/sci/ - Science & Math

Reminder, when you use logic, reason, and actual real science (real physics - not math which if you rely too much on makes you gullible and limits your understanding), then you realize rockets only work (definition of work: to propel themselves forward) inside an atmosphere.

They don't and can't work in a real vacuum (space).

So will a rocket which "works in space" (propels the craft forward) ever be invented? No. No such technology can ever exist. Any claims of such tech existing is a fraud and a lie. You want to believe in a fraud and a lie?

>inb4 you parrot "newtons 3rd law!" like an NPC without any thought involved
That law isn't in dispute here. Quoting it to "prove" rockets "work in space" shows you don't grasp the fundamental problem here. The 3rd law is 100% correct. When asteroids floating in the vacuum of space crashes into each other, the 3rd law applies. Likewise, the law applies to objects interacting on the ground on Earth, underwater, and in the sky. The 3rd law is real, but it doesn't "do" anything for a rocket engine fired in a perfect vacuum.

You see, the atmosphere gets thinner at higher elevation until it disappears completely (out in space). That's the issue is here! And you can't get around that issue. Parroting "newtons's 3rd law!" or throwing math equations around, doesn't magically make the issue go away. That's just you avoiding to deal with reality. Man up and stop avoiding reality :)

If you're currently under the "rockets work in space! xd!" spell they cast on you through the entertainment industry and educational system (the indoctrination system), and you want to break free from that spell and shatter the illusion - then see these two educational videos (they play inside your browser):

First vid: https://files.catbox.moe/dl9ldw.webm (embed)
Second (also important): https://files.catbox.moe/so2rrt.mp4 (embed)

Once you know that stuff - then you know beyond any doubt rocket technology will never be viable outside of Earth.

>>11590096
i'm a brainlet and this is too difficult for me to understand

i got totally lost 1 minute into the first vid

>>11590116
See this picture, fren. It might help you.

>>11590096
Reminder, we landed on the moon

>>11590132

>>11590134

>>11590135

I had a dream last night where crew dragon was lost on the pad. the crew boarded and soon to launch when something happened, the abort system fired, but the capsule didn't leave, instead the top blew out. don't think the rocket exploded though, can't remember, but crew died

>>11590148
Hey now, don't start getting prophetic visions of doom.

>>11590096
take your lithium schizoposter

Feel like shit just want her back

Alright methalox ssto anon from an older thread here.

If skylon can work with using meme hydrolox then wouldn't swapping to superior methalox make it even more practical?

>>11590134
>Posting nudes on a blue board

>>11590327
>If skylon can work with using meme hydrolox
if

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcylLNfCD5Q
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7hQ9dmiQ54

Starlink launch thread will be up an hour before launch or so

>>11590128
Reminder, we are currently not landing on the moon.

can we really get anywhere near the levels of progress we had in the 70s without the political pressure? we only sent a man on the moon because we had a foreign enemy hellbent on doing it first. unironically the only future i see with major improvements to spaceflight is if north korea or china wanna compare dicks with us but north korea is a dictatorial shithole that pretends it has funding for anything and china is the same but it could hypothetically do something. we're pretty tight with russia so that wont be happening

>>11590669
reminder, we are literally preparing to land on the moon. as we speak. it is a test phase for a mars mission which is projected for the 30s but will probably be more like the 40s

>>11590674
We don‘t need an enemy. Just a clear target, strategy and timetable to stick to.
Also if you think NASA would immediately unfuck itself just because there‘s an idiological opponent somewhere, I fear you are way too optimistic.

>>11590096
Fuck off back to the containment thread.

>>11590674
excellent related James Burke docu regarding that
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puWbQ1b-ljU
highly recommended!

>>11590676
He's here to disrupt this general every fucking time with the same boring shit, you can tell by the writing style
just ignore the schizo and he'll go somewhere else, this creature feeds off interaction

>>11590693
thank you anon! i have been watching documentaries all day so that ones going on my list now
>>11590687
if the cold war didnt happen i guaranfuckingtee you we would not have made it to the moon in the timely manner that we did. the ussr wouldnt have even tried either. jfk said several times that he personally didnt care, he just wanted to get em up there before those damned russkies did. without the pressure we would not have the advances we enjoy today, or at the very least, they would have been delayed. logistics dont matter if there is no reason for it. NASA wouldnt have been funded for it either if the ussr wasnt an enemy of the state

>>11590687
what's fucked with NASA currently

>>11590674
A space race is still possible, perhaps govt led, but mainly for profit this time, not ideological shit.
If you could put a million tonnes of ice into lunar orbit along with an electrolysis module to crack it open you'll have a lot of others trying to do the same.

>>11590721
the only space race thats happening is between bezos and musk and musk is clearly winning. bezos has money to shred though so who knows. regardless i dont think that a war for profit will yield the same results as a war for national security and domint presence in space for the nation

>Massive earthquake near SpaceX HQ in Hawthorne, CA
HAPPENING HOLY SHIT

>>11590715
Going to the moon was pointless though, just an unsustainable glory program

>>11590754
if going to the moon was pointless then why would a mars mission have any more value

>>11590754
tfw j-missions were cut

>>11590755
The point is a sustainable space enterprise, not one off missions to the moon or mars or wherever

>>11590752
>3.7

>>11590809
DID SOMEONE SAY CONNNTRAAACTOOOORRRRRS?

>>11590720
What isn‘t?
They paid contractors 20 billion over 10 years to glue a DeltaIV upper stage to legacy shuttle hardware. And it hasn‘t even flown yet. And it‘s not even the final vehicle they wanted to build in the first place. And the capsule costs just as much and has another huge stack of contractors.
Mars 2020 sends the same vehicle we sent last time, except they left out the chemistry lab and it costs just as much as the first time when they developed it from scratch.
Commercial crew is years behind schedule and while SpaceX will at least deliver results finally, Boeings program is completely JUSTed. I guess they made the right call contracting two companies independently.
Gateway is a Delta-V tollbooth designed only to get the Senate/Presidents to stop changing the plan all the time.
Artemis program is a step in the right direction in general with its focus on sensible commercial partner proposals, but since the senate wrote into law that SLS MUST be involved, it‘s still fucked and will definetly slip(and then probably get cancelled by a democrat because they’re now skipping the Delta-V tollbooth intended to prevent this).
JWST is an absolute meme at this point. Completely over budget and hilariously behind schedule and there‘s still the chance it won‘t work.
Meanwhile really promising technologies like in orbit refueling get pennies for research that would just lead to a report locked in some desk if SpaceX weren‘t actually pursuing it by themselves.
I suppose there‘s a chance NTR will see some more developments, which is nice and Kilopower seems like one of the small scale future projects that actually pulled through and might be useful instead of rotting in a desk.
Meanwhile VASMR is a complete meme that can‘t possibly work with any current or near future power aource and it‘s still getting funded.

>>11590817
fukkin hell

>>11590818
The only foolproof answer is to end immigration, affirmative action, and the welfare state, thus freeing up enormous amounts of money for space investment locking the Chinese out of our IP, and booting the incompetent diversity hires out of NASA. You can't solve political problems with rocket technology.

>>11590818
Paid more than that for the capsule too
Fucking orion

>>11590120
The force of pushing the exhaust even while in a vacuum generates an equal and opposite force on the rocket.

>starlink sats are getting sun shades
BOOOOOOOOOOOO
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

welcome to the club

>>11590841
(the military sat club)

>>11590833
...or you could just shelve one carrier group...

>>11590838
I don‘t get this meme. If people are worried about astronomy getting ruined isn‘t it completely irrelevant if the dot moving through the picture is bright or dark? It‘s still a dot you need to account for. This is just a placebo for the public isn‘t it, because this whole thing is just one of those pseudo-smart problems that people like to parrot to sound smart which is not actually an issue in the first place.

