/sci/ - Science & Math

is hydrolox good for you?

Past three threads have had really good images. I love starship editions, but there are some good fucking photos out there (especially from NASA) which I have never seen before

Second for vulcan RUDing on its first launch

>>12173177
Breath some and let us know for science.

Fourth for sniffing female astronauts used space diapers

DRIFT INTO ORBIT

>>12173178
NSF just dug up some never-before seen vandenberg shuttle kino, it's great

>>12173170
How much refurbishment did shuttles require after each launch?

>>12173186
Powerslide into a freefall where we will fly past the curvature of the earth itself. Any questions?

>>12173191
A lot. The turnaround record was 54 days until a Falcon 9 beat it a few months ago.

>>12173191
>>12173196
The plan was for Discovery to fly twice in one month in 1986, including the first Vandenberg launch, but who knows if they could have pulled it off. After Challenger they had to completely give up on shortening turnaround times.

Anyone know a good and cheap way to produce nitric acid???

>>12173208
Damn imagine working at NASA and apollo comes to an end and for a BRIEF period, you are under the impression that you are about to build and launch a reusable shuttle that will be unlike anything seen before- and be able to launch on a moment's notice. Sucks that it got raped to death by everyone involved

>>12173198
>>12173187
how many times did they launch from here?

Vandenberg is underrated kino

>>12173198
>>12173187
This is really really cool. Thanks for posting anon.

how long of a turn around can you get with a starship practically, elon can keep saying several hours but that seems incredibly unlikely. The reality would be just several days I think, am I off?

>>12173216
THANKS, CHAIRFORCE

>>12173214
Buy it. Nitric acid production is fucking gay as shit. Don't waste your time.

>>12173224
I don't want to have my head in the clouds but I am praying it turns out to be as much of a juggernaut as promised. I mean, a starship needs multiple launches for a refuel so I would THINK elon is designing it with quick-launch in mind. My mind will be blown the day he proves to us that he can launch a SS, land superheavy, mate it with a tanker, and launch it again within a few hours.

>>12173217
>how many times did they launch from here?
Launch what? Shittle never launched from there. That's Enterprise, which only flew by jumping off of a 747. (BOING!)

Good thing I always sleep late

>>12173239
what a waste

>>12173241
God so soon? Fuck yeah gonna be a nice Halloween.

>>12173241
October surprise!

>>12173243
Launching from Vandenberg was one of the stupid stunts that Chair Force wanted Shittle to do that made it be so shitty.

>>12173241
Nothing bad will happen on Halloween in 2020 right haha

>>12173267
shutchobitchass up nigga. Out of all the shitty things to happen this year, I'm actually surprised dm-1 went off without a hitch (well, aside from a scrub but that is to be expected). Crew 1 will go fine with no problems. Only thing I can imagine is that a majority of the population won't even know it's happening. Normies don't give a fuck about space and only knew about crew 1 because it was pumped up by the news

>>12173217
>>12173239

Yeah, they just set up Enterprise on the pad as a dress rehearsal but then Challenger happened and the DOD dropped the shuttle in favor of the Titan IV.

If not for that, the Air Force would have used Discovery to launch all of their KH11s into polar orbits. Maybe even do hubble-style repair missions for them too.

>>12173269
Dm-2

>>12173276
Fuck, Dm-2 my bad.

>>12173275
>but then Challenger happened and the DOD dropped the shuttle in favor of the Titan IV.

>>12173281
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUtAe5PUKtE

>>12173170
hate traffic

>>12173269
>Normies don't give a fuck about space
It's not so much normies as the news media not giving a fuck about anything but clickbait news (or shilling their favorite political party). They'll probably make news about this upcoming launch, since it's the first REAL flight and not just a demo, but no more than that.
Remember that Apollo 13 was a dud with the news media who had stopped giving a fuck until it became a crisis. And the media wasn't as bad about it 40 years ago as they are now.

>>12173306
I bet its because Apollo 12 fucked up with the camera

>>12173303
lel is that Wallops?

>>12173308
Naw, Gemini 3 was a huge deal in the press but after that public interest was pretty low until Apollo 8. Normies only care when you're doing something that has a novelty value. STS-1 was new. CD-1 wasn't really new but it was the first time we'd done a crew launch on a real rocket in 45 years.

>>12173320
*DM2, oops

>>12173317
yep

>>12173320
There was also the "space race against the evil Ruskies" factor until we reached the "finish line" of landing on the moon. At that point it lost all of its clickbait-ness.

>The skies above Boca Chica, 2023

>>12173354
I fucking hate boomers
>yeehaw we beat the commies and landed on the moon
>huh what? Oh yeah whatever, space is lame now, back to consoooooming.

>>12173241
I see what they did here

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/nasa-counts-down-to-twenty-years-of-continuous-human-presence-on-international-space-station/

K I N O

https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/09/28/1008972/us-army-spacex-musk-starlink-satellites-gps-unjammable-navigation/
US army wants to modify starlink satellites to be unjammable.

>>12173303
I like the Antares Rocket desu. Does exactly what it says it will do

>>12173258
Regarding your picture, cars evolved until the 90s at which point a technical plateau was archived and they could only throw bloating at it anymore and as for smartphones, we could be way ahead, even if we were just limited to software optimization. Computers are the only truly amazing leap forward and even there from the mid 10's we again, encountered a plateau where moores law stopped happening.

>>12173425
>plateau
of course, the functioning of these devices is based on the understanding of physics laws that were all pretty understood by early xx century, if really wanted in a few iterations they could have had teh technology we will have in 2050 by 1950.

thing is companyes looooooooooooooove to chop improvement up into little pices to overcharge each shitty version of the way, its meaningless you jus happen to be born in the period of bullshit make believe improvements to make money. Real advancement wont take off till this is done

>>12173258
imagine if government was in charge of building out all of those like the shuttle

This game has to be /sfg/ approved

>>12173464
only KREBAL

>>12173455
word. Free market does strange things. I wonder if there is a less inefficience inducing sytem we could realistically adapt to on a global scale, ignoring that the strings to pull would be held by these who'd loose the most from that. I'm not even having anything particular, like communism, in mind desu... Maybe hivemind or something like this.

>>12173469
Is that a Ksp version of Lockmart's Starship-lookalike Mars shuttle?

>>12173475
The American war machine that emerged in the 1940s drew off of the physical infrastructure and intellectual resources that had been built up by a capitalist economy but it couldn't be called capitalist in any meaningful sense. When you had a that much scientific and engineering expertise combined with that much industrial might then it was just a matter of political will to take on great engineering projects like Manhattan and Apollo (or building 4000 B-29s and 50,000 Sherman tanks) that brilliant inventors tinkering away in their garages could never have pulled off, no matter how much money it would have made them.

When we quit trying to apply that technique exclusively to engineering problems and tried using it on social problems (war on poverty, war on cancer, whatever) then it stopped working nearly as well.

Maybe one day we'll be in a protracted war again and the political will to take on great projects will reassert itself.

Elon confirmed today that Starlink will go to IPO when it has a stable revenue stream. God DAMN a lot of people will make money on that.

>>12173509
does this mean i'll be able to invest in starlink? how little will the stocks cost upon it opening?

>>12173517
That's something that gets decided in the process leading up to the IPO.
Usually during these, retail investors (individuals who are buying for themselves rather than an investment firm) kind of get the shaft while institutional investors get first pickings. But, Elon just committed to retail investors getting first priority for the eventual Starlink IPO, which is huge.

>>12173535
So like... is this going to be a Tesla thing where if I buy a fuck ton now it will be worth millions later?

>>12173177
If you burn it first, yes.

>>12173540
it's just as likely to be overpriced as it is to be underpriced at this point. just wait and see.

>>12173258
The limits of materials and engineering become apparent. The Fermi Paradox is solved.

>>12173464
yeah, outer wilds is /sfg/ approved

>>12173500
>When we quit trying to apply that technique exclusively to engineering problems and tried using it on social problems (war on poverty, war on cancer, whatever) then it stopped working nearly as well.
That and the New Deal were the US flavor of 20th century "engineering a better society" disease that manifested in other countries as fascism or socialism.

