/sci/ - Science & Math

>>10834610
I didn't realize the SLS core was that much bigger than the Shuttle ET.
Why isn't it orange? Pic related looks more of a yellowish color.

HOP TONIGHT?

>>10834619
IIRC, it turns orange as the foam reacts to the UV light from the Sun. The foam is a more yellow-brown when freshly applied.

BIG FLARE
HOP AGAIN??!??!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rfb0cd17IAY
hop happening?

>>10834610
What the fuck is up with those chairs, are there that many 500 lbs+ people that work for boeing

Just connecting my question here to cover all my bases. >>10834675

Pic related.

SpaceX drone flying again. Engine cycling in progress. Hop in a few minutes

The suspense

issue https://twitter.com/NASASpaceflight/status/1154223919634755584

>>10834619
Orange man bad

is everyday astronaut cute

>>10834796
nvm i looked at his insta hes not

scrubbed.
Also, transpiration cooling is dead
>Thin tiles on windward side of ship & nothing on leeward or anywhere on booster looks like lightest option
from Musk

>>10834803
not surprised, anything active can go wrong and kill you. Good decision.

But if that is the case, I doubt they can get away with stainless steel any more, and will need to look at various ceramic tile options.

>>10834810
that's basically confirmed now
everything leads back to shuttle, huh? so many good decisions marred by one or two really bad ones

>>10834810
Well today in the F9 stream the presenter said there are a couple Starship test ceramic tiles on Dragon to collect data

>>10834810
I'm really not sure how to feel about this, tiles seem to have been a fucking disaster all around. That being said, maybe SpaceX will pull a rabbit out of the magic hat.

>>10834803
So shiny steel back with a black belly? Shit's gonna look sleek.

>>10834822
yeah, we're back to ITS, but shiny, instead of being a shuttle ripoff in carbon fiber

>>10834813
the fact that they keep moving closer and closer to shuttle makes me more and more convinced that this won't work.
they're avoiding side-mounted, which is good, and they might be able to do SSH recovery, which is good, but then you've got a whole bunch of dead weight in orbit

>>10834819
Only the Shuttle tiles were bad:
1. very fluffy, so they were fragile
2. custom moulded to exactly fit in particular places, so they couldn't be mass-produced, and had to be hand applied (super expensive)
3. Shuttle was fuck-huge, so there were a fuck ton of these custom tiles
4. The whole Shuttle architecture (side-mount) meant these expensive tiles were vulnerable to air strikes.

Dragon avoids most of these problems with their own tiles (smaller area to cover, not exposed until in orbit; cheaper, ablative material)

The Starship goes back to being huge, but at least it is a simple cylindrical shape. It will be interesting to see what tile design they end up with.

>>10834831
Seems like broader, more robust tiles with a more homogeneous shape would be the way to go. Lighter alloys than aluminum with higher heat tolerances do exist now too.

>>10834829
there are a few critical differences from shuttle:
1. it has its own propellant tanks, enabling multiple km/s dv if refueled in orbit
2. it's not trying to do both crew and cargo at the same time, reducing dead weight in orbit
3. propulsive landing instead of horizontal landing, which reduces dead weight in orbit and is less sensitive to weather
4. not a booster/sustainer design, reducing dead weight in orbit and improving payload capacity
5. owned by a private company who are willing to innovate and attempt to lower costs, instead of a government program limping along on the good will of Congress attempting to not rock the boat and get cancelled, reducing dead weight to orbit
>>10834831
there's got to be at least a little bit of custom shaping in the aerosurface joins

>>10834826
>we're back to ITS
you mean Spaceship has been upscaled back to the size they presented in the IAC 2017 presntation? That's nice

>>10834838
I'm pretty sure it's still fully stainless, but the high heat tolerance of stainless means less shielding is required (hence "thin tiles")

>>10834845
no, I meant it's got the black/shiny look going on

>>10834845
>>10834847
Shame about the scale, ITS would be fucking beautiful. Oh well, I guess we can settle for BFRship for a while.
>>10834846
Ah true, are there any predictions for how hot Starship is going to come in? If it's coming down (relatively) slow and cool enough they might be able to get away with much lighter blanket insulation perhaps with a thin RCC or ceramic top layer, rather than full sized tiles.

Apparently NASA's moving forward with using a Cygnus spacecraft, but bigger for the deep space gateway. This larger Cygnus, or Chungus as it is called, is the best shot NASA has of getting their DSG launched to 'facilitate' a 2024 moon landing. It is also interesting to note that Orbital ATK more or less designed it. If you don't know Orbital ATK was the first commercial rocket launch company. Real interesting history there, they fucking started from scratch. ....And now they're part of Northrup Grumman.

Inb4 the gateway sucks. It does. It really fucking does and there is no way around that. But the reason why NASA is doing this is because for the last couple decades every president has changed the direction of NASA. NASA needs a way to make steady progress despite the fact that the next(or even same) president is going to change their focus. So bearing this in mind NASA needs something that can support missions to the Moon, Mars, asteroids, or somewhere else entirely equally awfully. It's nowhere near as good as a dedicated mission, but a dedicated mission can't be accomplished before getting cancelled without a massive increase in funding. The gateway can stick around, we can put shit on it till we actually can go to these places. It's a godawful situation. Fuck SLS and fuck senator shelby though.

>>10834867
1000°C according to Musk

>>10834925
they're going to build a monster GEO-sat style satellite bus and then staple a Cygnus with some life support mods to it
after they finish with that abomination what else are they going to staple to it? I hope we see a Starship up there at some point, lol

>>10834933
>implying Starship will use the bourgeoisie IDA standard instead of their own, majestically crude and practical design
I don't think people realize just how much of an impact Starship will have on space standards going forward. Docking, comms, everything.
I'd make a comparison to the 1800's and the railway gauge wars but I'm not a /n/igger so idk

>>10834937
there's no reason they couldn't shitrig an IDA onto it, it's made of steel
I could fucking weld an IDA onto it

>>10834933
>after they finish with that abomination what else are they going to staple to it?
ESPRIT's still coming apparently. So the monster satellite bus will be refuelable.

>>10834937
fuck you cager

>>10834933
>> monster GEO-sat style satellite bus and then staple a Cygnus with some life support mods to it
this couldn't be further from the truth:
http://investor.maxar.com/investor-news/press-release-details/2019/Maxar-Selected-to-Build-Fly-First-Element-of-NASAs-Lunar-Gateway/default.aspx
it's kerbal as fuck.
>>what else are they going to staple to it?
that could change quite a bit within the next couple of months. You'd have a better luck predicting the weather within a couple months than predicting what's gonna be on the gateway. Now they're talking about abandoning the Moon plans for Mars:
https://twitter.com/NASAWatch/status/1154072027789168646
Could be anything from big spider legs for attaching to an asteroid, space lasers, or even fast food restaurants.

>>10834925
>every president has changed the direction of NASA.
Surprisingly, Trump didn't really change all that much.
IMO, the only reason that the Orange man administration has NOT been an absolute shitshow is thanks to Pence. He does all the ACTUAL space stuff while keeping Orange man far away

>>10834943
>this couldn't be further from the truth:
Anon, that saying means it ISN'T true
It IS kerbal as fuck; that means it IS true.

>>10834943
>Now they're talking about abandoning the Moon plans for Mars
Pence calmed orange man down, thankfully. Moon is still on.

>>10834945
I'd call suddenly shifting NASA's focus to land on the Moon >2 years in an absolute shit show. Saying the funding's gonna come from getting rid of pell grants is also a pretty shit move. Still, it's not as bad as the damage senator shelby has done.
FUCK SLS AND FUCK SHELBY!

>>10834943
one thing that the NLRHO gives the Gateway is the ability to extremely efficiently change orbital inclination around the moon, because it's going so far out

>>10834962
>implying that NASA actually had to change their plans all that much to land on the Moon
One of the DRMs for SLS was always a lunar return.

>>10834625
How the fuck would anyone know that??