>>11590838
>guys_literally_only_want_one_thing_moon_colonies_lit_up.jpg

~9 more hours for starlink

>>11590327
Yes it would be better with methane fuel, however for the reasons we have already gone over 1000 times in these threads it would still be shit. If you want to go to space you use a rocket, end of story unless there is some kind of paradigm shift like lightweight fusion or antimatter or whatever but that's a long way off.

>>11590817
"How can Musk lunch so cheap? He has to design rokt that go down, not just go up. Munst be the dumping."

Meanwhile, at oldspace HQ:

>>11590900
>This is just a placebo for the public isn‘t it
Yes. Enough people being shrill enough causes problems for anything. That's what they have to address

SPACE, LE FINAL FRONTIER

>>11591042
yes

>>11591042
no

>>11591042
>>11591044
>>11591045
>4chan

>>11590676
>test phase for a mars mission
this meme again

>>11591042

No, Space is the beginning of the final frontier.

>>11591023

>>11590930
i got u senpai
Fuck astronomers

>>11590900
why not just move to orbital and lunar observatories anyway, no atmosphere to get in the way

>>11590900
God damn you ignoramus.
What does a bright reflective thing do to a long exposure image?

>>11591204
nothing because the image isn't visual band like all modern astronomy

>>11590120
>year of the lord 2020
>the plebs still doesn't understand Sir Isaac Newtons third law

>>11590148
>instead the top blew out
So are you saying the front fell off?

>>11590148
Are the SuperDracos powerful enough to literally rip the capsule off the top, without firing the separation bolts?

>>11590835
>>11591224
ACKSHULLY its about conservation of momentum. It has nothing to do with forces, which is why rockets work in a vacuum.

>>11590464
stream link for those who want to leave it open in case they forget
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSge0I7pwFI

>>11591023
1591023
Besides reusability there are three reasons:
>less burocracy
If you don't have half your workforce signing papers and doing bullshit-jobs like that, you don't have to pay for this crap.
>most stuff is in-house
Every company involved wants a profit margin and requires more administrative work as well as making development harder.
>more risky approach
SpaceX often uses prototypes or does experiments when launching with payloads.
That's why they paid next to nothing for all these Falcon-9 lower stages blowing up during landing.
They where paid off as soon as MECO happened.
https://youtu.be/bvim4rsNHkQ

>>11591248
Conservation of momentum is an expression of Newton's laws you smoothy, you just restated the same thing with extra complication and a nonsensical complaint.

>>11591258
>That's why they paid next to nothing for all these Falcon-9 lower stages blowing up during landing.
This is probably the most brilliant part of all. They used literally FREE cores to develop reusability.
They didn't even need the drone ship at first, they simply hoverslammed to just above the ocean to prove that they could do it.

>>11591248
Anon, it's the force you use to accelerate the gas out of the nozzle (f=m*a) that creates an equal force in the opposite direction.

>>11591273
And now they use their excess capacities to build starlink as they would need to pay for workers and infrastructure anyway, meaning it creates neglectable additional costs for them to launch that stuff.
And if it works they have a 2nd buisness with pretty much a guaranteed global monopoly on infrastructure like that amd they can push the competition out of the market with economies of scale.

>>11590120
STOP IT ALL OF YOU

>>11591289
...and just as there was a slump in launch rates too, this keeps them launching

>>11591289
In order to match what they're doing you need to be the sole supplier of both cheap sats and cheap reusable rockets. Blorigin may be able to pull it off with a few years of time lag, everyone else is screwed. RIP oneweeb

>>11591299
At this rate I doubt Blue Origin could do it.
Then again, Bezos funds are prettymuch unlimited.
>>11591296
The additional costs for them are basicly materials and fuel only as they have to pay the workers and launch pad anyway.
And since they launch re-used boosters for starlink, they don't even pay much for that either.
As the oilprice is insanely low right now, the only real additional costs for them are probably upper stages and liquid oxygen, wich is pennies in that buisness.

>>11591314
AWS is the vast majority of Amazon's profit so a constellation to back it up would be well worth it to shit on Azure's data transfer rates and steal high profile customers who need very fast bulk data transfer

>>11591323
For fixed point to point data transfer you would still want fiberoptic cables as their capacity is just insanely higher for a given cost.
So for servers that is maybe not ideal...

>>11590327
Yes, but why not just attach it to a booster and obtain substantially better performance?

>>11590817
Oh OH OH FUUUUCK I'M GONNA OOOOOOOUTSOURCE!

>>11591314
>At this rate I doubt Blue Origin could do it.
desu I do too. Fundamentally, they should have the technical ability to do it and the intention is there as well, but the ambition to make it happen isn't there. New Glenn's planned launch cadence is pitiful and it barely has anything to launch anymore with OneWeb defunct. They need to abandon "play by the book and grab everything that isn't tied to SpaceX" plan of action.

>>11591345
The main issue is that SpaceX saturated the market of LEO/GTO launches of medium to heavy satellites at this point.
To compete with them they would need to either:
>launch small satellites
Wich isn't all that profitable and they don't have the hardware to do so.
>launch cheaper than SpaceX
Wich I highly doubt they could as SpaceX allready operates at a much higher scale and has re-useable lower stages as well as highly profitable contracts.

The only thing I could see them reasonably do would be launching stuff too heavy for Falcon Heavy if Starship takes longer to develop than their heavy launcher.
(But SpaceX could still mount 4 F9 lower stages around the center core and ignite center core after detaching them wich would dramaticly increase payload capacity)

>>11590669
why you gotta do me like that mang

>>11591354
>Just add more boosters bro

45 Merlins. Maybe after 5 years of development/testing.

>>11591345
The problem is that they have to compete with the Falcon-9.
Falcon-9 at the moment is covering payloads to ISS, heavy satellites to LEO, medium weight satellites to GTO, mass launches of small satellites to LEO and in near future manned flights to the ISS.
That's about 90% of the market I would guess.
If they wanted to suceed they would either need to fight an uphill battle on launch costs as they don't have the scale of operstion SpaceX does or on the 10% SpaceX can't do for the near future.

The main weakness of Falcon-9 are missions at escape velocity as its upper stage isn't that efficient due to the RP-1/LOX fuel.
But demand for missions outside of earth orbit is low untill they start building gateway.

>>11591354
You don't need to match SpaceX in cost to assemble the infrastructure, you just need to stay solvent long enough to have a profitable constellation. I think Blorigin could do that if they had the mindset for it, but they don't.

The other monkeywrench is Starship. If New Glenn does everything on time and Starship doesn't, it still doesn't get much done before Starship is regularly pushing shit into orbit for pennies on the dollar. At that point, even Blorigin couldn't justify launching their own payloads. Not unless they have a fully reusable vehicle of their own coming online right on the heels of New Glenn.

>>11591367
Give me one good reason not to add more boosters.
The 4 outer boosters would be recoverable and the center core expendable.
With a configuration like that and maybe a mathalox upper stage they could probably do Apollo-tier missions on a budget.

>>11591386
They'd either have to be SpaceX but better or create a new niche at this point. They lost the race and have to play catch up.

>>11591393
>Give me one good reason not to add more boosters.
Starship is happening in the same timeframe and will obsolete F9/FH anyway
Would require a new suite of structural reinforcements on the central core which was already a time consuming bitch to do for FH
The demand for superheavy lift isn't there with the current generation

>>11591386
Falcon 9 also can’t do direct insertion into geostationary orbit, while New Glenn can. However, I don’t know if such a market would exist because of Starlink.

