Ariane 6 maiden launch live broadcast. - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 09, 2024, 06:13:30 pm
content: Should launch in less than an hour of posting this.

author: Gyro
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 09, 2024, 08:04:38 pm
content: That went surprisingly well for a new launch vehicle!

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 09, 2024, 08:38:00 pm
content: ^I would not say surprising. It's made in old stile. Conservative design, risk aversion, testing every tiny bit on the ground. Barely anyone beside SpaceX (and none of big guys on government funding) would rather explore uncharted waters and rapidly blow up things to advance faster rather than keep doing safe mediocrity.

author: Gyro
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 09, 2024, 09:32:54 pm
content: Agreed, maybe swap surprisingly for pleasingly. It's a shame they won't have any re-usability until into the 2030s though.

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 09, 2024, 09:51:36 pm
content: Quote from: Gyro on July 09, 2024, 09:32:54 pmI suspect they'll achieve reusability no sooner than SpaceX lands humans on Mars. TBH I'm glad Europe has a launch capability again but it's hardly exciting.

author: brucehoult
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 09, 2024, 10:32:48 pm
content: I came 3 1/2 hours after the launch and the broadcast is still going!

author: tom66
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 09, 2024, 10:34:10 pm
content: If SpaceX do succeed with Starship, it's hard to see what market this rocket will have in a few years. But maybe I'm missing something.

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 09, 2024, 10:54:13 pm
content: Quote from: tom66 on July 09, 2024, 10:34:10 pmLaunches from EU government agencies.

author: tszaboo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 09, 2024, 10:57:19 pm
content: Quote from: tom66 on July 09, 2024, 10:34:10 pmThis allows Europe to launchanythingthey want into space.Cost is secondary consideration.Congratulations on the successful launch.

author: brucehoult
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 09, 2024, 11:08:14 pm
content: Looked up the stats.The €115m configuration with four solid boosters can launch 21,650 kg to LEO, a little less than Falcon 9 FT's 22,680 kg in expendable mode (apples vs apples). The €75m two booster configuration used today can launch about half of that, 10,350 kg. Falcon 9 can launch 17,690 kg to LEO if they are landing and reusing the booster.Falcon 9 with two boosters (aka Falcon Heavy) can launch 64,000 kg to LEO if all three booster stages are expended, 50,000 kg if they are recovered for reuse.So Ariane 6 is not a huge rocket. The payload to LEO is very similar to the later Ariane 5 ES. The main thing is that Ariane 6 costs about half as much as Ariane 5 -- but still almost twice more than an expended Falcon 9.

author: brucehoult
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 09, 2024, 11:16:31 pm
content: Quote from: tom66 on July 09, 2024, 10:34:10 pmThey already succeeded. Superheavy/Starship got safely into orbit  on both of the last two flights. That's doing everything that anyone else's rockets do, but launching (in expendable form) TEN TIMES more payload into LEO than Falcon 9 or Ariane 6, at the same cost as Ariane 6.If (when!) they succeed in making it reusable that's just icing. well, not *quite*, but that was deliberate.

author: coppercone2
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 09, 2024, 11:29:53 pm
content: this is great for Europe's independence. Europe is already scared that America is going down the crapper because of a trump reelection and this rocket puts them in a better negotiating position. No one can deny you space, plus you don't have intercontinental red tape to cross, and you have higher security (more local = easier to detect infiltrator without trusting something 2000 miles away.. and even if alliances are maintained, isolated systems bring confidence together). Also, wanna bet a certain possible future president might... lay down the levies on 'useless for common folk' space companies and gut NASA even more? Nothing agrees with the low income voters then getting rid of 'waste' like space development! (and when that budget NASA budget is tapped out, he will just raise taxes on space companies when the people finally wanna see the guillotine go down on corporations cuz they still don't have enough money)Diverse platforms are good too in case it turns out that space x has boeing-esque problems in the future after they bought a fleet. They will have their own expertise on heavy rocket systems and you can better appraise a purchase or contract in the future.I think it increases world stability. There is less centralization of space.A company is very strictly controlled from the top, which gives it efficiency, but it also means that it can make rapid unexpected maneuvers (i.e. musk +ukraine) , which can lead to problemsSpace-x is a engineering company with a company culture. We don't know if its the right mindset in the long run. Having independently developed systems will bring more knowledge into the fold that are not subject to company specific dogma (every company has its 'thing' that gets into everything it does).I will guess that this is a very high quality heavy rocket.For instance, no one is happy about the quality of test equipment thats under the Danaher Corp umbrella. Its basically common opinion that quality went down, and annoying features that we do not need or want become common and dictate the direction of the market based on non technical people being involved in the purchasing process, meaning we get stuff we don't really want to work with. Space-x having a monopoly on heavy launch vehicles is similar to the problems that we see with modern test equipment. the ESA is pretty well isolated from space-x, so hopefully it allows for alternative systems development. Plus, its more free from investors (which seem to decrease quality in general). I do not have faith in the Chinese space program being particularly innovating (it might be effective however, in the short run) because of their tendency to just copy and or steal designs. I don't think India is coming to the rescue in this regard either, and the Russian space program is currently regarded more as a threat then anything, due to the Russian governments intense efforts to weaponize their space industry.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2024, 12:14:16 am
content: Quote from: tom66 on July 09, 2024, 10:34:10 pmYes, maybe. But alternatives are good, and, it will be reliable. SpaceX does great stuff, but I doubt they'll reach the same level of reliability. Two different approaches really. And I don't see why there should be only one player in the western world, that wouldn't make sense.

