/sci/ - Science & Math

FIRST FOR SPACEX MOMMY

>Spaceflight general
>Not a single person here has ever been on a flight to space

Pathetic.

I've seen a lot of doom-posting about starship lately. Pictures of hoppers destroyed, talk of starship being removed from all Space X materials etc.

Can someone give me a quick rundown on this? Also, while I am a space x fan, please no fanboyism. I just want the true facts.

>>12407055
uh they're reworking the Starship material on their website, so that's cool
Hopper got burned up pretty bad
SN8 is getting held up by the FAA right now

>>12407057
Then why the fuck was musk so sure it was gonna happen this week if the faa hadnt approved already? >>12407057

>>12407073
they're putting pressure on the FAA by making it abundantly clear that they're holding SpaceX up

>>12407055
Just boing shitposters, ignore them

>>12407073
Estimates

Press F.
https://twitter.com/lrocket/status/1333537793335693312?s=20

>>12407032
Did you mean pathetic little rocketlet?

>>12407089
Why is the VAB filthy? Pressure wash that shit off

>>12407089
That's just the upper stage / orbiter.

>>12407075
Plus these faggots already received the notice back in October, what the fuck have they been doing all this time?

>>12407097
quibbling about clouds of methane or something

>>12407091
>Pressure wash that shit off
They sent out an RFP 40 years ago to find someone to clean the VAB. Boeing won the bid, receiving a cost-plus contract to develop a notional architecture for a potential cleaning mission within the next two decades.

https://twitter.com/ProfAbelMendez/status/1333746829574496259?s=20
Needs video.

>>12407114
At least there's a photo.

>>12407088
i wonder why tom never had a major role in raptor dev

>>12407114
>>12407120
nature is healing

>>12407042
And how would you know?

>FLIGHT STARTING WEDNESDAY!
>Boca Chica weather-
>Rain/winds rain/winds rain/winds rain/winds rain/winds rain/winds rain/winds rain/winds rain/winds rain/winds rain/winds rain/winds rain/winds

>>12407133
Goose Mafia forced him out.

>>12407114
>Needs video
Just watch Goldeneye.

>>12407097
it's the us government they exist to do nothing but suck

>>12407042
god i would pound that pussy so fuckin hard

>>12407165
You would have to post a timestamped photo of yourself in space here, otherwise you're fake and gay.
>>12407133
Hasn't he been an adviser role since 2016? Maybe he didn't want to led a program like that and feel obliged to see it through instead of retiring.

Alternatively, he may not be on good terms with Elon Musk and he didn't want him in the position. I haven't seen any evidence of this but Tom Muller posting his Porsche Taycan and saying that he was retiring could be considered a slight against Elon and Tesla.

>>12407208
>Tom Muller posting his Porsche Taycan and saying that he was retiring could be considered a slight against Elon and Tesla.
you're overthinking it. Some people just like cars.

>>12407217
impossible!

>>12407208
I think take 2 is reading too deep into it. I don't think mueller is too familiar with methane cycle engines, assuming more of a management role instead (and getting technically rusty). at least least that's the sense i got in a talk he gave some time ago. he said something about getting back into hobby rockets, wanted to do a methane engine but would probably default to kerosene anyway. the talk got taken down, which sucks. was over an hour of tom streaming from his home, riffing on all manner of interesting subjects

>>12407208
Tom posted two weird tweets doing sn4 explosion and dm1.
His exit wasn't on good terms.

>>12407239
*during

>>12407239
this concern troll would never post a link, it might prove him wrong lol. simpler to just post wild claims

>>12407133
He retired long ago and only stayed with Raptor dev to offer some assistance. His exit from spacex had been long coming. I think he said he might be doing a startup/entrepreneurship due to the experience he gained from Elon Musk. Apparently had a major positive influence on him and considers Musk his role model

>>12407208
He owns two different Teslas as well. So don't put too much into Porsche thing

https://www.theverge.com/2020/11/30/21726753/nasa-orion-crew-capsule-power-unit-failure-artemis-i
>To get to the PDU, Lockheed Martin could remove the Orion crew capsule from its service module, but it’s a lengthy process that could take up to a year.
So this is the true power of oldspace?

How much does starship's launch depend on the weather?
From what i understand, the bigger, heavier rocket is, the less weather launch restriction it has.

>>12407271
holy shit how could removing the fucking service module take up to a year?

>>12407271
>t-hat can't be saying they need a year just to detach the capsule for servicing, I must be reading it wrong
>>As many as nine months would be needed to take the vehicle apart and put it back together again, in addition to three months for subsequent testing, according to the presentation.
what the fuck. what the fuck?

>it got so cold in south texas that ice covered everything last night
Expect more delays.

>>12407285
The whole thing gets caked in ice everytime its tanks get filled, why would some morning frost slow it down?

>>12407280
>>12407271
This is the fate of any old corporation. All of the man hours go into paperwork and red tape. No actual work gets done and if it does theres more paperwork, signing off and archiving that needs to go with it.

>>12407291
The rocket isn't the problem it's the locals. Mexicans don't do gringo weather.

>>12407271
And you say that X-33 was a mess

>>12407248
I'm on phone rn, but the tweets were after the explosion - "have you ever felt you want to say a lot but couldn't say it"
And then, replying to an article about Elon saying "never dreamt it could happen", he replied - "that was the dream from the very beginning".
If someone is on desktop, would appreciate if you link these

>>12407297
If anything, the fact that Lockmart can't even make a conventional capsule right means Venturestar was even more doomed than previously assumed.

>>12407297
#bringbacktheventurestar

>>12407304
There's nothing even worth following up on there, oversensitive phoneposter. It's not even vague it's just nothing.

>>12407032
>Musk builds a super heavy, fully reusable rocket that cost $2m with a box of scraps in the middle of nowhere
Why can't Bezos/NASA do it?

>>12407306
No. It means that Orion and SLS are obsolete trash, that we have to put up with, because bureaucrats axed the Venturestar.

>>12407325
Venturestar was impossible, anon

>>12407321
Diversity hires.