>>11591398
Assuming Starship takes the usual Elon-time and isn't ready for Gateway/Artemis and some idiot in congress schedules something beyond the capacity of a regular falcon heavy to push SLS wich won't be ready at that point either, welding reinforcements to a booster and strapping 4 instead of 2 side boosters to it sounds like a reasonable plan (and Kerbal as fuck)

>>11591393
Gave you one in the first reply, 45 Merlins 1D+ simultaneous ignition.
It's not like you can duct tape another 2 boosters on FH and smash launch button.

>>11591401
Falcon Heavy can, so that's also not realy an option.

>>11591408
>45
No, just 36.
The remaining 9 fire up when the 4 boosters detach.
If one engine fails, you just shut down one on the opposite side, meaning 1/18 loss in thrust wich can be compensated for.

>>11590817
Based.

>>11591405
The last time they needed to reinforce the core for 2 more boosters it took 10 years.

>>11591405
"Strapping some sideboosters onto F9" sounded straightforward and quick. It wound up taking more time than Starship will probably take to go from from its current state to sitting on Mars. Wringing more out of the F9 platform is at diminishing returns.

How many superheavy prototypes be required before we see an orbital starship prototype?

>>11591434
Most of the required R+D was done with FH.
However a more efficient upper stage would sure raise their abilities.

>>11591413
The problem is that the forces of four boosters firing simultaneously would tear the Falcon Heavy core stage apart at the mounting points, either that or the weight of four boosters hanging off it would preclude even mounting them in the first place.

>>11591443
Assuming SN4 is structurally sound then maybe by SN6. If I'm not mistaken SN4 won't have wings or control surfaces, it will just be a more size and weight accurate version of HOP, with SN5 being the control surface testbed. Maybe SN5 will be orbit capable but I think SN6 is more likely.

Call it two months maybe?

>>11591444
>Most of the required R+D was done with FH.
No, it was not. FH is built to handle its specific configuration. You now have to do that work again and double all of it up.

Starship will be better and happen sooner, stop zubrining

>>11591401
>New Glenn can
Not until it actually launches.

>>11591443
I guess the thrust puck is completely different. Other than that it‘s just a longer Starship at its core. Well maybe the walls need to be thicker so it doesn‘t crumble like SN3.
I guess it mostly depends on how bad the plumbing/vibrations are with all those engines.

>>11591443
Who knows? Superheavy is supposed to be the easy part, but I'm pretty sure we will get some test failures

>>11591511
it's really surprising to me that they haven't even started on it yet

>>11591530
Testing Starship is basically testing itself + a small scale superheavy at the same time. Same construction, same engines.

I've been thinking and I have some space politics questions... 1) Why doesn't Russia launch Chinese astronauts into space. They seem to be close allies yet China is very independent with their space program. Also why is China barred from the ISS?
2) Roscosmos is supplying a part of the Gateway. Will a cosmonaut get to land on the Moon as part of the Artemis program or are they going to get cucked by the US

>>11591582
1) China want own capability.
1b) USA didn't want them onboard
2) they'll get a passage, probably? I think even Japan and EU.

>>11591582
>Why doesn't Russia launch Chinese astronauts into space
Because Russia doesn't want to upset the US, a country who's been paying Russia to keep their space division employed. China has no such leverage on Russia.

>Also why is China barred from the ISS?
My guess is that the US doesn't want to inadvertently teach China how to make better ICBMs through cooperating in space. I think the ISS barring happened at the same time ITAR was made.

>Will a cosmonaut get to land on the Moon as part of the Artemis program
I don't think so. At least not for the first couple of missions (if later missions happen). Artemis is very much America's program. Gateway is ISS 2.0.

>>11591589
>>11591594
Perfect, thank y'all. These were my assumptions. I'm glad we have a cooperation with Russia- all the cosmonauts seem so happy and friendly and it's a great way to share science with our sort-of-allies sort-of-enemies over the sea

>>11591582
1a) No one wants to use another nations rockets. They want to flex their own space programs. American Astronauts flying on Russian rockets was a major statement how fucked the US space program had become.

1b) Legend tells they stole tech or copied something classified. We'll find out in a few decades probably. They developed the same hatch assembly to dock with the ISS now anyway.

2) Probably in a later Artemis missions if they genuinely do work to keep the moon manned. Not holding my breath. Ultimately the US Human Space program has such a surplus of Astronauts fighting for seats it's unlikely to be very generous with other nations.

>>11591582
>Why doesn't Russia launch Chinese astronauts.
The Chinese and Russians often cast similar votes when it comes to world affairs, often against the Eurobloc and America but that doesn't make them allies. China doesn't want to lose absolute control of any of their assets, and when possible they'd prefer their citizens not be exposed to foreign influence at all.
>Why is China barred from the ISS?
Because they have a well established track record of supporting naked acts of industrial espionage, civil technology sharing like the kind between the US and Russia isn't even really possible with China('s government) because if they have to share they'd rather just not share anything and steal whatever you have that they want.
>Will a cosmonaut get to land on the Moon as part of Artemis?
Definitely not on the first trip, but because it's such a big project I can imagine it at least being possible for later shots. It would be a nice little piece of diplomacy to ease relations between America+Allies and Russia.

>>11591621
>Because they have a well established track record of supporting naked acts of industrial espionage
This is pretty much true of the US as well though, anon

>>11591530
Boca Chica is only one SpaceX site and even then we only know what's going on from conjecture acrued from 1.5 miles away and tweets. By Nasa/Blue Origin standards SuperHeavy is no doubt at a pretty advanced stage of development.

>>11590888
Nice try, Chang.

>>11591582
1) Chinese are selfish bastards who will steal anything not welded to the hull, including IP.
2) Probably not unless they send their own lander on their own rockets.

>>11591641
Is it? I'd have to see proof of the US government systematically sending out citizens to become multi-year plants to then whole-cloth steal designs for foreign technologies for us to be anywhere remotely comparable to China when it comes to Industrial/Intellectual espionage. I'm open to it, not like I have even an ounce of love for the US government, I've just never, ever heard it compared to China in that particular field.

That aside, it's a station run by the US and Russia primarily and some Yuropoor countries contributed the rest, not China, so even if the US government were being hypocritical, it doesn't make it any less true that our government has a rational justification to reject Chinese occupants.

boku no chica needs a rapidly reusable test stand, SN4 is still waiting on this shit and was probably done 1 or 2 days ago.

Some faggot started a launch thread without posting it to /sfg/

>>11591568

>>11591685
Good because the thread that died for it can't possibly be high quality

>>11591680
Am I seeing it right that this is a reinforcing structure on top of the existing rustbucket stand?

>>11591694
Take your meds, the anon was a faggot for not posting it here, not for creating the thread.

>>11591696
the middle part is the jack stand and they take it in and out, it's a separate piece

>>11591685
whoops! Normally I'm on the ball with posting the link here, my bad

>>11590835
>>11591224
Go the fuck back to plebbit and fucking stay there, you gullible bait eating retards

When will we encounter a "postmodern" era of spacecraft design? Where spacecraft aren't designed based on what's the most efficient, but also based on what feelings the designers want to invoke with the design. Will spacecraft design ever be free from the rigid design philosophies of ultra utilitarianism?

>>11591787
If you build them in space and for space you can do all sorts of design, i guess.

>>11591787
Not going to happen anytime soon, we need every bit of bit of payload per dollar we can get for the forseeable future.
However they could possibly try different paintjobs or stuff like that.

>>11591787

>>11591787
When spacecraft don't have to go in and out of Earth's gravity well.
The laws of physics trump """utilitarianism""" every time.

>>11591787
After we solve the engine problem, aka create fusion drive, and material science evolves to create metamaterial and allows us to 3d print effectively.