author: brucehoult
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2024, 12:32:33 am
content: Here's an interesting statistic.SpaceX flew Falcon 9 96 times in 2023. Only three of those flights used a new booster.Ok, that overstates the reusability a little, as they added four new boosters in 2002 (February, May, October, and November) for 60 launches. All four of those 2022 boosters are still in use with their most recent flights on May 22 or more recently.Two new boosters were added to the fleet in 2021 and are still in use.Three boosters first used in November 2020 are still in use (most recent flights June 8 (21 flights), June 27 (22 flights), May 14 (18 flights)).The booster that was lost at sea on the way back to port after a successful landing on December 23 last year was first used in May 2020 and, if not lost, would be the oldest still active. Another with first flight in June 2020 was deliberately expended on its 20th flight in April 2024.Two new boosters have had first flights (so far) in 2024.So they have made a total of 16 Falcon 9 boosters in 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024. With zero launch and zero landing failures, and just the one loss in a storm at sea, and one deliberately expended to launch a heavier payload.There have been 280 Falcon 9 flights from January 2020 until today.(some flights in that time used older boosters but, equally, the current active fleet of still has a lot of life left in it)

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 10, 2024, 12:41:45 am
content: Quote from: SiliconWizard on July 10, 2024, 12:14:16 amReliability compared to what? SpaceX made significantly more successful Falcon 9/Heavy launches in a row than a total number of rockets ArianeSpace launched in 41 years of its existence (with a few failures).

author: brucehoult
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2024, 12:49:34 am
content: Quote from: SiliconWizard on July 10, 2024, 12:14:16 amThe last time a Falcon 9 failed to get its payload into the desired orbit was in 2015, approximately 245 flights ago.Ariane 5 has had 117 launches in total in 28 years, with 5 partial (reached orbit but not the right one) or total failures. The most recent failure to reach the desired orbit was in 2018. There have been 20 successful flights since.I don't think a claim that SpaceX rockets are less reliable is in any way logical.

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 10, 2024, 01:04:38 am
content: Quote from: brucehoult on July 10, 2024, 12:49:34 amThe last Falcon 9 failure (out of 2 in total) was more than 330 flights ago in 2016 when it blew up on the pad during fueling. Also It was a different rocket back then (Falcon 9 FT B3, v1.1 on the first fail) that was followed by Falcon 9 B4 and current B5, neither of which ever failed. At that point of time SpaceX made just 28 Flacon 9 launches. The first failure you mentioned was a 19th launch.

