/sci/ - Science & Math

>>10688497
NASA drawing

starship point to point will be a viable alternative to long distance airtravel, and a significant portion of the customers will literally only be on it for the weightlessness

>>10688497
>Solar panel on a Lunar surface probe
Imagine spending millions upon millions of dollars on a vehicle that will have a maximum operational life span of less than two weeks before it gets rekt by extreme cold

The Soviets only pulled it off because their Lunar rovers had big chunky radioisotope heaters and the whole thing closed up at night to hold that warmth.

>>10688522
>ssto
>shows two stages

>>10688539
>Solar panel
>What are batteries, Alex?

>>10688524

>Arrival at Mars, job title; Nuclear infrastructure construction and repair technician
>Job description; Layin' pipe
to satisfy that womannn

>>10688550
Not power dense enough to supply kilowatts of thermal energy for nearly two weeks straight, retaaaard

>>10688548
No silly, there's only one stag, but it has the ability to dump 4/5ths of its engines once it's high and fast enough :^)

It's basically just a big Atlas stage-and-a-half design desu

>>10688548
It'll be closer to an SSTO than the X-33.

>>10688575
>kilowatts
You just need to keep it from freezing up until the sun comes back.
Shit should be rated for -50C. It's a total vacuum so only radiative cooling, put some warm snuggies on it. And there's plenty of extra sun to charge the batteries during lunar daytime. No clouds, no dust storms.

>>10688534
I buy into pretty much every capability of starship but this one is bullshit. No one is going to be getting into a rocket where a tiny failure causes big kaboom and pulling 3-5gs just to get to the destination quicker, tickets will also be expensive as hell even based on their cost estimates.

The only way civilians are riding these willingly is risking one launch and re entry to get to Moon/Mars/Orbital stations. Even if they are as safe as airplanes, a failure mode on an airplane generally means you have a decent chance of surviving and even for me who is pretty confident they can make them that reliable just makes it too much to risk riding on a regular basis.

>>10684300

You can launch tin can modules and tin can station cores on Starship for rock bottom pricing.

Starship is big enough it can be its own space hotel for trips to LEO will also carrying paying customers. Ride the Heart of Gold yourself before her fateful voyage to Mars.

It's a new era. Check your paradigms at the door.

And don't call me Shirley.

>>10688602
>tickets will also be expensive as hell
The latest update from Musk-chan is that Starship can do point to point without Superheavy, which dramatically reduces fuel costs. A fully loaded Starship uses only a $50-60k worth of fuel if (big if) Raptor can run on commercial grade LNG instead of pure methane. That's less than a 747 over the same distance.

>nobody is going to [get on top of a firecracker]
Eh, it shouldn't be too far off airline grade safety; assuming Raptor lives up to Merlin reliability standards. Rockets are certainly more dramatic when they fail, but Starship has to be built with enough redundancies to safely get humans to Mars. Suborbit should be easy for it.

>Failure on airplanes means decent survival odds
Depends on the failure, same as Starship. Explosion in the fuel tank has killed a number of jetliners. And Starship can land with one of three engines, in theory. Losing atmosphere should result in an immediate entry burn and landing wherever possible. Remember, if it's built to land on Mars, it can land on a random field in Iowa.

>>10688617
Musk better fucking choose the right names for Starships

>Enterprise for first orbital model
>Heart of Gold for first Martian lander
>Rocinante at some point
>Aldrin, Shepard, etc for lunar landers
>Seldon, and on that note Asimov

>>10688591
>It's a total vacuum so only radiative cooling
Correct, which is what makes designing a Lunar surface probe such a bitch. You can't just design for the cold by adding insulation, you have to design for the middle of the day when the surface temperature reaches above 100 C.

You'd need hundreds of kilograms of batteries to keep a probe that can reject enough heat to survive the day time warm enough at night. The Soviets had a trick where they put a lid on top of the probe at night so that the radioisotope heaters could keep up, which then opened during the day to let the heat out quickly.

>>10688602
>No one is going to be getting into a rocket where a tiny failure causes big kaboom
>implying Starship the shit-can-to-space won't be tolerant to tiny failures

Starships that don't make orbital grade will be beefed up by guys welding on strips of reinforcement from cherrypickers and used for point-to-point single stage instead.

>>10688661
Phoenix for the first orbital model. Enterprise for the first armed one.

>>10688617
>You can launch tin can modules and tin can station cores on Starship for rock bottom pricing.
Better than that would be to launch flat-packed metal paneling and interior liners to assemble in space to make a monolithic habitat module with a dry weight of ~150 tons that wouldn't otherwise fit into Starship.

>>10688673
>first armed one
there is no such thing as an unarmed starship

>>10688673
No, Phoenix is saved for the first Starship that falls over during landing but is rebuilt and put back into service later with its new name.

whats the next step for small landers after these fly? if these are supposed to be cheap commercial landers then what kind of commercial payloads can we expect? are businesses going to be spending millions on payloads for some lunar data, or are nasa and other research organizations going to be the only ones sending up payloads?

>>10688677
Starship isn't a 'starship'. Its engine plumes disperse in vacuum after only a few meters into harmless gas clouds, the engines don't spray any radiation, the vehicle doesn't have the delta V to just do a close-pass and drop off a few kinetic kill missiles on the way, etc.

There's no such thing as an unarmed Orion nuclear-pulse rocket, so long as it isn't dead in the water. There's no such thing as an unarmed Torch ship. There's no such thing as an unarmed Heinlein-esq matter-to-thrust-conversion-propelled Fuck-You vehicle.

>>10688692
Starship can still just burn suicidally at things and hit them with a lot of metal at goodly speed.

>>10688677
>>10688673
>>10688661
Christ fuck off back to rebbit

>>10688720
>muheddit
every day since 2008

>>10688720
Do you have some kind of detector with you that can sense if someone has visited reddit? In that case, then it must be going off constantly because reddit it one of the most populated websites on the internet.

Calm down and stop the pointless witch hunt.

>>10688725
rebbitanon won't take kindly to the suggestion that his reddit witchhunting shits up /sfg/

What should the first warp ship be called?

Options:
>Phoenix
>Event Horizon

Any other ones?