>>11591787
That will happen once spacecraft aren't so expensive that we have to make them for function only
ie when we have a space renaissance and a great presence in space

>>11591787
It hasn't happened with aircraft. It's sorta happened with cars, though designs are constricted by regulations and aerodynamics.

>>11591680
How would they recover the thrust simulator after each test?
High altitude Balloot? Lifting body and wheels or go for gridfins and some rocket engines? Active or passive cooling. Maybe catch it with a helicopter? So many possibilities.

uhhh, when's the stream starting?

>>11591990
If I have understood correctly 19:15 UTC

>>11591990
in the next half hour
someone set up the start time on the stream two hours early

>>11591990
T-11
Stream is live.

1 minute

nice job

>FUDposters when falcon successfully landed

Nice, great job.

>NOO YOU'RE RUINING MY NIGHT SKY
>haha cool glow :)

>>11592163
Still holding to my theory that they were rushing and cutting corners in refurb and that they've (maybe) got that under control for now.

>>11590257
you and me both, brother. But with aluminum tanks this time.

>>11590818
i happen to think spacex is doing quite well
not sure what you meant about gateway being a delta-v tollbooth
JWST still has a chance, the hubble was fucked up numerous times and we still got it to work
>SLS
i am a little uneducated, what are the problems with the SLS?

>So you're planning on leaving Earth and all of the unresolved issues we have here?
Yes.

>>11590841
They were already in the club. But they had to introduce a new rocket (Qased) because Safir and Simorgh failed five times in a row.

>>11591162
why is it a meme

>>11592210
it takes more energy to slow then dock with gateway and taking a lander down, instead of just orbiting then landing directly on the surface anyway

>>11592210
>not sure what you meant about gateway being a delta-v tollbooth
Because Gateway's orbit was specially selected to enable extra missions...to Gateway. It's too far out from the moon to enable easy missions on the lunar surface, and there's nothing special there that would be helpful for a Mars mission. Any mission that's not strictly for the Gateway yet has to stop by would be making an unnecessary detour.

>>11592218
focusing on the closer one precludes the other, whilst going further out and then working backwards only speeds things up

>>11592218
I'm with you. We're going to NEED closed circuit life support if we're ever going to make mars or anywhere else happen. That sort of tech would be best tested somewhere close enough to rescue but far enough to demand successful development of the tech.

>>11591680
>boku no chica
yooooooooooo

>>11591680
ya how are they going to take off of mars with zero GSE if they need this shit for a small test hop

>>11591826
The Soviets did tend to have more "organic", curvaceous looking designs. For example, pic related, Lunakod, Soyuz, Proton rear end, and the Fregat upper stage.

>>11592259
because they couldn't make pill-shaped pressure vessels. At all. Their designs relied entirely on the added hoop strength of spheres. That's why the N1 was a bunch of big balls stacked on each other.
Soviets couldn't into long tanks

>>11592258
because on mars the rocket will be supported on its landing legs, but sn4 doesn't have them

>>11592265
that explains a lot!

>>11592271
yea

>>11592241
We have closed circuit life support, it's how nuclear submarines work.

the big ass ? is funny, it really is a rough and tumble operation

>>11592272
Plumbing for 30 fucking engines just for the first stage that were never tested together due to sheer complexity didn't exactly help matters.

>>11592210
The thing consists of a strengthened shuttle tank with (preexisting!) shuttle engines and lengthened shuttle solid rocket boosters with a DeltaIV heavy 2nd stage on top. It took them twenty billion dollars to figure this out and arguably up to ten years. And then it‘ll cost roughly 1 billion per launch if not more on top of that.
The fucking tower to hold and fuel the thing cost a billion dollars AND IT‘S FUCKING CROOKED!
The capsule has even higher costs than the development for the SLS.

The whole program is a jobs program. It doesn‘t have anything to do with space flight. Congress wants to keep the people making shuttle hardware employed to keep the respective states happy. Oh and they want to have a reason to keep making solid rocket boosters, because that‘s the technology you need if you need to make more ICBMs in a hurry.
Meanwhile they gave up on recovering the solid rocket boosters because they couldn‘t figure out how to do it economically. And the historic refurbishable space shuttle engines will now also land at the bottom of the sea for each flight.
I won‘t even go into stuff like the reports that the software development was sloppy and skipping steps.
Oh and before I forget. This whole big dick rocket would be superfluous if they just built fuel depots in orbit. But that got denied endlessly because of the jobs related to shuttle parts thing.

>>11592279
Turns out that Starship was a cover for Elon's most ambitious plan; to make the largest thiccest steel ass in the world complete with hydraulics to raise and lower the voluminous booty. He plans to sell the use of this humongous bottom to the state of Texas for use of enforcing capital punishment.

>>11591685
Not filtering space threads to the top of catalog.

>>11590120
>Doesn’t understand conservation of momentum
>Posts on /sci/

>>11592312
>using the catalog
>expecting any other threads on /sci/ to be worth reading

>>11591415
You have to wonder if they still have the 3D models from Toy Story sitting in a computer somewhere gathering dust

>>11592318
>not using catalog
4chan has evolved, if you don't evolve, you die out.

>>11592318
/sci/ might be the most schizo group of people outside of boomer facebook groups. I occasionally check other threads to laugh

>>11592336
The only thing I use the catalog for is ctrl-F space, everything but space and launch threads is worthless

>>11591354
The issue is that everything that Spacex isn’t launching is a government payload or something contracted years ago

>>11592293
>And the historic refurbishable space shuttle engines will now also land at the bottom of the sea for each flight.
NOOOOOO
FUCKING KIKES

>>11592391
Thats why you use filter/highlight, so you don't have to do ctrl-F all the time.

>>11592293
Also the real upper stage for this thing will take more years, will cost yet more money to develop and until that arrives, the capabilities of this thing aren‘t even that far beyond existing vehicles.
I also should mention that the senate wrote into law that NASA has to use this thing for something.
So basically right now the American space program is basically just NASA trying to find nails to use the hammer on that they‘ve been given. So that‘s why the next space station is around the moon and they‘re trying to poke more flags into the moon some time soon.

>>11592188
Woooo shooting stars

At th end of the day, NASA wanted the shuttle and wants to keep SLS
No matter how much you claimc congress forces them to use shuttle contractors, it’s not actually in the law

For 4chanX. Copy paste in Subject Filter.

boards:sci;op:only;/^((?!(sfg|launch)).)*$/i;

>>11592451

>>11592451
>>>/sci/space
https://boards.4channel.org/sci/space

Either works

>>11592482
Huh. I didn't know that shortcut for filtering.
I guess it's much more efficient. That regex takes a while to work.
Regex isn't exactly designed to NOT match.

>>11590257
>>11590327
Daily reminder that the problems of SSTO vs TSTO do not go away when you handwave magical propulsion systems, because those systems become vastly more effective when used on TSTO rockets anyway
Daily reminder that SSTO niggas miss the point of why rocketry is expensive for the same reason people who believe the hydrogen meme miss the point of why rocketry is expensive.

>>11590674
>can we really get anywhere near the levels of progress we had in the 70s without the political pressure?
What do you think SpaceX is doing?

>>11592588
Could a three-stage-to-orbit offer even more payload than a two-stage-to-orbit or does further staging stop improving payload capacity already at only two stages?

>>11591443
Less than years away.

>>11591530
They have. All the same valves and pneumatic systems and construction techniques they're been working on for Starship are exactly the same ones that will be used for Super Heavy, they just need to make the tanks taller and the walls thicker.

>>11591895
A fusion drive alone isn't enough. What you need is a fusion drive that can accelerate itself plus vehicle plus propellant plus payload at at least 10 m/s^2 without also spewing retarded amounts of radiation that kill everything biological or electronic within a kilometer. That's a tall order, but if we could do it then we could move somewhat to making vehicles look "pretty" rather than being engineered for performance. Personally I think our current hyper-engineered stuff looks pretty enough, and even if we could build vehicles with 1000 km/s delta V budgets I'd still prefer to not have the wasted mass.