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 10, 2024, 01:40:22 am
content: Actually this flight was not flawless. Auxiliary power unit (APU) that pressurizes the propulsion system failed, so probably it will stay in orbit as a space junk instead of deorbiting properly.

author: tom66
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2024, 09:35:04 am
content: Quote from: brucehoult on July 09, 2024, 11:16:31 pmAgreed, they have succeeded in a test flight. However, they haven't 'caught' the launcher yet, and have not demonstrated reuse. They are a way off from Starship being a useful launch platform. It is still a prototype. It seems likely we will see some commercial launches in 2025-2026 if things go well for SpaceX. Artemis III will be an exciting moment!

author: brucehoult
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2024, 09:41:30 am
content: Quote from: tom66 on July 10, 2024, 09:35:04 amNo one else even tries.QuoteBullshit.Read what I wrote in the message you quoted.Right now, today, Starship in expendable mode can launch payloads at 10% of the cost per kg (10x the payload at the same cost) as Ariane 6.That's a useful launch platform. Even if they NEVER make landing and reuse work.

author: tom66
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2024, 10:46:48 am
content: Quote from: brucehoult on July 10, 2024, 09:41:30 amOh come on, I'm not anti-SpaceX, but exactly how many commercial payloads are actually lined up for launch on Starship? Payloads with a date for launch? There's nothing but prototype flights scheduled right now. Launching successfully is great but they have a while to go before people are going to be willing to put actual hardware on their craft. It is very much in-development.And the 'catch' is important as Starship is too expensive to launch otherwise in expendable configuration for all but the largest payloads. It's like 200t to LEO. No satellites are that heavy. Basically it can only be filled with Starlink satellites. It's also required to fulfill the NASA contract as they need to refuel an in-orbit booster upwards of 14 times to make it practical.

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 10, 2024, 11:10:56 am
content: ^The only payload on the line is Starlink V3 so far. They could also do Project Kuiper, but I doubt it will happen as Amazon contracted three F9 launches only after sued by shareholders. I bet Amazon will regret them buying launches on unproven rockets (at the time, not that they are completely proven now either): Vulcan, New Glenn and Ariane 6, two of which had just flown. I would be really surprised if there won't be significant delays, and them potentially losing FCC license (under FCC license, Amazon is required to launch and operate 50% of its satellites no later than July 30, 2026, and must launch and operate the remaining satellites no later than July 30, 2029.)Once Starship is fully developed, people will rethink how they build satellites. No mass constraint, no need for complex unfolding mechanisms, etc... Basically it will be about how to build it faster and cheaper rather than how to get it fit in the rocket. A lot more things will makes sense with cheap launches of enormous rocket.

author: brucehoult
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2024, 01:59:46 pm
content: Quote from: tom66 on July 10, 2024, 10:46:48 amProbably none. But it doesn't matter. There are warehouses full of a backlog of Starlink V2 satellites that don't fit on F9 -- they had to make a special "V2 Mini" when Starship took longer than expected to get flying.One it does a few Starlink launches payloads will start appearing. No doubt with shared launch at first, to fill the thing up.QuoteHow many successful flights did other rockets have before they put *people* on them? Zero in at least one case (Shuttle), one or two in others.SLS launched satellites (cubesats) on its first flight, it's planned to do a crewed lunar flyby on the 2nd flight.Ariane 6 launched cubesats the other day. It's planned to launch a $400m military satellite on its 2nd flight (program cost $1.3 billion for three satellites)What makes you think Starship needs to have more launches under its belt than the others before it launches valuable payloads, or humans?

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2024, 03:15:57 pm
content: Quote from: brucehoult on July 10, 2024, 01:59:46 pmStarship is doing radically new things, so it would be foolish to send up anything that needs to come down in one piece in the near future. However, for getting things into orbit they are pretty much there. Their big problem with Starship as a launch platform, rather than as a launch, land and fully reuse platform, is weight. Like most new aerospace systems its overweight, so its payload performance is compromised. That's true of most planes and spacecraft in their early stages of development. Any new plane on its first test flight is a completely unusable craft for commercial operation. With spacecraft the margins are usually so narrow they can't even try to fly the thing until they get the weight under control. Starship has such a large target payload capacity they seem to be OK for test flights, and even lifting some useful payload, with what they have.

author: Sal Ammoniac
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2024, 04:21:02 pm
content: Quote from: coppercone2 on July 09, 2024, 11:29:53 pmYou know that ESA launches the Ariane from French Guiana, which is over 4000 miles from Europe, right?