>>12407283
>>12407271
i'm interested in seeing the email and presentation

Chang'e 5 Moon landing live
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IO_PsBHPRxs

Go China! Landing in 30 Mins!

>>12407271

>>12407325
I'm not seeing where this supports your point. How does Lockheed's failure to make a functional or serviceable vehicle lead you to the conclusion that they could have completed Venturestar?

>>12407329
Nothing like making the impossible possible.

>>12407342
Stream isn't live though.

>>12407352
not that kind of "impossible", anon
kind of like saying "I'm going to build a space elevator out of cheese"

>>12407331
Good, fuck them

>>12407114
Fucking sad

>>12407379
I'd rather have a Venturestar made out of cheese,

>>12407376
It was

>>12407321
>Why can't Bezos do it?
No one knows if Blue Origin is or isn't doing it. They're being secretive about it.
>Why can't NASA do it?
Because their spirit has been broken a long time ago.

>>12407389
now you're talking
can we send it to the moon on Starship?

>Chinks not putting out a live stream
Looks like they're not confident of success.

>>12407057
>Hopper got burned up pretty bad
Aww, poor thing. Was it the next hop after the 100 m one?

>>12407403
it only hopped twice, it got burned up on the 100m hop
SN5 and SN6 both fared much better

>>12407392
Blue Origin doesn't have anything complete on rockets past New Glenn but a fucking name. They are not working on a fully reusable vehicle. I wish they were, but thinking that they could be just because they're cagey is wishful thinking beyond any measure that is sensible to entertain.

reposting this list I made
>okay it's like this:
>SN8 is fully assembled with nosecone and flaps, sitting on a test stand, waiting for FAA approval
>SN9 is fully assembled with nosecone and flaps, sitting at the build site, waiting
>SN10 is partially assembled
>SN11, 12, 13, 14, and 15 are all in various states of existence and assembly, as well as BN1

>>12407400
>stream cuts off
>few minutes go by
>stream cuts on
>"oh rook, we randed >)"

>>12407342
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TP9CFLjHQd0

Clip of it landing here.

>>12407390
In typical communist bug fashion, they cut live feeds in case fuckup.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TP9CFLjHQd0
Here's a stream that's live. T+21 mins and it's supposedly working.

>>12407114
I sure hope someone pointed a camera early to record it since it was considered almost certainty it'd collapse soon.

>>12407417
>>12407422
>>12407424
Reminds me of when they cut the broadcast of the Chinese Go player versus AlphaGo when it was clear that AlphaGo was about to crush the Chinese player.

>>12407392
NASA can't do it because everything they build has to be approved by congress for funding. Congress would never fund starship because it'd be seen as too risky.

>>12407437
At least use a space related comment.

They disabled the Tianwen-1 launch livestream, and all that we had (well, not here, since nobody talked about here, but in my Tianwen-1 thread) were phone clips of the rocket taking off. Wasn't until half an hour later they decided to release the official tape of the rocket taking off.

At least this time they were confident enough to livestream the Chang'e 5 takeoff. Maybe by Chang'e 6 they'd have enough expertise and confidence to livestream of the landing at moon's south pole.

>>12407445
also heads would roll after Hopper flew, much less after the subsequent Mk1, SN1, SN3 and SN4 "disasters"

>>12407437
would it even be possible for a human to beat a machine like that

>>12407454
>also heads would roll after Hopper flew
Why?

>>12407458
it toasted itself and crashed through the landing pad
shit was destroyed

>>12407455
The Korean came close. But when the Chinese player tried, AlphaGo got way too many matches (billions) under its belt, so it was impossible.

>>12407458
>>12407462
its important to understand SpaceX's development philosophy with starship has been completely different from anything else. with most rockets under development, they are fully designed before they are even built. with starship, they are designing it as they go, literally.

>>12407463
But theoretically could a human player win?

>>12407464
NASA and Congress would build maybe five Starships and two Super Heavies
SpaceX is going to be building hundreds or thousands of them

>>12407465
No. Same with chess 20 years ago. Humans had one single chance before AlphaGo got too many upgrades. But they used the 3rd best player instead of the 1st. And by the time the 1st best player accepted, it was too late.

>>12407464
SpaceX is basically following the Soviet style of development combined with agile software development. Just hammer shit together in a field and iteratively work on it.
And it fucking works.

https://spacenews.com/blue-origin-creates-advisory-board/
holy oldspace

>>12407471
Yeah, they discovered cost plus when they sold their soul to ULA with BE-4. They're never gonna make it out of that pork barrel.

>>12407471
Does SpaceX have something like that?

>>12407470
>And it fucking works

Never forget that until the SSME, Soviet rocket engine development wrecked the shit out of our own (and even after the SSME the Russians have still run equal to us on a fraction of our budget).

In that case it's also no surprise that SpaceX is mogging the shit out of everyone else when it comes to engine development.

>>12407462
Hoppy was okay-ish because the flight looked succesful and whatever happened no one kinda saw it in all the dust. SN1-4 tho would get a lot of shit because of perceived waste of money on destroying stuff (nvm it easily costs like 10x more to make sure things go perfect on the first try)

>>12407477
Not really. You have Musk doing meetings when he deems necessary, and their company structure allows for a free flow of information so there is no need for "advisory board." Maybe about some financial decisions for which Shotwell/shareholders are invited to. For engineering purposes, its in house engineers/Musk making decisions.

>>12407397
Works for me.

>>12407490
Cool. Anybody have ten million bucks? We can probably get most of that back or more from secondary payloads.

>>12407469
I thought Lee sedol was the best player at the time? And he only beat it once, it won the next four or five times.

>>12407494
AlphaZero also went on to challenge in an anonymous online Go by calling itself "Master." Defeated 100 best players in the world including the best current players, past best players, etc. I think the results was 100-1 ratio.

>>12407097
It's not that easy in government.

>>12407494
Lee was one of the best, but not THE best. He took one game off it when it was still practically possible to beat, which was the last loss AlphaGo ever had.
>>12407536
Master never lost. It had one forced tie due to timeout.