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-space-exploration-stratolaunch-exclus/exclusive-space-firm-founded-by-billionaire-paul-allen-closing-operations-sources-idUSKCN1T12FD

spruce goose 2.0

>>10688755
Alcubierre, Tsiolkovsky, or "Relativity my Dick LMAO"

>>10688760
>build literally the largest flying anything in history
>immediately shut down
Nice

>>10688725
sounds like you from reddit

>>10688797
The power of Yes-men

>>10688497
they'd better not stick lunar resource prospector instruments on a lander...
>>10688539
save the plutonium for deep space, ISRU, and permanently shadowed craters not some dinky lander.
>>less than two weeks
maybe it doesn't need to last that long
>>rekt by extreme cold
DLR's Philae lander did just fine without any heaters. It had cold tolerant electronics.

>>10688824
>they'd better not stick lunar resource prospector instruments on a lander...
Why not?

Wait, Starship isn't going to be able to be solar powered, is it? How much power do you think is needed for life support and recycling for 100+ colonists? Consider that the ISS only needs to keep single digit astronauts happy, and the size of it's solar arrays. Would Starship need a reactor?

>>10688725
Yes it's going off right now with your rebbit tier shit. All your faggots posts are cringe as fuck and the typing style is easily identifiable.

>>10688834
>All your faggots posts are cringe as fuck and the typing style is easily identifiable.
What typing style?

>>10688831
because they're worthless on a lander. They need to be mounted on a rover to have any scientific value at all.

>>10688835
>He isn't even aware of how obvious he is

Cringe

>>10688834
>>10688839
>>10688720
For someone with an incredibly distinct "edgy neet spamming buzzwords" typing style, you sure criticize others a lot

>>10688861
Beep beep beep

Oh look my rebbit radar went off again

>>10688861
I'm not the guy, but this shouldn't have bother you. I'm not saying you're reddit but you seem new and gay

Something cool to ease tensions.

>>10688884
>this shouldn't bother you
almost half the posts in this thread are autistic screeching about reddit

>>10688892
That shouldn't bother you newfriend. Grow thicker skin and ignore it.

>>10688889
Is there any benefit or application for non-nuclear pusher plates? I know that's just a model for testing purposes, but the idea is neat.

>>10688892
Cool feel free to fuck off back to your safe space then.

>>10688755
Meep Meep

>>10688901
I wouldn't think so, unless plastic explosive is orders of magnitude more energy dense than rocket fuel. Nukes are obviously insanely energy dense which makes it viable to lift up a heavy plate and piston system with you.

>>10688990
>I wouldn't think so, unless plastic explosive is orders of magnitude more energy dense than rocket fuel.

They aren't. The energy density in chemical explosives is actually very poor, and hydrocarbons have them beat by miles. The only thing they're good for is releasing their stored energy all at once.

>>10688834
dilate

>>10688602
Definitely worth it to turn a 12 hour flight into a one hour one.

>>10688760
Aka stratogoose.

>>10688824
Don't use plutonium in your radioisotope heaters then, use a different radioisotope.

More time equals more return on investment.

Philae didn't need to worry about baking in the Sun at >100 C for 12 days straight then being refrozen to less than -173 C for 12 days. Moon thermal environment a shit. In fact it's probably 3rd worst out of all of them (Mercury is thermally just the Moon but the days are hotter and longer, Venus is the worst of them all).

>>10688832
A reactor would need radiators and those radiators'd be as large or larger than a solar panel array of the same power output as the reactor. So no reactor.

Remember though that ISS has shitty old panels whereas Starship will have much better 2020's technology panels, plus probably a more simplified life support system.

>>10689020
Which makes them good as explosive weapons and shitty as fuels.

Hydrogen is the lightest fuel which is why it's the most energy dense despite burning at a much lower temperature than most hydrocarbons. Since energy density is measured in joules per unit mass, hydrogen has an advantage, because 70 kilograms is a fucking thousand liters of hydrogen, whereas 70 kilograms of kerosene is only 86 liters.

>>10688990
>which makes it viable to lift up a heavy plate and piston system
Actually Orion required that heavy plate and a thick steel hull just to give it a high enough dry mass that it wouldn't reach peak accelerations so high that everyone on board would be killed despite the shock dampening.

The sister concept to Orion, called Medusa, replaces the relatively small surface area steel plate with a huge, thin, kevlar 'parachute' of roughly equal mass but orders of magnitude higher surface area, shaped as either a rotated parabola or a half sphere. The nukes are detonated at the focal point of the parachute, and the shock wave is much more efficiently redirected backwards. The parachute is actually mounted to the front of the vehicle via a very long cable, which stretches and retracts to absorb the shock of each denotation front. Medusa offers better shock dampening and more efficient thrust (more impulse generated per nuke), and therefore allows for much higher top speeds. Since the parachute walls are located quite far from the nuclear explosions there is essentially zero erosion, which is why bare kevlar can hold up to the barrage. Since Medusa operates via tension rather than compression it can be much lighter for a given impulse value than Orion, which lets you devote more dry mass to the actual vehicle rather than the pusher plate, giving you a bigger habitat volume.

>>10688901
The pusher plate is designed because the nuclear reaction cannot be contained at the efficiencies that are desired
Chemical propellants do not have this issue, see notably solid rocket motors

Okay I've got it
Brace yourself for the big meme boys because here it comes: tripropellant rocket engine, but instead of the third prop being hydrogen for muh isp memes, it's atmospheric air

>>10689458
Lame and gay.

>10687976
>No (You)s for no effort bait
Fuck you retarded brainlet nigger, for posting that piece of science fantasy crap here. You can't spin "for gravity" a body which maintains its shape through self-gravitation, because you would cancel it by the rotation, making the body fall apart.

>>10688760
>spruce goose 2.0
Yeah looks like only the commies could actually find a use for an xbox hueg plane, wasting the country in the process

>>10688666
>hundreds of kilograms of batteries
I wish our rockets weren't so piss-poor right now that adding "hundreds of kilograms" are an actual challenge.

>>10688497
K me, me I know ze answer..ze Van Allen radiation belt no?

>>10688522
>No ULA, you can not copy my homework

>>10688661
Firefly, Pillar of Autum and so on..

