Missile defense multiple kill vehicle hover test

What Hacker News said

Recommends ge96 · 2023-11 · on “SpaceX will launch the X-37B on a Falcon Heavy rocket Dec. 7”

Semi tangent, the MKV thing is so rad, I don't understand how it kills ballistic missiles but yeah -- I thought this thing was supposed to operate in space. [this video]

Cites jcims · 2021-07 · on “The James Webb Space Telescope has passed the final mission analysis review”

Sure the final mission configuration isn't exactly what they would test, but the differences in the sky crane maneuver on Mars and Earth would be relatively easy to factor in (ok, that might be an exaggeration, but its doable). There is a ton of control development that would need to be sorted out so they knew how to integrate it all. For example, I had heard that the primary indicator that the rover had touched down simply watching the throttle on the closed loop flight control system. When it throttled down it meant the rockets were no longer suspending the weight of the rover. If true, I would think you would want to test that quite a bit... FWIW they tested missile defense 'kill vehicles

Cites ActorNightly · 2023-02 · on “Ask HN: So what IS the end game for any WW3 scenario?”

This is my personal belief, which I have no way to substantiate, and solely statistical, but it helps me sleep at night or so to speak. Nobody spends more on defense than US. Also, the new technology that you hear about today is essentially declassified tech from ~20 years ago. I remember reading in the past about Boeing doing experiments with a 747 carrying a giant laser that could lock on and fry ICBMs. There was also stuff like this 14 years ago: [this video] Extrapolating to today, I firmly believe that US (and probably NATO and other countries who share intel) are watching Russian launch sites closely, ready to drop kinetic warheads from orbit at the first sign of activation, not to mention

Cites freitzkriesler2 · 2023-08 · on “China Stops Publishing Youth Unemployment Numbers Amid Faltering Economy”

Nukes these days are about strategic destruction of economic assets, not blanket salting the earth. MAD was only really a problem in the 60s and 70s when delivery systems were fuzzy and they were going for a wide berth. A nuclear exchange today would be much more precise. Not a complete volley to glass everything. Not to mention, anti missile tech has been black tech for years. Here's a video of a mkv defense tool made by Lockheed back in 2008 [this video] This is the stuff they show off. Imagine the stuff they haven't shown yet. I am not worried at all.

Cites datadrivenangel · 2024-05 · on “Disney's robots use rockets to stick the landing”

Reminds me of the MKV-L ballistic missile interceptor tests: simple physics, with impressive engineering implementation [0]. 0 - [this video] (the rapid fire rockets are a little loud)

Cites mrguyorama · 2026-03 · on “Missile Defense Is NP-Complete”

[LINK] This is what we had to build in the 60s to allow a missile to know where it physically existed precisely enough to allow it to 50% of the time hit within a circle of ~50 meters. When you get to certain points in physics, certain energy regimes, you no longer are building machines or tools or something mass market. You are building artisan scientific instruments, and then sometimes gluing explosives to them. Even modern laser ring gyros do not even share a dinner table with the precision and accuracy of the above singular component of the Peacekeeper ICBMs, and that was a long time ago. "Tech" and some of the developments of the past few decades have really confused people. The miniatu