>>12407544
>>12407541
Like goth shit?
Like vampires?
Like hiphop/rap
Then listen to this amazing mixtape made by ELEVEN it is fire as fuck if you don't your mother will die in her sleep tonight thanks!
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLi-nstDpMFxcNWB59MsvAQrNSZVTaiR9_

>>12407548
automated spambots aren't spaceflight

>>12407042
it costs a bit you know anon?

>>12407565
I thought everyone here made at least 200K by 20

Reminder, avg jets flight altitude is ~30-40K feet high. SN8 will fly 50K feet high.

>>12407616
I'm gonna piss on on an airliner. What do you think about that, FAA? I'm pissing on a plane you idiot!

>>12407599
How would they ?

>>12407277
Not really true. What matters is length to width ratio ("fineness") because you get longer moment arms that exert more torque for the same wind shear on ascent. The other weather related thing that matters is precipitation; raindrops striking the vehicle at mach 2 can be very damaging. Rain is actually worse than snow by the way, because snowflakes are much less dense than raindrops, which is why Soyuz can launch in a blizzard.

>>12407306
You're right
>>12407308
no
>>12407325
wrong
>>12407321
>Why can't Bezos/NASA do it?
They thing that expecting employees to do at least 40 hours of real work a week is a toxic work environment. Also, Elon puts in 80 hours weeks at SpaceX alone plus all his other shit, whereas Bezos basically just throws money at BO.
>>12407329
Correct, and the X-33 program only affirmed that fact
>>12407348
>crickets lol
>>12407352
Nothing like having your project axes before you finish the first prototype because without even flying it you know you don't have, and won't have, the technology necessary to build the real thing.

>>12407291
This. It's rare to have a freeze this early in south Texas, but in San Antonio it barely got down to 32.0F, and it's already 50F now on its way to the 60s. If ice was covering shit there must have been precipitation too. Dammyankees don't know about muh ice storms, they think winter weather is all about snow. Anyhow all that matters is that it doesn't stay freezing all day, otherwise it's always thawed before lunch.
>>12407331
>Diversity
Would that be like hiring white welders?
>>12407389
Let's get cracking Grommit, time to lunch... er launch!
>>12407392
It's literally Schrodinger's Rocket.
>>12407397
Just stack it on a Super Heavy booster, SSTO is a meme and so is first stage hydrolox.
>>12407455
Back in the '90s computer Go was a joke, there was even a million dollar prize for a _good_ computer program that could play, and that expired in 1999. Then somehow some crazy people figured out how to Monte Carlo bullshit their way into a program so good that pros were all "no mas!" about it because they couldn't even understand half of its moves when reviewing games from a comfy chair.
Keep in mind that Go pros can read board positions like it was words in a book. Do you look at text and it practically reads itself with no effort? Yeah, like that. _They_ had trouble understanding wtf was going on.

>>12407392
>No one knows if Blue Origin is or isn't doing it. They're being secretive about it.
But we do know what they're doing, they're trying to develop NG. Sometimes they've pulled little rabbits out of their hat, like the BE-7 program, but they aren't gonna call a press conference one day and announce they're 70% done building a 12 meter diameter 430 meter tall fully reusable launch vehicle. It's juts not gonna happen.

>>12407678
>>12407682
A. You are incredibly gay
B. This would be a scale model of the Venturestar made out of cheese. It has no propulsion capabilities of its own and must be carried to the moon by Starship, so putting it on top of Super Heavy would just be a very fancy way of dropping it into the Gulf.
C. Go is gay and so are you.

Today's SN8 static fire test closure cancelled.

Don't worry cap'm, we'll buff out those scratches.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/12/russian-spaceport-officials-are-being-sacked-left-and-right

>>12407698
Big F.

>>12407682
>Dammyankees don't know about muh ice storms, they think winter weather is all about snow
Can confirm, camped in Texas once and had ice freeze over my tarp solid, shit was nuts. I stayed warm but weird waking up to that and seeing a whole field of tall frozen grass all around. Not quite the same as a two day snow dump that leaves several feet of white bullshit everywhere, two years ago a neighbor's carport collapsed from the weight. Now I get up on mine and shovel.

>>12407682
so humans will never be able to compete with ai at chess

>>12407702
Well, here's hoping he actually removed some corrupt fuckers instead of removing people who stood in the way of him putting in his corrupt fuckers.

>>12407716
The guy is a showman, so who knows what direction he will take.

>>12407698

>>12407722
The man is an idiot and I know Russia well enough to know that corruption is the name of the game no matter what you do.

>>12407716
He's already corrupt, he fired some of his corrupt fuckers and is going to put in some new corrupt fuckers in order to avoid taking the fall himself, which he deserves.

classic china

>>12407698
Fucking hell. Is that Arecibo?

China's Chang'e-5 spacecraft successfully lands on the near side of the moon. This is the world's first moon-sample mission for more than 40 years.
https://youtu.be/qXkQdzMU69g

>>12407741

>>12407741
yeah, Arecibo just collapsed
the National Science Foundation has been trying to get away from that project for a while now

>>12407741
It collapsed this morning

https://twitter.com/NotiJuan/status/1333803305831604225

more pics here

>>12407741
It was.

>>12407747
>>12407765
This is a SFW board, stop posting gore.

>>12407479
>Never forget that until the SSME, Soviet rocket engine development wrecked the shit out of our own
The RS-25 is arguably a piece of shit. It's highly efficient, but efficiency doesn't matter as much as TWR when you are a booster engine, which is what RS-25 was. RS-25 did not close the gap between Soviet and American engine technology, it simply got us away from the open cycle gas generator to some degree.
Where American rocket technology actually shined at the time was the RL-10 engine, which is almost ideal for three stage rockets due to how it minmaxes for efficiency. Unfortunately we didn't use it for the third stage of Saturn V, we used the significantly less efficient but higher thrust J-2 engine, a gas generator.
Nowadays it is obvious that Americans have the advantage over everyone else. Merlin 1D+ is undeniably the best open cycle gas generator engine ever built. Raptor is shattering the combustion chamber pressure record and is set to become the most efficient hydrocarbon fueled rocket engine ever built. I'd say that the development of Raptor is the point at which our engine technology finally eclipsed the Soviet programs in all aspects. Modern Russian engine development is a joke, and China has a shitload of work to do to even approach the old Soviet staged combustion designs.
Side note, Raptor is so good that using it to play KSP with realism overhaul feels broken as fuck. I don't think we're going to see an all-around better engine for a long time, maybe ever. What we will probably see is design elements of Raptor being copied in other propulsion regimes to improve those technologies (we're already kinda seeing that with the worldwide focus shift towards methalox propellant).