>>12173500
> Maybe one day we'll be in a protracted war again

The war in Afghanistan is the longest war in American history and it’s still going on. This is a horrible take where you would sacrifice hundreds to millions of human lives.

If you eat Gyromitra esculenta, then it will hydrolyze into MMH in your body. Obviously you'll die because it's hydrazine. My question is whether we can find a foodstuff that produces an oxidizer in our bodies, and start manufacturing organic rocket fuel.

>>12173577
Our you proposing we use our own stool to explore the stars?

>>12173577
what if we find a microorganism that does the same process

Fuck ULA and Old Space, just let SpaceX launch their rockets.

>>12173591
Someone get ISRO on this.

DESIGNATED SHITTING SKIES

First does dirt covered Soviet shuttles

>>12173611
SCAT-Sat

>>12173611
It's a baby Titan, it even uses the same "trash bag interstage" technology

>>12173611
Our sharts will blot out the sun!

>>12173611
If I was a God I'd totally take a launch support frame in my form as appropriate worship and bestow safe launches upon them, unless I thought a RUD would be funny

>>12173611
poolar orbit

>>12173611
The way the arms make it look like some diety is pretty cool though

>>12173611

I kind of feel bad for india-it's like 20% hard working decent people and 80% barbarians.

>>12173667
isnt that pretty much every country?

>>12173674
NEET here. Back to work wagie

>>12173674
Not every country has pockets in the jungle full of communist rebels.

>>12173680
USA, only difference is that they are in concrete jungles and have access to twitter

>>12173682
lol

WOAH ANOTHER /SFG/ THREAD

MY FRIGGIN FAVORITE. SPACE IS SO EPIC!! ANYONE ELSE HERE LOVE ELON MUSK AS MUCH AS I DO??? HE IS SO HECKIN BASED. OUR LORD SAVIOR ELON MUSK IS GOING TO SAVE HUMANITY BY COLONIZING MARS.

FRIGGIN EPIC

BUMPING THIS GEM

HERE’S SOME GOLD AND AN UPVOTE FOR YOU, OP. THE LEAST I COULD DO FOR YOUR CREATION OF SUCH AN EPIC SPACE THREAD

>>12173696
based

>>12173696
Based

>>12173187
>>12173198
>>12173217
Damn, I never realized they set up a full stack for integration testing at Vandy. I assumed they just built the pad and cancelled it before they tested any hardware.

>>12173696
Wow! Thank you so much for the gold, kind stranger!

why the fuck are indians so annoying whenever it comes to their country?? Oh look at what ISRO is doing, oh look at what we have done blah blah blah blah blah.They will not hesitate to what about their own space agency into every fucking space related topic.

>>12173696
Except for that last part; Yes.

>>12173715
It's pretty impressive considering the state of their program, a broken loo, tashbag, and bucket of hydrazine somehow go their shit into orbit

>>12173715
Yeah I'm in planetary science and there is an indian green card in my research group who REFUSES to use any NASA data. She only uses ISRO sattelite data to do her research and all it does is hinder her and force us to research all their complex calibration data just to understand what the fuck she is talking about. WELCOME TO MY PLANET THANK YOU COME AGAIN

>>12173663
just now actually read through the diagram, kek

>>12173731
Oh fuck hahah, that was posted a long time ago and yeah I just now read it due to your post

>>12173696
incredibly based

>>12173696
basically, yes

>>12173730
This sounds too insane to be true, but then again this is an Indian you're talking about, so I guess anything goes

Sexy UFO

https://twitter.com/waEMD/status/1310660332512190464/photo/1

>>12173769

>>12173696
As opposed to what? Lmao talking about ULA and Arianespace?

>>12173782
>Taking bait serious
You're gonna attract more bait Dilbert

>>12173782
roton and kistler imo

>>12173769
>The area has high speed fiber
>It burned down anyways
>Starlink has stable connection, and will even keep a stable uplink after a huge quake hits
Lmao I know it's too big of a market to loose, but musk should pull a chad move and prove how his service is needed and then pull out once everyone wants it for the whole tesla factory thing and tell commiefornia to fuck off

>>12173500
>that had been built up by a capitalist economy but it couldn't be called capitalist in any meaningful sense.
false and true

nothing about the us is capitalist.

>A trillion regulations for all working class people and mom and pop stores.
>None for big corporations
>Constant forgiven tax evation, loans, and striaght up money being gifted for big corporations
>Half the gdp of the country constantly reinvested in goverment projects that are centrally decided by the goverment

the us and the ussr werent enemies because of difference, they were attempting the same thang thats why they clashed, a centrally state controlled imperialist country

>>12173730
>REFUSES to use any NASA data
its called national sovereignty you imperialist cuck, yeah sure, nasa's data is probably more advanced but you have to figure shit out for yourself from scratch as a country cause no one will ever gift you anything

maybe the imperialist british who had a headstart of like 200 years on industrialization but STILL dont have a space program could learn a think or two from their imperialist victims to whomst they owe all because they stole their future constantly, unlike the stupid british indians didnt get cucked out of a space program by a stupid promise

god, america ass raping and totally humillatimng int he total worst way in a way that its totally superior to be from zimbawe rather than ebign british when they ownedrererered theiryr space program is hilariouslastanstitctariosus

>>12173801
Post hand

>>12173801
You strung together english words into an incomprehensible salad

>>12173801
i love schitzos

>>12173801
no, you are hilariouslastanstitctariosus

>>12173801
Did they drag you to POO IN LOOO at the end as you were typing this?

>>12173801
the core point about how funny it is that RUUUUUUUUUUUULE BRITANNIA is marked inferior in aerospace to their former imperial subjects is hilarious and true. Even a tiny scrap of land mainly inhabited by sheep has more going on in terms of space than that rainy little island.

>>12173801
here's your (you) you fucking mental case

>>12173820
Why are you responding to your own post instead of posting hand?

>>12173826
why do you think that you aren't a retarded manchild faggot?

>>12173826
lol, you pointed out THE ONLY response that wasnt me samefagging, i swear

>>12173827
Because I was toilet trained at a young age and because I don't make posts so embarrassing that I have to make my own replies agreeing with myself.

>>12173826
I was not samefagging, i was just trying to dunk on the bonglanders for letting themselves down. I was the one who said india was 80% barbarians.

>>12173801
lol what?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sr4YjSLxsgE

Nice to see early steps towards fusion rockets being taken. Would like to see Dinan start collaborating with Shumlak on a z-pinch rocket. That seems like the architecture easiest to convert to rocketry right now

>>12173258
Launching into polar orbit would've been useful; it was not a stupid stunt. And if the vehicle was to replace all other LVs in US service (which would be needed to minimize cost per launch), then it would have to perform all their tasks.

>>12173801
Indians lmao,the chinese are better when it comes to internet behavior regarding space.

>>12173575
The war in Afghanistan is not a conventional war, or intensive in a technological or dedicated societal effort sense. US has ~10.000 personnel there, and has taken double digit fatalities in the past six years.
Even cost-wise, it has been on the order of ~1-2% of cumulative GDP.

>>12173591
>>12173611

>>12173696
Luv, kisses, and positive vibes to you.
Nipa~h

>>12173715
met an Indian on Omegle who claimed that the ISRO > NASA. then i catfished his balls off

>>12173888
Checked and based to the n'th degree

>>12173863
Yeah, it's easy to bash it in retrospect but shuttle came closer to working than people give it credit for.

The thinking was that it needed 20-25 launches per year to be cost-effective. From April '85 to January '86 they had 10 launches in 10 months. 1986 was going to be the first full calendar year with all four orbiters, and there were 15 flights planned, including the first shuttle-centaur launches. If you could have kept up 15 flights/year with DOD/commercial launches plus another 5 launches for space station work then you're right on the money.

But then once they lost the DOD and commercial payloads AND centaur it was hopeless. They should have given up on it then and there.

Polar launches from Vandenberg could have made for some nice spacelab missions too, although I don't know if they actually had any planned.

>>12173170
I hate when this happens
Shuttle I mean

>>12173488
Looks more like dcx to me

>>12173888
based

kino lockheed starship when?

>>12173730
Call ICE on her.