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 11, 2024, 09:25:37 pm
content: About APU and it's failure at 11 minutes.

author: Stray Electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 11, 2024, 09:54:40 pm
content: Quote from: tszaboo on July 09, 2024, 10:57:19 pmNails it.European Nationalismwill ensure that it will get plenty of usage by the EU countries even if it's cost 3x as much. This is about the EU trying to form an economic union (and a space program) that can compete with US industry in general and in this case, specifically with the US space program.Russia, China and Japan are also attempting to get into the space business. (Iran and North Korea just want to get into the weapons business.)You do realize don't you, that a LOT of the computers, electronics and TE and TE techniques that are discussed on this forum were developed in the US for the 1960s Space Race don't you? I'm sure that Europe would like toKickstarttheir own high tech industries in the same way that the US did in the 1950s and 1960s with the Space Race.They say that competition is a good thing so we'll see how this plays out over the next 30+ years.

author: coppercone2
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 12, 2024, 02:28:24 am
content: I think there is also a quality concern here, I am pretty sure alot of Europeans are... concerned about space-x as a companyi.e.https://www.businessinsider.com/former-spacex-employees-lawsuit-elon-musk-execs-spanking-video-2024-6its kind of like do we trust animal house for space defense & securitywhat it makes me think is "is a reasonable complaint or request going to be taken seriously by that kind of company during a dire situation?"then there is a concern about self destructs and disabling access to infrastructure based on the opinions of a single individual or possibly a board of his friends, that are in another country, across the ocean.. .with only the slow feed back process from congress to correct it. i.e. redeployment of satellites after ASAT attackI don't think it will push computer technology forward too much anymore, but there is something to be said about having cheaper reliable power electronics and stuff like that based on knowledge from research for rockets. Right now treez is an example of european expertise in economic power supplies, I think they can maybe do better.The whole idea of basically trusting your ENTIRE access to a area needed for defense with a single foreign private company is nuts. At best you could try to get the pentagon as a intermediary to make it into some kind of enforceable contract, but wow that does NOT go down well at all in a politically turbulent country. Its a bit like relying on mercenaries, they said a big reason why the roman empire fell was reliance on mercenary forces for defense reasons. In this case its like relying on mercenary transport ships. The only example that comes to mind is CHOAM from the dune books lol, no big power yet has contracted out their entire navy (which I think is similar to satellites since they have persistent objects away from your country that seem to go in big circles endlessly). Even Japan demanded its own boats. They don't have too big a army but they still got plenty of boats. On a singular level , its like having your own car vs having to take the bus or taxi, its ridiculous. In this case its like having to charter a bus from germany to drive to france to pick up the weather man to get to work.In the early days of sail, countries were also feverish about having their own boats if they had any access to water at all.

author: brucehoult
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 12, 2024, 12:02:40 pm
content: Damn ... Falcon 9 upper stage just had the single engine explode when trying to re-ignite an hour after launch to circularise the orbit. The booster worked normally and landed safely on the drone ship.Unusual ice buildup was visible during the initial engine burn. Something may have been leaking.The Starlink satellites were deployed into an elliptical orbit with the apogee at the desired altitude but very low (but not in the atmosphere) perigee. They might or might not be able to circularise their own orbit, but even even if they can they will have a shorter than normal lifetime because of using up a lot of their propellent doing that.

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 12, 2024, 12:20:15 pm
content: ^Reflective foil looks unusually puffed up. Considering excessive ice build up should be oxygen leaking somewhere inside. Some oxygen ice is normal but not anywhere this much.

author: brucehoult
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 12, 2024, 02:32:34 pm
content: Something starts to happen by mission time 3:50 but it gets dramatic at 4:06.https://x.com/i/broadcasts/1gqGvNkwZPgGB

author: Sal Ammoniac
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 12, 2024, 07:26:50 pm
content: Perhaps it's time to start a new thread to discuss the Falcon 9 engine failure...

author: brucehoult
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 13, 2024, 01:18:39 am
content: If there was a space&rockets or even aerospace sub-board (like "Cooking" and "Tea") then I might agree with you.But there's not, the only other recentish similar post are a 737 Max one that's been going since January and Tianlong-3 accidental launch a couple of weeks ago..And this post veered into comparison of Ariane and SpaceX capacity and price and reliability within 2 or 3 hours, four days before the Falcon 9 upper stage failure. So it was basically already on topic in this thread before it even happened.