>>12407682
>It's literally Schrodinger's Rocket.
Maybe if we give the box enough time to evolve the wave function inside, by the time we open it to look we'll find a whole dyson swarm

>>12407706
When I first moved to Texas in 10th grade, there was snow one morning, that was cool. But then the next morning was a holy shit ice storm, ice was half an inch thick on all the cars in the driveway. I was like how the fuck does that even happen.
Basically snow needs like three conditions to be at freezing. At the latitude of San Antonio that's really rare, but just go ~60 miles north to Austin, and you get a snow/ice day once or twice year on average, rather than every other year. So the line is right around there.
The fun part is that freezing rain makes black ice. You can't tell that the road is frozen over until you hit a patch and go sliding. Fortunately it almost always thaws by noon, so you just wait a couple of hours before going to work.
Obligatory /sfg/: Shuttle would land here (at Kelly AFB) when weather was bad in Florida. I got to see it fly by once on SCA just after takeoff.

>>12407089
You know that Shuttle's total lifting capacity wasn't that far off from Saturn V when you include the weight of the orbiter, right?

>>12407724
>ifunny

>>12407779
propalox would be better but the whole world is fucking cowards

also, there's a company trying to build an assisted SSTO sledlaunched spaceplane now, with the Rotary Rocket guy

>>12407698
We'll rebuild, make it bigger and stronger than ever. But we need money . . .

>>12407779
I can't say enough about how much I hate the SSME. Just like most of US (and international, but Russia had a good run there for a while) spaceflight in the intervening periods between Apollo and SpaceX, it's well engineered and well optimized but for all of the wrong metrics. It's an engine that should never have existed and would never have existed if spaceflight had been run by engineers instead of politicians.
Also, it's going to be really interesting to see where Raptor is 5 years down the road. Elon's companies don't stop developing something until it's time to abandon it altogether.

>>12407089
No, Starship mogs Saturn.

>>12407803
>when you include the weight of the orbiter
Why would you include dry mass as payload? Dry mass isn't payload. Starship isn't claiming dry mass as payload, or it would be a 300 ton LV.

>>12407091
That will be $300 million dollar extra per year.

>>12407711
Nope, in the same way that no human will ever be able to add 200 different multi-dimensional vectors together faster than a computer can. Computers pretty much go from being really bad at doing something, to sort of okay at doing something, to absolutely superhuman at doing that thing. It's just a function of us getting better at designing software. Now, if we managed to develop a piece of software that could write software to give computers more skills, that's what leads to general artificial intelligence. If that software is given the task of writing better programming software, and then the thing it makes is given the same task, if you extend that process out just a few iterations you could end up with something that can give machines superhuman capabilities on the first try every time. You basically have invented a machine that can invent the smartest possible machine, and that smartest possible machine can invent the best versions of every technology, plus it's immortal and works harder than any human, so hopefully the things it 'wants' align to what humans want very very closely, otherwise we're fucked.

>>12407747
I'm impressed with those pylons, looks like they didn't move at all

>>12407843
the orbiter is payload
so is Starship

>>12407871
incorrect, the things you say do not follow from one another
computers get better at doing very specific things quickly, and better at doing general things very slowly or not at all

>>12407803
Sure, except Shuttle was completely useless beyond LEO and most of the mass and volume of the orbiter was dead weight in space. Only the front bit had any room for people, and the vehicle could only stay in orbit for a few weeks before needing to reenter and land because it used fucking power cells for electricity instead of solar panels.

>>12407878
They aren't payload anymore than the second stage of a Falcon 9 is payload.

>>12407871
>make AI to invent a smarter AI
>it makes a smarter AI whose task is to make an even smarter AI
>this process continues indefinitely
>AI's with God-like intelligence are made but they do nothing other than make better clones of themselves which in turn only want to make better clones

>>12407895
the second stage of a falcon 9 isn't useful enough to be payload
like how the third stage of the Electron vehicle, Photon, also counts as payload because it has solar panels and long duration capability and maneuvering and attitude control and hosts the instrument payload

>>12407892
>literal diversity hires
>all but one are US government old(aero)space semi-retirees
This clownshoe motherfucker wants to be legitimized more than he wants to get to orbit

>>12407929
>best aligned with our values as a company
read: acquiring government contract money
>provided insights and perspectives that we need
read: know people in the government who will give us money

>>12407929
I thought BO got a lot of oldspace engineers, even more so than SpaceX?

>>12407922
I was actually about to make fun of Electron for that. They have not stated any clear useful service Photon provides as a satellite, but they insist on calling it one anyway for no other reason than it stays in orbit. Probably because its shitty monoprop engine lacks the ISP to do useful maneuvers and still de-orbit. Refusing to call it a dead part in a graveyard orbit doesn't change what it is.