>>12173214
depends
iirc, Joe Shmoe can't order nitric acid because government is afraid of Ahmed cooking up TNT
Best way is just ask around friends who work in a lab or run any small company (a carpenter is probably good enough)

if you don't have any friends, nitrate fertilizer + battery acid + distillation is probably the way to get a couple litres for entertainment purposes
cobbling up scaled down industrial methods like electric arc isn't a very good idea

>>12173782
I might be the only one itt who cares about Arianespace/ESA
The pre flight check and countdown in (half) French is kino, I can't help myself.
Also, I'm glad for Brexit. Now they might actually fuck off with British English and start talking about rockets in proper, thick German accent (just as God intended)

>>12173981
I think arianespace has SOUL, but it’s full of retards. The french don’t copy anybody; but no one copies the french. They build reliable shit but do it in such a fucking dumb way. I mean look- NASA is so confident in them that they are launching JWST, the multibillion dollar prized possession of the US, on an ariane rocket. So they deserve respect

>>12173696
soijack posters are the new ponyposters

>>12173991
As far as expendable hydrolox/solid designs go I think the Ariane 5 layout and proportions are about optimal for its weight class. It was my favorite non-Shuttle rocket as a kid. The only weird thing is the frogs haven't made a replacement in decades. If only Aerojew Shekeldyne had made it possible to cluster the RS-68 I think SLS would have used them and been flying years ago, looking very much like a scaled up Ariane 5.

imagine needing solids

jupiter aerobraking fucking when?

>>12174026
I just realized the whole reason the Delta IV is being retired is SLS. Orion on a Delta IV Heavy plus Moonship equals Artemis without SLS or Gateway. Orangetankbad will delay its green run until the final Deltas launch or RUD, and then it will explode mid-run, thus bringing the hydrolox-first-stage dark ages to an end.

>Musk told corona vaccine pushers to fuck off and he won't be getting it nor will his kids

Every passing day I like him more and more.

>>12173509
Yay, free money.
Although I‘m mad they don‘t IPO now when people are still sleeping on it.

>>12174042
>but elon, da coronavirus...people are dying
responds with
>everyone dies
jesus omega based

What giant rocket will NASA spend 10 years developing after SLS is canceled guys?

>>12174048
Shuttle-Derived Heavy Launch System

>>12174048
The Webb Space Shuttle

>>12174048
Common Component Heritage Launch Vehicle

>>12174048
SLS Block Two

>>12174048
lashing 5 Atlases together and calling it the Fatlas V

>>12174048
OmegA scaled up to 160 tons to LEO, fueled by rocket candy mixed with shredded US currency. Cheaper than SLS and more likely to reach orbit.

>>12174048
If Big Jim has his way (and I really hope he does), NASA will never develop another rocket.

Since MZ is now going around the moon in a Dragon, why do we need Artemis II?

>>12173667
20% of almost 2 billions is a actually a lot.

>>12174085
what?

>>12174085
Did they switch DearMoon back to a Dragon?

>>12174107
There's been no public update about that, and the dearmoon Twitter posted promo stuff with a starship earlier today

dumb question, but why are the pillars leaning in like that, rather than being perpendicular to the ground?

>>12174123
the launch thrust will bend them back straight, if they built them straight then they would be bent outwards after launch

>>12174123
Probably a mistake. SpaceX can‘t even place pillars right. Elon is a fraud, SpaceX exposed, buy Boeing stock.

>>12174137
Boeing can't build capsules nor planes. Support the SLS. A vote for NASA is a vote for progress.

>>12174119
Ah, I see. The other anon was just being retarded.

>>12174123
Dumb answer, to better resist toppling over in the wind when an empty launch vehicle is sitting on it.

>>12174074
I'm bored so...
I didn't find cost per launch for Omega, so I took Falcon heavy instead
conveniently, any $ bill weights 1 gram
paper has energy density of 17 kWh/kg, while PR-1 had 12 kWh/kg
Which means you would need roughly $870 million to fuel Falcon Heavy with 10$ bills instead of RP-1
including 100 million for normal launch costs makes it something like $1 billion (lets say it costs 130 million to liquefy your assets via thermal depolymerization as you have some inefficiency in conversion)

THAT'S STILL 2 TIMES LESS THAN SLS !!

>>12173258
We need newer version of this. With iphone 11, tesla model 3, dell xps, and a blank white image.

>>12174159

Are they even trying

>>12174093
>>12174107
>>12174152
I can't remember where, but at some point in the last year I read that MZ and SpaceX were considering a "training" mission to fly around the moon in Dragon prior to Starship.

This is different from the initial booked Dragon flight that was cancelled

>>12174172
Fucking hell, put a fairing around that thing

>>12174172
>October
>Still no date for a test flight
>Possible quality control issues with capsule
How does boeing fuck us this badly?

>>12174172
>>12174193
Starship will put a fucking payload in orbit before Starliner puts astronauts on the ISS

>>12174172
JUST

>>12174172
The funny thing is there's nothing special about Starliner, it's exactly like every other Boeing space project. It's just that putting it next to an actual functional development project highlights how much Boeing relies on being paid to self-sabotage.

bros, I already miss the old SpaceX intro, especially the music

why the fuck are my environmental control laws so fucking strict?? I can't even buy sulfuric acid or sodium hyrdoxide.I can make nitric acid but i don't have the ingredients to make it into the Red fuming variant.

You can buy high grade hydrogen peroxide and no one will bat an eye

>>12174197
And probably at a lesser cost too.

>>12174359
Make your own sulfuric acid

>>12174383
base ingredients are also controlled, benis >.<

>>12174419
Wait, you can't even buy sulfur? WTF

>>12174123
They are "huddling", which strengthens social bonds of teamwork

>>12174431
lel, fuck me. the fertilisers here don't even have single fucking trace of sulfur or ammonia and if you want that you need a looooiceeeenssseee.

>>12174440
what the hell
what even is in the fertilizer?
what are you btw? english?

>>12174448
I am from Singapore, a chink city state with no environment to protect but has super strict laws on chemicals.Apparently all of the fertilizers here are all phosphate or magnesium based.No ammonia or Sulphates.Well, i guess i can only make nitric acid.

>>12174448
the only way i can make ammonia is to boil 10L of my pee which will absolutely wreck my apartment.

>>12174455
red fuming? WHITE FUMING???

>>12174464
UH OH STINKY

>>12174466
It's the nitric acid you get from the Birkeland–Eyde process.Not red fuming yet.

>>12174472
>RFNA can be converted to WFNA by simply leaving the RFNA out in low temperature for a couple of hours. WFNA was once used in the manufacture of nitroglycerin, an explosive, by mixing it with concentrated sulfuric acid, and then by the slow addition of glycerol
Have fun anon!

>>12174479
like i mentioned before, sulfuric acid is unfortunately unobtainable and its ingredients for its synthesis are also unobtainable for me.

>>12174482
are you trying to make an oxidizer or a bomb?

>>12174489
Oxidizer for fun, i just love the seeing the red fume in Chinese launches so i want to see it real life.

>>12174184
This, why in the fuck is it so mismatched? At least wrap a little tinfoil around there so it doesn't look as bad.

>>12174496

>>12174496
I can't help you with real life
but I could make some red fumes right now and put it on a video if it makes you feel better

>>12174496
UDMH-IRFNA is indisputably based

>>12174048
SRB-X

>>12174636
what's so great about these SRB's?

>>12174038
D4H can throw 10 tons on a TLI max. Orion's too big. Its D4H test flight had a 5800km apogee.

>>12174636
Alright I’m gonna say it!

Space Shuttle SRBs are really cool and it would’ve been neat if we had an EELV with a SRB first stage like Ares I or Liberty.

>>12174172
From what I've read about Boeing's part in Commercial Crew, yes. However, they're trying as hard as a student who relaxes while taking a final exam because he knows that he will pass no matter how he scores.

>>12174636
So this, but with Shuttle sized solids?

>>12174648
They're shuttle-derived! Which means faster development times and low costs.

>>12174652
The reason Ares I got cancelled was that the J-2X was too expensive, not the SRM. If Rocketdyne was still a real company and not a zombie government-welfare grift it could have worked.