author: coppercone2
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 13, 2024, 01:31:22 am
content: there is something to be said about the one use rocket particularly for human use. I feel like the materials are not advanced enough yet to really give me confidence its going to work more then once, and the engineering controls are not fool proof.It seems that with every manned accident, its the boosters that act up, not the shuttle. Space-x reuses the part that gets the hell beat out of it by really intense fire, vibrations and strain. I think its OK for low value sats (which is what they seem to be on) though so long it maintains a positive score.That ring manufacturing process he has is IMO scary. I think you would need a giant pilger machine to make a really durable one. But even then, I feel like metal is god damn weird. Really it should be 100% forged after forming too, because the skin should be less susceptible to cracks.No one likes a non-forged axe. But the stresses on these rockets are enormous.And if you did have said pilger and it worked good, it would pretty much make sense just to smelt the thing and reform it because its well automatedThat might be a good use for mars too, build a nuclear reactor there and form rocket tubes in a giant ass plant.As for the reusable heat shields, I too am really dubious after restoring this old kiln. These old bricks are totally fucking unpredictable. It could spall when its compacted, or it can crack in half. Who the fuck knows why! The "foam" process of the fire resistant material is shady, I think it needs to be all engineered micro lattice structure, you can't trust random bubbles for too long. Of course thats my opinion, its going to turn out that material might totally suck balls and you need the randomness of the forming process to make it half decent lol. Well I will give it one thing, I still think high heat ceramics are less unnerving then glassy structures, now those are just unpredictable

author: brucehoult
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 13, 2024, 04:27:36 am
content: Quote from: coppercone2 on July 13, 2024, 01:31:22 amI dunno. Would you want to a passenger on a new 737 Max that had never been test-flown? I wouldn't.I'd rather be on the 2nd or 3rd or 5th flight of something where there were already a dozen of the same design that had each made 15 to 20 flights, with zero failures. That's the current situation with Falcon 9 Block 5 boosters.Note that it was the use-once part of Falcon 9 that failed. Even then it was a completely survivable failure. It deployed the satellites and they might yet be usable. It seems it's not a matter of available fuel and dV but whether the thrust over a complete orbit will be greater than atmospheric drag at the perigee and they can get a net raising of the perigee at all. Ideally, of course, you want to add all the dV instantaneously (or at least over 5 or 10 minutes) at one or more apogees, not thrusting all the way around..If the upper stage had more than one (smaller?) engine then there might well have been full mission success.Maybe it's a bit different for things coming back from orbital speed, or higher. Falcon 9 boosters only hit ~6500 km/h, Superheavy 5750 and 5500 km/h on tests 3 and 4 respectively. That's only 4% to 5% of the energy of orbital speed, so no big problem to deal with. The slower Superheavy isn't even bothering with an entry burn before hitting the atmosphere.There have been 6 Crew Dragon 2 built. The first prototype had a successful Demo-1 flight, but was accidentally destroyed in a ground test of the abort thrusters a few weeks later. The second one was retired after a successful Flight Abort Test. It might well be that it's always sensible to retire them after a launch abort (hopefully after they save the crew!). That should be very unusual.The remaining 4 built are all still in service, with a total of 13 crewed flights between them, including the one currently docked to ISS on its 5th flight.There are also 3 cargo Dragon 2s, which have done 10 flights between them (4, 4, and 2)QuoteDragon seems to be adequately proven. Starship is certainly still an open question.I'm sure they can protect it adequately, it's just a question of how much weight they have to add, and how much maintenance between flights.SpaceX just seems to like to approach the optimum from the "let's prove we didn't do enough" side, not from the "build it like a brick outhouse and then see how much we can safely trim off later" side.

author: coppercone2
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 13, 2024, 05:42:23 am
content: I have seen many more used things break then new things break unless their not tested properly when it comes to structural stuff. I never thought to myself this weld is getting better with age, just due to what they are.For precision systems sure, you get to the 'correct' point. But structural stuff? No way.You trust a old aluminum ladder over a new one? Or things like heavy hooks, beat up bolts, used up steel cable and older wiring.. I rarely have more confidence in them. It feels like a space rocket is chock full of those things. Especially brittle stuffI think there is a error that develops because people used to build things so much better that you end up thinking age made it better but I think the manufacturing quality of those things degraded to such a point that they are just orders of magnitude inferior.Granted, they only expect 10 uses out of it.. but the stress conditions those objects undergo are like the worst there are.I think the data set that is relevant to space travel proportional to the amount of total data there is about general materials science knowledge used terrestrially is still very small and it might not be wise to use methodologies even vaguely similar to terrestrial conditions in order to assert objects durability.Total number of rocket launches humans made is like 50000. For something like cars or planes, you have orders of magnitude more data gathered within the same time period. A car manufacturer has 1.7 billion cars to date to learn from and make judgements based on. 50K is jack shit compared to this, but I think they are using the same methodology as cars. And with cars you can study all of them, the majority of rockets are burned by the atmosphere save for some debris. And relevant to heavy rockets, I bet that number is under 5000.and despite all of this, it still seems like its super easy to make a shitty unreliable car, even though you can test all the components and their under massively better conditions (but built with similar cost engineering practices as space x)

