/sci/ - Science & Math

didn't it blow up?

>>11741606
The shuttle was pretty but it was a fucking waste of resources. Anything it did you could have done for cheaper with an upgraded Apollo capsule and dedicated cargo boosters. The more you read into it the more you'll come to hate it and realize it was a big part of why space exploration slowed to nothing in the last decades.

>>11741680
see this wouldn't be a problem if it wasn't for capitalism

>>11741777
Actually it had nothing to do with capitalism and everything to do with government programs wanting to waste billions of dollars to make gimmicky shit and mostly just money laundering. Fucking idiot.

>>11741606
Yeah but it just threw away its stages and boosters. What the fuck?

>>11741621
Like 2 out of 6. Yikes.

Space shuttle cost per launch; 450 to 1500 million for 27,000kg
Falcon 9 cost per launch; 50 to 60 million for 22,000kg

Holy fucking yikes

>>11741889
yeah but their launches were 450 million times epic

>>11741935
yeah I guess killing 14 people is pretty epic lol

>>11741951
should have just used parachutes

did the NASA big brains not think of that?

>>11741606
The shuttle was a failed design - also a glider, not a plane. A very, very bad glider.

>>11741994
They did but they had already spent so much weight on useless gay wings and a structure to hold it onto the fuel tank so they got rid of it lmao. The crew compartment was originally gonna be detachable in the event of a mishap, it was a fucking travesty to make a launch vehicle without an escape system as the soyuz program has proven they do indeed save lives, albeit being russian retards using a russian retard systems to do it

>>11741889
Even less the more falcon 9 is recycled. Bout $100, 000 a launch

>>11742052
Eh, maybe not that low but we will be reaching 1 million within a couple years. That is, all things considered, dirt cheap.

*is an actual SSTO spaceplane*
*is cancelled due to politicians meddling in the design*

Daily reminder that Congress set America's space program back at least half a century.

>>11741889
>>11742052
Yea Now I need to know what the launch cost is of a space launch like todays manned launch of falcon 9 vs Soyuz and or space shuttle. I know the cost has to be 1/X of the cost of the manufacturing cost of the rocket (X being equal to the number of times the rocket will launch in it's lifetime) + the cost of fuel + the time and effort of ground support personnel. Anyone know the answer?

Daily reminder that lifting body spacecraft are rad as hell and NASA should've kept with this approach, honestly just try to deny these things look 1000x cooler than the shuttle.

>>11741777
>Muh capitalism bad

Then why are SpaceX and Boeing the only Americans able to send humans into space, and not NASA?

>>11742124
SSTO's ARE NOT FUCKING VIABLE

>>11742155
I know that space fighters are not viable but I don't fucking care, if I direct a sci-fi movie there WILL be a scene where two of these bad boys fight each other while falling out or orbit.

>>11742165
because capitalism attaches everything to cost and "commercial viability" other ecenomic systems don't

>>11742186
Right, that's why the Buran was such a success in the URSS
oh
wait

>>11742192
They realized it was stupid and a waste of fucking time. Are you seriously saying they should have followed in the Space Shittles footsteps?

>>11742192
>>11742197
I'm retarded disregard lol.

The Shuttle as originally proposed could have been good, then they tried to make it multi-role and it went to shit.

>>11742216
What is up with the U.S. government post-cold-war and multi-role memeshit?

>>11742192
By the time Buran was ready Gorbachev already did his thing.

>>11742152
When you see the cost of SLS compared to falcon 9 your eyes will water (And then fall out when you realise SLS isnt reusable)

>>11742224
Congress is all about coalition building and getting pork to your state or district. They control the budgets and are the ones who can kill any project.

>>11742181
Blender exists. Why are you on here instead of making it happen?

>>11742240
>80 times the cost, 1000-5000 when the falcon 9 is finished
>barely 4 times the capacity
What in the (non)flying fuck?

>>11742171
Only thing holding it back is the fuel tank, and guess what?