>>12174658
Maybe if they tried clustering 8 together instead it would have worked.

>>12174628
still better than the influx of wannabe werner von brauns in recent times about making a liquid rocket engine as their first rocket engine.

>Too much garbage in your face?
>There's plenty of space... out in space!
>SpaceX Starships leaving each day,
>We'll clean up the mess... while you're away!

>>12174778
ppl need to revive retro space posters, i am done with /3/ renders of a starship, give me more substance and artistic flair!!

>>12174783
based

>>12174706
J-2X was a great engine but it’s too bad it’s company was retarded. They should’ve built it anyways but nooooooo you cant build anything unless you have a government contract!

Fucking OldSpace, man. I remember watching the Ares I - X launch live when I was like 7 and it’s was awesome. And then it got shitted on.

>>12174778
WALL-E is one of my favorite sci-fi films of all time because despite it's message (capitalism has to be restrained, diversity of life is valuable) it still shows that unrestrained capitalism leads to maximum happiness and value for the average person as well as maximum technological progress in the shortest amount of time.

>>12174789
EPIC

>>12174123
Not an architect but I reckon the reason is same as most other structural designs. Wide base at bottom helps more with stabilizing pillars. You can sorta look at it like how a natural mountains are shaped in a pyramid like shape with large base and thin top.
Now the launchpad isn't completely solid thick pillar, but rather a series of pillars separated by large gaps, but it still serves the same function as a solid pyramid-like foundation. Along with other functions.

>>12174795
>Fucking OldSpace, man. I remember watching the Ares I - X launch live when I was like 7 and it’s was awesome.
I was about to call you out on being too young to be here, but then I remembered that the Ares I-X launched 11 years ago. Goddamn oldspace is slow.

>>12174832
Also that's not to say solid perpendicular pillars don't work, but rather I think the leaning pillars brings more value than straight edge.

>>12174815
Have another.

>Late Monday night, the Expedition 63 crew was awakened by flight controllers to continue troubleshooting a small leak on the International Space Station that appeared to grow in size. Ground analysis of the modules tested overnight have isolated the leak location to the main work area of the Zvezda Service Module.

RIP

Are spaceplanes inherently inferior to capsule designs in terms of crew safety? Were it not for congress and air force interference, could space shuttle be safer? What is the advantage of crewed spaceplanes over capsules in current and future space program?

jim, kathy, and hans live
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtYCAOiCisA

>>12174883
No. Fuck yes. None

What are the chances we’ll ever get /m/ tier bodysuits for astronauts

>>12174881
Weren't the Russians planning on breaking off their parts of the ISS to make a new station of their own?

>>12174883
(stream of conscious warning) I can't speak for terms of "are they better"; this question gets asked a lot on /sfg/ and no one ever really gives a concise answer. I can give my two cents though. Spaceplanes aren't necessarily intrinsically bad. The problem is, they are gliders after all, so the dead weight of an empty vehicle needs to be made as light as possible. This is even worse when you have heavy engines on the back that are useless that consume most of your mass budget, leaving very little weight available for things like crew compartments and their amenities (toilets, rooms, storage, etc. needs to be conserved.) With a "capsule" starship, such as Starship, engine weight isn't messing with your glide because, well, you aren't gliding- and you need those engines to land anyways. Also keep in mind that big delta wings weigh a lot too.

Let's put it this way: let's assume Starship was being made as a glider instead. It would be carrying large ass wings, and large ass raptor engines that all act as dead weight. This means less mass can be carried to orbit, and the interior would need to be made WAY lighter so you wouldn't have as nice of a ride. The only upside is that if something were to go wrong I guess you could still glide her in. An engine failure on starship, while unlikely, is a death sentence. And also remember that a lot of people shit on the shuttle, but something like Starship was NOT an option in the 70's (and really not an option even 10 years ago either). Had the shuttle been made with steel, or at least a modular heat shield that was safer and didn't require custom parts, it would have been way better. Spaceplanes aren't BAD, propulsive landing crafts are just better

>>12174896
No this is just a meme. Ivan can't support a station by themselves in 2020.
>>12174893
Zero

>>12174893
0% unless humanity becomes a lot sluttier on average.

>>12174893
Nil, these things are not practical. All garb in space will be practical, space is not an environment which invites luxury and wastefulness.

>>12174789
It's amazing how close to current reality these old artists were

>>12174883
In the history of spaceflight there have been 196 manned capsule missions and 135 shuttle missions. Of the 196 capsule missions, 0 have failed because of reentry problems, even on Mercury and Vostok when we really didn't know what we were doing. Of the shuttle missions we had Columbia get destroyed on reentry and Atlantis only got saved by a miracle on STS-27. Capsules are much easier to do safely.

>Were it not for congress and air force interference, could space shuttle be safer?

No, because ultimately the shuttle's safety issues were caused by side-mounting, which is what NASA wanted.

>>12174036
Galileo probe

>>12174893
Maybe when Musk becomes emperor of Mars, we'll see more /m/ tier bodysuits.

>>12174893
good because they're awesome and somebody will make one on aesthetic grounds alone

>>12174893
Late into Trump's second term he and Elon will finish their joint operation into the creation of the future humans- anime cat girls- and then it'll happen; until then, zero. To have /m/ tier bodysuits you need /m/ tier bodies first, and I don't know if you've taken a look at the average woman as of late but it's not a great sign.

>>12174930
Lots of space art was made. It's no surprise that some got it right. On the other hand...

>>12174932
Loss of tiles would have been fine if they had been able to use titanium rather than aluminum like they wanted.

4 deaths: https://twitter.com/spacecom/status/1310812120359952385

>>12174836
>11 Years and Orion is still three years away
JUST!
U
S
T
!

>>12174966
You are right

>>12174883
At small cargo and crew size with little dV constraint a capsule makes more sense than anything due to simplicity. Spaceplanes, as in true spaceplanes with low-speed gliding and plane-like landing, don't really make sense for anything unless you just cannot accept anything other than landing on a runway for some reason.

>>12174968
Would have been fucking cool, but it would have either needed 6 SRB's or a completely new fuel like RP-1 just to generate any lift lmao

>>12174991
>Titanium RP1 Shuttle
Oh no, they would have had to almost make it worthwhile

>>12174974
What is that engine on the top right?? Also peep the dynetics alpaca down there at the bottom

>>12174971
This guy is the biggest anti-new space afaik. He has hatred for Musk/SpaceX to the point of conspiracy theory territory.

Eric Berger essentially asking Bridenstine on the call if Demo-2 changed anybody's minds on commercial space.

Bridenstine says yes, including in the government and congress. "Some of the doubters have been made to not doubt so much."

>>12174971
I mean he's not really wrong. Anyone seriously investing in SPCE is a complete fool. Virgin galactic is a death trap and money furnace. Space tourism is a meme, and will only happen when spaceflight becomes so regular you don't have to also offer insurance to customers.

>>12175023
Jim is cool. It was so awesome to hear him praise Starship when Dm-2 returned.

>>12175023
I got banned from chat for spamming BIG JIM when he started talking. Cucked stream!

>>12175033
>It was so awesome to hear him praise Starship when Dm-2 returned.
Based time travel anon

>>12174971
>>12175004
He probably shorted $SPCE lol

>>12175037
Dm-2 has already returned lmao. Or did I shift timelines?

>>12175040
Nah, I'm a retard.

>>12174783
have some Saturn kino

>>12175043
Based oort cloud poster

>>12174881
>isolated leak to Zvezda

uhhh

>This was the second time the ISS crew confined themselves to Zvezda in an effort to track down the leak. A month earlier, the three also spent a weekend in Zvezda with the other modules sealed off in an effort to locate the leak. “After the three days, there was no indication of where the leak was coming from,” Dorth said.

So they were in the right place the entire time

>>12175057
They should just cut a slip of paper and let it float in there. The leak will draw the slip to itself and then it can be easily pinpointed.

>>12175061
If they have pinpointed to module, why not fill it with some sort of infrared-sensitive, or slightly radioactive gas, and do an EVA with a camera or geiger counter and pinpoint the leak

If you were tasked to mine an all ice planet or moon, how would you go about doing that? The facility has to withstand moving ice and remain stable for bulk haulers to land and take off from, so how would we plan and construct such an operation?