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 13, 2024, 01:25:42 pm
content: Quote from: coppercone2 on July 13, 2024, 05:42:23 amEvery analysis of reliability says you are wrong. Reliability for something well designed almost always follows a bathtub curve. However much up front testing you do before delivery there is always some amount of early failures in real world use, due to manufacturing issues. If the product is well designed this will soon settle to a very low level of failures, as the early failures gets shaken out. Then you have happy times until something starts to wear, and the failure rate goes up again. Usually the failures rise fairly slowly, leading to the classic bath tub shaped failure curve, and sometimes they rise quite fast. The Japanese used to be masters at getting the long low failure period really clean, and having many things reach wear out at a similar time. So, their final phase was often a steep upward slope, after a period of very high customer satisfaction. You don't see that effect as strongly these days.

author: coppercone2
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 13, 2024, 10:02:57 pm
content: I heard of it. I had to deal with it because of medical people. They wanted burn in for certain things. Maybe it made sense for a voltage reference but they never once saw something fail within the first 3 days, it was mandated but even the CTO thought it was BS.After a properly engineered thing passed the manufacturing tests, the way it seemed to work is that problems might show up in 6 months to a year. 3 day intensive burn in never caught a single fail for YEARS.I think it applies to SOME engineering things. We just saw high stress shit that we know is gonna possibly start to show problems in a long while.There was literary no data for this that if it survived for X amount of time it was better and the main problem was some kinda ceramic like shit running near the strain point. It was basically better new, period.They had no idea about what specifics can cause what problems, it was just policy that did nothing that was taken from some unrelated system. I think its mad common. The people that understand the specific problem are like "lol wut" when you get some kind of wear-in crap.I trust things that are machined poorly more when they survive a "burn in" which means that parts grind themselves to the correct dimensions without breaking. Because I know there its basically not made right and the final manufacturing step is to basically let the fuckign thing lap, grind and burnish itself into spec. The first few hours of operation of like a cheap gear box or something is similar to pottery not cracking during final firing lol. But thats not some magic indicator of reliability, its more like "oh, it finally managed to grind that burr and misalignment off the shaft hole and run smooth without vibrating to death". I call it incomplete.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 14, 2024, 01:24:16 am
content: Quote from: coppercone2 on July 13, 2024, 10:02:57 pmEven mass market consumer products like TVs get a 48 hour burn in, with some temperature cycling and shaking, at the factory before they are shipped these days. It doesn't pick up every bad soldered joint and loose part, but it picks up enough to really bring down warranty claims. If you have a lot of problems showing up after months you may have a poor design with real weaknesses. Of course, it can take a

author: coppercone2
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 14, 2024, 01:31:57 am
content: not if its good to begin with and they just want a extra requirement & ignore your reliability data for whatever internal reasons. They were very confident it would improve things, it just made more work for no reason IMOI think it helps if your manufacturing is half assed but literarly this program was running for years and it aint find a single thing. It was like considered a 100% drain of company resources to maintain that "burn in" program for that customer requirement. There was 0 failures (they were all caught by normal testing/calibration procedures on the bench for a hour or so) that the burn in weeded out, and not a single equipment was swapped or whatever according to the data.Maybe it would show something if you tightened a specification to weed something out, but they were more then happy with the spec.Its a reason why small companies sometimes find big companies to be insane.They paid extra but it basically lead to more people being hired to do nothing/occupy space and IMO had a bad effect on company culture, I always wished they out sourced that to someone that is isolated by the mail man, so they can have a little place where people just plug it in and do nothing with it and we don't know who they are or how little they work lol. It got lumped into the calibration department and their supposed to be smart people but it was just a bunch of extension cord plugging.If there was a problem with that thing, it was when a customer wanted something more demanding, and it always required a re-design, not any kind of screening. it seemed that it either worked or needed a redesign for some extra demanding application.For this particular thing, it was