>>10688522
>>10689605
Yeah, and Gagarin's PhD thesis was about using grid fins for the controlled low-temperature reentry, for suborbital applications in particular.

Turns out that every idea ever has been explored by someone in 50s or 60s, and you can whine about copying for absolutely any spacecraft or rocket, if you choose to.

>>10689702
>every idea ever has been explored by someone in 50s or 60s
Speaking of which... https://falsesteps.wordpress.com/

>>10689531
I was told stories of how after assembly of a rocket washers and bolts were cut down in order to reduce the dry mass as much as possible. Hopefully those days are over.

>>10688760
>Paul Allen
Better cancel that 8:30 res

>>10688656
>A fully loaded Starship uses only a $50-60k worth of fuel if (big if) Raptor can run on commercial grade LNG instead of pure methane. That's less than a 747 over the same distance.

big if true, did you account for cost of liquid oxygen

>>10688755
>What should the first warp ship be called?
Einstein, obviously

>>10690460
I think the tanks at Boca Chica were filled up by trucks that had .99 purity methane, but I could be wrong

>>10689254
energy density per volume is very important, too

4/60 are being odd

>>10690464
>not Zefram Cochrane

We have a Raptor!

https://twitter.com/LabPadre/status/1134876496135434241

>>10690464
It should be Gary Oak.
>c ya later, losers!

>>10690510
that plumbing, owo

Raptor livestream. Some great close ups https://youtu.be/HZvOpAY1yW8

>>10690510
Digging those rainbow colours.

>>10690584
>>10690510
Do we know which Raptor it is?

>>10690584
>>10690510
>>10690388
Nobody cares. Fuck off back to where you came from.

>>10690584
>Harmony harmony oh love

>>10690594
Where do you think you are right now?

>>10690594
>nobody cares
>about rockets
>in a spaceflight thread

>>10690567
Starlink can't come soon enough.

>>10690600
>>10690606
Nobody cares about your pathetic stalker-tier webcams and other creepy shit that you keep posting here from that place that you came from.

>>10690616
I care.

>>10690594
3dgy.
Did your mom made you tendies?

>>10690584
Just think, the whole fucking starship is going to look like that after reentry

>>10690567
they installed it already, that was fast

>>10690616
I think it's funny that you think that

>>10690631
what will stainless steel look like after reentry anyway, darkened by soot or heat sintered into mirror finish

>>10690625
Why? Is your life so pathetic that you watch other people do what you wish you could do, 24/7?

>>10690629
Projecting much?

>>10690634
It's funny that you deny that.

>>10690616
I too care

>>10690640
>Is your life so pathetic
where do you think you are newfag

now fuck off and let us watch rockets in peace

Report and ignore. Dont feed the troll.

>>10690637
It'll be rainbow with some scortch marks, maybe
Like the engine bell
It really depends on what sort of landing burn they do, and how much soot it generates

>>10690641
Why? Is your life so pathetic that you watch other people do what you wish you could do, 24/7?

>>10690644
>where do you think you are newfag
Where do you think you are, retard?

>>10690666
Damn that was fast

detail of the new engine

They reported on the stream that the SpaceX workers were high-fiving earlier, as they were excited to get the new Raptor!

>>10690674
Less extraneous tubes and stuff than the earlier raptor. Wonder if those were for instrumentation or what

>>10690654
Are you that retard that spams the thread with "muheddit"

>>10690682
First raptor was essentially a testbed/proof of concept engine. All of the extra bullshit on it was for the extra instrumentation so they knew the design worked. Now that they've confirmed it and begun bulk engine production they dont need the extra shit anymore.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZvOpAY1yW8

>>10690649
Landing burn shouldn't generate any soot because methane is non-coking. That was a big part of why they chose methane. Imagine cleaning soot out of Raptor plumbing.

>>10690687
No, and it wouldn't make sense to do so since you retards come from an even more cancerous place than Reddit.

>>10690689
The first raptor was built 2015-2016 and wasn't even half the size of this one.
Moron.

>>10690690

>>10690674
supposedly this is Raptor SN4

>>10690646
its really a strange thing to troll about though. out of all the things to be edgy or angry about

can we expect ticket prices for suborbital tourism to drop? virgin and BO are both going to get destroyed by starship E2E if they dont do something.

>>10690768
They're going to get destroyed if they don't do something anyhow, since they still haven't launched a single passenger yet.

Love how this bearded worker is measuring something with a plank of wood next to a fucking raptor

>>10690830
>bearded worker
fuck off, sexist trash
why does it matter if they have a beard?

>>10690834
Because only a unintelligent misogynist white male person can have a beard, and someone like that shouldn't be allowed to work on a rocket, especially with a plank of wood. It's clear he doesn't understand what he's doing.

>>10690848
Oops! It looks like you've violated a 4channel Global Rule! "Trolling outside of /b/"! It's okay friend, we all make mistakes :D

>>10690830
It's actually a perfect encapsulation of why automation destroying all jobs is a meme.
>literally the most advanced rocket ever built by mankind
>still needs big guys carrying lumber around construction sites

>>10690873
Right now there’s four of them hand cranking it up, fun to watch

>>10690873
>big guys
>guys
well consider me triggered, anon.

>>10690873
>>literally the most advanced rocket ever built by mankind
huh?

>>10689274
ah, Medusa makes a lot more sense to me. than just catching a small metal circle's worth of force

>>10690616
>constantly complains about "rebbit" shitting up sfg
>shits up sfg

>>10690891
Who are you quoting?

>>10690860

>>10690690
So much for the "NEW LIVE VIEW!", transmission problems apparently.

>>10690470
Of course, because it impacts your minimum practical dry mass for a given wet mass.

>>10690460
LOx is dirt cheap, way cheaper than natural gas. SpaceX can also just manufacture their own and use it at cost if they want, they literally only need a cryocooler and a compressor to liquefy oxygen from the air.