>>12175071
>nuke/melt ice
>suck water
>free money

>>12175071
Nice try, you aren't starting a business on OUR Titan. Post nose.

>>12175004
you know he's right.

>>12175081
Wouldn’t you mine Titan for its oil oceans? Europa or Ganymede would be far better ice mining sites
Also

>>12174991
What makes you say that? Titanium alloys easily beat aluminum alloys in terms of strength to weight ratio, and they also have a fatigue limit, which together mean that a titanium-structure Shuttle should have been lighter than the aluminum one we had. Some parts in Shuttle had to be made way thicker and stronger than actually necessary in order to achieve a long enough service life, because aluminum alloys don't have a fatigue limit and therefore your engineering needs to keep the specific stress as low as possible, otherwise after a few launches the vibrations from the propulsion system will start to cause cracking in the air frame. With titanium, you design the part to be strong enough that the specific stress is 0.8x the fatigue limit stress, and you get effectively infinite operating lifespan. Also, titanium alloys (while not as heat resistant as steel) can allow you to use way thinner TPS tiles because your airframe won't turn to jelly if allowed to soak to temperatures above 150 celsius. Finally, like the other anon said, if you lose a tile on ascent the titanium skin should be able to handle reentry with some repairable damage, rather than the aluminum airframe which would melt like butter and allow plasma to blow into the orbiter structure and melt shit everywhere.

Titanium-body Shuttle wouldn't have just been safer and stronger, it would have been much less of a headache to clear for re-flight after a mission AND it would have had a greater payload mass fraction than aluminum-body Shuttle.

>>12174932
>and Atlantis only got saved by a miracle on STS-27
What happened?

Foam strike but not at the place of highest heating like Columbia? (leading edge of the wing) or less foam damage than Columbia?

>>12175090
Titanium burns in reentry environments.

>>12174652
Based

I wish the progression went from Shuttle > Ares 1/Liberty > Venture Star

Riding a boom stick all the way to the ISS is cool but riding an SSTO aerospike Spaceplane is even cooler

>>12175090
Good luck sourcing enough titanium on that budget let alone the tooling needed to work it

>>12175086
This image has so much energy hahah

>>12175098

>>12175092
Part of the SRB nose cone came off during ascent. The one tile that got destroyed just happened to be one that covered some extra plating for an antenna. If it had been a few inches in any direction you would have had two shuttles destroyed in 3 flights.

It took the most damage of any orbiter. Columbia's hit wasn't even that bad but it just landed perfectly to punch a hole in the wing.

>>12175111
Jesus fuck

What if Shuttle had the metallic TPS system engineers designed for X-33 would it have been able to withstand these impacts better?

>>12175111
Yeah IIRC this is the mission where mission control said "all is fine, you don't need a recovery mission". and the pilot basically wrote a manifesto in the event that it exploded on reentry. He was sure the crew was going to die

>>12175122
>One report describes the crew as "infuriated" that Mission Control seemed unconcerned. When Gibson saw the damage he thought to himself, "We are going to die" he and others did not believe that the shuttle would survive reentry. Gibson advised the crew to relax because "No use dying all tensed-up", he said, but if instruments indicated that the shuttle was disintegrating, Gibson planned to "tell mission control what I thought of their analysis" in the remaining seconds before his death.

>>12175111
Looks like some drunk redneck started blasting the nose with his shotgun one night.
Christ I think I would've been more comfortable reentering in a MOOSE.

>>12175095
You'd obviously use a titanium alloy for the skin which had acceptable passivation properties. Besides that, the point of titanium is not to handle unshielded reentry conditions, that's just an environment that it handles better than aluminum. The point is that with a heat-tolerant material like titanium, your thermal protection system can use tiles that are physically more robust, because you can allow more heat to soak through to the vehicle without it breaking down. Denser tiles are stronger but conduct heat faster, so to protect aluminum without being unacceptably heavy, the tiles needed to be very low density and very thick. Titanium would have allowed the Shuttle TPS to be less than two inches thick at the thickest, and several times tougher, tough enough to easily handle and install.
>>12175100
Of course there are other reasons why titanium wasn't chosen, including availability, but the problem of titanium availability is simply an issue of not having enough domestic production of titanium alloys. Titanium is one of the most common elements on Earth, it's just a bitch to refine. This could have been overcome simply by choosing to make titanium Shuttle airframes, and then contracting out the production of titanium to domestic companies after a competition. Literally a case of the supply not existing because the demand isn't there, so be the demand that creates the conditions in which supplying can become financially attractive. anyway, Shuttle had way more problems than just being made of aluminum, and it's gone now, so it doesn't really matter.

>>12175129
>Mullane recalled that while filming the reentry through the upper deck's overhead windows, "I had visions of molten aluminum being smeared backwards, like rain on a windshield"
>STS-27 Atlantis was the most damaged launch-entry vehicle to return to Earth successfully.

>>12175122
>>12175129

Mission control couldn't see what the crew was seeing because it was a classified DOD payload and they weren't allowed to bring their normal cameras aboard. You couldn't see anything with the low-quality images they sent back so Mission Control assumed that it was just normal damage and the astronauts were exaggerating things.

Then they landed and it turned out that it was even worse than the astronauts had reported.

Today in history:
>1954 – The convention establishing CERN (the European Organisation for Nuclear Research) is signed.
>1988 – NASA launches STS-26, the first mission since the Challenger disaster.
>2004 – The asteroid 4179 Toutatis passes within four lunar distances of Earth.
>2004 – Burt Rutan's Ansari SpaceShipOne performs a successful spaceflight, the first of two required to win the Ansari X Prize.

>Only 5-10 minutes to set up and connect a Starlink terminal
This is amazing

>>12175140
Pretty sure this is an image of astronauts shitting their pants and deciding to never fly on the widowmaker again. I wish i knew what was going through their heads in this exact moment

>>12175121
>What if Shuttle had the metallic TPS system engineers designed for X-33 would it have been able to withstand these impacts better?
TPS is TPS, it needs to be quite low density. A chunk of shit falling off of side-mounted hardware is going to cause significant damage. The solution is not to try to make stronger TPS, it's to avoid mounting shit to the side of your vehicle.
That said, the metallic TPS tiles invented for X-33 would have been very useful on Shuttle, not because they'd be tougher but because they would be mechanically affixed to the orbiter, meaning that tile inspection and replacement would be way way faster and easier. Working with Shuttle tiles is described as like trying to work with blocks of glass with the density and fragility of styrofoam; if you held them at the wrong angle their own weight could cause them to crack, at which point they were ruined and you needed to order a new tile of that exact shape to be manufactured and delivered to the servicing bay to try again. With metal TPS, while you wouldn't see people tossing tiles around, you could at least treat them like an actual object rather than a jellybaby with brittle bone disease.

>>12175135
Columbia's titanium parts did worse than the aluminum ones. You need an alloy with better heat and corrosion resistance than titanium to get the damage resistance you're talking about.

>>12175145
The trick is, they didn't decide to design the system wrong on purpose in order to make more money later by slowly rolling out 'improvements' for the next four decades

>>12175121
Metallic TPS is cool but it works only on vehicles that are not very dense (Like a returning SSTO, which is huge and very light). It’s shitty at high speeds but great at being reusable - like actually reusable and not just “hey lets replace it one by one :)”

>>12174440
I can order pounds of sulfur off the Internet in the US for fast food prices

>>12175164
Titanium airframe with a ~0.1mm Inconel alloy foil coating the entire belly, with the TPS coating attached to that. Get a hole in the TPS, the Inconel shields the titanium structure. Why not make the whole thing out of Inconel? Shuttle was a shitty enough stack that building the orbiter out of any kind of steel alloy would increase the mass too much to allow even the empty orbiter alone to reach orbit. Only way to make all-Inconel construction possible is to get rid of the boosters-strapped-to-external-tank architecture.

>>12175159
>be nasa engineer in 1979
>be excitedly waiting for columbia's arrival at the KSC
>know that your years of hard work on the world's first reusable TPS have paid off
>feel a great deal of professional satisfaction that you solved the problem of using silica tiles on an aluminum airframe by just gluing them on
>can't wait for the entire world to see your masterpiece
>747 comes in for landing
>see this

JUST

>>12175004
Source?