>>10834982
there are pictures of it being applied, immediately post-application, and the change is very well documented

>>10834610
SLS is very large, if they insist on using it why not find some absurdly large payload to lift with it?

>>10834982
because you could literally see the shuttle tanks "tan" from yellow to orange the longer they sat out in the sun

>>10834985
For all you know they could have sprayed something on it in between pictures. The orange looks like "hazard orange" so it could be painted intentionally.

>>10834986
despite being absurdly large, it doesn't have an absurdly large payload capacity, due to being a shit booster/sustainer design with an underpowered second stage

>>10834986
I think shooting Orion to the Moon IS a pretty big payload, Anon.
Of course, SLS Block 1 is actually pretty pissweak. the core stage is WAY too big. It only gets STRONK with Block 1B and the EUS.

>>10834989
people fucking watched it, dude
space fans are nuts
also it's documented, it's a known thing

>>10834990
>due to being a shit booster/sustainer design
literally everyone uses booster sustainer for heavy payloads these days. even FH.

>>10834995
Falcon Heavy was a mistake

>>10834993
Watch out, flat earthers and moon landing deniers, there's a new conspiracy theory on the block: the insulation foam painters!

scrub info
>Pc (chamber pressure) high due to colder than expected propellant

>>10835010
>oh fuck our engine is running better than expected, SHUT IT DOWN

>>10835013
Higher than expected performance is more dangerous than lower. Still, good that it’s a simple problem. Just heat up the fuel I mean really lmao

>>10834839
>>10834838

Isn't their plan to have extremely fast turn around. How do you do that with either tiles or some enormous heat shield or something? Can you avoid inspections by bleeding off heat fast enough with surface area, and keeping say tiles for several flights or something?

>>10835030
the big issue with shuttle tiles is that they were both extremely delicate and the glue wasn't very good, so they fell off all the time
you needed to inspect every single tile every single flight by hand
if the Starship tiles are tough enough and fastened well enough this shouldn't be a problem

>>10835035
that feels like a good thing in theory but leads to several hours inspection for any manned flights or anything like that, and on unmanned might lead to a field of debris over an ocean

I always liked the porus heatshield, though I know in theory they just have to get off of earth, it's irrelevant on mars, through virtually every other space, so reuse is considerably more streamlined

next hop when?

>>10835087
>"next" hop

>>10835050
It's not irrelevant on Mars at all wtf are you on about. They use aerobraking to slow down from cruise speed.

I swear to Christ, if this delays the hop another week I am going to scream.

HOP

HOP

JUST HOP FFS

HOP

>>10835035
There's also the fact the shuttle tiles were all unique. Starship's tiles likely will, outside of specific areas like the nose and curves onto the aero surfaces, be all the same, so it vastly simplifies manufacturing and maintenance.

>>10835139
the nose is symmetric so each rung of tiles will likely be identical too

HOP WHEN

>>10835142
Probably next week.

>>10835143

REEEEE

>>10835142
16 hours

How the fuck is this thing supposed to get 'orbital' by the end of the year if they can't even hop once every seven months?

Newspace turning into oldspace

>>10835148
QRD of a brand new engine is why. Once they've got the kinks sorted out, it'll be ezpz.

>>10835110
I know the use aerobreaking but the heating and the amount of deceleration I get would probably not need the ablative shielding. Because there is a limited amount of atmosphere to create friction though I know they are coming in faster nevertheless

>>10835148
It was "paper" rocket just 6 months ago. Now there's 2 prototypes and 1 hopper that's going to hop any day now.

Concept -> prototype in 6 months is going super fast already.

>>10835205
not much good if all it seems to do is spontaneously catch on fire

>>10835214
that's never hurt anybody

>>10835214
That's why they are building on two different sites.

>>10834995
There's a huge difference between strap-on boosters and having a very low TWR core stage assisted by very low Isp boosters.

Falcon Heavy without boosters has almost the same TWR as vanilla Falcon 9, it's slightly lower because of the added structural mass and some hardware differences.

Meanwhile only 19% of SLS' liftoff thrust comes from the core stage, with the majority being supplied by solid fuel boosters. Once those boosters cut out and separate the TWR of the vehicle drops quite low, which severely affects performance. Due to this low thrust to weight ratio the SLS core stage must spend significantly more time burning at an upward angle off the horizon in order to maintain vertical velocity and altitude as it accelerates into orbit.

Also SLS is really not an optimized design for dropping off big payloads in space. It already has a low TWR which causes significant gravity losses on launch, but furthermore the ridiculous size of the first stage means SLS is in effect designed to drop off its second stage directly into orbit. This sounds nice but it means that SLS is better suited to launching small and medium payloads onto high energy trajectories, because it has the delta V to do so but doesn't have the stage thrust to weight ratios required to translate that delta V budget into payload mass effectively.

>>10834996

>>10835184
Aerobraking here at Earth occurs at high enough altitudes as to be much thinner than Mars' atmosphere at sea level, which means in effect that the amount of air density available for aerobraking both at earth and Mars is the same. The difference is that not only is Starship going to be moving faster when it encounters Mars, it will need to slow down MUCH more all in one go just to capture (due to Mars' weaker gravity) and because of this will need to drop into even denser atmosphere at higher speeds than an Earth reentry.
Mars atmospheric braking from interplanetary speeds will be much more intense than even Earth aerobraking from interplanetary speeds.

>>10835214
The fact that they're doing at this speed means there will be some issues here/there. Especially since they're being this open to the public.

Look at any other space industry and compare. What do we know about Blue Origin? NOTHING. Boeing? NOTHING. Lockheed Martin? NOTHING. Etc. None of those company do not share any details of their development. As far as we know, they're using Roswell alien technology and we'll never know. Those oldspace may have exploded billions of their prototypes, we'll never know. Chances are, they don't have any actual prototypes like the ones spacex is building. What they will have is mostly meticulously planned test beds that takes years to come out of conceptual phase and from then on takes years more to come into first real product.

There is one or two other that have done something similar to SpaceX in the past. Guess which ones? NASA and Soviets. During the space race. In 10 years, they went from 0 rockets to landing on the Moon. SpaceX will surely do the same given how similar they are operating.

>>10835266
>Due to this low thrust to weight ratio the SLS core stage must spend significantly more time burning at an upward angle off the horizon in order to maintain vertical velocity and altitude as it accelerates into orbit.
Yeah but that's why it has ridiculously efficient engines on the core.
Honestly, and I say this as someone who likes the SLS, what sucks about this config is its cost, not its performance. Performance-wise it's really fine. But the RS-25s bump the cost of the core stage WAAAY up.

>>10835266
>but furthermore the ridiculous size of the first stage means SLS is in effect designed to drop off its second stage directly into orbit.
Same Anon here. This is only half-true. For Block 1, you are entirely correct. If you wanted, you could easily out the whole freaking SLS core into orbit along with whatever payload you're carrying: that's how ridiculously overpowered it is.
For Block 1B it's not true, and that's honestly what the core is sized for. The EUS is key.

>>10835308
>During the space race. In 10 years, they went from 0 rockets to landing on the Moon
Yea but NASA also had 4% of the GDP of the world's largest economy to pull that of. It's not a useful comparison.

>>10835348
they only needed that much because they were trying to buy political uncancelability by spreading the money around as much as possible

>>10835348
>Yea but NASA also had 4% of the GDP
Not a good comparison, because GDP grew substantially since then. If you look at inflation adjusted dollars, then NASA budget is fully half of what it was during the height of the space race, and sustained for decades instead of 5-6 years.

The real issue with NASA is gross inefficiency and bureaucracy.

60s NASA was much more similar to SpaceX than to todays NASA, both in employee age average and work ethic.

>>10835348
They had to invent stuff out of thin air. SpaceX doesn't have to invent new things, just optimize some stuff and make their rocket bit bigger.

This is why I see SLS as a huge cancer. They're close to funding of Apollo era and still haven't flown any rockets yet. They have nothing new to invent, heck they're still using old parts from other shuttle too.