>>10690697
He's talking about the first full-sized Raptor obviously. The first one mounted to this vehicle, even.
>>10690689
>>10690682
Yes, all those tiny tubes are just leads to pressure/temperature sensors, the first engines had lots of sensors as they were figuring out the exact temperature profiles inside the engine at certain levels of operation etc, now they have cut those back to a few diagnostic sensors and the ones necessary for the engine computer to monitor performance.

seems that much like all of the machine tools on the Hawthorn production floor, they've decided to aestheticize Boca Chica. White and black scheme

>>10690884
Advanced does not necessarily equal complex or expensive or ultra-low-tolerance etc. Advanced can just mean a better application of old technology. It can mean a design that allows for significant slop without impacting reliability or performance, which is the best type of design since it allows actual humans to make repairs in the field.

similar shield structure to Cocoa

>>10691193
>those fucking welds

>>10690884
>37 full flow staged combustion methane engines
>stainless steel hot body cooled by channeled fuel

>Musk is catgirl posting

Based

>>10691211
>Here's your orbital rocket bro

>>10691211
If it doesn't explode, it's gucci

>>10691211
They look fine you nigger

>>10689709
fuck this was what I read all day. now im mad almost all of those things never happened.

I wish we got more info on blue origin. 2021 is supposedly the new glenn launch timer. Bezos walks on stage shows a lander. Says new sheperd is launching later this year after continuous delays.

I don't know how much you can even trust the newglenn timeline at tthis stage. We see the spacex stuff but even if they gave us 10% of what we get now, that'd still be 90% more then we get out of blue origin.

>>10691725
Blue Origin was pretty reliable with their New Shepard development timeline IIRC. If that means anything.

>>10691725
>2021

Seems pretty fucking unlikely given their absolutely glacial pace and that they don't even have their factory built yet. Also their plan of landing the first stage on a fuckhuge manned ship is full retard mode.

>>10691766
>and that they don't even have their factory built yet.
I thought that they have a factory near Launch Complex 36 right now?

>>10691847
They have a factory for new Shephard but it's too small for New Glenn and last I checked the new one was taking fucking forever and had barely gotten out of the ground.

>>10691868
I think new glenn by 2023 is likelier desu. If he fucks up a lot of shit goes to spacex in the short term

>>10691751
Pretty sure humans were supposed to be flying on NS years ago. Also, year-long breaks in launches doesn't scream progress and readiness to me.

200 fucking IQ take

>>10692501
And here i thought we needed more cabbage and pixie dust

>>10688497
>Sex in space
Did it happened or not?

>>10691193
Literally why not get a welder robot?

>>10692544
Musk is scared of robots and AI

>>10692544
these prototypes are fast and "cheap" unlike setting up a welding robot on an assembly line to weld finished products

>>10692544
they do, for the lower sections.

>>10692544
Horizontal circumference welds are robotic

new hopper pic

>>10692875
Why does it look...crinkly? Is it just because its shiny? Am I retarded?

>>10692879
it is covered with shiny foil

>>10691193
oh nononono

>>10692887
So none of the stuff on the outside is structural? I guess that makes sense, its supposed to be like insulation for reentry, right?

>>10692892
I've noticed that too. Anyone know why it's like that?

>>10692893
hopper will not go fast enough to need real insulation for reentry, so the foil is just for looks or something like that

orbital starship will have no foil, just polished stainless steel surface

>>10692899
I see, thanks for helping me understand

>>10692898
meme rocket

>>10692899
The hopper foil is mainly to reflect heat and sunlight away from the fuel tanks IIRC so the LOX and Methane stay cooler longer.

>>10692892
I don't see any sign of a weld along that entire level.
It sounds stupid, but they probably just dropped it into the hole on top of a support structure right inside. Also note that the support cables don't go beyond that point either. Maybe they goofed and made it an inch too small but were too busy for a do-over.
They probably wanted it up there to look good until they could do some work inside there later. The risk of the wind blowing that cone tip off is probably low with the rest of the hull secured.

>>10692928
>>10692892
Maybe we're seeing an inner hull and an outer hull. Musk did say they'd run cooling channels under the skin.

SpaceX readying Starhopper for hops in Texas as Pad 39A plans materialize in Florida

https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2019/06/spacex-starhopper-hops-texas-pad-39a-plans-materialize-florida/

Res In Pieces Stratolaunch.

>>10693256
>that ugly as fuck tower
OH NONONONO

>>10693312
It's not a SpaceX visualization.

>>10693256
S O O N

O

O

N

>>10693279
Was a pos with no market desu
air-launch design is the perfect indicator that someone has no idea what the fuck they are doing

>Lunar Gateway is only rated for 15 years
How conservative is this timeline

>>10694109
They'll keep it going for forty, just like the ISS
It really depends on if it remains a tollbooth or expands out into the ISS replacement they kept trying to make it
It will exist as long as SLS does

>>10694205
>It will exist as long as SLS does
hmmm

How kickass could SLS have been if NASA had ordered a clean sheet design in terms of hardware but still requested the same overall final design? (I'm talking hydrogen core stage, boosters to provide enough lift to get off the pad, high energy upper stage that gets dropped off almost in orbit by the core stage, etc). Say back when Ares was cancelled instead of that program being sort of Frankenstein'd into what became SLS, following the design principal of 'reuse old Shuttle shit', they decided instead to use the same overall vehicle concept but mandate that all engines and tanks be developed from scratch, with reliability and low complexity favored over maximum performance (which SLS, being a booster-sustainer, has a fundamental disadvantage in anyway compared to an all in-line staged vehicle).
I think new hydrogen fueled core engines using a simple gas-generator design with regenerative cooling would be a better option than the RS-25 engines currently slated for use, because even a gas generator engine is super efficient so long as it uses hydrogen, and if you aren't using RS-25s you won't be paying >$50 million per engine and be limited to a single launch per year.
Obviously liquid fuel boosters would be better than solids in every way, since they get better Isp and better overall performance while also producing gentler thrust loads with less violent shaking and can throttle and shut down early if necessary. The relatively lower thrust of a liquid fueled engine compared to the biggest solids is an illusion for the most part, because most of the mass of SLS on the pad is actually the solid fuel boosters, which are therefore mostly working just to lift themselves. With liquid boosters you get an overall lighter vehicle and one that's much easier to transport since it's empty until it's on the pad.
I also think that if a new hydrogen fueled staged combustion engine were developed as a more powerful high efficiency replacement for the RL-10 it would be worth it.