>>12175171
Metallic TPS tiles would also make replacement of eroded tiles much faster and easier, because you're working with bolted panels made of non-brittle metal alloys. The disadvantage is that metallic TPS can't handle heat loads beyond a certain ceiling, which means it can work great for LEO reentry but not interplanetary aerobraking. SpaceX is now achieving what metallic TPS gets you in terms of ease of mounting and replacement using ceramic tiles, by being smarter with their design and invoking their own secret sauce to get less brittle tiles that still have great thermal emissivity and insulative properties.

>>12175187
>Titanium airframe with a ~0.1mm Inconel alloy foil coating the entire belly, with the TPS coating attached to that. Get a hole in the TPS, the Inconel shields the titanium structure. Why not make the whole thing out of Inconel? Shuttle was a shitty enough stack that building the orbiter out of any kind of steel alloy would increase the mass too much to allow even the empty orbiter alone to reach orbit. Only way to make all-Inconel construction possible is to get rid of the boosters-strapped-to-external-tank architecture.

The only reason it was built that way is because mid-flight engine ignition was judged to be a high risk part of the flight at the time. Sustainers are unnecessary and inefficient.

>>12175186
>anon orders taco bell

>>12175004
>>12175198
I was double checking my own memory, but I may have misspoken. It be some other company.

>>12175206
>Sustainers are unnecessary and inefficient.
Absolutely this. Also, Shuttle was the way it was because it needed to carry the engines on the orbiter, because they went with a disposable external tank rather than a reusable booster vehicle. The vastly superior design of mating two airframes together, with one being an orbiter with internal propellant tanks and the other being a booster vehicle using a more dense propellant combo that separated low and slow enough to not need any TPS if made of heat tolerant materials, was deemed too expensive in the short term and was rejected.

>>12175095
So does aluminum.

>>12175206
They were inline F-1 and pressure-fed boosters up through 1972. They went with the parallel SRBs because of lower development costs, but I don't think air-starting the SSME was ever thought to be an issue back then. Once we had an SSME that was designed to only be ground-started then adapting it for air starts became a problem.

>>12175165
What the? Why would they do that? That doesn't sound like it would make too many jobs even!
It's gonna be funny watching old boomer companies scratch their heads and wonder just HOW did Musk systematically dismantle their industries for the better.

>>12175230
>was deemed too expensive in the short term and was rejected.
That was due to the small budget given to them. I don't know why they were given that, but I guess it was a combination of NASA overestimating its abilities, and Congress wanting to cut the space budget as much as possible. Imagine if both sides had the foresight to put more into development.

>>12174159
>liquefy your assets via thermal depolymerization
kek
I'm going to use this to troll /biz/raelis now.

>>12175071
fission (or even better, fusion) power plant that uses it's excess thermal energy to cut ice into biggest possible cylindrical projectiles
said slugs are then loaded into a gigantic steam powered spacegun with some basic hydrolox booster anchored to it to raise it's periapsis once it's up and get it orbiting
use nuclear tugs that use ice/steam/hydrolox as reaction mass to move them to correct delivery trajectory
meanwhile booster lands back by the gun to be refilled and reloaded
more tugs to redirect them on the receiving end or just let them slam into planetary surface at designated bombardment area (say, Eridanian sea)

>>12175071
>If you were tasked to mine an all ice planet or moon

You need to specify it better.
>Ice planet the size of earth?
We have atmosphere and gravity to deal with. Land an enormous industrial kickstarter operation there that sets up fuel production facilities on the surface.

>Ice moon the size of deimos
Put a giant bullseye in orbit and have my crew throw snowballs at it from the surface.
Or have a ship with giant teeth that fly close to it and eat a mouthful of ice at a time like a space shark.

Also how much ice do we need to mine?

>>12174884
Hans starting to look like motherfuckin Bryan Cranston over here

>>12175310
>Or have a ship with giant teeth that fly close to it and eat a mouthful of ice at a time like a space shark
Attack-Pack had it right all along

Can someone give me some books to read on spaceflight/rockets/history/etc? Preferably more on the educational side.

>>12175034
retard lol

>>12175098
Ares 1 was a bad idea
Venture Star is impossible

>>12175333
I got a book for the price of one small donation

>>12175333
You buy it, and I'll sign it!

>>12175206
>mid flight engine ignition was judged to be a high risk part of the flight
WE HAD JUST FINISHED WITH APOLLO, WHERE THERE WERE SEVEN DIFFERENT ENGINE IGNITION EVENTS
SOME OF THEM WITH MULTIPLE ENGINES!M.

>>12175333

>>12175370
>>12175374
>>12175377
blocked

>>12175377
>To save the Minervans from oppression in the central galaxy, the liberal Western Galactic Empire relocates the sect to their ancient homeland of Kennewick, Washington. But for the fundamentalist fanatics ruling the USA, the presence of pagans in the holy city is intolerable, and they launch an interstellar campaign of destruction in protest. A madcap role-reversed War on Terrorism ensues.
What did he mean by this?

>>12175380
anon, I am everywhere

>>12174906
>An engine failure on starship, while unlikely, is a death sentence.
Except it isn't, because there is engine redundancy, and multiple engines would have to fail to be a problem. Some other system might fail without redundancy, but not any single engine. I think it favors the sea-level engines for landing, but depending on the programming, could probably get along with using a vacRap or two.
Falcon 9 has already had an engine-out happen at least twice, one failed to deliver the secondary payload, but that was due to NASA rules about ISS clearance.
>>12174920
>Ivan can't support a station by themselves in 2020.
They might could try to dock with a Chink station, but really, those modules are pretty old already.

>>12175380
Now you will never see my real answer! >:^)

Modern Engineering for Design of Liquid-Propellant Rocket Engines (1992)
http://gen.lib.rus.ec/book/index.php?md5=3D236B9BDD4070690CA83952058D9A1F

As a wannabe Werner von Braun, I recommend this book.

>>12175376
There were. That does not change their risk assessments after the fact.

>>12175333
Ignition! is great and NASA has lots of historical stuff for free on their website https://history.nasa.gov/series95.html

Of the stuff on there, Challenge to Apollo is the best history of the soviet space program ever written. Chariots for Apollo and Stages to Saturn are great resources, and The Space Shuttle Decision is required reading if you want to engage in /sfg/'s favorite pasttime of shuttle-bashing.


Carrying the Fire and Riding Rockets are great reads but not terribly educational

>>12174172

when?

>>12174172
brainlet here. What is the big issue?

>>12175417
>4,650 Raptors

>>12175417
ARES ÜBER ALLES

>>12175417
>niggaheavy

>>12175424
It's ugly. Now, that's not to say it can't work because it's ugly. It doesn't work because it's a Boeing product. It just happens to also be ugly.

>>12175417
>no window the size of a parking lot

dropped

>>12175424
It's so broken that it can't even navigate to the ISS, but it makes up for it by being the ugliest stack since atlas-able

>>12175424
It's sloppy, primitive, and just plain ugly compared to Crew Dragon + Falcon 9... and yet more expensive and behind schedule. Look at this shit. This looks like a baby Saturn V. The Starliner/Atlas stack looks like a cheap Asian knockoff (which knowing Boeing is probably accurate).

>>12175436
RESPECT THE Q-TIP.

>>12175436
What's the most aesthetic stack? The Bridenstein?

>>12175417
>9.3GN
At that point you might as well make fusion pellet bombs and make a Clean Orion.

>>12175445
The Shuttle. Dangerous and expensive it might have been, but it WAS pretty.

>>12175447
>clean
Who cares it's Mars the radiation isn't a problem. Go for OG style two stage thermonukes.

>>12175445
the hot rod of the saturn family

>>12175451
>but it WAS pretty.
I'm inclined to agree but a part of me wonders if that's because its image has become ubiquitous through its long live. Mere Exposure effect and all that

>>12175462
>Who cares it's Mars
Oh, I was thinking for Earth lift. That'd be a way better colony boat than Starship.