>>11592631
>without also spewing retarded amounts of radiation that kill everything biological or electronic within a kilometer.

They’re usually depicted as being on the end of long extensions separated from any crew modules by propellant and radiators.

>>11592212
Expanding off of Earth will give humanity access to millions of times more material and energy resources than we have right now, making solving any problem on Earth fairly trivial. We can either wallow here forever in our own waste or we can go to space and fix every modern problem within two hundred years.

>>11592391
If you look for coffee there is a lot of good porn though.

>>11590674
China may start kicking up their ambitions in response to Artemis, and that could start some shit. They're the only country in remotely the same weight class, though, because Russia is a corpse that hasn't fallen down yet.

The instigating force in the first space race was nationalism/wanting to intimidate the opponent out of open conflict. This time, it's economic. The private sector is driving this push into space, mostly through Musk and Bezos who are both ideologically driven and financially capable. The US government is kind of along for the ride, but starting to catch up and realize that they should be enabling the titanic ambitions of new space more directly. China will see/is seeing the leaps and bounds the US is making towards economic exploitation of space, and they won't want to get left in the dust. Expect to see some extremely big timeline shifts, project announcements, and propaganda from China in the next few years.

>>11592643
No stop ruining the space environment. We have no alter to alter the moon from its natural state

>>11592600
when you have fully reusable rockets, most of your costs are logistical and 3sto will always be far more expensive in that regard, no matter what propulsion system. It would offer more payload capacity but the increased complexity would make it too costly to be economical.

>>11592241
Life support gets easier the bigger you go. It's literally an automatic process on Earth for example. The solution is to not try to make a closed loop system the size of a shoe box. Instead what you do is GET THERE with the equipment necessary to supply oxygen and water, then just build out your ISRU capability and resource recycling from there. 50 people won't eat 100 tons of food in two years, you can afford to send hundreds of tons per sinode (using Starship) no problem, and some of that mass can be soil starters and humidity controllers fro running greenhouses to start to cut down on the food-from-Earth fraction.

>>11592275
They eat their bilge? Recycled piss? I didnt think we had true closed circuit life support, yet. I know that it will always need energy but I don't think we have a system that ONLY needs new energy to keep all of the other needs in cycle.

>>11592649
The uranium-mining moon pirates don't care

>>11592272
It's kind of amazing that the N1 even got close to the same payload to orbit when you consider how much less optimized its mass fraction was compared to the Saturn V, as well as the comparatively reduced efficiency on most stages due to only using kerolox for everything.

>>11592653
So you may be able to get more payload per rocket but it may end up costing more to run the rocket and thus have a higher cost per kilogram? Fair enough

Could Super Heavy hypothetically take out a village if this happened and does Elon chuckle to himself at night about the hypothetical possibility?

>>11592222
>it takes more energy to slow then dock with gateway and taking a lander down, instead of just orbiting then landing directly on the surface anyway
but the entire purpose of gateway is supposed to be an iss-type deal right? whats wrong with having a relay point between the moon and earth to chill out? plus you could board up more people there and send specific people down there based on the current mission requirements. maybe a tad unnecessary but i think its a good thing. i dont know a whole lot about this though

>>11592674
if it crashed into a village with full tanks, there wouldn't be a village anymore

>>11592674
No, because of Earth rotation and rocket trajectory it would always fall in the ocean

>>11592689
The damage a rocket could do to a village if it crashed onto one is only really worth considering if you’re a subhuman communist.

>>11592223
why would the moon not be helpful for mars? we're getting some easy practice on a very close extra-terrestrial body before committing to a 6 month journey out to nowhere before reaching mars. and whos to say that we HAVE to stop by gateway anyway?

>>11592699
The moon and Mars are so different that I don’t think you could call living on the Moon meaningful practice for Mars.
A much better and easier to access comparison is antarctic stations, especially the one at the South Pole.

>>11592684
don't listen to him he's retarded
we know how to live in microgravity, it's much easier to run a base there since as you said it's iss 2 deep space boogaloo. There are so many unsolved issues of surface habitation, finding an actual spot for a base, looking for ice and shit, building actual facilities and power generation etc. They're not unsolvable but essentially having a long term reusable lander in orbit for the period leading up to surface habitation makes a lot of that easier cause you can just pop down to any point on the surface when you need to, eva for a few hours and come back without needing apollo levels of preparation

>>11592708

Well the Moon can train you in how to deal with radiation and very low gravity, it's not that stupid.

>>11592600
For launching into low Earth orbit, you only want two stages. I'll get into the complexities if you want to read them, but rest assured that three stage to orbit doesn't get you any gains.

Okay so, some basic rocket science.
Due to the nature of chemical reaction energy densities, propellant volumetric densities, engine design etc, it gets really hard to build a single rocket stage that can push its own dry mass plus a payload mass fraction of 5% up to a delta V of beyond 6 km/s. Getting into orbit around Earth requires a minimum of about 9.5 km/s. Therefore, a single stage launch to Earth orbit is totally impractical, let alone a reusable SSTO, which is full retard. However, with two stages, not only can you get into orbit, you can actually get into orbit using easier to build (more massive) structures, and with a bigger payload mass fraction. Considering three stages however, each stage could have a 60% propellant mass ratio and you'd still be putting comparable payloads into orbit as the 2STO. The problem is, you're now building and stacking three stages, and nobody is so hampered by manufacturing problems that they need to build a rocket that is 40% dry mass.
So without considering anything else, 3STO is not optimized for launching into Earth orbit. If Earth required more delta V to get into orbit, then 3STO would make sense. There are other reasons why 3STO isn't as big an improvement as 2STO, though. For one, in the 2STO case, the second stage is already pretty much in vacuum once it ignites, meaning you're already using engines optimized for vacuum. That's one reason why 2nd stages tend to impart much more delta V than first stages. Another reason is that since 2nd stages are dropped off already moving fast, they don't need high TWR to work, so it makes sense to give them oversized propellant tanks to increase burn time. The list of things goes on.
Where a 3STO works is if you're going significantly beyond low Earth orbit. Pic related.

>>11592272
Obligatory.

>>11592719
Mars has more than twice the gravity of Luna, and you can simulate dealing with intensive radiation without actually irradiating anyone. It’s just so much easier to access the Antarctic.

>>11592642
Sure, but that doesn't get you space Cadillacs, that gets you your highly mass-optimized interplanetary cruisers that drag payloads aroudn the solar system.
Definitely useful, but irrelevant to the discussion of "all propulsion problems solved" spaceship designs.

>>11592649
I want to take the Moon and convert it completely into a wide, flat, Earth-orbiting ring of space habitats and shipyards where old installations get recycled.

>>11592744
That’s pure evil stop destroying nature

>>11592739
>luna
god "the moon" is so fucking gay and boring
i really wish calling it "luna" was more common

>>11592658
Why bother autistically focusing on 100% closed loop life support when you're sitting on the surface of a 6.39*10^23 kg pile of resources? Even considering just Mars' atmosphere alone, you have infinite oxygen generation capacity. Also, even with just basic water recycling (read, evaporative distillation of waste) you can stretch out a single ton of water a loooong way, and it's not like Mars is lacking in permafrost to dig up and thaw.
>muh perchlorates
Chemicals that neutralize themselves by decomposing into salts in the presence of liquid water. Not a problem.

>ULA ad from 2011
ironic, isnt it?