>>10692517
No

>>10694242
>(I'm talking hydrogen core stage, boosters to provide enough lift to get off the pad, high energy upper stage that gets dropped off almost in orbit by the core stage, etc).
I think I have an idea of what it might look like. Just scale this up by 30% in every dimension.

>>10694242
>hydrogen
It's shit

>>10694313
Why the fuck not?

>>10694242
>Another billion dollar piece of engineering that gets dumped into the ocean

Why would I be hype for this?

>>10694478
So far everyone in space has been officially at work, save a couple geriatric billionaires.

>>10694242
Literally the entire point of SLS was reusing shuttle supply chain because it's spread out into too many Congressional districts to kill.

why does this feel so right

>>10694520
You like sucking cocks

>>10694533
haha yeah

>>10694478
Smell, fluids posing a hazard to electrical equipment, and the fact that there's four other people along side the two

>>10694561
Then, is masturbation in the space happened?

>>10694685
Probably. They have toilets that work by suction, you think no dudes have used that thing to simulate a blowjob? Bonus points, the fact that it sucks them means that they can actually get a decent erection, something that's apparently difficult in microgravity (or not, since erections aren't gravity-powered, it may just be a myth that spacemen can't get boners).

>>10694742
Your circulatory system is adapted to having gravity to pull blood down to your legs, which is why astronauts have swelling in their heads in microgravity; your physiology is adapted to have a harder time pumping blood upward.

>>10694755
Yes, but boners work simply by reducing blood flow out of erectile tissue without hindering inflow, thereby leading o a buildup of blood and an erection. So long as the penis has circulation it should be capable of becoming erect. The same is true of a woman's vaginal walls and labia.

>>10694763
Not quite so; your circulatory system still accepts a lot of the free downward pooling from gravity, so it's not quite as effortless as it is on Earth.

fucking Berger is at it yet again

https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/06/spacex-working-on-details-of-how-to-get-people-to-mars-and-safely-back/

>Wooster said that SpaceX is working to "minimize the number of things that we need to do in order to get that first mission to Mars." Part of that minimization involves a massive payload capacity.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/06/nasa-spaceflight-chief-warns-of-internal-cuts-needed-for-moon-program/

>>10694109
That's a very pretty rendering

>>10695209
Well life support isn't something small.
eg. power generator, they are all heavy.

Bigelow shows their new lunar habitat concept

https://twitter.com/BigelowSpace/status/1135583105924755456

>>10694242
I've been thinking about this too, Anon. The main obstacle the actual SLS has towards being cheaper is the core stage, more specifically, the expensive as fuck RS-25s. The SLS needs that bleeding edge performance because the core stage is so fucking big and because the shuttle needed that performance to be two-stage to orbit, so the RS-25 was designed to maximize performance with little regard to cost.
I think if NASA had instead done something more like Energia, you could shave about $300M from the incremental cost, even keeping all the upper stages the same. Go for cheap-ass hydrolox with "okay" performance for the main engines instead of expensive-ass hydrolox with outstanding performance, and switch out the solids with something a bit beefier to compensate for it.
The SpaceX fags reading this might be thinking, "why stick with hydrolox on the core?" Well, because the core is the mid stage - It's the strap-ons that act as the ascent stage - so the hydrolox Isp boost is advantageous there. The main objective is to minimize how much of the ascent the hydrolox stage does by offloading more of the work to the strap-ons. The SLS and shuttle are problematic there because something like 80% of the orbital burn is done by the RS-25s. If you can offload more of that to the (relatively) cheap-ass strap-ons, you don't need to have engines as crazy complicated and expensive as the RS-25s and can use cheaper ones that have shittier performance.

>>10690616
The fuck are you talking about? It's the only thing I come to this gay board to see.

>>10695347
Hmm yes delicious engineering IP, thank you Bob

>solid boosters
>solid first stage
>solid second stage
pretty based ngl

>>10695685
All-SRB stages are fine as long as your cargo isn't meatbags. When it is, an all-SRB stage is more trouble than it's worth.

>>10688889
looks just as nuts as I thought it would, oh man imagine that scaled up x1000

>>10695857
Unfortunately, unless we get invaded by space elephants or something we will never build one.

>>10695347
practical and actually looks pretty good, nice

I wish I could buy SpaceX shares but IPO never ever

>>10695685
>hey bruh I heard you like solids so I strapped some solids to your solid so you can blow bells off while you blow bells off

>>10695938
same, i'd sell everything I own to pay for it and sit on that shit until i'm at least 70

Is space actually real though?

>>10696013
does the ocean really have a floor?

Is there a video of the Dragon landing from a few minutes ago? I'd love to get a view of that

>>10694109
The PPE is just a modified commercial geosync satellite bus. Those are usually built for a lifetime of up to 15 years which is where that number likely came from.

Stratolaunch should sell it self to the USAF.

The Pegasus II rocket can get the X37B into orbit from the Stratolaunch carrier. Giving the USAF more flexible launch ability.

>>10694109
so the purpose of this thing is to keep the lander in orbit. so moon bound astronauts can just take a capsule to the gateway?

>>10696243
What does the X-37B do anyway? Spooky black ops satellite killer?

>>10696251
Its purpose is to transfer multiple billion dollars to the mates of senators. It has literally no useful function.

when is nasa going to send a 4K-enabled camera with huge fisheye lens to Neptune so we can get some vivid images with depth of view and scale? I can't handle things like pic related anymore

>>10696262
I would rather they spend several billion dollars on human spaceflight not pretty pictures

>>10696254
Hardware testing is the most likely purpose. In 2016 one of the things the airforce said it was being used for was testing a Hall effect thruster for Aerojet Rocketdyne.

>>10696254
spooky black ops surveillance and comms sat for short term missions.

>>10696267

I don't actually want to leave Earth 2bh, I'm satisfied wth a recording I can experience in VR

>>10696275
Fuck off neet cuck get a job

>>10695685
how do solids deal with Max Q?

>>10696289

I'm not a NEET yet, waiting for Yang to win

>>10696258
THIS
there is not a single reason why this PoS would be needed. Better to go from LEO straight to Lunar surface

>>10696309
Shaping their burn areas will produce different thrust profiles. An appropriately shaped grain can produce a suitable thrust profile that allows for passing through max Q without overstressing the vehicle. Its how they did it on the shuttle.

