at the planck scale. No it does not.
    It is either 1 or 0. You can call those states whatever you like, but that is the point at which you cannot take "something" 1 and divide it into two somethings.
    You end up with a 1 here or a 1 there, not both.

    You cannot divide 1 by 1 when 1 is the smallest "something"you have - it is quanitsed.
    There is no half way between here and there - it is quantised.
    If you try and trick the universe by moving 1 between the two places very quickly - time is quantised.
    You cannot be in two places at once - space(time) is quanitised.

    You come up against these limits of universe in lots of places.
    That's quantum physics.

    The NAND gate levels... you're not understanding that this is logic, ie maths. The fact that you choose to use real world 5V is adding noise to the argument and then claiming the noise is wrong. NO. the electron is.... you guessed it... Quantised. You cannot have half of an electron. It only comes in 1 or 0. It exists or it does not.

    If we turn the current down on the NAND gate... guess where we end up, at a quantum limit.
    If you think this is just a coincidence... we can turn the current down on a beam of light and we end up at another quantum limit, the photon.

    And yet while we have only a single photon we know from quantum physics that it can be in two places at once. Well, no it can't, it just looks like it is in two places at once.
    When we check, these fundamental particles are only ever in one place at any time. Again... they are quantised. They come in 1 or 0. They have only two mutually exclusive states.

    A NAND gate is a fundamental piece of logic.
    Addition is a fundamental piece of logic.

    These basic pieces of logic cannot be broken down to some other form of logic which does not self inclusive.
    You might call it logical entropy.

    A nand A = NOT A
    (A nand A)('A nand 'A) = A
    (A nand A) nand (B nand B) = A OR B
    and so it goes on.

    Addition is the same
    A + A is addition
    A + -A is subtraction
    ++A 'a is multiplcation
    A-- 'a is division
    A** 'a is to the power of

    All mathematical functions can be reduced to a series of additions.
    All logical functions can be reproduced using only NAND gates.
    Given that mathematical functions ADD can be performed by NAND gates....
    And all numbers can be reduced to base-2. You can't reduce numbers to less than 1 and 0. Opps... numbers and logic are also quantised.

    Analogue gates ... sorry... they can be reduced.

    Of course I have seen this "analogue" or false logic offered up before. The argument from infinity, maths can't describe everything.
    Err.. yes it can. Don't confuse something that is very complex with something that is impossible. This is like saying very large numbers are the same as infinity.
    They are not, it is your laziness that makes them look the same.
    It's a religious argument... oh well you can't know everything, ie god.

    the only thing that stops me being god is a physical limit, (a finite number of brain cells) I is not a logical limitation.

    Ok... your description of memristors was a bit err. loose. So I took the liberty to read the wiki description of them.
    I'm absorbing the logic behind them pretty fast. There's still a bit to learn, so I'll have to give you a rain check while learn how they're applied and what makes them different or unique.
    I can see a few issues with them. It's just a question of where thy they fit in. Quantum computers and conventional computers do different things, they're not exclusive of each other.
    One does something the other cannot or does not do so easily.
    The memristor component theory makes sense, it has some quantum issues, so it's not a quantum device.
    The first application I thought of was a Turing machine. This is a very simple computer given a simple adding task. Conventional computers do it well. Quantum computers can do it too, though the result looks a bit like a fractal. And memristors look like they should be able to do it too, actually, they look like they were born to do it.
    They too have a reduced gate. "IMPLY". Their equivalent of NAND or CNOT ..... oh, look where we're going

    So I've not learned how to use imply gates yet. Bed time and I'll have to look at them tomorrow night.
    I can see where this appears to be headed, but I'm not drawing any conclusions yet as to if conventional or quantum computers can do the same thing or if (as I suspect) they're just a different (better) way of doing something.

    If one memristor does the job of 128 Qbits or 2048 conventional bits .... then it has a clear advantage. It might be reducible, but not practical to do that.
    Last edited by trash; 18-01-18 at 01:01 AM.
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    Quote Originally Posted by trash View Post

    If one memristor does the job of 128 Qbits or 2048 conventional bits .... then it has a clear advantage. It might be reducible, but not practical to do that.
    And that is exactly the point I am trying to make.
    What is the point in quantising the Universe when I just want to compare or add the weight of two potatoes.
    Last edited by Uncle Fester; 18-01-18 at 10:16 AM.
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    Right .... it has taken some serious reading and looking at the world in a different way. Actually, a lot of these ideas are or have been used in many different places, it's the memristor that is the "weirdness".

    To simplify it, this kind of computing is still reducible to a conventional computer and conventional gates. But it's not like using a simple function to emulate a more complex one, it's the other way around.
    It's using a more complex function to emulate a simple one. Normally this kind if thing would find itself thrown in the retarded ideas bin. But the is reason to this madness which is to take advantage of the memristors.
    A bit like having to go the long way around with CNOT gates to take advantage of Qbits.