>>11592658
what's wrong with recycled piss, it is literally just water and waste minerals.

newborn starlink train

im jealous of the people in the future who will look up into the night sky and see stuff like this all over the place.

fuck earth based astronomy, go to space if you want to look at the stars

>>11592762
>we deliver astronauts

>>11592684
It's really not any more useful than an unmanned robotic spacecraft that surveys the ground from orbit. Having people on board will teach you NOTHING about the space environment there or what places would be best to try to land on. It's literally a nothing program. At most, we'd learn more about how astronauts' bodies react to roughly 2x the cosmic ray dose and an increased dose of solar charged particles.

If this program were serious about going back to the Moon, they'd have done a big study of the Moon's surface based on already-produced high res surface topography data in order to find the 6 best landing sites for scientific data and surface stability, and they'd commission surface habitat designs to put in those six areas preceding the human landing and exploration program. There would be designs and prototypes of remote-controlled high speed (walking speed) rovers that would be driven by astronauts from the habitats at the Moon bases, in order to explore the surrounding area and gather meaningful sample masses to be packaged and inspected here on Earth. Each manned mission would go to the next base landing site in the series, and meanwhile commercial unmanned landers would be sending new shipments of resources to the one being abandoned for a while. The bases would be spread out such that we'd always have one or two occupied facilities at a time, during the Lunar day. At night the bases are shut down and put into hibernation.

That turned into a sort of autistic rant but really that's what we would be doing if we were actually trying to explore the Moon. Going to a station in Lunar orbit to study how to live on the Moon would be like sending astronauts to the ISS to study how to live on Antarctica.

>>11592780
If starlink continues to proceed according to plan you will easily live long enough to see a sky swarming with them.

>>11592759
also there might be no perchlorates after all

>>11592699
Going to the Moon could be helpful for developing the technology to live on the surface of Mars, but they're very different environments so there'd not be a lot of carry-over. Living on the Moon would teach us a lot about trying to live on Mercury, though.
If we focus on trying to develop the vehicles that can get us to Mars, what we'd get would allow us to do Moon missions as well. This is because from a delta V standpoint, getting to Mars is almost the same difficulty as getting to the Moon, it just takes more time to coast that far out. Since the Moon is a lot closer, there exist the potential to do many Moon missions per Mars mission, even if you're looking at something as awesome as Starship.
>and whos to say that we HAVE to stop by gateway anyway?
The government right now wants Gateway to be a thing and they want everything that gets done on the Moon to go through Gateway first. It's the exact same problem they had in the 90's when people wanted to design Mars missions but they were basically forced to include every other god-damn program already happening in space, from the ISS even to the people pushing for a Moon base. As a result the program became impossibly bloated, complex, and expensive, and was promptly shitcanned.
I should point out here that we're arguing against Gateway because it's a useless station, so saying we don't have to use it just justifies our argument to get rid of it completely.

>>11592735
N-IIGR
N-IGGR
NIGGR
NIGGER

>>11592786
>"...in order to find the 6 best landing sites for scientific data and surface stability"
its been narrowed down to the south pole for water ice that india found
>"they'd commission surface habitat designs"
3d printing and abundant lunar material
>"There would be designs and prototypes of remote-controlled high speed (walking speed) rovers"
really wouldnt be hard to convert existing rover designs to make them autonomous/radio-controlled. probably not a priority and not even needed if proper land surveying is performed
>something about multiple bases
unnecessary and a wasteful expenditure of material and time

like >>11592710 said, a lunar orbit base would save us time and effort without the need to prepare for a one-off apollo level mission every single time. keeping people for 6-month stints like the ISS lends itself to efficiency and can ultimately become somewhat self sufficient if we can find a way to process the ice on the south pole into oxygen or fuel. no need to spend billions on a rocket mission to the moon that only lasts for a few hours and then comes back when you can have a semi-permanent presence in orbit

>>11592699
>why would the moon not be helpful for mars?
It's not that going to the moon might not be helpful for mars. It's that Gateway's location isn't helpful for mars. Learning about how to live on a different planet would be better on the surface of the moon instead of an awkward orbit kinda-sorta around the moon. Stopping by the moon on the way to mars is also pointless unless there's a propellant d*p*t on the moon, but there's no way to make propellant at Gateway. Sure, missions can be done around Gateway, but those missions would have unnecessary steps and be worse off.

>>11592816
ah yes very nice

>>11592836
the point of gateway is to make the creation of a moon base easier and more efficient instead of sending one rocket for a small period of time. work is easier to do with a station like the iss in the moons orbit. it would be ridiculous to make a rocket designed to give life support for 6 months at a time and then go back instead of just making an orbit station you can pop down to the moon from at any time

>>11592816

>>11592836
we can grab extra oxidizer from the moon

>>11592833
Who's talking about spending billions on a single Moon mission? I'm talking about sending 2x refueled Starship to the Moon with >100,000 kg of payload per landing, with a total price tag of less than $60 million each time.

Even if you don't believe in Starship, we still don't need Gateway to make Moon missions more practical. There's nothing special about Lunar orbit for assembling a lander from multiple lower-mass modules. In fact, if you skip Gateway and just do your orbital assembly here around Earth, you can launch a much bigger commercial lander in a single piece, then launch a series of kick stage modules to link up to it, then fire the whole train at the Moon. Pic related, that payload thing can be anything that weighs 50 tons including a spacecraft that can land on the Moon then launch directly back to Earth. You could also do much smaller payloads, for example the same size as the landers they want to assemble at Gateway, and use fewer kick stages.

>>11592645
wat?

>>11592847
You don't need gateway to spread out launched, though. You can send all the modules you want DIRECTLY to the Moon's surface and bypass parking anything in Lunar orbit at all. You need to send all the propellant required to land your modules on the Moon anyway, so it's pointless to maneuver to a near-rectilinear Moon orbit first. In fact doing so adds to the total delta V required and is therefore less efficient than a straight Moon shot.

>>11592851
NASA has no plans to do ISRU whatsoever at the moment. They're planning on using Gateway to stage Apollo-style flag and footprints missions.
Ironically lunar oxygen as propellant would make the most sense for vehicles that completely skip Gateway, such as Starship, which by using oxygen from the Moon can more than double its useful payload mass to the Moon's surface.

>>11592877
>NASA has no plans to do ISRU
Lame.

>>11592859 excuse me since im not exactly well educated on the economics of the subject, but here's my way of thinking. ill make an analogy.
you live in california. you pick up a new construction job. problem is, the job is based in texas. the job offers you a hotel in new mexico to make the commute shorter and easier on your wallet. would you rather drive from california to texas every time you need to work that construction job, or would you rather drive to new mexico, stay at the hotel, and then only have to cross the border between new mexico and texas every time you need to work the construction job?
my view of gateway is to make moon missions more practical. i dont know anything about assembling a lander from orbit, and i didnt know that assembly from orbit was a facet of gateway
im also not very familiar with rocket design either so im not entirely sure what you meant in parts of your post. i was merely discussing the logistics of the mission

>>11592859
NASA can't hedge their bets on a single yet undeveloped product from a single company, especially considering that gateway started in it's first form in 2012, before vtvl was even on the cards. Also nobody has ever assembled a landing capable spacecraft in orbit afaik, that's a whole new delay and expenditure
>>11592871
most of that payload would be humans and life support, gateway means you send the humans first and keep them there long term, you can land all the construction shit you need on the surface once you've found a suitable spot (likely will need to prospect for water ice and other important ISRU materials which only really a human can do), built a landing pad etc.
The gateway isn't the replacement for a lunar base, it's a replacement for the apollo style missions that would be required to prepare for surface habitation

>>11592877
>>11592888
wouldnt it be loads more efficient though? why not? thats retarded
if they can spend taxpayer money trying to refurb shit from the shuttle they can do ISRU stuff

>>11592912
>Also nobody has ever assembled a landing capable spacecraft in orbit afaik, that's a whole new delay and expenditure
I mean, the Lunar Module was only ~15-16 tons. They also had to perform the transposition/docking maneuver on the way to the moon, which is basically just assembling a spacecraft on-orbit except you've launched both bits on the same rocket.