>>12175475
nah the FAA will make them ferry up all ten thousand colonists on dragon 2, seven at a time

>>12175432
>>12175436
>>12175441
I fucking love you guys

>>12175474
No, there's a few things that make it objectively good looking.
>red and white with black accents always looks good
>especially with the white PLOOOOM of the SRB exhaust against a bright blue sky
>the orbiter follows the "if it looks good it flies good" school of aircraft design, which was true as far as it went - the only part of the orbiter that ever caused a problem was the TPS being made of fragile pixie farts, not the airframe shape or the aerodynamic controls
>"WOOOOOOW, AMAZING MEATBALL!" -- Inugami Korone
>American flags and "United States" all over the thing reminding commies who won the space race
>huge fucking 80 ton orbiter that gave anything it docked to a severe case of penis envy, gleaming white against the black of space

>>12175424
Every time I look at this I wonder why someone thought this was okay.

>>12175445
2024 FH-launched Orion docking with Moonship in NHRO. It WILL happen. Keep hope alive.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Stevens
Mutts were injecting people with plutonium without consent.

>>12175547
What's the point of using Orion or the NRHO in this scenario? If we're doing "SpaceX does Artemis themselves because NASA is too slow", why wouldn't they transfer crew from Dragon II to Starship in LEO, then transfer to a polar Lunar orbit?

>>12175525
>Every time I look at this I wonder why someone thought this was okay.
Its necessary. It smooths the airflow enough for the vehicle to fly.

>>12175558
Because it would piss congress off to not even use Orion. Assuming starship makes it to the final round though I can see jim allowing it. But probably with some stipulations, i.e. Orion must remain docked and go to gateway too.

>>12175547
I just realized Orion docking with Starship would be the most kino sight. The epitome of lumbering expensive oldpsace design ethos docked with the crown jewel of what newspace has to offer

>>12175565
>Starship lands on the moon with Orion still docked to the top as a fucking hat
heh

>>12174172
>>12175525
>>12175560
Why the fuck didn't they just stretch the capsule instead of making this abomination? They knew they were launching on an Atlas the least they could do is accommodate. Hell, Boeing builds both launcher and spacecraft

retards

>>12173275
>then Challenger happened and the DOD dropped the shuttle in favor of the Titan IV.

Titan IV and, uhhh, ""something else"", if the persistent rumors in the defense contractor world are anything to go by...

Holy fuck I hate journalists so much

>ur black isn't that so great
>omg ur the first african american astronaut what does that mean to you

>>12175547
>orion crew opens hatch
>capsule flooded with liquid oxygen
>crew drowns and or freezes to death

>>12175579
Because this was easy and the need was found late in the design process.

>>12175579
Even just tape up a tarp around the gap so it looks smoother, what the fuck.

>>12175576
m'lander

>>12175582
What's the "something else"? It's rather hard to hide a launch vehicle. Not X-37B, surely, that's just an unmanned reusable payload fairing.

>>12175558
Moonship's gonna need refueled in lunar orbit to take off from the surface, so crew transfer would take place there regardless.

>>12175565
Orion isn't that bad all considered. I'm fine sticking with a (reusable!) capsule for lunar reentry until starship's proven itself.

>>12175579
Boeing thought that ACES would be operational by the late 2010s so they designed Starliner to fit on it.

>>12175512
>huge fucking 80 ton orbiter that gave anything it docked to a severe case of penis envy, gleaming white against the black of space

Forget the Saturn V, the Space Shuttle was the most ambitious space vehicle ever constructed (until Starship gets to orbit next year)

>>12175590
Did somebody say first african american astronaut?

>>12175607
>first female african american

>>12175593
>the need was found late in the design process.
How, did they just not compare the bottom of the capsule and the top of the rocket until it came time to mate them?

>>12175612
maybe nasa had a requirement the footprint has to be that big?

>>12175612
>How, did they just not compare the bottom of the capsule and the top of the rocket until it came time to mate them?

>Implying the capsule has to match the diameter of the booster for any technical reason

>>12175607
he actually said something like "first black long-term resident of the ISS" which sounds even more retarded. And the next question was about crew diversity. Had to turn it off, disgraceful

>>12175625
>Implying the capsule has to match the diameter of the booster for any technical reason
Don't you want it to fit?

>>12175601
>Starship
>Shuttle
>Saturn V
How can other countries even compete?

>>12175599
Most of what was ACES and Centaur G is becoming Centaur V for Vulcan, so it won't look super ugly on its eventual new home.
>it will however be trapped inside a fairing on the pad because lolhydrogenboiloff
>hope those emergency fairing release charges work

>>12175597
There have been persistent rumors of a air-launched two stage to orbit vehicle being constructed in the late 80s and flown in the early 90s before being cancelled during the Clinton administration after the cold war ended.

Basically, it was something resembling Dreamchaser or Hermes with a little bit more delta V than Starship that was launched at mach 3 from an XB-70-esque carrier vehicle on a parabolic zoom climb. Supposedly there were 2-3 major defense contractors involved in its design and construction. There were a bunch of sightings in the 1990s that matched such a vehicle and there was some buzz during the 00s that the USAF/NRO were going to declassify it.

I'm about 60% convinced that it's real, as there's nothing in that concept that wouldn't have been doable with Reagan-era technology and a few billion dollars to blow. I've also wondered if Burt Rutan wasn't inspired to build SpaceShip One as an air-launched rocket because of some classified involvement in this bigger, far more capable program, as Scaled Composites has always done a ton of classified work with the big defense contractors as a subsontractor and prototyping firm.

>>12175634
>Don't you want it to fit?

Atlas uses a Centaur upper stage that uses a weight optimized, narrow body balloon tank structure for a second stage. Starliner is a booster-agnostic capsule, and can launch on Atlas V, Vulcan, or even Falcon 9. The current diameter fits more vehicles without trying to fit into the extremely narrow confines of a soon to be retired upper stage, which would unnecessarily eliminate capacity and capability from the capsule. No, I don't want it to "fit" because it already fits. You want it to /match/ and that doesn't matter one bit.

>>12175424
It's a bit of a fucking mess, it's five separate parts plus a fairing, and some of it's most basic electronic functions were fucked on first flight when a simple check lasting maybe a day could have caught almost all of them, and would definitely have caught the error which caused it to fail it's ISS docking maneuver.
The fact that it's butt ugly is just another side effect of poor design on top of everything else, things which function beautifully, simply, and reliably are beautiful, form and function are unified. Compare Shitliner to a superior modern capsule, two parts, first flight is utterly flawless, and the capsule may even be modified to propulsively land in the future, further enhancing it's capabilities.

>>12175651
HYPERGOLIC

PROPULSIVE

LANDINGS

>>12175659
>>12175659
The best part about the SuperDracos is you could just add a little extra plumbing to them to toggle between external/internal stores, and fill the trunk with more hypergolic propellant tanks. Bam, there's your service module capable of going to the moon, AND a capsule that lands propulsively on Earth. In an alternate timeline where the Raptor didn't work out that would be what I see SpaceX doing for moonshots.

>>12175643
I don't doubt something like that could have been tested in secret but if it actually worked then surely NASA would have copied it to replace the shuttle instead of going back to capsules.

>>12175672
They'd have to declassify it first, and with the ISS that also means they'd be putting foreign nationals on it.

>>12175651
Tbh can't even fucking discern if this is a render or not. SpaceX teleports behind the uncanny valley / shitty NASA 90's cgi and just makes cool stuff happen IRL

>>12175643
Sometimes I wonder if the MAKS spaceplane wasn't designed as a Soviet response to this still-classified US program.

>>12175676
I *think* it's a render, the real capsule and real station have slightly more texture, tiny bumps and divots and imperfections, space has a certain glaring kind of unfiltered white light that most renders don't properly capture.

>>12175672
>>12175675

Don't forget the PR nightmare of having to explain, post-Columbia, that the USAF was sitting on a secret TSTO system that could have been used for non-ISS construction flights.

Although, IIRC some of the rumors about the USAF TSTO also specified that it relied on the kinds of insanely toxic fuel that NASA tested in the 1950s and early 60s* to get it to orbit, so acknowledging that stuff in the open might have been a big no-no.