>>10835369
Amazing that they have half the budget and seem to accomplish 1% of Apollo era stuff. People deserve to be roped for this.

>>10835379
They're running a space station, a rover program, and are building 3 human spaceflight vehicles they intend to operate simultaneously, one of which is a Saturn V-class vehicle. All this on a budget WAY smaller than they had in the 60s.

>>10835348
>Yea but NASA also had 4% of the GDP

SpaceX has an order of magnitude lower budget than even NASA today.

>>10835350
What? That happened post-Apollo. During Apollo nobody Had to worry about cancellation at all: cost was literally no object. The whole program only had to worry about the goal.
This should be reflected in how expensive they made everything during this era of NASA. I did the math on this: the Saturn V makes the SLS look like a fucking bargain when you compare their costs.

>>10835385
Imagine if SpaceX had 4% of the gdp

>>10835390
>the Saturn V makes the SLS look like a fucking bargain when you compare their costs.
Nope.

>>10835393
Yup.
There is literally no way to cook the books where the Saturn V comes out on top. Fucking TRY me Anon, I've checked.

>>10835384
All of those things are filler bullshit though, snooze you lose

>>10835411
I mean we're just gonna have to fundamentally disagree on that.

>>10835410
How many times has this been broken down for retards like you? We should just put the maths in the sticky. It's hideously expensive, not to mention the fact it hasn't had a single fucking flight after a DECADE of active development and that's not counting all the other work that went into it years before that.

>>10835414
Fucking READ Anon. I'm talking about in comparison to the Saturn V. This shouldn't even be a debate!
There is NO metric that the SLS isn't cheaper than the FUCKING Saturn V. That's not some huge achievement or anything, but it's TRUE.

>>10835412
>Sending supplies up every now and then
>Making billion dollar toy cars
>Building more tiny ass tin cans that we had in the 60s

Literally none of this is impressive or advancing spaceflight in any meaningful way. If you take SpaceX out of the equation, spaceflight has regressed massively since the end of Apollo.

>>10835417
Stop sperging out retard, this has already been btfo many times, SLS is a pile of shit that is more expensive than Saturn V.

>>10835418
>implying human spaceflight is only spaceflight
if you think the ISS wasn't worth doing, we have to disagree. the issue is that we probably shouldn't be doing it this long.

>>10835422
You are literally wrong, and the figures online will easily show that, but you can have your alternative facts.

>>10835423
The amount of money dumped into that shitheap could have funded 20 Starship style programs so that we could actually do stuff beyond shuffling around in a little box in LEO. Instead we get decades of white papers jerking off over rats in 0g with a handful of interesting bits here and there.

>>10835422
>>10835417
Pls show your math

>>10835433
K.

Marginal (per-launch) cost:
SV: $1.16B
SLS: $864M (from GAO report)

Dev Cost over launches (assumption: 4 SLS launches):
SV: $42B over 13 launches (Apollo CM costs not included)- $2.625B per launch
SLS: ~$10B over 4 currently-scheduled launches for Artemis+EC (Orion costs not included) - $2.5B per launch

The more launches, the better the second figure gets. Give it the same amount as Apollo, and the costs are WAY lower.

>>10835461
And to pre-emot claims that an assumption of 4 launches is arbitrarily chosen, that's the currently scheduled number of flights. Artemis 1, 2, and 3, and one more for Europe Clipper.

Why is the ITS not called ITS anymore?

>>10835379
Congress literally earmarks most of that budget for SLS. NASA has no choice to spend that money on something else.

>>10835569
Stuff like that is probably one of the reasons why going to space is so expensive. Who cares if its billions over budget so long as key constituents get what they want? Who cares if spaceflight has regressed so long as key constituents get what they want? Who cares if we have killed 14 astronauts so long as key constituents get what they want?

>>10835392
I'm imagining an entire fleet of Starships.

>>10835393
>the Saturn V makes the SLS look like a fucking bargain when you compare their costs.

No it does not.

>>10835461
>Saturn V $2.625B per launch
>SLS $2.5B per launch

So if we believe your numbers, then SLS is very slighly cheaper. Not a bargain at all.

That said, your numbers are highly suspect. Particularly this one:

>>10835461
>SLS: ~$10B over 4 currently-scheduled launches for Artemis+EC

It will be 2025 until this happens, and SLS will cost significantly more than $10 billion through 2025.

Not to mention all the costs that were already spent on SRBs and RS-25 and RL10 is technically spent on SLS as well, and should be counted.

>>10835377
Raptor is SpaceX developing something out of thin air. And if the second stage is anything like the concepts it'll be a watershed moment for space travel. I think you are being slightly disingenius but overall I agree with you.

>>10835657
Spending money on Shit-Rocket-Boosters is a cost in bad taste.

Chinese iSpace achieves orbit with historic private sector launch

https://spacenews.com/chinese-ispace-achieves-orbit-with-historic-private-sector-launch/

>iSpace
>Landspace
>Linkspace
>OneSpace
>Jiuzhou Yunjian
>Galactic Energy
>China Rocket Co. Ltd

So many Chinese private space companies established in last few years..

>>10835680
Interesting too, they're planning to launch the Zhuque-2 in 2020, who's first stage will be powered by four 80-ton TQ-12 MethaLOX engines.

>>10835680
copying western tech combined with slave labor will probably not produce the desired requirments.

>>10835691
>>10835680
Americans cannot dream big these days. If they are dreaming big, they are shutdown by old stagnant industry.

>>10835680
>China
>private sector

No such thing

>>10835692
I fucking hate this, I hate that these days kids aspire to be faggot E-celebs rather than the next generation to push further out beyond Earth. If I could trade all of Youtube and Twitch and all that vlogging shit for a single habitat can on the Moon I'd do so in a fucking heartbeat. My disgust is immeasurable, fuck this image and fuck you for posting it.

>>10835699
Don't blame the kids. These kids grew up in a world where American rockets didn't fly Americans in space. Heck, their father/grandfather grew up in a place where American rockets stopped going anywhere.

>>10835692
the west is truly going to fall, isn't it?

>>10835699
you don't want to be a professional youpotato when you grow up? yikes cringe!

seriously though, I can count the number of youtubers that DON'T deserve to get sent to camps on one hand and that will still be true if I get into a nasty industrial accident

>>10835692
Sauce on pic? I'd like to see the rest of the stats for other countries if there's any.

What is the bare minimum IQ to become an astronaut?

>>10835711
that's it. It's from Arstechnica

>>10835705
Not completely certain, there's still chance of salvage if US government can move fast enough and support their own innovative private industries. However we lack the people in the government making those decisions.


>https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/07/american-kids-would-much-rather-be-youtubers-than-astronauts/

>>10835713
~110, slightly above average for official government astronauts (requires science degrees). Rich as fuck for commercial astronauts.

>>10835717
Really? Fuck, I expected them to be more exigent.

>>10835713
Depends on the publicity needed. Big Bird was supposed to go up on Challenger but they chose the teacher instead. She was picked because of the bad optics if Big Bird died. (Seriously, look it up, it really happened.)
Supercargo doesn't have to be smart.

>>10835722
It is. There's 2 sides to NASA selection. Military background and academic background. Ideal for NASA is military background + engineering/science degree.

>>10835699
I wouldn't trust that graphic depending on the age of the kids. What they want to be as they get older can change. For example, in preschool I wanted to be a baker now I'm an aerospace engineer.

>>10835726
what the fuck, it is true

>>10835727
Yeah, "fighter pilot with stem degree, preferably masters" is basically every astronaut pilot

mission specialists are more varied

>>10835745
Now picture in your minds eye,
"Challenger, go for throttle up."
Boom, feathers!
Broadcast to every elementary school classroom nationwide.

>>10835740
The graph is only for 8-12 year old kids and relevant for gauging how cool astronauts are to these kids' mind and how much exposure of space/science they have. US kids are lacking horribly in science/space department.