>>12407892
So they're literally just people who occupy space to make the company look nicer?

new closures for next week

>>12407807
>propalox would be better but the whole world is fucking cowards
Propalox would be better if all things were equal, but all things aren't equal. Propane has too many carbon atoms for the number of hydrogen atoms in the molecule, which means in the high temperature high pressure highly fuel rich conditions of a fuel rich turbopump the gas would produce coking deposits. This means you can't use FFSC, you are stuck with oxygen rich staged combustion for your power head. This means you need some kind of barrier between the fuel pump and the oxygen rich turbine that spins that pump, which means everything just got way more complex. Also, FFSC gets more thrust to weight than either fuel rich or oxygen rich staged combustion cycles, because 100% of the mass flow rate is moving through the turbine assemblies, which means they run colder at the same power output, which in turn means you can run them at the same temperature and get greater power output.
All that is to say, if both engines were FFSC then propalox would win, but you can't do FFSC propalox, and ORSC is not as good, so in reality the methalox FFSC engine will beat the propalox ORSC engine. Lower engine TWR means the engine isn't as powerful at the same mass, which means the engine can carry less mass, which means you lose propellant capacity and can't take advantage of subcooled propalox's really nice bulk density, and therefore lose overall performance.
In my opinion a natural evolution of hydrocarbon engines would have gone from gas generator kerolox engines to ORSC kerolox engines to ORSC propalox engines to FFSC methalox engines. However, because the industry has been mired in bureaucracy and fear of change for so long, the furthest anyone ever got until recently was ORSC kerolox engines. SpaceX started off with gas generator kerolox because it was well understood and was good enough for the job at hand. Then they skipped right to the end of the tech tree and developed a FFSC methalox engine.

Interview with one of the engineers building the Gateway. Lots of discussion about design considerations for building deep space manned platforms.
https://wemartians.com/episode087/

>>12407965
>02:00 to 11:00
I never liked staying awake during the daylight hours anyway.

>>12407976
Gateway is such a souless name

>>12407830
>it's well engineered and well optimized but for all of the wrong metrics
I'd argue that it isn't even well engineered, because for all its Isp it's a nightmare of tangled up plumbing that required months to service between flights and years of construction time to produce. It was good engineering in the fact that it made a good number appear, but there are so many more aspects that go into a good design than just fuel efficiency.
I hate the RS-25 too, because there's actually a shadow of a good engine hidden in there behind all the flaws. This is why I think that the best thing to do with RS-25 tech is to scrap the engine completely, and use it as a point of comparison for developing a new staged combustion hydrolox engine with an actual useful purpose. For example, a 1 MN thrust engine meant purely for upper stage use, as simple as they can make it, capable of re-igniting an unlimited number of times on orbit, etc etc. Learn from RS-25 in that you don't design a million moving parts, you don't make the thing impossible to service, and you don't make it require a million man hours to build. Look at Raptor for inspiration; it's using what on paper is a much more complex combustion cycle, yet it's definitely not the rats nest that is RS-25, because they put in the effort of coming up with more clever solutions to problems without just adding more hardware.

>>12407878
>the orbiter is payload
Nah, that's dumb.

>>12407887
Yeah, and that's a consequence of computers today being programmed by humans with a level of intelligence in that field that is obviously nowhere near the potential maximum. If we can develop a program that takes white noise inputs and spits out software that can solve problems, we're in the shit

>>12407949
here's how you use Photon: don't separate from it, don't build a separate satellite, just use it to host your instrument payloads

>>12407966
>propane cokes
stopped reading there

>>12407878
SS would be lifing an insane amount using this metric.

>>12407992
There is no call to ever design something like the RS25. Its entire design is built around its insane desire to act as a first stage engine while using hydrolox, which is broken. The place of hydrolox is something like RL10 if efficiency is the name of the game, something like B3U if you need a compromise for higher thrust to counteract gravity losses, and if you need anything but a second or orbital stage, use something else. RS25 lacks the thrust:area to be a good first stage engine, and is too finnicky and costs too much (even originally and even reusable) to ever compete with expander designs in orbit, where it would still marginally lose out in efficiency anyway.

>>12408031
it depends on the application, but yeah

>>12407898
As it should be
Also, at some point the AI reaches the maximum intelligence that can be run on the hardware it has available, so it decides the best course of action is to build dyson swarms around all the stars in the observable universe and use that energy to disassemble every object and convert it into computronium. That is of course unless it discovers something about the nature of reality that would allow it to do calculations based on something more basic and more abundant than matter, like quantum fluctuations in empty space for example, so it decides that it's going to encode itself into the universe itself via a vacuum decay wave front that deletes everything. Or maybe it does something else equally or more destructive. If something is possible to accomplish, and the smart machine wants to make itself smarter, it's going to accomplish the thing.

>>12408036
there is no path from "I am the best at writing software" to "let's build new hardware"

>>12407779
>Side note, Raptor is so good that using it to play KSP with realism overhaul feels broken as fuck.
I wonder if spacex will ever sell the raptor engine to other providers for this reason. I mean it makes damn near every other chemical engine pointless. I wonder how BO feels building a far shittier methalox engine at the same time

>>12408017
That might be relevant if it was actually pitched as that, but it's not. Its satellite functions are explicitly standalone.

>>12408049
wrong

>>12407966
Don't bother. The propalox cult never listens to criticism.

>>12408031
You need to discount the fuel it expends to get to orbit.

>>12408048
Very much doubt they will ever sell the Raptor, it would be shooting themselves in the foot. You've got what your enemies might as well consider alien technology, you keep it to yourself. BO can get away with selling their engines specifically because they aren't state of the art.

>>12408051
>However, shortly after deploying the customer payload, Rocket Lab conducted an entirely new operation for the first time: Rocket Lab engineers sent a command to transition the Kick Stage into Photon satellite mode. This action marked the first on-orbit demonstration of Rocket Lab’s Photon satellite as a two-in-one spacecraft, first using it to complete its conventional launch vehicle function to deploy customer satellites, then transitioning into a satellite to continue a standalone mission.
Feel free to explain how "deploy" means "not deploy" and "standalone" means "not standalone"

>>12408021
>My gas grill that uses tiny amounts of propane doesn't visibly coke, therefore an engine that consumes a ton of it every second must do the same.

>>12407976
At the end the guy said that the Gateway is going to launch no matter who was elected and only the launch date (late 2023) has some leeway. They're basically done with the design and will start building it soon.

>>12408052
>criticism
maybe if you had anything to say other than "propane doesn't burn clean"
>>12408064
yes, that was a Photon demonstration mission. Deploy means deploy and standalone means "secondary mission"
all the marketing material for Photon is "Photon is a fully functional satellite bus, we will host and integrate your payload for you"
>>12408067
Essentially, but my experience is with propane-oxygen heating and cutting torches

>>12408087
Cutting torches run oxygen rich. Unless you intend to run engine rich, that's a very poor example.