>>10696317
3 FHeavy launches could do the same job for less money.

>>10696310
Enjoy Biden nomination

>>10696330
I know, just send up some tin cans and connect them, add some more tins cans over time meanwhile better rockets are developed to send Luxury Tincans™ a few years later for a more comfy base

>when the blunt hits hard

>>10696317
>>10696330
>>10696353
>falling for the "distributed launch is cheaper" meme

>>10696365
Explain how it's a bad thing then?

>>10696365
>130-150m per launch
vs
>1B+ per launch, on a 30B program
at least FH actually fucking works already

>>10696375
he works for the ULA kek

>>10696375
Skylab vs the ISS. One took one launch, the other took god knows how many. Look at the relative cost per habitable volume and Skylab wins every time.
Shuttle only accounts for $50B of the ISS's costs too, so that doesn't explain the difference.
There's a reason SpaceX moved all their lunar architecture from the Falcon family to Starship.

>>10696386
>hurr people that disagree with me are shills

>>10696389
>>10696389
What a bullshit comparison

>>10696395
>I have no argument

>>10696389
Yeah except FH is like 6-7x cheaper than SLS with only a moderately smaller payload.

>>10696399
And your argument is a false comparison, nice.

>>10696389
Starship is intended to be fully resuable, SLS isn't.
STS was a fucking disaster anyway, that 50B is pushed up by boomer oldspace overbudget as usual, way more than if they had just developed a more reliable, conventional heavy lift akin to the Energia

>>10696403
The financial question is:
Does the mission risk and added payload costs (i.e. redundant avionics and docking systems) created by splitting up the architecture into different parts outweigh the pure cost advantage?
I'm not bold enough to answer that question with a straight-up "yes" or "no" for the particular case of Artemis and the SLS, but it's not as simple as "orange rocket bad."
I'd also like to add that:
1) SLS payload to LEO is 95 t, not 70 t - they updated their figures
2) Using the SLS to send stuff to LEO is a huge fucking waste because it's optimized for payload BLEO and to TLI.

>>10696409
>literally can't come up with a single counterpoint
If it's a false comparison: prove it.

>>10696409
And it all doesn't matter anyway because SpaceX is fishing for external funding sources and wants to retire Falcon in favor of Starship because it should make the Falcon line obsolete while being much more capable.

Arguing about Starship and Falcon on the basis of singe launch vs multi-launch architecture costs is pointless. The topic of your argument has nothing to do with SpaceX's approach to the launch business.

>>10696432
>it's not as simple as "orange rocket bad."

30 billion dollars pissed away on this piece of shit that is going to see less launches than I can count on one hand is a pretty strong case for orange rocket bad.

>>10696436
I'm not even that guy you fucking imbecile.

>>10696443
>I'm not even that guy you fucking imbecile.
One, your point is a useful segue.
Two, it doesn't really matter. Stop being mad.

>>10696389
Using the ISS+Shuttle vs. Skylab+Saturn V isn't a fair comparison because the Shuttle was a very expensive vehicle for the amount of payload it can send up, cost-wise the Saturn V was the cheaper vehicle. Meanwhile the Falcon is a substantially less expensive vehicle than the Shuttle for the same payload mass (roughly), and the SLS is a very expensive vehicle even compared to the Shuttle.

>>10696438
You're implying that it's going to be cancelled anytime soon.
Let me ask you this, Anon:
Was STS cancelled when the EELV program came around even though it was vastly more expensive?
Nope.
Did the shuttle have any useful capabilities that really justified keeping it around after that point?
Not really. Hardly anything ever utilized its downmass capabilities.
The fact that you think Congress will cancel it any time soon is funny when it kept the shuttle around for so many years.

>>10696449
Again: Shuttle costs only explain $50B of the cost difference.

The problem is that Eric Berger is a hack of a writer who can't keep his hateboner for orange tank bad in his pants.
You guys remember when he spun one of the best things to happen to the program, that saved millions in infrastructure costs, as:
>hurr leaning launch tower
When it was leaning like 6 inches and was literally a non-issue?
Or that he said it'd only be used once when NASA literally said that they'd be using Block 1 more if they got the second ML?
He doesn't lie, but he twists the truth.
You guys wanna complain about SLS, complain about DIRECT's idiocy, Boeing's foot-dragging, NASA's chickenshit management not calling them out, and a Congress that is too busy fighting over orange man to even give a damn about a FUCKING moon landing.

>>10695685
If you're going to go retard with solids, I guess you should go all the way with it, huh?

>>10694520
>ESA
>launch hardware
Pipe dream

>>10696472
Trump derangement syndrome has gone so far as to prevent us landing on the moon
So has orange tank derangement syndrome

>>10690884
It will be one of the heavier lifters ever flown by the human species and it's engines are certain some of the more mechanically busy to have ever been successfully fired. Those engines are breaking combustion chamber pressure records and haven't even reached their first flight yet, they're switching propellants to allow for what will likely be the first majority reusable heavy lifter. It will have versions for carrying cargo and versions for carrying humans possibly all the way out to Mars. I think it's fair to say that at the very least the BFR/Starship will be one of the most advanced rockets to have been built to date, advanced after all doesn't mean the same thing as complicated, it also doesn't necessarily mean best either, it just means that the system is doing a lot of new things that haven't been done before.

>>10696472
>NASA's chickenshit management not calling them out
This is really the heart of it all. Sure, it's shitty of Congress to design a rocket when they shouldn't, it's shitty that Boeing is being slow, Gateway is kinda shitty too, but NASA not stepping up and taking it seriously is what's really holding them back (apart from the changing administrations resetting them every 4 to 8 years, but they can't do anything about that). I'll grantee that Boeing would pick up the pace if NASA had withheld milestone rewards until milestones were complete instead of just handing money out whenever Boeing was late.

>>10694205
>It will exist as long as SLS does.
That doesn't bode well friend.

>>10696654
Oh boy! I get to post this again.

>>10696656
God dammit it hurts so fucking bad, I wasn't old enough to ever get to see one launch God fucking dammit fucking NASA shits REEEEEEE!