>>10835680
It’s funny how all these ‘private’ companies are ‘building’ small launch vehicles out of donated ballistic missile segments. Many of them are also planning to launch small liquid-fuel rockets powered by Methalox in the future, the hive mind mentality surrounding these interchangeable companies reeks of tight government control.

Elon just changed his name on Twitter

What DOES it mean?

>>10835780
He had "ln(e)" before, I think.

>>10835792
ln(e) can be read as e ln which sounds like elon

>>10835756
>US kids are lacking horribly in science/space department.
Yeah. My science classes from middle school to high school were mostly reading from a book. We did some experiments, but they were pretty small scale or not noteworthy. Although I think a huge hurdle is to get kids interested in something they know little about.

>>10835780
It means e^(πi)

https://medium.com/astronomy-cosmology-space-exploration/why-are-people-not-so-interested-in-astronomy-cd70cb8cb68f
What do you guys think? How would you fix the low interest in spaceflight (excluding China, they seem to not have that issue apparently)?

>>10834991
The only SLS worth building is the big boi with the liquid strap-on boosters. If NASA had any sense of vision and/or willingness to un-fuck the SLS, they'd build a block II SLS with flyback Falcon 9's as the boosters.

>>10835832
LEO flight lottery, pay few bucks for your ticket and cross your fingers, pick one or two winners a year and send 'em up as a publicity stunt. That way everyone feels like they could have a chance to see space, and average people can have casual conversations about it along the lines of "what would you do if you won the powerball tomorrow?" As oppose to ignoring space entirely.

>>10835726
https://muppet.fandom.com/wiki/Big_Bird_on_Space_Shuttle_Challenger

And here I was thinking "Big Bird" was just a reference to the planned shuttle-launched KH-9 derivatives...

>>10835852
This is fucking brilliant

>>10835852
I think after Challenger, NASA would be abit apprehensive about sending average people into space. Not that it's a bad idea though, I'd like that. Although the anti-spacers would get upset over that.

>>10835780
SpaceX is down one in the space race with Bezos and china

>>10835862
I hear you in regards to NASA's cold feet, but would a private company like SpaceX or Blue Origin (assuming orbital capability eventually) be able to get away with it? I suppose a stack of waivers/releases would let them cover all their bases legally speaking.

>>10835865
Why is bezos always compared to spacex when he has not shown anything except renders of new glen?
Its a completely paper rocket.

>>10835868
>I hear you in regards to NASA's cold feet, but would a private company like SpaceX or Blue Origin (assuming orbital capability eventually) be able to get away with it?
I think they can if there's enough people interested in buying a SpaceLotto ticket. Although I can imagine SpaceX taking a loss at the start to try to gain momentum.

>I suppose a stack of waivers/releases would let them cover all their bases legally speaking.
If the safety concerns are anything like skydiving, then that should do. Perhaps also make it so that the lotto winner doesn't have to do anything technical to add abit of extra safety.

>>10835871
Given Blue Origin's tendency to sit on their progress updates and remain mum until they've gotten a complete vehicle to show off, I'd bet hard money that the first New Glenn prototype is at least as far along as >>10834610 the SLS, if not significantly more so.

>>10835874
>If the safety concerns are anything like skydiving, then that should do. Perhaps also make it so that the lotto winner doesn't have to do anything technical to add abit of extra safety.

Also, like skydiving, add fine print where SpaceX/NASA/Blue Origin retains the right to reject any potential candidate due to medical/psychological/etc concerns.

>>10835879
They don't have any complete vehicle yet. So how could it be a "tendency" if there's not even any pattern established?

>>10835874
>also make it so that the lotto winner doesn't have to do anything technical to add abit of extra safety.
Definitely, I just envision passengers only, not making winners do crew stuff. I don't know what the numbers would be but if that Mars One scam was any indication there's a fairly sizable group who'd reliably throw money at the lotto tickets every year for their chance. If it's a large enough group, it gets positive press coverage, and tickets are affordable to the average interested person, I think it could work.
>>10835881
Smart thinking.

>>10835886
>Mars One
Yeah, if anyone should do a space lotto, then it should be a company that has established trust with the public. SpaceX is the most likely candidate, but Blue Origin could pull it off if New Glenn works well.

>>10835871
Theri attitude of keeping things under wraps until it's ready appeals to old space, so BO has more of old space sympathy than SX does. Also they have been consistent with the few dates that they've set as far as i'm aware, so when Bezos sets a date it carries a lot more weight than when Musk sets it, so when they say that New Glenn will fly in 2021, people take it as true, and 2021 is right around the corner

>>10835852
Aren‘t lotteries super fucking regulated?

>>10835780
Keeping those twitter bots on their toes.

>>10835922
Federally and state-by-state, as states operate their own lottery boards. The only outright prohibited form of lottery are by phone or mail, as far as I know, so maybe an online lottery would skirt that regulation? I'm not certain. There's exemptions for charity or nonprofit lotteries, which a good lawyer might be able to spin SpaceLotto as, but I wouldn't bank on that.
Maybe someone else here knows lotto regulations in more detail, I've never played so I never paid much attention to how they do things.

>>10835837
>SLS main core
>4-5 FH side boosters strapped to the side
>Korolev's Cross with 5 boosters flipping and burning back home
>mfw

>>10835852
Every third seat will go to a B.O.B-level FE schizo just to shut them up

>>10835886
Wtf happened to Mars One anyway?

>>10835935
https://definitions.uslegal.com/l/lotteries/
I think it should be fine, idk Im not a lawyer.

>>10835949
You obviously haven't seen enough flattards.
>"I know that (prominent flat earther) has gone to space and has changed his mind about the Earth being flat, but what I think happened is that he was inducted into the conspiracy and thus his statements about the Earth being round are forfeit."
I mean, ffs they deny that the sun sets! A guy going on a space trip isn't going to sway them one bit.

>>10835955
They went bankrupt before they made anything.

>>10835955
Apparently declared bankrupt.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanocallaghan/2019/02/11/goodbye-mars-one-the-fake-mission-to-mars-that-fooled-the-world/#30d988a32af5
https://community.mars-one.com/webshop
But it looks like you can still give them $20 for a coffee mug.

>>10835945
This nigger gets it. SpaceX would get major brownie points with NASA, while also getting to sell Falcon 9s to NASA, while NASA gets to use the SLS core for what it's actually good at, which is hurling massive payloads on trajectories where recovery of the sustainer stage just isn't feasible. It's a win/win for all parties.

>>10835780
>>10835792
>>10835794
Is he going for a c-c-c-combo on this?

>>10835770
>It’s funny how all these ‘private’ companies are ‘building’ small launch vehicles out of donated ballistic missile segments.

In fact not at all surprising. Rockets have a shelf life and after a number of years have to be replaced and scrapped, the Chinese companies got them for cheap to experiment with. It's also the reason why so many of the private launches failed - it's old fucking rockets even the military refuses to stock pile any longer.

>Many of them are also planning to launch small liquid-fuel rockets powered by Methalox in the future,

Just one is building towards Methalox at this time iirc, the rest are doing either solids, there's a proposal for a colossal 70 ton to orbit all solid one, or good old kerosine rockets.

>>10835972
>no american built intercontinenta-
>I mean no solid fuel boosters
I won't vote for this.

Launch thread will be up shortly.

>>10836274
They going for same time as yesterday or what? Also, hop update?

>>10836278
Falcon launch is scheduled for 6:01 eastern, so 20 minutes or so earlier than yesterday, or in 2 hours from this post

>>10834610
orange stage bad

>>10836315
Good to know, thanks anon.

>>10836315
hop today also?

>>10836327
It seems like their plans for today are the same as yesterday's, but I think it's all speculation at this point. Road closures are scheduled afaik

>>10836315
>20 minutes or so earlier than yesterday
great news for me in euroland

>>10836328
launch and hop thread are up

>>10836344
How's the heat treating you?