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 14, 2024, 01:44:25 am
content: Quote from: coppercone2 on July 14, 2024, 01:31:57 amHow many units were you making? Try a reasonable production line making 10k to 50k units per day, and see how many early failures a good burn in program picks up. People don't do this for no reason on products with thin margins. It takes a lot of space to have 10s of thousands of units in burn in at any one time. Especially when you are the other side of the world from most of your customers these practices make a big difference.

author: coppercone2
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 14, 2024, 01:46:22 am
content: They wanted it for small amounts in the several hundreds per month. (ie. batch of 100 taken from the usual several thousand)IMO the volume for aerospace heavy rockets is rather similar or even much smallerHonestly the extra crap around having to do the burn in test IMO made it more likely to get damaged in the factory too. It just lead to scheduling problems, weird shift requirements (unplug it on a weekend type stuff) that you know can just cause a problem because its so irregular. And god forbid sales made a quoting mistake for a dead line, suddenly things needed to get rush to ensure burn in is completed on time. Management was not good, but that was not something that can be changed.

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 14, 2024, 02:44:15 am
content: Quote from: coppercone2 on July 14, 2024, 01:46:22 amAlso they have thousands of times more parts than your thingy running in extreme stress conditions. A tiniest defect can blow up a whole rocket.

author: brucehoult
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 14, 2024, 06:13:23 am
content: SpaceX says each pass through perigee is removing 5+ km of altitude from the Starlink satellites' apogee. So it's not going to take many orbits for the apogee to drop into the upper reaches of the atmosphere too, and then it'll be all drag, all the time, and a rapid spiral into burning up at that point.

author: tszaboo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 14, 2024, 01:49:56 pm
content: Quote from: coppice on July 14, 2024, 01:24:16 amThat definitely didn't happened at the factory I was interning at. TV was turned on only while it was on the production line, showing test images maybe for a total of 2 minutes. They had pallets that had electronic pick-up on the bottom, and sent some code on the IR to set it to test mode.

author: coppercone2
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 14, 2024, 02:43:43 pm
content: the other thing that burn in does is that unscrupulous people can degrade the normal QC because "burn in will catch it". It might not because its not being monitored as well, your just assuming time will do the work for you.lots of hunching and figuring can go into justifying that wise decisionI would say over load testing is much better. A proofing test, if its at all possible.For something as simple as a loose wire, it often can work just peachy for a long time until you bump it, or it gets some serious current. It will run forever at nominal conditions without a stimulus of some sort (or 2 years of thermal expansion and contraction if it survives the postal service). But if you catch that sucker smouldering, it can be tightened and good forever.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 17, 2024, 09:01:21 pm
content: Quote from: tszaboo on July 14, 2024, 01:49:56 pmI've been to a few TV plants in the UK and China. They've all done some form of burn-in. Some more thorough that others, but they did it.

author: coppercone2
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 17, 2024, 09:05:47 pm
content: is that not mostly specific to the display being a very peculiar component that is known to really have problems because of its extreme I/O count and rather shoddy interconnects ?Its not often you come across a optical ASIC that has a surface area in square meters. Its like a QFP from hell that has to make connections to all those pixels.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 17, 2024, 09:07:00 pm
content: Quote from: coppercone2 on July 14, 2024, 02:43:43 pmPeople running sane burn in programs include some form of shock, from whacking with rubber mallets to vibrating the product in patterns. They usually ensure the burn in includes at least some temperature variation as well. However, some people think production testing is about cosseting a product, so the flaws don't show up. Fire them.

author: coppercone2
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 17, 2024, 09:07:48 pm
content: Quote from: coppice on July 17, 2024, 09:07:00 pmthey get the raise and the praise not a firing

author: coppercone2
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 17, 2024, 09:09:46 pm
content: I am curious about burn in on CRT tv's. Did they do it? It has a sane component count. Since the phosphors is just a canvas, and the beam steering does the work, so its just a few very nice amplifiers.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 17, 2024, 09:46:42 pm
content: Quote from: coppercone2 on July 17, 2024, 09:09:46 pmThe Japanese started burn in for TVs and other consumer electronics in the 1970s. When they started building in European factories, and arranging JVs with existing European makers to build in European factories, the practice spread. People found there were financial improvements from the lower level of warranty claims.