/sci/ - Science & Math

>Musk spends decades dissing the space shuttle
>his new rocket is literally just the space shuttle but on top of the rocket instead of on the side
>it even features no launch escape system
APOLOGIZE

Was the shuttle a good idea or a bad idea?

SpaceX has never launched a payload anywhere near the theoretical maximum capacity of the simple Falcon 9
In fact, I'm sure I read somewhere they have not even yet designed the fairing that would handle a heavier payload.

So what's the point of the Falcon Heavy? What's the point of the BFR?
There doesn't seem to be any commercial use for more than ~10t payloads to geostationary orbit, at best.

I think the New Zealand afrojew guy has got the right idea. The future is to go even cheaper than SpaceX, not to try and go bigger and bigger.

Okay I have another question,
at the Iridium launch yesterday, when the second stage cuts off and before the satellites begin deploying one by one, there's still some fuel being expelled violently off the sides of the engine.

You can see it at 1:07:50 here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtdjCwo6d3Q
and when the camera comes back it's being shot out violently and there seem to be ice crystals forming?

Whats that?

>>9212936
>spaceflight will be as reliable as passenger airline travel
y hello there :)

>>8322810
>shuttle failure rate
>2/135

>falcon 9 failure rate
>4/29
For a "flying coffin" the shuttle sure was safe compared to spacex's meme rocket

>>8322814
>In expendable mode, it can throw 8300 kg to GTO
Not that guy you're replying to, but not only are those numbers NOT accurate yet (they reflect an engine change that was supposed to change Q4 this year) but falcon 9 will never fly in expendable mode again.

How did it land back where it launched?
Did it circle the Earth once?

Space launches always go east to save like 500m/s dV due to the Earth's rotation, shouldn't it have landed somewhere in Europe or something?
Or did they burn a lot of fuel to reverse all that horizontal velocity and bring it back where it started?

I completely missed it all due to work I wish I had seen it.

Why don't we launch rockets from very tall mountains where the atmosphere is thinner?

I'm not knowledgeable enough to comment any further here but I can post this