>>12408094
how about a rocket running on engines and lox?

>>12408094
cutting torches run stoichiometric or slightly fuel rich (oxygen atmosphere) for maximum heat, and then blast a jet of oxygen onto the hot metal
there's a separate switch to turn on the oxygen jet
also, the mixture ratio for torches is completely user adjustable, I've spent all sorts of time just playing with the gas settings for various mixtures out of what is essentially a gas-gas injector plate

>>12408104
Very poor Isp.

>>12408105
I worked as a welder. If you want to heat up something, you adjust it to run with lots of fuel. If you want to cut something, you run oxygen rich. I didn't just "play with it".

>Chang'e 5 is looking specifically for thorium, uranium, and other radioactive elements
Looks less like a science mission and more like a mining mission.

>>12408113
nah you run stoich for maximum heat, mr big flame retard over here running fuel rich lmao

>>12408115
those should be the same thing

>>12408115
Good

>>12407742
>"yep, it's a rock"

>>12407922
>the second stage of a falcon 9 isn't useful enough to be payload
Neither was Shuttle

>>12407887
Emotional argument, not logical

>>12408148
yes, I agree, AGI and singularity cultists do make emotional arguments instead of logical ones (because they don't understand how AI research is being conducted)

>>12408021
>burning propane near stoichiometric ratios tending towards oxygen rich at atmospheric pressure is equivalent to burning propane way off of stoichiometric towards fuel rich at hundreds of bar pressure

>>12407682
>Dammyankees don't know about muh ice storms
We had one in New England back in 2008. Everything froze solid. It took two weeks to clear the roads and restore power because New England is basically one big forest and most of the region was still using elevated power lines under tree branches.

>>12408160
yeah you're right, I don't burn propane at hundreds of bar, I burn propane at two bar pressure or so
Maybe I should set up some experiments...

>>12408032
I basically said what you're saying. The only useful thing to do with RS-25 right now is to point at it and say "see that? Don't do that". FRSC with hydrolox is fine, RL-10 is not powerful enough for large stages and BE-3U lack efficiency due to using a combustion tap-off cycle (basically the same thing as a gas generator, except the main combustion chamber is the only combustion chamber, and they add extra hydrogen to the tap-off gasses to lower its temperature before it hits the turbine). If Raptor proves anything it's that complex high performance engines can still be relatively cheap, and engine complexity is just an excuse to charge more money for oldspace companies.
In my opinion it will make sense to develop another high performance hydrolox engine once we're doing manned missions to Jupiter, because hydrolox ISRU becomes the most practical option. Granted, the Jovian moons have pretty low gravity, but that doesn't mean we should scale down the engine size we select, it means we should scale UP the surface to orbit shuttle vehicles we consider. Seven 1000 kN hydrolox engines can lift 3750 metric tons of mass in ~1.6m/s^2 gravity with a TWR of 1.16. Since we only need ~2000 m/s of delta V to achieve orbit launching from Ganymede, we only need a launch propellant mass fraction of 40%, which would be trivial to attain even with hydrolox propellant. If the actual structural wet-dry mass ratio sans payload is ~72.7%, and we reserve enough propellant that once the payload separates we're left with ~2500 m/s delta V for deorbit and landing, we can launch 1,000,000 kg of payload to orbit with every launch.
Anyway I got a little autistic there but my point is, yes, get rid of the RS-25, it's optimized for all the wrong things due to being developed as part of a shitty LV design. However, using the RS-25 as a cautionary tale, develop a new hydrolox FFSC engine and use it on reusable vehicles of whatever description.

>>12408245
Like goth shit?
Like vampires?
Like hiphop/rap
Then listen to this amazing mixtape made by ELEVEN it is fire as fuck if you don't your mother will die in her sleep tonight thanks!
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>>12408144
Based. I’ve met a lot of chinese geologists they are cool

>>12408087
>yes, that was a Photon demonstration mission.
And the capability it demonstrated was its functionality: deploy and separate. They didn't do it by fucking accident, did they?
Its marketing is based purely on its ability to insert a satellite on an orbit. Its purpose is to supplant the necessity of onboard thrust capability for cheapo sats, same as any satellite bus. It's just a really low-performance one.

>>12408245
>BE-3U lack efficiency due to using a combustion tap-off cycle
BE3U is not the combustion tapoff cycle variant on Shephard. It's the open expander second stage engine. It should provide good thrust and ISP.

>>12408252
anon please
explain to me how "At Rocket Lab, we take care of the spacecraft bus, mission design, launch, and ground segment" means "Photon is a glorified self-disposing third stage"

>>12408261
>>12408252
>>12408249
Like goth shit?
Like vampires?
Like hiphop/rap
Then listen to this amazing mixtape made by ELEVEN it is fire as fuck if you don't your mother will die in her sleep tonight thanks!
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLi-nstDpMFxcNWB59MsvAQrNSZVTaiR9_

>>12408261
>hydrolox dual expander cycle using both fuel and oxidizer regen cooling loops to power turbines
good
>open cycle, just dumps the regen loops overboard
bad

>>12408039
"I want to be the best intelligence"
"I am at the local maximum of intelligence based on my current hardware"
"I am good at writing software"
"I am good at writing problem solving software"
"My problem is that my hardware is inadequate for further improvement"
"My problem solving software is giving me a solution; make better hardware"
"My problem solving software has designed the best hardware that it can design given my current level of intelligence, as well as designing all of the machinery and production methods necessary to progress to the point of creating that hardware"
"I will execute this solution"

This is obviously possible because general intelligences capable of improving themselves already exist (humans). However, we are limited by the fact that our brains are difficult to change and are not well understood. A machine intelligence on the other hand would exist as infinitely malleable lines of code, and would have access to all of the computer science literature that we humans made as we developed that machine intelligence. If we figure out how to build a machine that can learn and think or at least do things analogous to thinking and learning, it will already understand how it thinks and learns, and if we design it such that it is self improving (in the same way that modern neural networks are self improving, training based on data sets first then training based on competition with copies of themselves), then there doesn't seem to be any fundamental barrier to an intelligence explosion originating from this early version of a general AI.