>spacex now has 420 operational satellites

Holy shit feels like only yesterday they started launching them.

>>11590257
IMAGINE

>>11592989
how can you assemble something in orbit? gravity would fuck with everything, an iss-type station would not be big enough to house a construction area, and the required materials and their weight would be impractical to bring up just to put together, right?

>>11592996
cool aerodynamics bro

>>11592994
>spacex now has 420 operational satellites

>>11592998
>aerodynamics in an interplanetary vehicle

>>11593001
>...that travels to other planets with gravity and atmosphere

>>11592998
I'm pretty sure that the lifting body part separates from the ferry when about to fly though an atmosphere.

>>11592995
When people in this thread are talking about on-orbit spacecraft assembly, they usually mean connecting together modules that are launched separately, like the with ISS.

>>11593012
ahh, thanks. so pretty much space legos

>>11592904
it's a case of creating an expensive station in a spaghetti orbit it actually keep it up there long term, which will need to then receive both extra people and landers from subsequent launches to then get down to the surface, or just going straight for the moon from LEO, entering a temporary orbit, and landing straight on the surface.

>>11593006
>>11593009
>vehicle follows von brauns mars shuttle program
>large long term nuclear propulsion system built in orbit
>front detachable section is a lander designed for martian landing
>shuttle designed for LEO meetup arrives with crew when all part assembled
>nuclear engine sends crew to earth from orbit
>nuclear engine arrives in martian orbit
>front nose is manned and delivers crew to mars
>once mission is complete nose section launched back to meetup with nuclear engine
>both parts reconnect
>nuclear rocket delivers crew back to earth orbit
>shuttle section takes people back to earth
>rinse and repeat with minimal downtime using multiple shuttles and mars lander's in refurbishment if necessary
Unironically something we can build today.

>>11593030
>nuclear engine sends crew to mars* from orbit

>>11593030
>Unironically something we can build today.
But can't right now due to political fuckery.

guys what if we turned the moon

into 2 moons

Make way for the king.

>>11592995
>how can you assemble something in orbit?

........?
Stick it together.

>>11591354
>(But SpaceX could still mount 4 F9 lower stages around the center core and ignite center core after detaching them wich would dramaticly increase payload capacity)
>Falcon Super Heavy
>launch expendable and it's 70t to orbit cheaper than SLS
Oldspace would be committing mass sudoku.

>>11592995
>how can you assemble something in orbit?
>iss-style
durrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

>>11593067
Based and fuck-marinelife-pilled.

who here's gonna try and sign up for the starlink closed beta in 3 mo? my dad will, probably

>>11593109
>tfw Australia

Hurry up and get that shit here cunt, the entire population will sign up. I suspect they are going to have a pretty serious bottleneck making the pizza boxes though, they will be getting a minimum of millions of orders immediately.

>>11593100
yeeet

>>11593125
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-02-05/elon-musk-spacex-starlink-step-toward-internet-in-australia/11934158

>>11593109
I might give it a go when it comes to the UK just to give a personal middle finger to those boomer cunts that have been complaining
>NOOOOOOOOOO YOUR MESSING UP MY OBSERVATIONS! MY HOBBY IS RUINED! HOW DARE YOU TRY TO OFFER GLOBAL INTERNET ACCESS!
Some mapping firm that ((Neil deGrasse Tyson)) sponsors tried to get a 100k petition to get the government to protest the deployment, they only got 1.5k. oh I am laffin.

>>11593129
God that's a sexy render

>>11593125
Oh man I forgot about Australia. Starlink is going to make so much fucking money.

>>11593190
>aussies have suffered with shit ping for years, but have knuckled down and adapted
>suddenly get access to low-latency internet
...it's going to be like Goku taking off weighted clothing isn't it?

>>11593184
>NNOOO NOT THE SHINY BLOODY STARERINOS!
>haha satellites go zoom

>>11593195
If moot were still admin I think he'd kill himself

>>11593129
AUGH I'M GONNA COOOOOOOOOOOM

Each satellite can only do 20gbps across 2.7m km^2 so it really only works in the ruralist of the rural areas

>>11593216
20gbps was the initial v0. They said they've increased it by 4x.

>>11593137
Oh shit did Telstra forget to bribe them? Can't wait for those giga kikes to get rekt.

>>11593195
>The Sky Muster satellites are two geostationary (GEO) communications satellites operated by NBN Co Limited[...]
>They provide download speeds of up to 25 Mbit/s, and upload speeds of 5 Mbit/s.
>Each satellite offers 80 gigabits per second of bandwidth.The two satellites will provide high-speed broadband service to 400,000 Australian homes and businesses in rural and remote Australia

>>11593216
>2.7m Square km

Bullshit they service much smaller areas.

>>11593226
nvm I can't find the source for this.

>>11593231
I was on sky muster before Telstra put up a 4g tower, it was ping hell and the speeds not even close to what's advertised most of the time. 400k customers for Elon right there.

>>11593216
>>11593226
>>11593240
https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-starlink-satellite-upgrade-more-bandwidth-more-beams/

V0.9 was ~17-20Gbps. They've said they can get 400% more bandwidth with new upgrades. So ~70-80Gbps each.

>>11593029
I think the biggest advantage with gateway is political. In that it chains congressional bean counters into continuous support even with administrative turnover. Its like how opportunity was billed to only run for 90 days, but they kept getting funds for mission extensions as long as it ran. Similarly, I bet gateway would be able to ensure that a constant flow of cash is maintained into lunar orbit, which then makes the task of suggesting new moon missions easier, at least in a political sense.

>>11593247
>30,000 satellites times 80Gbps
>2,400,000 Gbps total capacity
>2.4 Pbps
>and damn near all that money gets driven back into Starship or other Mars projects
Wow.

>>11593261
https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2019/11/02/starlink-is-a-very-big-deal/

Here's bit more the analysis.

>>11593261
>tfw soon my Internet bill will go towards funding Mars colonisation instead of buying luxury yachts for executive jews

Absolutely

Erect

>>11592725
So in theory its seems like the only real advantage of an SSTO would be a theoretically higher launch tempo, and maybe easier ascent path of passengers. Though by the point these things matter, it might honestly be cheaper to just use a rocket to slap a skyhook up into orbit as the main way of getting a higher throughput of people into LEO.

My mom told he that SpaceX got approval so quickly for all those satellites because the department of Defense wants the bandwidth and low latency of that world wide network.

>>11593293
Your mom sounds smart enough

>>11593293
My mom also told me that humans should have fusion power in 10 years.

>>11593293
>high bandwidth, low latency internet for everyone in the world, except people we don't like

best timeline

If SpaceX gets 10,000,000 customers for Starlink, they get $6 billion per year, if they charge $50/m.

That's roughly 200K customers per 50 states. 200K is ~3% of each state's avg population.

>>11593309
10M is ~17% (60M) of rural population.

>>11593293
This is no secret. The DOD are already using starlink for testing.

>>11592195
Last engine failure was because some cleaner wasn't properly purged and it ended up igniting, resulting in the failure.
Human error.

>>11593313
And the solution was to skip that cleaning step, which is pretty much the opposite of what anon is suggesting

>>11593309
Plus whatever governments and stock traders will pay for priority service from having global high speed connection 24/7.

>>11592195
>>11593313
Basically cleaning alcohol didn't evaporate and was stuck in some sensor area.