    Memristors as memory units is obvious. There is no imagination there and their use in a turning machine really is a given.
    Had memristors existed in the 1940's conventional computing might have been a bit more messed up.

    The memristors in the imply gate configuration on a tile really makes me laugh for looking at what is clumsy computing. It's square wheel technology stuff. But when you put a lot of square wheels together, something interesting happens.
    They can behave a lot unlike squares and more like circles. And that's what is going on here in a computing sense.

    It's the situational/weighted or implied logic that makes it special. A bit like a square wheel car with a limited slip differential. (Right now the readers are really lost).
    At this very low level, fuzzy logic just isn't fuzzy. It's still too quantised. The circuit ends up in a yes or no state. It is the length of "maybe" that changes.
    Maybe doesn't exist in conventional computing. That undecided state is the realm of quantum computers, but even they end up with a yes/no answer. There really is no "maybe".

    Though if we IMPLY that "maybe" A>B not (exclusive) B<A or A<B. [yeah that one really hurts the brain - don't get sucked into thinking A>B is the same thing a B<A]
    A or not B depends in when or rather how fast this happens. The conventional equivalent is an Asymmetrical XOR gate. A XOR B = yes. BUT, B XOR A = no
    This is very similar to a quantum CNOT.

    So it does appear this kind of computer is reducible and is still quantised. It's the memristors that give it a different (integral) spin on 'fuzzy' logic.
    It'll be interesting to see how they develop, but I'm not expecting miracles. No miracles with quantum computers either.
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    Quote Originally Posted by trash View Post
    I find it funny explaining maths to the boy. Everything can be reduced to one simple equation .... NAND.
    He of course thinks I've dropped acid.
    Am I detecting a little bias there? (NAND Vs NOR)
    I can construct a NAND gate from NOR gates and vice versa which has proved very useful over the years when required to make use of spare gates in circuits for required modifications or improvements.
    Something useful I learnt way back in the early days of 74xx TTL logic devices - DeMorgan's Theorem.

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    Yes you can Skep, you can build NAND from NOR and NOR from NAND.
    The difference comes when you try to construct an XOR gate. That extra NOR gate is one more than NAND.
    NAND is the lowest common denominator.

    The logic behind just using NAND lithographs saved a lot of time money. But these days GHz chips are trying to squeeze nanoseconds out of the silicon.
    Each gate is latency, so the less gates the better. I doubt very much they still use the NAND only philosophy. The thought exercise is still important in computer science.

    The point of the exercise is reduction. Like the simplest computer is a Turning machine. It's a reduction of a conventional computer. A thought exercise.
    If something can emulate a turing machine, then it can be made to do anything a conventional computer can do.

    The same thing can be done for a lot of things. Reduced to either one simplest unit or a group of units.


    The good news for me is I learnt something new and important, memristors.
    I'll be looking for equivalents in the real world now.
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    Some more interesting space junk.

    The name mademe laugh, I keep thinking of "The Human Fund", Money for people.
    I think I need to fire up the argon laser.

    Second Falcon X lightsail 2 gets a ride.
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    Wouldn't it be possible to make a light sail that could travel through our solar system(and beyond) and also have the form of a huge, near parabolic antenna for a relatively low powered transmitter that could send stuff it picks up with the same super sized parabolic sail it uses to transmit and accelate. Assuming it could be kept away from gravitational force of planets it should always be pointing perfectly to the sun, so all is needed is a tiny servo motor to offset the transmitters angle in the focus point to track earth for transmissions or the direction it wants to receive from, alternately.
    Being reflective foil the amount of light it can focus on a small solar panel could be significant even it is very far from earth. Once that light gets too weak a nuclear device can continue to power it.
    I am thinking of a parabolic foil with 1km in diamater. Sewn like the top of a balloon but parabolic that gets filled with solar wind.
    Last edited by Uncle Fester; 26-01-18 at 10:24 PM.
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    Quote Originally Posted by trash View Post
    Some more interesting space junk.

    The name made me laugh, I keep thinking of "The Human Fund", Money for people.
    I think I need to fire up the argon laser.
    Hahaha, yes the disco ball. Read about this the other day, 9 months before it burns up?

    Here is one bloke that thinks it's great.




    Here are some that aren't impressed.

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    Quote Originally Posted by nomeat View Post
    Wouldn't it be possible to make a light sail that could travel through our solar system(and beyond)
    I read about such an idea in my youth, Sunjammer, by Arthur C Clarke was the story, I also believe that Jules Verne also proposed such an idea.
    I'm out of my mind, but feel free to leave a message...

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