>>10836349
I'm in the dark dark Balkans so we dont believe in climate catastrophe here and I guess it just works

>>10836349
Different Anon here.
41 degrees Centigrade. That‘s 105 degrees Burger.
The sun feels like it burns my skin, the wind feels like a hair drier. Everything exposed to the sun becomes scorching.
I ain‘t used to this shit. Nobody here is. Most of the country doesn‘t have AC. I was one of the few lucky ones to have a climatized workplace at least.

>>10836268
Trump should stop being a faggot and bring back the Peacekeeper program or something similar. Let's replace those ancient minutemen with some big bois packing 14+ maneuverable reentry devices apiece.

Remember that dummy warheads to swarm and overwhelm Russian/Chinese/Israeli ABM shields don't count towards treaty limits.

>>10836395
Hah, come to America sometimes. Where I live we have a nice range of 10° burger to 110° burger.
Everyone has AC.

>>10836402
Oh yeah, that sounds like an easy sell to the left and all the nuke-hippies

>>10836402
a new icbm program named GBSD is gonna get built sometime in the 20s because the minutemans are getting too old to be reliable

right now NG looks certain to win, which means the program will probably go 5x over budget and schedule

>>10834945
The biggest thing Trump changed was he brought back the National Space Council. It's always been chaired by the Vice President since the Kennedy administration, though its name changed a couple times and it has been disbanded twice before.
Generally speaking, it's always been a good steering committee for policy regarding space.

CRS-18 launch thread >>10836328

July brings us Russian surprises in form of military launches of satellites. On july the 30th, a communication satellite of the Russian VKS (Aerospace forces) will be launched on a Soyuz 2.1a. The day after (31st of july), a Progress cargo capsule (MS-12/73P) will head towards the ISS.

This would make the 6th Russian launch this month of which 5 are done by various Soyuz variants.

>>10834610
CAN WE JUST GET TO THE FUCKING MOON ALREADY!!!??

>>10836863

It takes time and money. Scrapping the Saturn-V was one of the 4 most biggest mistakes ever made in space history.

>>10836960
Curious, what's the other 3 on your list?

>>10836960

While i am at it, the other 3 are:

1: The Space Shuttle. NASA: Need Another Seven Astronauts.

2: Failure to preserve/keep alive the Buran Shuttle program including the Energia rocket system.

3: The UK canceling the Black Arrow in favour of buying foreign rockets to carry their satellites with. The UK is the only country to have done away with an ability to launch stuff into space.

>>10836960
Just think about it, a saturn that has been constantly updated to newer materials and building techs, finetuned at every step.
Scaled up and down at several points, and probably turned in to a big dumb booster for all kinds of stuff and a beyond soyuz level of safety vehicle for humans.

With that kind of rocket you would have a ISS with modules the size of skylab and a moonbase.
And a american flag on mars.
Fucking politicians...

>>10836975
Well to be fair, the Saturn V was pretty expensive, especially with the budget cuts NASA was getting. What NASA needed was a cheaper, albeit smaller, launch system. Saturn 2 or 3 would've fit the bill. But those were too expensive compared to the promises of the Shuttle.

Pic related, my favorite Saturn V derivative.

>>10834803
>>10834810
>>10834819
The Apollo heat shield was fucking cork. What's wrong with that?

>>10836995
It’s ablative, great for one-time use but incompatible with reusability.

>>10836995
Apollo wasn't cork, it was a carbon heavy thermosetting plastic. You're thinking of Mercury and Gemini.

And besides, SpaceX doesn't want anything ablative because they're aiming towards quick reusability. Needing to replace a heat shield sort of defeats the idea.

>>10835780
another change

>>10836973
>2: Failure to preserve/keep alive the Buran Shuttle program including the Energia rocket system.

This one 100x over. Remember that the Energia as-flown was like the R-7 to the Soyuz that they planned to build it into. Stuff like the Energia with flyback boosters and cores using the same automatic landing technology that Buran did.

>>10836973
I might lop off the Black Arrow cancellation and replace it with Soviet politics and Korolyev's autism keeping them fixated on the fundamentally broken N-1/Soyuz lunar launch/landing profile instead of just swallowing their pride and building the UR-700.

It would have been a lot harder to justify ending the Saturn V program if the USSR had either beaten us to the moon or got there second but made Apollo look like a fucking toy while their UDMH-spewing environmental catastrophe of a gigarocket starts lobbing Salyut-sized habitation and science modules and crew rotations direct to the lunar surface as part of a 1970s moonbase program.

I WAS PROMISED PURPLE FLAMES

>>10837364
the yellow and grey is from the concrete underneath the rocket ablating, once it's in the air it'll be purple

ELON SUPPORTS NTR:
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1153378777893888005
NASA's NTR efforts are supposedly well funded though. They're allegedly putting together fuel rods now.

>>10837368
everybody on /sci/ loves NTR, it's the best propulsion system for the outer solar system

>>10837368
>ELON SUPPORTS NTR

>>10834610
Once we have been to Mars, what will become the next big targets in spaceflight?

>>10837390
Hopefully, establishing more stuff beyond LEO, like on the moon or Mars. I think the biggest thing (bigger than sending the first person to Mars) would be off-Earth manufacturing, whatever it may be propellant, housing material, or food. This will allow the amount of mayerial needed to be lifted from Earth to decrease, thus making missions cheaper and therefore possible to be more frequent. Only focusing on the firsts is short sighted and will result in people quickly losing interest in spaceflight (again).

>>10837390
Gas giant moons, then I N T E R S T E L L A R

>>10837368
>ELON SUPPORTS NTR

>>10837407
>Gas giant moons
SPACE WAR NOW

>>10837407
This, jovian/saturnian moons are a matter of time

>>10837413
Out to Saturn get the ice back to Ceres

>>10837376
>>10837411
That's right! The best kind of NTR: Nuclear Thermal Rockets! It can get you there faster or move bigger payloads than chemical propulsion can.

>>10837451
NTR means cuck in gook friend

>>10837470
shut up, weeb

HOP COMPLETED

also brush is on fire

>>10837390
Callisto

or balloon cities on Venus but Callisto is better

>>10837470
I'm well aware anon. I was trying to come up with a subtle NTR joke and failed. Hence the bigger payload.

>>10835461

fun tangentially related fact. We spend more on cellphones in six months than the Apollo/Mercury/Gemenii programs spent in a decade.

>>10837665
So?

>>10837390
>>10837576
The correct order goes Moon, Mars, Ceres, Callisto, Ganymede (using Callisto as a jump-off point), the larger asteroid belt objects, Titan, the smaller spherical Saturnine moons, Mercury, Europa (using large vehicles with thick water shielding built and stocked on Callisto to get there), the Uranian moons, Triton, the large Kuiper belt objects, the large distant/scattered objects (like Sedna), Planet 9 (if it exists), Venus never unless to disassemble for materials because colonizing it is a meme.

>>10837687
I feel like Ceres and Psyche concurrently might be the recipe for large-scale Belt habitats early on

>>10837560

>>10837687
>Venus never unless to disassemble for materials because colonizing it is a meme
But only after dismantling Mercury before 500 years from now, else at least 500 years in the future (energy demand issues).

>>10837376
>>10837411
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejUcnpwNDLs

>>10837560
There's something menacing about a giant awkward shiny trash can just calmly moving up, scooting over, and going back down. For some reason I have the image of a sentient telepathic Starhopper hovering over a major city and demanding tribute.

The age of the FFSC is upon us.

the news says it was a failure

what gives?

Space Colony Reminder: Liquid Oxygen responds to magnetic fields, and could be used to signal through intact tanks via their monitoring equipment in the event of catastrophic damage to an outpost.

>>10837771
Where?

>>10837771
the press is the enemy of the people

>I HAVE BECOME DEATH
>DESTROYER OF WORLDS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WblhAI-T1Cg

reminder: Starship update after Hopper hover.
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1153183373109542913
The Hopper just hovered.

NEXT HOP WHEN?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zM-eeFOazY

best footage so far; Mary from NSF. can see it hover through the flames.

engine cam view https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1154629726914220032

>>10837826
200m hop next week. Maybe some before that.