>On September 7, 2004, Northrop Grumman and NASA engineers unveiled a liquid-hydrogen tank made of carbon-fiber composite material that had demonstrated the ability for repeated fuelings and simulated launch cycles

We have a working SSTO design, we just need to throw money at it.

>>11742267
I have some knowledge of blender, it was enough to make and rig a loli model for VR from scratch (albeit done the old fashioned polygon stitching way). But I'm a shit animator.

>>11742273
Thrust to weight ratio.
Do you have any idea of how big would an SSTO would have to be to be able to get to orbit?
What you said only allows reusability, does not get around the fucking launch.

>>11742273
SSTOs have a shitty payload mass fraction. SABER could change that thanks to an ISP an order of magnitude higher than a rocket for most of it's flight but now BAE owns it it'll be a black project for a couple of decades.

>>11742271
I'm glad I have converted a new person to the anti-SLS hate train

The rabbit hole goes deeper. But, you don't need to know that yet

>>11742071
If that becomes a reality I can see space tourism being a thing as even spending a couple of millions on a party is a common practice of millionaires days.

>>11742124
FUCK linear aerospikes make my dick so fucking HARD just look at this shit i need to fucking COOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM

>>11742318
I already can't stand boeing having worked with them in the past, and I expected their SLS to be less efficient than the Falcon 9, I just never checked it before. But those numbers are cosmically bad, what is the point? At that cost anything you send up in one piece would be cheaper to put together in space. Surely this is money laundering.

>>11742315
>>11742171
so we're never getting star wars?

>>11742340
>Surely this is money laundering.
Some is outright money laundry. Really it's just a way for senators and congressmen to fund well-connected companies in their districts who in turn donate money to their campaigns.

Accomplishing anything isn't really the point. Not like there were Russians to compete against or anything.

>>11742344
You could get a targeting pod up just fine but lasers are going to need to shrink before we have SSTO pew-pew.

>>11742340
There was something that made my blood boil a few years ago too, about contracts and additional costs.....Something to do with not being able to go straight to the moon/mars/asteroid with SLS in one launch as the contract says they need to dock at ISS first or moon base or something. Instead of doing it in one flight, It was confusing and I can't remember the exact details.

>>11742181
>>11742155

>>11742344
Ships that can enter/exit atmospheres were always memes. It's a huge design constraint, any battleship or freighter built around it would be hopelessly outmatched by a competitor designed purely for space. We're stuck using rockets until we get asteroid-based industry and then you'll have star wars.

>>11742376

>>11742367
Lunar Gateway space station orbiting the moon, because the ISS is going to be killed in a decade or 2 they want another space station that needs constant resupply missions to keep those tax dollars moving.
If we are just doing a few landings it's a waste of time but if we are goign full lunar base it makes sense to have a lunar station for reusable landers.

>>11742380

>>11742392

>>11742340
I think after today's performance Trump and or even the NASA admin would put pressure on just to go fully behind Spacex

>>11742416
There's going to be a fight against the people whom boeing is supported by.

>>11742390
Ah yeah, that might have it actually.

>>11741994
Parachutes don't have real cross-range capability.
>>11742186
>other systems would waste resources on STS rather than cancelling it for literally anything else
Closing your eyes doesn't make scarcity go away.

K through a quick google of both the Falcon 9 and the SLS.. Fal 9 is estimated to be about 50 million per launch (assuming a reuse launch) whereas SLS will be about $500 to $900 mill per launch BUT...

The SLS payloads about 4 times what the Falcon 9 can (100 tons to the Falcons 25 tons)

Bottom Line is that the cost of launching into space with the Falcon is roughly between 1/3 and a 1/2 the cost of launching with the SLS PER POUND but you are only getting heavy lift capability with the SLS for now. On to a reusable HEAVY booster!

