Fun & Curios

Stuff That’s Hard to Do (3-9 AUG)

Major US Launches this Week:

• MON FL Falcon9 / Starlink
- MON NZ Electron/ iQPS (nice staging and fairing sep vids)
▶︎ FRI ISS Crew Dragon / separation from ISS
▶︎ SAT CA Crew Dragon / Recovery 
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Updated: 9 AUG / 1200 (all times US Eastern)
Last week

Rocket PrOn:

For info, click on X and Grok it.
Don’t miss the nifty shutdown transients in full-screen.

Next week, Mach diamonds

Engineering Fun:

MaxQ is maximum aerodynamic pressure.
Think of aerodynamic pressure, Q, as felt wind.
Q = 1/2 x (air density) x (speed squared), so it goes from zero at liftoff to zero in space.
MaxQ is one of the primary design points, like liftoff and stage separation, that drives structure, dynamics, and control.
Basically, if it’s gonna break-up, it’ll be by here.
Where maxQ is the big driver, it requires structural strength and control oomph, i.e. it costs mass, dollars, and payload.
Avoiding the worst of it allows you to trade-off performance, cost, and reliability.
Therefore, they throttle-down around maxQ to avoid needing all that mass while staying within structural and control margin requirements.

Again, a slide rule is required beyond this.