>>10696656
>>10696654
>>10696675
Why are you getting upset about Saturn V's untimely demise when you're alive to see Starship/Superheavy? It's literally the most ambitious rocket project in history. A fucking colony ship is being built in a field in Texas out of plumbing parts. This is real life.

>>10696677
Because the Saturn deserved better. It could've been a better alternative to the Shuttle even one of the smaller Saturn V derivatives like INT-18. Don't get me wrong, I'm excited about the BFR, it's an awesome rocket, but what happened to the Saturn V is sad.

It's just a conspiracy theory, but I think that the Saturn V was scrapped because Congress was afraid that NASA would push for more beyond Earth orbit missions, and thus canceled Saturn in favor of the Shuttle (a vehicle that barely makes it to LEO).

>>10696686
I think it's pretty simple if you look at it from the perspective of a congressman in the 70s. NASA did its job, beat the Soviets, got to the moon. Now NASA promises a cheaper, reusable rocket. The DOJ says the new reusable rocket will help us spy on the Soviets! So we shitcan expensive and exploration focused Saturn, and replace it with a cheaper Shuttle capable of military missions.

The fact that Shuttle never flew any real military missions, was a horrifically expensive program, and killed 14 astronauts only becomes clear in hindsight. They thought Shuttle would be cheaper than Saturn, so they canned Saturn.

>>10696686
>It's just a conspiracy theory, but I think that the Saturn V was scrapped because Congress was afraid that NASA would push for more beyond Earth orbit missions, and thus canceled Saturn in favor of the Shuttle (a vehicle that barely makes it to LEO).
That's actually pretty accurate. I'd add the caveat that NASA was frankly delusional about their role in a post Moon-landing world. They were planning Mars missions when Congress was preparing to abolish the civillian space agency entirely.
They got a clue way too late and part of the reason the shuttle turned out the way it did was NASA was convinced if they admitted the shuttle concept was unworkable it'd be the end of them as a federal agency.

>>10696675
Blame tricky dick for that one

>>10696652
I mean, they finally DID start holding them accountable, and look what happened. Boeing's hitting performance milestones on-time and they managed to slide the core stage completion date far enough to the left that they think they can make a December 2020 launch if this holds and the green run and other tests don't hit major problems, when they used to be consigned to a mid-2021 date just a few months ago.

>>10696712
>The fact that Shuttle never flew any real military missions, was a horrifically expensive program, and killed 14 astronauts only becomes clear in hindsight.
You have a point I guess, but it's still frustrating to see how NASA could've been without Shuttle even if they were limited to LEO missions only.

>>10696752
>if they admitted the shuttle concept was unworkable it'd be the end of them as a federal agency.
That's ever more frustrating.

>>10696712
Shuttle was an experimental controlled reentry and reusability testbed that NASA billed as an operational rocket

>>10696775
abso-fucking-lutely. this was the whole problem:
shuttle wasn't a bad idea. shuttle was a good concept. shuttle was really really fucking difficult to build. shuttle had clear problems when they finally did so
but they never went and did a "Shuttle 2" and improved on the design when the flaws became apparent. there were changes between the orbiters over the years - small design refinements here and there - but for thirty years the same system flew, even when it really, really, needed to be iterated to ever have a chance of working as a concept.
NASA should've been building shit like THIS after Challenger. That would've been the perfect opportunity to do a ground-up overhaul of the program.

I'm just looking for a third opinion on this, but a selling point for more spaceflight I push for is that more scientific research can be done in space. That people who want to study the various bodies in our solar system don't have to rely on simulations or data that's years or even decades old, and don't have to wait for years until a new probe comes along that picks up a rock sample so small that a geology student could do in a day.

However, I keep hearing that scientists are content with the state of space research. That the data gathered by the few probes we've sent can keep them busy for years. So to them, what's the point of sending a probe every year to Mars when one probe every 5 years generates enough data?

I'm not on the inside when it comes to this kind of research, but is it true? Is it true that researchers are happy with the current pace of data gathering of space bodies? To me that feels off, surely having more data (and up-to-date data too) would be better? Yes? No? Why?

>>10696799
It's more of that, at current prices, they think this is a good balance between science and cost. The equation would change if access was cheaper.

>>10696804
To clarify, I mean launch costs and access to space.

>>10696788
>That would've been the perfect opportunity to do a ground-up overhaul of the program.
Unfortunately, Congress wouldn't have billed for it because to them the Shuttle was good enough (I mean technically it was America's most capable launch system). This is why I'm glad that other space organisations are stepping up today, it makes their faults more clear and motivates them to fix said faults.

>>10696788
>hydrogen powered boosters
The entire point of a booster is high thrust, low cost, and "meh" efficiency, right? Why would you ever use a hydrogen powered strapon?

>>10696788
Shuttle was a terrible concept
Reusing the second stage before the first is totally ass backwards
Boosters are also a retardedidea over complicating things
Wings going into space....
Giant dead mass going to orbit and back
Dumped fuel tank meaning no orbital refueling in case you wanted to actually leav LEO

Etc
Saturn V was infinitely superior to the shuttle concept, and should have just continued to be launched

>>10696812
Parts commonality with the Shuttle? If the boosters used the RS-25s like in the Shuttle, then more would be required. More engines mean that they would have to be produced in bulk which could mean cheaper engines? I'm just spitballing here.

>>10696822
And then it wouldn’t even leave the ground because thrust to weight matters a lot...

>>10696817
Except that's the kind of stuff that we know in hindsight. At the time, bringing the SSMEs down might've seemed worth the efficiency tradeoff, and computer tech was nowhere near good enough to allow booster landings.
>>10696812
For some reason they're listed as Hydrolox here. Everywhere else I've seen this concept (so like two places),the strap-ons are Kerolox boosters powered by a RD-170 derivative.

>>10696812
hydrogen is abundant on earth and can be extracted from water. hydrogen that is simply burned is very powerful. way more than jet fuel. a teacher in middle school filled a balloon with hydrogen and popped it with a candle that was lit on a stick outside. everything shook despite the fact i was 20 yards away and many things were even farther away. people on the other side of the school thought there was a earthquake. thats a small off the rack rubber balloon that wasnt even filled all that much. in liquid state you can store plenty and liquid oxygen would be taken anyways or some oxide which would have the oxygen released via chemical extraction or less efficiently via heat produced through electricity and a induction coil

>>10696804
>>10696808
Hopefully launch costs keep dropping. Space shouldn't be a club that's exclusive to the wealthiest groups.