>>10837826
next week, they got the engine to a point where they got a really soft landing on that thing. Like looking at it. I see no reason aside from engine failures that it could in theory go wrong.

That was honestly really clean

>>10837836
Water towers cannot fly, what the hell.

>>10837836
they really need a flame trench, it's going to be insane when they get 3 engines on there

>>10837850
wrong. The entire goddamn point is to land on MARS. There ain't no flame trench on Mars. For SH, sure. But SS—it's good practice to see if the radar gets confused, or the engines ingest debris, or whatever. So far, the Texas dirt doesn't seem to be an issue. Wonder how well it simulates mars dirt.

venting

>>10837854
Yea I understand that. They set their site on fire though because they didn't have any sort of trench or deluge system.

>>10837861
there was deluge, just not enough? Anyways, with each test more stuff gets cleared out.
Perhaps now they'll do a bunch of landscaping

>>10837864
It was just a little water cannon, not a deluge

>>10837861
If you keep burning the brush, soon there won't be any left and you don't have to worry about it.

labpadre stream is full of elon fan boys. got fucking butthurt because people talking about the fire.

>>10837869
"Did the primary buffer panel just fall off my gorram ship for no apparent reason?"

>>10837839
>Like looking at it I see no reason aside from engine failures that it could in theory go wrong

that's not how rocket safety works and you know it

they'd better stick this steel hunk in Udvar-Hazy when its testing regime is done.

>>10837869
is that one of the big stainless panels that are tack welded onto the side?

>>10837886
it's way too big to transport that far

>>10837889
nah, they got Skylab to the A&SM in the Mall. That's 6m diameter. What's 3 more meters to it? Just gut the Hopper, stick it on a big truck and drive it on up.

>>10837892
there's nothing really to "gut" out of starhopper, it's straight up just over 100 tons of steel battleship plating

They have been venting heavy for almost an hour. Are they trying to empty the pads holding tanks?

>>10837896
Raptor is 200t of force. Elon said for this test they'll keep thrust above 50%. So yeah, definitely more than 100t.
It still seems doable. An easier route would just be to put it on a barge. They're like 400 feet from the ocean. Udvar-Hazy is close to Chesapeake Bay.

the "hop" was clearly faked that thing is welded by rednecks in the open its not how space works stop spreading disinformation meant to disrupt public support for key national security industries

>>10837889
Just fly it there

>>10837887
It appeared to be something on the ground that was kicked up by the exhaust.

>>10837967
it's the right size to be one of the panels off the side, I think, and they wouldn't be stupid enough to leave something lying around like that

That was loud. Just imagine 31 more powerful versions of those engines, in full throttle. I can’t imagine Ole Muskys transcontinental starship plan will ever come to fruition considering the amount of noise pollution that thing creates.

Well I'll be damned, she flew.

>>10838068
IT'S JUST A CAN.
SHELBY YOU FAGGOT, YOU LIED WHEN YOU SAID IT WON'T HOP.
FUCK SLS
AAAAAAAAAAAAA

What we really need to advance is this

>>10838038
Just land it at a base station at sea or whatever. Anywhere you can build a space port you can build a landing zone for a transcontinental starship.

>>10838085
Disgusting. Why would I want that over starship?

ELON BUILT THAT GIANT ROCKET IN A TENT

WITH A BOX OF SCRAPS

SO DONT TELL ME THAT YOU CANT BUILD SLS

So will actual starships and shit be made out of a bunch of wrinkly sheets as well, (seems to be the case for the prototypes) or will they look a bit sleeker than that?

>>10838139
The sheets on Starhopper are wrinkly because it’s literally just foil, the sheets on the Starship prototype are wrinkled in some places due to welding distortion and because the tanks and structural baffles haven’t been put in yet to reinforce the structure, they’ll bash out the dents when construction is done.

>>10838139
yes.

>>10838133
>https://twitter.com/NASASpaceflight/status/1154456222160101383
>"Starhopper is a test vehicle that SpaceX is using to help develop its Starship Launch System."
My fucking sides.

>>10838133
YOU CANT build rocketships in a open field !!!
YOU NEED CLEAN ROOMS AND SPACE GRADE Aluminum alloys for that !!!
STEEL is from 1850s !!!!!!!!!!!!

>>10838183
This is just a hopper. They might build the final starship in a clean room.

>>10838167
Elon takes trolling VERY seriously.

>>10838191
Why would they? You don‘t build nuclear submarines in a clean room.

>>10838191
>>10838211
or carriers
some components sure but not the whole thing

Since the roll lift equipment is at the landing site, I assume the 200m hop will land there

Leaked image of a Chinese Long March rocket. Notice anything?

>>10838384

Oh fuck off, that can't be real.

>>10838384
The Falcon style grid fins?

>>10838384
OBVIOUSLY THAT PICTUR IS WRONGU
HERE OFFICIAL PICTURE

>>10838387
don’t you mean Russian style? They did come up with it first.

>>10838392
Why do some rockets have big gaps in the middle like that? Surely that would cause loads of aerodynamic drag?

The molten concrete that started the bush fire

>>10838392
>don’t you mean Russian style? They did come up with it first.
Let's not get into the semantics of that. The fins the previous image look very distinctly like the ones used on the Falcon 9.

>>10838399
I think the gap is there for "hot staging", where the upper stage is fired before the lower stage is finished. I believe that is done to ensure that the upper stage engine(s) are working before it leaves the lower.

>>10838399
saving mass maybe?

>>10838403
Not to mention the new CZ-whatever concept has F9-looking legs as well

>>10837731
PBS Nova just had a show about the inner planets, apparently Mercury is mostly metal core with only a little bit of crust.

>>10837746
It's a giant R2D2

>>10837892
>they got Skylab to the A&SM in the Mall
Skylab has its 747 transport, they just need a landing strip nearby, then they only have to close a few miles of streets while they tow it.

>>10837956
This. Getting clearance for such a bonkers flight may be tricky, but depending on fuel capacity it should be able to do a really big hop.

>>10838392
>don’t you mean Russian style? They did come up with it first.

These are distinctively SpaceX-style gridfins, Russian-style gridfins are typically located at the bottom of the Rocket or LES shroud and not at the top of the booster.

>>10838413
nah - hopper fully fueled with the 3x raptors can go to like 5000m and come down. Not enough fuel to do anything else. They'll just put it on a barge if they do donate it

So SpaceX now makes history by being the first to achieve stability and fly a full staged engine.

>>10838422
and next week that glorious flying shitpile of a testbed goes to 200 meters. Imagine if you will Starhopper sitting in 200 meters in the air doing its thing.

>>10838422
*Full-flow staged combustion

>>10838428
it took grasshopper like six months between the first flight and its 200m+ flight. Starhopper is doing it in a week. They've landed 44 F9 1st stages since then, but still

>>10838441
there are no brakes on this ride.

>>10838211
>>10838219
In microgravity all the dust and debris is free to move around. IIRC this fucked up some early space missions. I can't remember which ones so you can just treat that as a fact I pulled from my ass. Although I wouldn't necessarily call the factory where SLS is built a clean room. Knowing elon, he'll probably opt for a tent.
>>10838400
Almost looks like molten steel the way it's burning.

>>10838507

IN A CAVE
WITH A WATER TOWER

>>10838559
It's just a hopper m8. Most complicated part is the engines and those would be difficult to make in a dirty cave. You've just been de-meme'd

>>10838566
>You've just been de-meme'd
Im-impossible...

>>10838566
>You've just been de-meme'd
You can de-meme others?!

>>10838191
I mean some parts will have to be built in a pretty clean environment, engines, life support systems, probably some of the computers if they have to be higher end, and the heat shielding plates, but the ship itself probably won't warrant more than a tough tent to protect it from storms and shit.

>>10838441
While i don't think they'll do it next week, i do think they'll reach the 200m mark much faster than they did with Grasshopper

>>10838407
You mean this? I don't think that is a CZ rocket.

