Re: SpaceX
Posted: Wed Aug 05, 2020 12:06 pm
That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange aeons bring us some web forums whereupon we can gather
https://www.octopusoverlords.com/forum/
https://www.octopusoverlords.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=87918
Daehawk wrote: ↑Wed Aug 05, 2020 2:34 pm Thats neat. Ive not kept up on this rocket. Other than it looking like its straight off the pages of some 1950s sci-fi space artist's drawing pad. Is it supposed to be some heavy lift cargo rocket with lots of space in it or a long range (Mars) human passenger rocket?
Charlie Bolden, a four-time astronaut, served as NASA administrator from mid-2009 through early 2017. During that time, he oversaw the creation and initial development of the agency's large Space Launch System rocket.
...
Meanwhile, the SLS rocket, originally due to launch in 2017, is now delayed until at least the end of 2021.
As a result of this, Bolden appears to have changed his mind. In an interview with Politico published Friday morning in the publication's Space newsletter, Bolden was asked what might happen during the next four years.
“SLS will go away," he said. "It could go away during a Biden administration or a next Trump administration… because at some point commercial entities are going to catch up. They are really going to build a heavy lift launch vehicle sort of like SLS that they will be able to fly for a much cheaper price than NASA can do SLS. That’s just the way it works.”
The anonymous new space company official quote sums it up pretty well:Kraken wrote: ↑Fri Sep 11, 2020 5:08 pm Well, that's what SHOULD happen, but all that money is getting spread around a LOT of congressional districts. More likely, they'll finish those development contracts and produce one or two vehicles before it's out-competed, probably by Super Heavy + Starship. Phat development contracts good, ridiculous operational costs bad.
SLS is dead, and has been dead for years. It's still burning money and will continue to do so for some time as you mentioned. But its chance to be a vehicle that actually proves productive for more than a token launch or two ended at least 2.5 years ago when FH flew."If Santa Claus arrived, and said, 'I have good news. It now works and you can launch tomorrow. Everything's done. You're going to have a launch tomorrow.' ... It still isn't getting us to the Moon. Even if they achieve everything they aim for, it still does not get people to the Moon. It certainly does not get a base on the Moon and absolutely doesn't get humans to Mars."
Elon Musk's SpaceX and the US military plan to build a rocket capable of delivering 80 metric tons of cargo anywhere in the world in 60 minutes.
Under a newly agreed contract, SpaceX will assess the costs and technical challenges of the project, while initial tests are expected in 2021, Gen. Stephen Lyons, the head of US Transportation Command, said Wednesday at a virtual conference.
A 7,652-mile journey from Florida to Afghanistan could be completed within about an hour with such a high-speed rocket, which could travel at 7,500 mph, per The Times.
Cost of shooting down a ballistic rocket delivery will probably be 1/10,000 the cost of the launch.LawBeefaroni wrote: ↑Sat Oct 10, 2020 10:25 pm Mars is the god of war, after all..
Elon Musk's SpaceX and the US military plan to build a rocket capable of delivering 80 metric tons of cargo anywhere in the world in 60 minutes.
Under a newly agreed contract, SpaceX will assess the costs and technical challenges of the project, while initial tests are expected in 2021, Gen. Stephen Lyons, the head of US Transportation Command, said Wednesday at a virtual conference.
A 7,652-mile journey from Florida to Afghanistan could be completed within about an hour with such a high-speed rocket, which could travel at 7,500 mph, per The Times.
Since 2012, SpaceX has been working on a reusable rocket family, now called Starship, that will eventually replace its workhorse Falcon 9 family. Its design has evolved into a rocket possibly unprecedented in its ambition, being even larger than the venerable Saturn V rocket, but with far more uses. At launch, it will be the world’s largest launch vehicle and mass 5000 tonnes, more than eight times the world’s largest passenger jet, the Airbus A380.
Pushing it off the pad will be 28 Raptor engines producing more thrust than an astounding 50 A380s (75,315 kN/16,931,500 lbf). The Starship upper stage alone will mass 11/12th of a Falcon Heavy, and its reusable cargo variant’s 150 tonne payload would take five reusable Falcon Heavy launches to equal. Its cargo bay is large enough to swallow a passenger locomotive or a tunnel boring machine.
See Also
A passenger variant of Starship will hold at least 100 passengers in a 1000 cubic meter pressurized cabin, an amount 9% greater than the International Space Station. This variant could potentially enable hypersonic point-to-point travel from any two points on Earth in 60 minutes or less.
A tanker variant would be required for missions beyond low Earth orbit (LEO), enabling the retrieval and repair of satellites, missions around and to the Moon, Mars and beyond. With the potential to slash the cost of missions to a fraction of their current levels, Starship’s debut may herald a new era in spaceflight.
Thanks to NASASpaceflight.com’s (NSF) behind the scenes reporting, SpaceX’s method of building it out in the open and Elon Musk regularly tweeting new details, we have been able to trace its progress through 12 known versions.
We’ll be covering seven years of design changes, including new information on materials, internal thinking and upper stage evolution learned since NSF’s first comprehensive article on SpaceX’s Big Falcon Rocket (BFR) was published on August 9, 2018. Additionally, we’ll be covering the latest development news.
Falcon 9 has lost engines on flights without issues before. It's better to lose 10-20% of your engines than say 25-50% is 1 or 2 of 4 fails. On at least one of the Falcon 9 launches IIRC two were turned off by the flight computer to maintain the ascent profile.
Well, I did. I don’t think I’ve ever been more conflicted about anyone else in my life. Elon is everything I hate, and, the only hope for making my boyhood dreams come true all in one.
...and now you know how supervillains actually work.Formix wrote: ↑Sun Oct 25, 2020 10:57 amWell, I did. I don’t think I’ve ever been more conflicted about anyone else in my life. Elon is everything I hate, and, the only hope for making my boyhood dreams come true all in one.
IIRC, during one of the Saturn V launches two of the Rocketdyne J-2 engines in the second stage shut down. One had a failure of some type and when the onboard computer issued the command to make sure it was shut down, turns out the wiring lead to the wrong engine . Since the flight software was programmed to account for engine outages this wasn't a mission success issue.malchior wrote: ↑Sun Oct 25, 2020 10:26 amFalcon 9 has lost engines on flights without issues before. It's better to lose 10-20% of your engines than say 25-50% is 1 or 2 of 4 fails. On at least one of the Falcon 9 launches IIRC two were turned off by the flight computer to maintain the ascent profile.
Awesome.raydude wrote: ↑Thu Oct 29, 2020 10:36 am OSIRIS-REx Sample Stowed. We got our souvenirs. Packing our bags and getting ready to head home.
On the one hand, that was incredibly frustrated since my satellite was atop the rocket that aborted launch at T minus 2 seconds.
Yup. two launches this week, I'll be watching them from my backyard and since they will both be after sunset it will be pretty cool.
Exciting. Good luck!
I also love how we've reached the point where the fact that this was a new, 'unproven' booster was an issue. Flight-proven (aka used) boosters are now the more reliable option for SpaceX. We're so far past landing/re-use being a novel thing that the dichotomy is reversing--how long before the launch price is discounted for new boosters rather than used?
" The thing that really gets me is that the ship and the rocket don't coordinate with each other in any way - both are locked into reaching, or maintaining in the case of the ship, a specific set of GPS coordinates, and if the readings are accurate, when the rocket lands, it's also where the ship is."