>>11742457
>The SLS payloads about 4 times what the Falcon 9 can (100 tons to the Falcons 25 tons)
Okay, but Falcon Heavy exists too

>>11742457
P.S. btw these numbers assume LEO

>>11742457
>whereas SLS will be about $500 to $900 mill per launch
Their most optimistic estimate is 2 launches a year. Fixed costs + marginal costs will be far more than that per launch, and it would be shocking if the marginal cost was that low.
No one would ever use SLS for routine launches to LEO (or routine launches at all).

Why did boomers go for the space shuttle design anyway?
The generation before them showed that boosters + shuttle capsule could go to the moon and back fine.

Why would you have that fat monstrosity flying around in LEO?

>>11742511
Johnson ended Saturn V production.
Nixon nixed manned missions outside LEO and told NASA to choose between a station and a shuttle.
NASA picked the shuttle and planned for a two-part fully reusable system.
They were told that was too expensive.
They then iterated their way to a design that the budget authorities would approve, ending up with the STS as we know it.

>>11742492
So in other words NASAs using the same accounting that they used for the space shuttle to insist that it would make space launches cheap and routine? Surprise! Call it 25% the launch cost of the Fal 9 then.

>>11741777
>Capitalism
The communists did it as well, Che.

>>11742605
and national socialism ?

>>11742609
Had a rocket program using slave labour that spent more than the Manhattan Project or the B--29 project to drop a ton of explosives somewhere in the vicinity of London or Amsterdam, assuming it didn't blow up on the launchpad and kill the engineers.

>>11742605
They did it better, Energia is arguably the most capable vehicle ever launched, only to be decapitated by the fall of the USSR. Still angers me to this day, just compare it to the chink shit we see 30 years later.

>>11742192
Buran was an improvement of the US shuttle. Not because the Soviets were smarter but because they were able to start with the US design and then make improvements off of what the US learned to be shortcomings of the shuttle. It's too bad that Buran had such an inglorious end but that's communism for you.

>>11742289
Practice makes perfect and the world needs space-cat-girls.

>>11742757
>Steal shit
>Fly it once
>Economy falls apart
>Can’t afford to refit it because we have to rebuild
>Shitty hangar crushed last remaining shuttle
>Economic situation so bad that effects linger today
>Mfw Russian space program is super fucked rn

Yeah sounds like communism

>>11742673
Well, at least Energia left us with this craziness https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVWfqOSdzs4

>>11742165
SpaceX exists despite capitalism, not because of it. Elon made his fortune through other endeavours and pours it into SpaceX for his own reasons, not financial.

>>11742769
Imagine being this uneducated

>>11742664
-and whose work we still fundamentally rely on 80 years later

>>11741606
how could they improve this design with the technologies (materials, machine learning, telecommunications, etc) we have today?

>>11742815
By not making it. It's an inferior idea to a conventional rocket stack.

>>11742796
Want to refute any of his points? They all align with history as commonly known but if you have an alternate history, we'd like to know about it.

>>11741606
>trusting muttmerican cgi

I live in Florida and it was unusually quite here, no pomp and show, no cheers.. no one even came out to take pics or whatever

Seems like a scam to me

>>11742821
what about skylon? will it ever work in your opinion?

>>11742453
>scarcity
it's not always about scarcity. sometimes good solutions aren't developed because there is no demand (for example, inferior competing solutions are cheaper because they already exist)

>>11742823
Burger education in action lmao
>Steal shit
Do I even need to explain this one or do you understand the "muh both sides" argument? Also imagine getting "stolen" and then improved upon, lol
>Fly it once
Yes, because the Soviet Union quickly dissolved afterwards, and 90s Russia can't afford a billion dollar project
Also
>Let's fly it some more instead as a gigantic money drain like NASA LMAO

>Economy falls apart
AFTER/DURING the dissolution you retard, do you know what times of uncertainty are, retard? While the economy was shit in the cccp it's not the reason for the programme failing
Economic situation so bad that effects linger today
Once again, see time after dissolution + uncontrolled capitalism and oligarchies at their finest

>>11742609
They did >>11741606

>>11742792
>Elon made his fortune through other endeavours
Without capitalism?

