garretruh
Joined 14 years ago
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344
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56
Member since
May 23
Recent submissions
Comment · 11 years ago
This launch was/is going to be the first one without a boost back. Because of DSCOVR's mass and destination (Earth-Sun L1 point), there isn't enough fuel to make a boost back burn. That's why the barge is ~650 km off the coast[0] instead of the 350 km it was for CRS-5[1].
[0] https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/viewer?mid=zp15b_P5ERVk.kQ...
[1] https://mapsengine.google.com/map/u/0/viewer?mid=zp15b_P5ERV...
Comment · 11 years ago
SpaceX has said that they will announce the status of the first stage as soon as they know on the webcast. And if successful (and they have a good link to the barge), they'll also play a replay of the landing.
EDIT: Or not. Looks like they wound down the SpaceX broadcast. NASA TV is still broadcasting the launch though.
Comment · 11 years ago
It's completed it's boost back burn, so it's on a trajectory towards the landing barge (positioned off shore a good distance).
EDIT: All this is just from the radio transmissions broadcast on the SpaceX YouTube stream.
Comment · 11 years ago
Stage 1 separation. Here we go.
EDIT: "Stage 1 boost back shutdown"
EDIT 2: "Loss of signal from Stage 1" (expected)
Comment · 12 years ago
It looks like that is indeed the case://openbook.sfgov.org/openbooks/cgi-bin/cognosisapi.dll?b_action=cognosViewer&ui.action=run&ui.object=%2fcontent%2ffolder%5b%40name%3d%27Reports%27%5d%2freport%5b%40name%3d%27Budget%27%5d&ui.name=20Budget&run.outputFormat=&run.prompt=false
Comment · 12 years ago
Obviously you can't. The geofence (as implemented in ArduPilot) is simply a safety measure; once the aircraft passes outside of a defined zone, it returns to a pre-determined waypoint inside the fence and waits for further pilot commands.
To answer the initial question, the latest versions of ArduPilot implement terrain following (based on terrain data loaded into the flight computer before-hand). Additionally, there is also now support for range-finding instruments like Lidar Lite [0], although I don't believe those are currently being used in the terrain following mode. Such instruments could conceivably be used to implement "look-ahead" functionality to more accurately avoid obstacles.
Comment · 12 years ago
They claim on their Kickstarter that they can get around this:
The Apple Review process restrictions are very specific. Apple forbids the dynamic loading of remote code. But this is not what Air-Control does, our library contains all the code it needs so no code is loaded dynamically. Our library only downloads content and configurations, which is permitted by Apple.
For a very similar use case we can reference our existing tool, nativeCSS, which is a dynamic styling library for iOS and Android. This is very similar to what Air-Control does, it downloads styles and applies them to a running app. This has been installed in a wide range of Apps, and has been approved by Apple since its launch in December 2012.
Whether or not Apple actually goes for this is another question entirely.
Comment · 12 years ago
Honestly, I think exposure to a country in which the population lacks rights that most Western populations enjoy has a value of its own. It makes it much harder to take those rights for granted.
Comment · 12 years ago
At least during the beta, a "Donate" segment would occasionally be interspersed between programs/segments; the app displayed a button that linked you to the start of their online donation process.
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