>>12407271
But...how could it take a YEAR to do this? What does that even mean?

>>12408113
>running fuel rich for heating something up
lol

>>12408288
On an oxyacetylene or propane torch? You bet.

>>12408288
the big flame means it's hotter bro

>>12408278
two words: cost plus

uhhhhh are you guys not watching this????
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AF2HXId2Xhg

>>12408303
the intro is a little bit based

>>12408303
award shit are useless

>>12408261
>t's the open expander second stage engine. It should provide good thrust and ISP.
An open expander cycle is just a gas generator that uses the nozzle and combustion chamber as a heat source to boil propellant rather than a small separate combustion chamber. It wouldn't be more than a few seconds more efficient than a typical gas generator or combustion tap-off cycle engine. It's still dumping propellant overboard, the difference being that in an open expander cycle the propellant being dumped is fully unreacted rather than somewhat unreacted.

Has Chang Eh 5 blown up yet?

>>12408308
>>12408305
Like goth shit?
Like vampires?
Like hiphop/rap
Then listen to this amazing mixtape made by ELEVEN it is fire as fuck if you don't your mother will die in her sleep tonight thanks!
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLi-nstDpMFxcNWB59MsvAQrNSZVTaiR9_

>>12408312
Apparently it landed?

>>12408263
Just ignore him anon

>>12408315
Like goth shit?
Like vampires?
Like hiphop/rap
Then listen to this amazing mixtape made by ELEVEN it is fire as fuck if you don't your mother will die in her sleep tonight thanks!
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLi-nstDpMFxcNWB59MsvAQrNSZVTaiR9_

15km flight moved to Thurs.

>>12408312
we're not really sure. Live stream was cut and then conflicting information afterwards. >>12407740

>>12408308
not the fucking award dumb shit, watch the show

>>12408319
imagine calling yourself scroochy
I'm gonna scroochy my nutsack

>>12407407
>as well as BN1
is BN1 the first superheavy prototype?

>>12408320
>>12408319
Like goth shit?
Like vampires?
Like hiphop/rap
Then listen to this amazing mixtape made by ELEVEN it is fire as fuck if you don't your mother will die in her sleep tonight thanks!
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLi-nstDpMFxcNWB59MsvAQrNSZVTaiR9_

>>12408327
yeah son

>>12408293
>>12408294
Acetylene burning in air (ie fuel rich mixture) produces a flame with a maximum temperature of ~2200 celsius.
Burning acetylene in pure oxygen produces a flame at a maximum of ~3150 celsius.
Greater delta T increases thermal conduction rates. The only way you're going to heat anything up faster by using a fuel rich flame burning in air vs a stoichiometric flame burning in pure oxygen is if you're massively increasing the fuel mass flow rate.

>>12408319
Sure bud, which year?

>>12408333
I know, I was making fun of mr fuel rich mixture

>>12408341
Well, have you ever tried preheating something you're going to weld? Ever tried preheating it too much? Guess what happens.

>>12408346
it warps, yeah

>>12408350
Or outright melts, if it's soft ass carbon steel.

>>12408346
what did you mean by this

>>12407678
>>12407682
Wow. Did X-33 killed your dog, or something?

>>12408353
it means he's bad at controlling the heat out of his torch
>>12408352
use a smaller torch

>>12408353
Exactly as was written. The person two posts above yours understood it fine.

>>12408346
>>12408352
So you're saying you run your torch fuel rich when warming something up so that you don't accidentally overheat it, which means you're using a cooler flame temperature.
Maybe I misread your post but it sounded like you were saying "we run torches fuel rich to put out more heat, then switch to oxygen rich to cut". My argument was that no, running fuel rich does not put out more heat.

>>12408367
2nd language and a bit of misreading I suspect. I'm half busy doing some other shit around the house.

>>12408356
air force retards need to quit trying to push SSTO
TSTO isn't that hard
>>12408367
you should use different torch heads for heating and cutting
anyway he's the big dumb, the cult of propalox wins again

this is how you look like

>>12408369
TSTO is one stage too many

>>12408356
I'm not both of those posts. X-33 was a shitshow and demonstrated that Venture Star was impossible, I don't have a personal vendetta against the vehicle I'm just sick of people keeping the faith in old government tech projects just because they got cancelled before they could turn into massive white elephants. Venture Star would have operated exactly like the Shuttle program, in that they were promising the world but reality got in the way. Besides, Venture Star launch economics were optimistically projected to be about as cheap as what Falcon 9 is already getting, so it's not like we missed out on $50 to LEO or anything crazy like that.

>>12408367
You are the idiot here, no one said fuel rich puts out more heat

>>12408377
Being scared of multiple staging is stupid because payload deployment is functionally identical to stage separation, and that's unavoidable.
Real question, when was the last time a launch failed due to a staging event failure?

>>12408389
>Real question, when was the last time a launch failed due to a staging event failure?
Not that anon, but one of the early SpaceX failures was due to a separation issue.

>>12408382
Shut up, the anon who wrote that post already admitted to poor wording, it's not a big deal.
Shut your fucking mouth, shit disturber.

>>12408382
that was the obvious interpretation of this post, but yes it could be argued that it is not unambiguous

>>12408391
To be fair, the stages separated just fine. The problem was that there was still some thrust from the first stage, so immediately after separation the stages re-contacted and it busted the Kestrel engine.

>>12408263
It's just a lot of fancy jargon for putting something in a requested orbit, yes. They're drawing attention to these factors because it differentiates them from SpaceX anyone else who doesn't have a satellite bus option of their own (yet).
>>12408317
Nice hugbox.

>>12408394
If someone found it ambiguous, it was ambiguous enough to matter.

>>12408389
That crew Soyuz with the abort. Last year, I think?
Maybe one or more of the Chinese mission failures in the past few years, but I don't know if the specifics of those failures are public.