>>11742796
Okay Soyuz-let

>>11743210
of course not, but said capitalism's only incentive is to continue that growth. SpaceX is not a capitalist endeavour, at the very least in its inception, regardless of where the wealth is derived. I understand the point you're making but its frankly irrelevant when you put it in context, since SpaceX is not an extension of that pathway but a U turn

>>11742790
i hadn't hear that song in far too long.

>>11741621
And the people on board are all still alive. Half of them were twins, what's the probability of that happening? Space is fake and gay.

>>11742336
they do look cool

>>11742609
You can just tell whoever made this picture looks like this.

>>11742673
>chink shit we see 30 years later
Shoo shoo tankie.

>>11741777
What a waste of trips. The shittle was ironically actually the result of Nixon fucking capitalism in the ass after the Apollo program.

>>11743731
r/the_donald bans people for hating jew parasites moron

>>11743731
kinda cute zoomies

>>11742823
Well for starters as soon as stalin took power the USSR was never a properly communist state, so the idea that its somehow the fault of communism that their space programme failed is nonsensical. Second, the USSR was always going to fall apart of its own accord because the ethnic and cultural situation was a disaster going all the way back to the russian revolution.

Read a book for once in your life.

>>11743798
>i-it's not real communism!
Communism always ends up in a totalitarian state because newsflash, humans aren't ants, and have a sense of individuality, meaning they actually want their own shit. Eventually, someone will arise and rule with an iron fist.

>>11743584
>And the people on board are all still alive.
nigga what

>>11743804
not when I re-engineer humanity
oh dont whine, you know its for the best

>>11743819
Oh it'll be the best alright.
Because he takes over.

>>11742673
communists should be executed and their families should be sterilized

>>11743821
Hey, that's good and all for sub-space civilization but we mainly just need strong collectivism and an even stronger sense of need to kill things that threaten us. Sort of a unified, homogeneous hivemind that detects and eliminates threats instantly.

>>11743827
He kills the jooz who support this racemixing bullshit
aryan hivemind now

>>11743832
Unironically AI is going to kill all the niggers and spics, and anyone who supports their existence.

>>11742052
theyre already recycling, anon.

>>11743770
chinks won't be dropping long march 9 boosters on african villages until like 2040. Energia would have led us to Mars.

>>11742171
not with that attitude

>>11742192
energia 2, uragan would of been FULLY reusable 30 years before spacex

>>11743842
Based AI. When can we get one? I want one now

>>11743823
you don't even need to be sterilized, incel

>>11742186
It's almost like a non retarded approach

>>11744153
don't fucking remind me
I hate Shuttle so damn much

>>11742511
It was hoped a reusable craft with fast turnaround times could get LEO costs in the ballpark of $100/pound, which would allow for actual infrastructure developments in orbit.

As others have described, there was political meddling and the shuttle ended up more expensive than the rockets it was replacing.

>>11742155
Spaceships doesn't have to look cool, they have to work

>>11742511
>>11744653

thats just how it turned out. originally it was a part of a larger system. a bigger dream.
in the end only the "shuttle" part materialized
the shuttle itself was meant to be just a freight transport like the name suggest.
after >>11742531 happened the idea was sold and brought up by the military and got green lit.
by mid 70s the military has ditch the project, the program lost it's purpose and became meme white elephant flying science lab we know today.

>>11741680
>>11741889

If we add the delelopment costs like it was added in the shuttle`s 450 mil price tag we need to add another 2,6 billions, and that being generous and not adding the whole 7,4 nasa gave to spacex. But the shuttle was multi-role, so to compare the falcons and the shuttle we need to add both the crewed and the cargo shipments.