*I'm talking shit like TEB-doped kerolox or boranated hypergolics to get you methalox/hydrolox-tier ISP from kerolox or Ethanol+Peroxide-tier propellant densities and lighter non-cryogenic tankage.

>>12173191
Half a million man hours.

>>12175628
the next black astronaut will be the first black astronaut to hold his poop for the duration of the flight. and i will be inspired

Is there any space company that's a dumber investment than Virgin Galactic?

>>12175758
arca?

>>12175758
Boeing. They've been at net-negative airplane orders for months.

>>12175675
We planned on putting foreign nationals on the shuttle from the start even though that . Historically the DOD hasn't worried about keeping vehicle capabilities a secret as much as keeping payload capabilities a secret.

>>12175721
If it needed pentaborane to work then I could see the USAF wanting to keep the fact that it's possible to make a working pentaborane rocket a secret. I think that would be incredibly dumb, but they do dumb things sometimes.

It seems more likely to me that what happened is that there were some secret tests of a suborbital airlaunched rocketplane and its capabilities grew in the telling.

>>12175787
>We planned on putting foreign nationals on the shuttle from the start even though that was designed for military missions

forgot to finish my first sentence

>>12175772
0 new orders, and cancelled pre-orders?
oof

>>12175721
Hell, even the Soviets needed that insane staged combustion kerolox/hydrolox tripropellant engine to get the right mix of thrust/ISP that was needed to make the relatively conservative MAKS spaceplane concept work.

>>12175628
i half expect some reporter to ask "How did you become an astronaut if you're black? Don't you think your time would be spent better helping inner city children?"

>>12175797
Yyyyyyyyyyyep.

>>12175772
fuck that, stock is cheap af and boeing is an extension of the military industrial base. they aint goin nowhere, so buy buy buy

>>12175787
>It seems more likely to me that what happened is that there were some secret tests of a suborbital airlaunched rocketplane and its capabilities grew in the telling.

This is my belief as well, though by ""sub-orbital"" I wouldn't be surprised if they meant "Vandenberg to Diego Garcia in a single shot". I'll bet that the hydrolox/kerolox sub-orbital spaceplane testbed was flown, and that the pentaborane rocket worked on the test stand, but that the program was cancelled before they were able to integrate them in the 80% complete orbital test article.

There's no way that MAKS wasn't designed to counter *something*, though, and that "something" was pretty clealy *not* the space shuttle.

>>12175798
Tripropellant engines > aerospikes. Of all the envelope-pushing ideas that got thrown around after the 70s I think MAKS was by far the one that had the best chance to work. If it had ever been tried I don't think it would have even been that hard.

>>12175823
Or it could just be that MAKS was a good idea that didn't need any ramjets or composite materials to give you a mostly-reusable spaceplane.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywbfCBxZ2uA

>>12175333
Sutton rocket propulsion elements and Sutton Liquid rocket engine history.You can find both on libgen

>>12174123
Probably to allow room for the flame diverters which look like giant slides from the concept art. And likely to make the thing more stable with a lower center of gravity since there's going to be a fuckhuge rocket on top of it trying to pull the thing out of the ground.

>>12175836
>Or it could just be that MAKS was a good idea that didn't need any ramjets or composite materials to give you a mostly-reusable spaceplane

Every major military-ish space project from the 60s onwards that either side started out on triggered a copycat project from the other side:
MOL->Almaz
X-20 Dyna-soar->Mikoyan Spiral
Mir->Freedom
Space Shuttle->Buran

As far as I'm concerned, the only question is whether it was
??????->MAKS
or
MAKS->??????

I'd believe MAKS as just being an unprovoked Soviet design project if it was nothing more than another design study, but they got farther along with it than we did with the X-33, and they even built/tested the flight configuration engine, and at a time when the USSR was dead broke, no less. There's no way that wasn't in response to something we were either doing or had already did.

>>12175892
>and they even built/tested the flight configuration engine, and at a time when the USSR was dead broke, no less. There's no way that wasn't in response to something we were either doing or had already did.
I mean the Soviets habit of recklessly throwing money around on mega-projects was part of the reason they were dead broke so I don't really see that as evidence

>>12173425
>Regarding your picture, cars evolved until the 90s at which point a technical plateau was archived and they could only throw

I’m assuming that you’re referring strictly to internal combustion engine cars here (excluding electrics and hybrids). But is that true? You do occasionally hear about some advances in either materials or engines like the below:

https://i.stuff.co.nz/motoring/122812854/all-the-details-on-mazdas-groundbreaking-new-engine

>>The Mazda engineers have chased down the theoretical benefits of homogeneous charge compression ignition (HCCI), in which an air-fuel mixture is spontaneously ignited by the heat and pressure of compression.

>CREW 1 DRAGON NAMED RESILIENCE
CREW 1 DRAGON NAMED RESILIENCE
>CREW 1 DRAGON NAMED RESILIENCE
CREW 1 DRAGON NAMED RESILIENCE

GUYS IT'S NOT A FUCKING SHIP THIS TIME

>>12175921
Serenity WHEN

>>12175892
That actually does make sense when you put it that way. I guess maybe they realized that Energia was never going to fly again so they had to scramble for a cheaper alternative but it was really weird timing to be taking on a new R&D project.

>>12175100
IIRC Lockheed figured out how to work titanium for the A-12 project. The CIA sourced the metal from the Soviet Union through a bunch of dummy corporations to build a plane to spy on the Soviet Union (kek).

Wait okay I thought Dragon was dead (the cargo variant). They are talking about having 2 dragons docked at the ISS this october? With one of them being a cargo? Will they be sending cargo up on a dragon 2 or will they be launching the OG Dragon??

Also for those of you who don’t have twitter, there will be at least 1 dragon docked to the ISS at all times for the entirety of 2021 [from SpaceX’s twitter]

>>12175946
Yes. Lockheed was the most chad cooperation back in their glory days. They had other suppliers but they went out of their way to source it from the Soviet Union lmao

>>12175961
>Will they be sending cargo up on a dragon 2

yep, OG cargo dragon got retired after the last CRS-1 mission and it's gonna be all dragon 2 at the ISS from here on out.

>>12175921
Mars rover-tier name

>>12175892
More obvious is SDI - Polyus.
There were no analogues to Zarya capsule in US though.

>>12175961
>>12175977
Yeah it’s looking like they are making custom ones just for cargo. They still have the universal chassis (¿ right term ?) but the windows are covered. Probably making them custom because they wont be pressurized so it will be cheaper to do it this way.
Also tried to fit the other tweet in the screenshot about 2021

>>12175982
only because US computers were good enough that we didn't need manned stations

>>12175998
Polyus was unmanned.

>>12175938
>I guess maybe they realized that Energia was never going to fly again so they had to scramble for a cheaper alternative but it was really weird timing to be taking on a new R&D project.

More like they realized that Buran was about to be instantly outclassed by a far more flexible system and scrambled to throw together something that could be launched on a few days notice into any orbital inclination from anywhere in the world as quickly as their engineers could manage to do so, and what that got them was the MAKS spaceplane, which traded the extra per-launch cost of an expendable tank to avoid the far-greater expense of developing a supersonic mothership carrier aircraft that shaved off a couple thousand km/h of delta V so that the orbiter could carry its fuel internally and still have a usable mass fraction.

>>12175998
Also Buran landed automatically while Shuttle was manually steered until 2000s.

>>12176000
unmanned but with a habitation space for visiting crew. aka the most kino of spacecraft configurations

>>12175992
>won't be pressurized
wtf r u talking about, ofc it's pressurized

>>12176004
I'm still upset that NASA never bothered to update the Shuttles in any meaningful way.

>>12176000
polyus is kinda proof positive that soviet computers weren't up to the job, no?

>>12175982
>>12175998

Yeah, there's no way we haven't disguised Polyus-tier shit as NRO launches.

>>12176027
It'll be really interesting to see what orbits all the upcoming Falcon Heavy and New Glenn payloads end up in over the next few years. If they stick around in LEO then those must be some really heavy telescopes.

>>12176017
God I wish this thing made it. Ballsy fucking Soviets openly putting a weapon system in space.