>>10838619
No there’s a separate chinese government project that looks like F9.
LinkSpace is cool though

>>10838183
THIS CANNOT BE HAPPENING! I'M IN CHARGE HERE!!!

>>10838619
Talk what you want about BO, but at least they are working on their own rocket, everyone else is just copying SpaceX

>>10834610
>>10838627
>NASA’s target for the first launch of its SLS moon rocket shifts from 2020 to 2021
>NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine told lawmakers today that the first launch of the heavy-lift Space Launch System was “definitely achievable by 2021,” seemingly signaling a shift in the plan for a 2020 maiden launch.
>Because of the turnover, Bridenstine declined to speculate on the precise schedule for SLS launches. “NASA has not been good at setting realistic budget and schedules, and we need to get better at that,” he told lawmakers.
oh no no no no no....

>>10838628
To be fair it makes sense to emulate successful designs, it's why most cars have four wheels. If you want to reuse a rocket almost entirely it's gotta land and to land it's gotta be able to steer itself down. Thus you must have fins and legs, having fins up top away from your center of thrust is going to give you more control than if they were right next to it, and having the rocket land the same way it takes off requires less mass than say having it deploy some kind of wing to land on it's side, so legs are the sensible solution. If somebody comes up with a better design than everyone will start copying that, although I can't off the top of my head think of any better way to do it.

>>10838632
US really needs more new space, old space is more concerned about preserving jobs rather than make a viable rocket

>>10838632
>NASA has not been good at setting realistic budget and schedules,
A tad of an understatement.

>>10837896
It doesn't weigh 100 tons dry, no way.

Meanwhile in China https://
twitter.com/LaunchStuff/status/1154643935526117376

>>10838705
Why are they dropping rockets on themselves?

>>10838764
inland launch site

>>10838705
Why song?

>>10838384
>>10838385
>>10838387
>>10838392
hmm...
found in this twatter >>10838705

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-guuMr53Uw
combined videos

>>10838784
Only difference seems to be that the chinese grid fins are straight while F9 is curved

>>10838849
Probably because its easier and cheaper to make straight gridfins than curved. Which makes sense for a prototype.

>>10838849
The SpaceX’s gridfins are modelled for optimum aerodynamic performance, which is where the curved shape comes from.

>>10838861 SpaceX has the luxury of using expensive titanium forged, aerodynamic modelled fins because their reused, whilst China does not.

>>10838880
Largest single titanium forging in the world apparently

Elon's meme names for drone ships made me start reading the Culture series and for that I am grateful

Thank you based Ol' Musky

>starship presentation after hop
>it is after hop
>no presentation
MUUUUUUSSSKKK

>>10838904

So what exactly is preventing spacex from refining starhopper a bit, putting 1 to 2 more raptors on it, and making it a solid 2 stage small satalite launcher?

Would that be a good idea or not?

>>10838919
>why doesn't spacex go back to falcon 1 but with raptors this time
because falcon 1 was uneconomical and even a single raptor has twice the thrust falcon 1 did

by the time you've scaled the design up for three raptors instead of one merlin you're basically competing with Falcon 9

also why would they develop a third, smaller rocket when starship should be cheaper (fully reusable)

>>10838919
Underpopulated SS+SH is sort of that. Less cost to build, since the (currently) $2mil+ raptors are a big chunk of the vehicle cost.
Wouldn't be surprised if they just leave off raptors for some of the builds, and use em for volume-restricted payloads.

>>10838919
If they finish starship+super heavy then the whole system will be 100% reusable. Most likely cheaper to send satellites to space with it than any possible disposable rocket system.

>>10838909
I still can't beleive this is a real person.

Part of me thinks he's still a 5 y/o kid in south africa, and we're all part of a dream he's having. That's the only explanation for reality that makes sense to me.

>>10838949
you don't say

>>10838919
Because they already have a small satellite launcher, Falcon 9, and a sort of small/medium launcher in Falcon Heavy, why build yet another one rather than just taking the step up to a large payload launcher? Especially considering that if BFRship works as intended then it will end up outpacing it's juniors in terms of $-per-kg economy. If I remember correctly Elon said Falcon will be around as long as somebody still wants to pay him to launch them, but BFRship will eclipse it completely if it works, once they start flying regularly nobody with economic sense would want to launch with a Falcon-9 or Heavy when launching on a Starship will cost less.

Here's a dumb/interesting idea for SLS: Make the core have 2 different fuel types while ascending instead of running pure hydrolox the entire way.
At launch when the core and boosters light, the core engines instead of burning hydrolox burn methalox, sacrificing some efficiency for more power. After booster burnout, the switchover to hydrolox begins over a period of several seconds to half a minute. The reasoning is that at this point the primary boost phase is over, the rocket is mostly in space, and is focused more on gaining lateral velocity, which is better suited for hydrolox.

Obviously there's some downsides to this. The engines all need additional plumbing and control valves, and have to smoothly transition from one fuel-type to another without shutting down. An additional turbopump and tanking for the methane will be required, which adds more mass. There might be a way to tie the methane pump to one of the other pumps so they share a common shaft, but that puts additional stress on that pump's turbine. Pretty sure there's some other issues that I'm missing here with this architecture.

>>10839010
bruh

>>10838883
Until Superheavy gets here...

>>10839010
this is a good idea, but separate out the methalox tanks and engines (because you'll need whole new engines for that) and have them drop off when they're done firing

>>10839025
Ah yeah, forgot that it will have waffles as well

>>10838949
It's kinda odd how reality conspires to always make him right in the end.

>>10839028
Sounds like a pretty smart solution, if you know what I mean

>>10839010
>At launch when the core and boosters light, the core engines instead of burning hydrolox burn methalox, sacrificing some efficiency for more power.
Isn't the whole deal of the space shuttle engines that they only work because they are hydrolox? Like any carbon-based fuel would fuck it up?

>>10838904

>>10839010
It is needlessly complicated, which is why to my knowledge nobody launches with hybrid fuel cycle rockets at all. On top of that SLS doesn't have an issue with power, the SRBs and SSMEs are plenty to get any variant of it going to where it needs to be. I've talked about it in other threads but I'd change out the propellants for the booster stage, have it run on a pure KeroLOX booster stage using 4 F1-Bs (two for LRB sticks and two for the core stage) or update the M1 with computer design and additive manufacturing and call it the M1-B and have two M1-B core boosters for methaLOX core and two LRBs each powered by an F1-B each. The MethaLOX core and KeroLOX booster setup will lose a bit of core efficiency but gain a good bit of booster efficiency, then your proper second stage will run off of a cluster of MethaLOX rockets based on the RL10, call them RL10-Ms, updated plumbing and computer designed components, extending bell, all the good shit. You'll gain around 20-25 seconds of ISP on the LRBs, lose 36 on the core boosters (Comparing sea level ISP of the SSME and Raptor) but the whole vehicle overall will see a good reduction in dry mass thanks to a substantially smaller core stage tank with lighter thermal insulation. Hydrolox is best on paper however in practice the weight of it's extra thicc tankage is greater than it's ISP gains vs methaLOX or keroLOX.

>>10839050
>>10839041
>>10839028
So not really worth the effort, and ultimately would be better spent on swapping out the booster and core architecture entirely.

>>10838949

>>10838418
Maybe because ruskies use then on ascent and musky on landing ass first.

>>10839147
The Ruskie fins are part of their lauch abort system

>>10836862
that is more Russian launches in one month than the entire first half of the year! Why were they so backed up?

>>10838891
Culture is awesome and quite unique sci-fi, considering all the dystopian settings out there. Too bad the author is an unironic socialist, but at least he had enough self-reflection a decade after the fall of USSR to not push his views onto readers.

>>10836973
>1: The Space Shuttle. NASA: Need Another Seven Astronauts.
>
>2: Failure to preserve/keep alive the Buran Shuttle program including the Energia rocket system.

These are directly related. Buran was essentially an expensive experiment to confirm that the Shuttle architecture really was a horrible, wasteful mistake, even when implemented slightly more rationally. The only mistake was wasting all that money on it in the first place. At least they cancelled the Buran project early.