The shuttle had 133 missions. In the contracts for the development of the falcons and dragons capsules are included 23 flights, so just 110 more launches need to be bought to equal the shuttle.
We have 7,24 billions paid for development and 23 flights, and another 5,5 to 6 billions will have to be paid for the 110 flights needed to equal the shuttle. In total at least 12,74 billions needed to pay for 133 falcon flights to equal the shuttle.

Which gives a real cost for falcon/dragon capsule at over 100 mil for each flight, not the 56 they are trying to shill. Definitely more than later soyuz flights, definitely much more than early soyuz.

Still around 110 is better than 450 millions. Boeing charges 90 millions but needed less money for development than space x, only 4,8 billions. Adding the development costs we get 126 millions per launch, just some 20 millions more than spacex. That is due to the reusability of the first stage and the fairings in cargo.

But the shuttle could launch both large cargo`s and crewed missions at the same time, something the capsules can`t do. Falcon 9 can`t launch space station modules and i don`t know if falcon heavy can either. So Nasa because of chosing comercial launches had to put another 18b in sls, which will have a 2,5 billions launch cost. We get 332 billions for 133 sls launches plus an optimistic 20 billions development costs so we have 352 billions for 133 launches which means 2.65 billions per launch. Adding the ability to launch people of spaceX we get 2.75 billions per launch to replace the shuttle.

>>11742155
Why is so hard to keep height at the reentry to decrease the speed traded for lift for a softtly reentry?

>>11742336
Aerospikes are a waste, same effect can be achieved giving some vector to the injected fuel in the laval nozzle.

>>11745470
aerospike's main advantage is altitude compensation, which only matters for SSTO vehicles. For multistage vehicles (all of them) it is better to just design the first stage engines for low altitude and upper stage engines for vacuum.

>>11744153
WE THREW ALL OF THIS AWAY FOR (((ECONOMIC SHOCK THERAPY))) IN THE EAST AND MASS MIGRATION INTO THE WEST AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

>>11741994
When you are strapped to the SIDE of the fuel tank, parachutes don’t help.

>>11749069
>fuck this shit, I'm out

>>11749234

>>11743987
>dropping long march 9 boosters on african villages
Wait, why aren't they taking off from the southern coast of China and dropping their boosters onto Taiwan?

>>11745432
>If we add the delelopment costs like it was added in the shuttle`s 450 mil price tag w
That's not even how they arrived at the 450 million figure. They discounted recurring fixed costs of the infrastructure need for STS operations.
>We have 7,24 billions paid for development
Why are you including cargo dragon funding in that? COTS and CRS were separate programs.
>So Nasa because of chosing comercial launches had to put another 18b in sls, which will have a 2,5 billions launch cost
Shuttle cancellation was 2003, in favour of the Constellation program, which was itself cancelled in favour of SLS.
SLS predates commercial crew, and is intended to send large cargoes beyond LEO. There were no plans to use it for (already core-completed) ISS construction, especially as it would launch only once or twice a year.
> We get 332 billions for 133 sls launches
There are no plans for 20 SLS launches (which would take as many years) let alone 133.
The STS heavy lift role is taken over by vehicles such as Delta IV Heavy and Falcon Heavy.

>>11749069
>>11749341
sci/pol crossover memes are the best

>>11741680
Space shuttle was designed to be a weapons loadout system. It could deliver the package + crew. Everybody knows this.
It was military flexing not civilian/science flex.

>>11749711
It was a NASA project from the start.
The USAF contributed no funds to its development and never operated it or launched it.

>>11749723
NASA was used as umbrella.
Military needed a weapons payload system.
That's why the russians were so afraid and hurry to get Buran/Energia.

>>11743804
Why are you trying to strawman me? I said that the USSR was never communist vis a vis the marxist ideal. I didnt comment on the viability or nature of the political system. Further, your conclusion applies to literally every political system and so the point is moot. I previously said read a book but I think you need to go all the way back to learning how to think and read.

>>11749860
>Communism
Stale bait

>going to
What's your favorite subreddit?

>>11749919
>I have no reading comprehension, get called on it
>bait bro
kys