I think those names are taken from spaceship names in Ian M Banks' Culture novels.
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I think those names are taken from spaceship names in Ian M Banks' Culture novels.
chriswoody
Legendary Member
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- Northern Germany
As an avid reader of Bank's culture novels I hadn't picked up on that, but checking wikipedia's entry on the ships, it does indeed say that they are named after two GCU's in the Player of Games. Namely the 'Of Course I Still Love you' and the 'Just Read the Instructions'.
U
User10571
Guest
Neither.
It is Lego, and almost twice the size of the old Airfix one.
I had read about it somewhere, possibly in The Register, I have only read one of the Culture books (The Hydrogen Sonata), so I didn't know those particular names, but he naming convention matches the pattern. Need to remedy my unfamiliarity with the rest of the Culture series soon.
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User10571
Guest
The answer to the little darling's question may lie here
https://www.livescience.com/61680-will-spacex-roadster-survive-in-space.html
Fnaar
Smutmaster General
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- Thumberland
[QUOTE 5141829, member: 45"]If God had wanted us to go into space he'd have made us to be able to jump really really high.[/QUOTE]
kevin_cambs_uk
Guru
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- Near Cambridge
WOW
Got to get me that kit!
Drago
Legendary Member
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- Suburban Poshshire
Is Elon Musk Iron Man?
I think that's a TMN to @Inertia , a few posts up.
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User10571
Guest
That's the one. I note that John Lewis won't sell you more than 5 - which suggests to me that it's a fairly limited run.
Keen students will have spotted that on the box it tells you that the model is made up of 1969 parts.
The number is the same as the year of the first moon landing.
How cool is that?
Also, the quality of the mouldings. They're all very high gloss finish, which means highly polished injection moulding tools, which means ££££££.
None of your spark erosion finish. I'm surprised that the kits do not cost more.....
I wonder how many times they can fill the mould, before the tool starts to wear out and the fit of the components starts to become sloppy.
I have to say that for a structure which stands 1m in height, it feels extremely solid.
A cylinder within a cylinder with plenty of webbing and cross-bracing contribute to that, is my guess.
In the interests of a little recreational gauntlet throwing, below is screengrab of how long it took me to put it together, in two equalish separate sittings.
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GrumpyGregry
Here for rides.
You will have to. The Heavy launch was several years late. Though at least the launch demonstrate to the US Military that SpaceX has the capacity to put satellites into GEO. The vastly more will be orders of magnitude more complex.
Whilst the success is thrilling, and it really does excite me, what does it really signify? The ability to earn revenue from Dept of Defence? Yes. Sending things to Mars? No. Re-useable rockets. well two out for three out of four is a step up.
It can send a empty car into the path of the orbit of Mars, and whoops, overshoot, which isn't much like sending a empty car to Mars, much less bringing it back again, "alive", at all. Manned spaceflight wise we are still in the late 50s. Still early days.
GrumpyGregry
Here for rides.
[QUOTE 5143646, member: 45"]Yeah but, I feel like a kid in the seventies when people used to jump motorbikes over buses just for fun.[/QUOTE]
As do I, but some of my best friends are rocket scientists, and until the Big Feckin' Rocket ,or whatever it morphs into, gets built, all the talk of manned flights to Mars is just hype.
As do I, but some of my best friends are rocket scientists, and until the Big Feckin' Rocket ,or whatever it morphs into, gets built, all the talk of manned flights to Mars is just hype.
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