And the legacy of Energia did live on in the side boosters, which became the workhorse Zenit launcher, the one adopted by Sea Launch. The only reason it isn't still flying today is geopolitical: it is mostly made in Ukraine and Russia canceled all their aerospace ties with that country when they invaded.

>>10839034
Because Elon likes to reason from physical principles first. You can fool a person but you cannot fool physics.

>>10839081
>Musk as Captain
>Shotwell as First Officer
>Mueller as Chief Engineer
hm..

>>10839168
So they fly upwards, which makes sense.

>>10839194

I havent the slightest clue but after 6 launches in july, they are slated to have a further 4 more in august and 16 more planned for the rest of the year (Some of them might slip into 2020).

>>10837746
it's a giant Dalek! especially when it shoots flame out the top.

>>10837817
>peekaboo!

>>10839041
You can use methane in a fuel rich staged combustion cycle. This is proven by the fact that Raptor exists, and since a Full-flow design has both an oxygen rich and a fuel rich turbopump assembly, it therefore must be possible to do fuel-rich only and still not suffer coking issues.

One wonders why Blue Origin decided to go for an oxygen-rich cycle using methalox instead of a fuel rich cycle, since it must be obvious to anyone who studies rockets that this is the case, and developing oxygen-rich anything is quite difficult.

>>10838418
>N-1 rocket upskirt
too lewd

>>10839236

Also to add, so far there has been 2 Soyuz launches from Korou with a further 2 of them planned for this year.

>>10838507
METHANE CAN'T MELT STEEL PANELS

>>10839217
Socialism works fine in the "luxury gay space communism" setting of post-scarcity. It's not an effective way of allocating limited resources, but take away the limit and who cares?

>>10839235
Yes, during launch the Soyuz capsule is inside a faring and these fins are mounted near the bottom of that faring. If aborted, the rockets at the top of the faring would fire and the fins at the bottom would provide steering.

>>10839222
The genius of Buran-Energia is that they were in no way locked into the design like Shuttle was.
They could have completely changed the orbiter in any way and it would have flown fine so long as it could remain bolted to the side of Energia and didn't weigh too much. Energia could have launched a vehicle meant to go from Earth orbit to the Moon, land, and return, similarly to Saturn V or N1. It could have launched large space station modules or even complete stations a la Skylab.
As others have pointed out, they could have also changed the Energia rocket itself to allow for reusability options. There were already plans for designing a flyback booster, which Energia would use 4 of. A different configuration turned the entire core stage into a giant orbiter which carried payloads in its nose, taller than the original Energia and with stubby wings but otherwise the same. Fully reusable Energia was possible, though it would have cut pretty hard into payload mass, but even if it cut it all the way down to just 40 tons per launch that's still enough to allow for a Moon landing mission in just two launches, so if their reusability technology turned out cheap to maintain they could have had access to a remarkably low cost-to-orbit super heavy lift system.
Reusable Energia wouldn't have beat Starship Super Heavy by any means of course, but it'd have shit on everything else at the time, Shuttle especially, and would have probably led to an international Moon base rather than the eventual development of the ISS we have today.

if the mormons can afford a ship in the expanse why don't they beat everyone else to mars irl

space mormons are the real redpill

>>10839317
They musn't have much of an interest in space, otherwise they'd probably have by far the largest private space industry on the planet. They collect about 8 billion freedom papers a year in tithe, so if they could get their hands on the caliber of people necessary to put together a space program team they could certainly put forward quite an ambitious project. Consider, the BFR project is approximated at about $5Bn and if it stays roughly on schedule from initiation to completion it will have taken 4 years, in that period of time the Mormons take in $32Bn in donations and could probably do more with a more aggressive tithing campaign. They could match it if they dedicated $1.25Bn a year or about 15% of their income.

new thread when?

>>10839409

Its fine if you want to make one but it is courtesy to wait untill 9/10, thats far enough down that it wont bother people going through the catalog.

>>10839415
i see

>>10839409
I have a suggestion. Putting links to neat spaceflight and related websites in the OP for extra reading such as.

http://www.astronautix.com/
http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/

>>10839409
this is a slooow board, dont panic if its past bump limit

>>10838919
Starship prototype is going to use 3 raptor if I recall right. That will most likely hit sub orbital.

>>10839421
you are missing Tim Dodds website !!! the best place for spacex news

>>10839501
not enough fuel to do anything beyond hops

>>10839511
Starhopper is the hopper. Starship prototype is testing Starship's main capabilities. Space/landing/etc.

>>10839538
How many hoops will the hopper have to go through until they are satisfied and move one to Starship?

>>10839551
Unknown, there will be few more hops for sure. 200M is in 1-2 weeks. Then there will be higher, then navigation and so on until they get a RUD. Then they'll have a second Hopper up for retesting those issues and finding out what went wrong.

If all plans out, Starship prototypes will fly by end of this year.

Musky said more info "after hopper hops", well we had a hop, when is the more info?

>>10839564
SOMEONE SAID HOP

>>10839564
he could deliver the information 10 years after today and not break his promise

Musk has talked before about using Starship for people to travel to the other side of the world in minutes, but has he talked about hauling cargo/goods across the world? Would there be a market for that?

>>10839262
Methane + pure oxygen can. Once it's hot enough the concrete/steel becomes the fuel and you don't even need the methane.

>>10839633
he could move his headquarters to a cave under a volcano and then charge reasonable rates for the service of not hauling "cargo" directly into various cities at ballistic speeds

>>10839551
>200m in a few weeks.
>200km in a few months.
>225 million km in a year or two.
>4.4 lightyears in a decade.

>>10839713

>4.4 lightyears in a decade.

If only.

>>10839633
People are used to long haul cargo taking time to reach their factories and its cost effective.

The only people whom wish to use a BFR earth to earth would be the same people who paid for seats on Concorde.

>>10839633
Not with such a (comparatively) small rocket, bulk cargo often comes in 100,000 up to 600,000 tons, not 100. Maybe extreme luxury items, but only if you're already wealthy enough to pay several thousand bucks for shipping and handling.

>>10839723
I also have my doubts on how safe rocketry can ever be made. I believe that it can be made pretty safe and reliable to the point where I would chance a launch and re entry to Mars but even with my confidence that would be the absolute most I would ever get on an exploding tube. I just don't see it becoming a daily thing, especially with launch and re entry g's making the trip pretty uncomfortable and not suitable at all for anyone not physically fit.

>>10839713
>>4.4 lightyears in a decade
i hope it's not all work and no play

>>10839735
Why is rocketry and less inherently safe than jet airliners? The complex parts are the same, big ol' turbines, but the rockets need some fancy metallurgy and run at higher temperatures. That's all.

>>10839735
the G's won't be that bad. I think Elon said at one point what the max E2E G's were.
Furthermore, rockets have one huge benefit over planes. The people maintaining them. A huge chunk of airplane accidents happen due to shoddy maintenance. Not greasing elevator screws, microcracks in turbines going unnoticed... With Starship, you have literal rocket engineers checking them over.

If Elon proves that literally any welding and plumbing company can build rocket shells, why even build Starships and sell services on them? Just fucking sell Raptors and blueprints. Build Your Own Rocket.

>>10839810
>Just fucking sell Raptors and blueprints. Build Your Own Rocket.
Lets just burn the whole country like it was eternal 4th of July!

>>10839823
>United States shortly afterwards

>>10839797
The difference being that as a rule of thumb a failure in an airliner is not a terminal event whereas with a rocket a failure is almost 100% of the time resulting in a huge explosion. Even in the event of a really bad failure in an airplane there is usually the option of gliding down to a mild crash, there is no such option with a rocket.

>>10839421
nah fuck that

Japam suborbital - Momo-4 - live stream
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sr9mRTe2F7I

New thread: >>10839920

>>10839920

>>10839920

>>10839920

>>10839907
Not undertandini Japaninishiro, when is the launchin?