>>10696812
Whole thing shoulda been kerosene, even. Then you probably don't need ET insulation, so no Columbia foam strike type failures.

>>10696812
>>10696822
>>10696853
Like I said, I think it was an error on that illustration. The engines are pretty clearly RD-170 derivatives here, so that means Kerolox.

>>10696848
Everything you said also applies to methane, but methane is easier to store and much more energy dense as a function of volume.

>>10696848
>and liquid oxygen would be taken anyways or some oxide which would have the oxygen released via chemical extraction or less efficiently via heat produced through electricity and a induction coil
What? Oxidizers needn't include oxygen at all.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_fuming_nitric_acid

>>10696848
Hydrogen is common. Liquid Hydrogen is a pain in the ass in many ways that methane isn't.

>>10696677
Idunno, I guess it's the same reason why I hate seeing old antique guns being destroyed, the point is not that newer inventions are undesirable, the point is that I like seeing history done it's justice and I think the Saturn could have been used a lot more and improved a lot before eventually being retired in favor of a truly superior launch system. Instead it's program was axed in a spasm of politician retardation, fuck politicians.

>>10696472

SLS fans want complaints and reporting to be within carefully roped off cordons while the program continues along.

>>10696677
Because it took half a fucking century of literally nothing but funnelling billions of dollars to the military industrial complex before we got to this point.

>>10696472

This guy thinks the problem with SLS is that it's timeline wasn't more orderly to make it look good, and that complaints should be confined strictly there.

SLS is terrible even on a good timeline.

>>10696472

They are spending a moonbase worth of money on SLS over the next decade and this guy thinks we should only be angry about SLS not being fed a few landing flights on a more accelerated schedule because that's the specific SLS based moon program he wants to see as an SLS fanboy.

>>10696472

SLS fans weaponize cynicism to present themselves as honest brokers, but it's all in service of their vehicle program fan mentality.

>>10696881
RFNA is a mixture of nitrogen oxides.

>>10697054
Actually you're right, that's a shit example. Consider flourine, then.

>>10696982
>>10697000
>>10697010
Wow. I pissed you off so much you made 3 full replies to the same post to shittalk me. Well done.
What's your preferred approach, Anon?

>>10697055
>Consider flourine, then.
I'd rather not.

>>10697082
No please

>>10696386
ULA actually proposed a distributed launch architecture, see ACES

denying the efficiency of distributed launch is even worse than ULA-tier

>>10696389
>There's a reason SpaceX moved all their lunar architecture from the Falcon family to Starship.

You mean Starship, a vehicle that will massively utilize distributed launch for refilling flights, and intends to separate the Mars mission into 6 launches

>>10696712
The cost reduction was always complete delusion. You could find a bunch of people pointing that out as well before the shuttle ever left the ground.

>>10697082
>the Mickey Mouse of horror

>>10697472
Cost reduction tgrough reusability is totally achievable though, SpaceX has done it today as a private company using 80s-tier engines. Merlin is just a gas generator cycle, pintle injected engine. The spiciness is in the computing power.

wasnt there supposed to be that 20m hop test by now?

>>10697514
oh i just read that there was a week delay for SN5 because SN4 is having issues?

>>10697516
I haven't seen the why, but that does seem to be the what. One week to go for SN5.

>>10697479
I wasn‘t talking about reusability in general, I was talking about shuttle specifically. The design they had was never going to bring down costs and everyone knew it.

>>10696254
It's literally a smokescreen program that only exists to draw attention to itself

>>10696262
>huge fisheye lens
Hope you enjoy your blue-dot-in-the-distance pictures

>>10696651
>It will be one of the heavier lifters ever flown
It will be THE heaviest, SSH will have a liftoff mass in excess of 4.4 million kilograms. Saturn V was only 2.9 million kg.

>>10697746
impossible

So what’s the deal with SN4 and SN5?

>>10697995
Apparently 4 is just being used for fitting, 5 is the engine they'll be doing testing with.

>>10697472
cost reduction motive was very much real in the beginning, it was why Shuttle was chosen instead of ordinary rocket, and first shuttle concepts were more reasonable and fully reusable

later on in the design process things got fucked up tough

This image shows the northwest edge of a large crater located in asteroid Bennu’s southern hemisphere. The crater extends beyond the lower right side of the field of view. The image was taken by the PolyCam camera on NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft on April 11, from a distance of 2.9 miles (4.6 km). The field of view is 214 ft (65.1 m). For scale, the square rock on the crater’s edge is 20 ft (6.0 m) long, which is about the length of a 15 passenger van. The image was obtained during Flyby 6A of the mission’s Detailed Survey: Baseball Diamond phase. When the image was taken, the spacecraft was over the southern hemisphere, pointing PolyCam slightly south and east.

>>10698214
High jump and shot put competitions on an asteroid of that size would be fun as hell.

>>10698238
You'd just end up in orbit
Long jump and shot put, trying to specifically throw and jump to the antipode instead of as far as possible

>>10698281
Interesting question to answer: What's the largest body an average human can achieve orbital velocity from just running (assuming no body rotation)?

>>10698303
>running
Can't run with low gravity, more like hop skip jump

>>10697569
Yes and no. The engineers figured out it wasn't going to work pretty quickly once development started wrapping up, but management was convinced that if they could just fly it often enough, the numbers would work themselves out. They only finally admitted defeat on that front after Challenger. Before then, they were packing a ridiculously large and unrealistic amount of flights into the launch manifest for 1986 and beyond.

>>10698333
>Before then, they were packing a ridiculously large and unrealistic amount of flights into the launch manifest for 1986 and beyond.
I have a suspicion that doing that killed the possibility of a commercial launch market until the Shuttle started losing launches.

HOP WHEN

>>10698915
They are waiting on Raptor #5 to get delivered for installation

New thread when?

>>10699232
Make one faggot

>>10697062

Starship