>>11593313
>inb4 thunderf00t uses this as proof that SpaceX is incompetent and can't send people to space

starlink service begins in 3 months
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1253115727965491202

>>11593264
Fantastic read, thanks anon.

>>11593326
>Private beta begins in ~3 months, public beta in ~6 months, starting with high latitudes
6 painful months.

>>11593326
First live global megaconstellation satellite internet up and running in 3/6 months.

>>11593344
And they only seriously started launching earlier this year and they have been hampered by the chink flu to boot. Shits going so fast man.

>>11593333
>public beta slowly crawls down in altitude
>all the slots are filled up by fucking leafs

>people send electron wave up to starlink
>starlink is lifted up

>starlink shoots electron wave down to earth
>starlink is boosted up

Ergo, Starlink will stay in orbit forever?

>>11593344
>mfw I'll be able to dab on a bunch of Antarctic researchers in Siege by the end of 2020

>>11592904
You can't view the problem in terms of distance, you need to view the problem in terms of delta V.

To use your analogical language, you live in California and you've picked up a job in Texas. You can either get a hotel in Texas, or you can drive to Louisiana, stay a few days in a motel, and then drive to your hotel in Texas. When your contract is over and you are going back home, you can drive straight back to California, or you can drive to a motel in Louisiana to stay for a few days, then drive back to California. Which option makes more sense?

Going to the motel takes more time, more gas, and offers you nothing. You're spending most of your time in Texas anyway, and all of the work is in Texas.

To drop the analogy, a Moon surface mission using Gateway requires more time spent in orbit, more delta V (which means more rocket fuel, basically), and is a more complex mission overall, compared to just launching directly from Earth orbit to the Moon's surface and back. The only useful aspect of the Gateway mission is the ability to cobble together a lander using smaller launch vehicles which couldn't lift the entire thing all at once. However, nothing about being in Lunar orbit makes that easier, in fact it makes it significantly harder than just putting your modular vehicle together in low Earth orbit.

Also, just to clarify, Gateway will not be a big station. It's stating off as a single habitat module not much bigger than the interior of the Orion spacecraft that they are planning to do these missions with. If they were using orbital assembly in Earth orbit, they could have a lander module with as big a volume as Gateway that the astronauts could live in during the entire transit to the Moon.

>>11593365
Yes

>>11593320
>sensor didn't give the right readings
>fucks up the flight in some way

Sounds familiar...

>>11593100
>launch expendable and it's 70t to orbit
Already-flying Falcon Heavy can already to 64 tons to low Earth orbit in expendable mode, though.

When's the SN4 test cunts

>>11593389
Should be any week now.

>>11593392
the building anticipation of it all is killing me

>>11593401
Its better they take bit of time to do QC. Don't want to wait another month for SN5 do you?

>>11593389
>Starship SN4 could be transported to the pad as early as April 19th or 20th and ready for testing by April 24th or 25th

>>11593268
No reason to think that restacking a reusable 2STO would be any harder or take any more time than inspecting and refurbishing an SSTO, which due to having far slimmer margins would require much more intensive preventative maintenance measures.

>>11593413
Also specific booster design matters. One bad engine on a Falcon 9 matters a lot less than, say, one bad engine on a Sea Dragon.

>>11593235
no u

>>11593440
That's around 6000 Square km, not 2.7m. Also the orbit is 300 something km now. Fuck off.

>>11593456
The math actually checks out. Each place should have some number of satellites in their viewing horizon at all times, so its not like all customers are limited to the bandwidth of one satellite.

>>11593456
940 km radius
Area = pi * r^2

Area = 3.1415 * 883600 km
Area = 2.77 million km.

>>11593456
Orbit is 550 km, 340 mile.

>>11593456
>/sci/ - Science & Math

>>11593389
They have a road closure scheduled tomorrow morning and all day on the 26th I think

>>11593456
retard

>>11591393
Spacex would have to completely redesign their launch infrastructure too. The Transporter-Erector-Launcher was designed from the get go to be compatible with Falcon Heavy, but a Falcon superheavy won't fit on it.

>>11592275
Erm, they hydrolize seawater to get oxygen.

>>11593598
On Mars you'd pyrolize carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Same deal, you use a power supply and an unlimited easily available resource to produce breathable air. The only difference is that when you do it in space people suddenly think it needs to cost a gorillion dollars and take 50 years to develop.

>>11593744
>On Mars you'd pyrolize carbon dioxide from the atmosphere

Not when you have a gigantic water electrolysis methalox operation producing thousands of tonnes of liquid oxygen you wouldn't. Whatever your colony needs will be a fucking rounding error in comparison.

>>11593320
Ah yes, too diluted and when the alcohol evaporates it leaves behind water. Yeah, that will actually happen.

>>11593326
IPO anready. I wanna make money.

>>11593299
That would require a startup to succeed. the regular path still leads towards 2045 or something.

>>11593040
more like won't. There are are a lot of things we *can* build but just won't because
1) nobody wants the thing (ie it wouldn't be profitable)
2) no political gain

>Starlink wants to target 3-5% of the total internet market
>Entire ISP industry for the world is ~$1Tn/year
>3-5%, say 4% is basically $40Bn/year

Mind you that's with a fully deployed 42,000 sat constellation. But that's basically 2x SLS' entire development budget per year, that would feed into an entity that vertically integrates everything and operates in an agile, fail fast fail forward method.

IN OTHER WORDS, Starlink allows SpaceX to take their greatest strength and pair it with 10x the yearly funding Bezos provides Blue Origin. Absolute insane potential that.

>>11594086
With a full constellation they are likely to be picking up a hell of a lot more than 3-5%

>>11594069
Actually i should correct myself and separate 1) into
1a) nobody wants the thing
1b) it won't be profitable

>>11594089
They could charge obscene amounts for priority on inter-bird laser transit and stock traders would pay it to outrun their opponents.

>>11593878
will they not need that oxygen for the oxidiser

>>11594086
42,000 sats means 700 falcon 9 launches or 39.9 billion (assuming internal cost = external price which it definitely isn't). Without starship, starlink needs an IPO

>>11594356
to expand on this, i feel like spacex are targteting 3-5 percent not because they feel like that is a realistic number but because that's the point at which they turn a profit

>>11594366
luckily, 12000 sats is around 12 bil at market price, so probably 7-8 internal, and they seem to want to get the network going sooner rather than later, which means it should be pretty easily scalable. No clue how they imagine getting that kind of launch cadence with expendable upper stages thought

>>11592999
Aren't some of those already failed/deorbited?

>>11594373
They might be lauching starlink satelites together with their contracted payloads to take advantage of any excess launch capacity.

>>11594373
I don't think your calculation is correct.
At the moment they use their excess launch capacity for starlink and only re-use allready paid off hardware when ignoring the upper stage.
So they use workers they would need to pay anyway, hardware that is mostly paid off anyway and basicly just pay for the fuel, oxydizer and upper stage in therms of launch costs.

Same move they pulled when developing propulsive landing of their boosters.
They didn't pay for these launches either, they got paid for them and now every booster landed is basicly pure profit.

>>11594428
420 is the operational count, the failures/deorbits are all from the first two test flights which aren't included

>>11594547
the upper stage is a massive expenditure per launch, and production of it is already limiting their launch cadence at about 1/month

>>11593878
Most of the oxygen you get from the end-to-end process of making methalox propellant actually comes from CO2. Two thirds of it in fact.

>>11594086
Starlink will make a billion+ on first year anniversity (after actual service launches (not beta)), if they can provide internet to ~2M people in US. Each 2M will generate additional billion per year.

>>11594810
At least it seems like they're okay with hosing down the salt water from the used fairings.

Hey folks, when you make a new thread, please link it from the old one, mmmkay?
>>11593608