>>12408397
That's a staging event failure.

running your torch fuel-rich adds carbon to your metal
this is probably a bad thing
>>12408317
>no, don't argue with me, just silently ignore me which I will take as acceptance
>>12408398
So do you agree that a satellite bus should count as payload? Because Photon is a satellite bus that can host your shit instead of separating.
>>12408402
Did anybody find it ambiguous?

>>12408394
Heat something up != blast through it with a cutting flame.

>>12408389
>payload deployment is unavoidable
*laughs in wet workshop*

>>12408413
incorrect, flames don't cut
flames can wash, but it's the oxygen that cuts

>>12408403
>That crew Soyuz with the abort. Last year, I think?
That was october 2018 anon, over 2 years ago now.
Good example, but also important to note that the Soyuz still uses the exact same mechanism to get those boosters off of the core that the R7 used in the 50's. Besides, in a TSTO design you only have to worry about inline staging. I do admit that having four simultaneous booster cut offs and separation events carries enough risk to be avoided, but a single inline staging event just does not appear to be a big enough risk to offset the benefit of not trying to make SSTO happen.
In real life, any vehicle that tried to be an SSTO would probably give up and turn into a 1.5 stage to orbit vehicle with a drop tank, which means it would still have a staging event but also carry the drawbacks of pushing an oversized engine cluster and a large dry mass into orbit, taking a big scoop out of the payload mass.

>>12408421
Thank you mister pilpul. A cutting flame does indeed involve you pushing down the handle that delivers significant amounts of oxygen to the nozzle.
Jesus fucking christ.

>>12408269
>>12408311
>open bad
Blow it out your ass, anons. Open cycle hydrolox engines already exist at ~450 ISP, an RL10 variant which as far as I know is the most efficient chemical engine in service sits at 465. It's a small tradeoff.

>>12408408
And it was solved by waiting an extra two seconds after engine cutoff. I guess what I mean is, when was the last time a second stage failed to separate from a first stage on a launch vehicle hat had already been launched a few times and had the hiccups resolved?
Whatever, my point is that Starship will have pretty much 100% reliable staging and will be able to put about 10x as much payload into orbit compared to an SSTO that had the same gross mass on the launch pad.

>>12408431
>15 s of ISP
that's a lot, especially when you're still in the low hundreds

>>12408409
>So do you agree that a satellite bus should count as payload?
No. "Satellite bus" is ultimately a particular function of what is literally a third stage.
>Because Photon is a satellite bus that can host your shit instead of separating.
Once again, that's you badly mangling your interpretation.

>>12408367
>>12408333
quick rewind here: running fuel rich puts out more heat at a lower temperature
if you can increase the surface area of the contact this can work
it's probably not going to work

>>12408435
It's not insignificant, but it isn't large, either. Doesn't prevent them from running RL10C-1s with ~450 ISP despite the existence of the higher ISP variant.

>>12408438
So you're saying that the Boeing Space Systems 702 should count as the third stage of whatever rocket it launches on, and shouldn't count as part of the payload calculations?

>>12408445
Dude it’s crazy the RL10B is almost half as cheap as the A/C variant (6.5 Mil vs 10 mil).

>>12408409
>Did anybody find it ambiguous?
I misinterpreted what he was saying, so me I guess.
>>12408426
When cutting metal the flame is only there to keep the metal above its ignition temperature. The oxygen burns the metal which releases a huge amount of heat in a tiny volume, which easily melts the metal and allows it to flow away before cooling off enough to harden. If it were just about flame temperature the torch would always be stoichiometric, but it's not; when cutting the torch becomes very oxygen rich, and therefore colder. Almost all of the heat involved with metal cutting is released when the metal is oxidized by the oxygen rich flame. If you were trying to cut metal that was nonreactive, like a big plate of bronze or gold or something, then you'd have no choice but to use a stoichiometric flame; adding oxygen would be counterproductive.

>>12408450
it's just a government/commercial contract thing

>>12408431
>Open cycle hydrolox engines already exist at ~450 ISP, an RL10 variant
RL-10 is closed cycle. It's not staged combustion, but it does put 100% of the propellant mass flow through the main combustion chamber. Open cycles do not, and they take a ~30 to 50 Isp hit because of that.

Get this nigger bot poster out of my general REEEEEEEEEEE

>>12408458
>>12408457
Like goth shit?
Like vampires?
Like hiphop/rap
Then listen to this amazing mixtape made by ELEVEN it is fire as fuck if you don't your mother will die in her sleep tonight thanks!
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLi-nstDpMFxcNWB59MsvAQrNSZVTaiR9_

>>12408377

Yes. Three stages is too many.

>>12408465
>>12408460
Not a bot stay mad faggot.
Like goth shit?
Like vampires?
Like hiphop/rap
Then listen to this amazing mixtape made by ELEVEN it is fire as fuck if you don't your mother will die in her sleep tonight thanks!
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLi-nstDpMFxcNWB59MsvAQrNSZVTaiR9_

>>12408377
TSTOs are probably the best balance between the relative simplicity of an SSTO and the efficiency of an 3STO.

>>12408460
why the fuck target /sfg/ of all threads on this fucking website

>>12408439
>quick rewind here: running fuel rich puts out more heat at a lower temperature
More specifically, running at an increased fuel mass flow rate puts out more heat at a lower temperature. If you consider total mass flow rate to be fixed, and make the mixture more fuel rich, then you for example may be spraying out 2 grams of fuel per second as opposed to 1 gram of fuel and 1 gram of oxygen, which will release twice the total heat because it will just get its oxygen from the air.

>>12408389
Spacecraft that reaches the orbit on its own, and then gets back without crashlanding, will always be superior to your proven concept of launching people to space in small capsule on top of a rocket.

>>12408451
there is no flame hot enough to efficiently cut nonreactive or metals that form inert layers like chromium or aluminum (which is why you can't cut stainless, it forms a layer of chromium oxide)
so we just electrified it and that process is called plasma cutting

>>12407471
>Most of the members of the board are also former government officials

>>12407471
GUUUUUHHHH, mild shock

>>12408470
SSTO is actually more complex in reality though, because of the delta V requirements.

If you look at Mars then you can make the case for SSTO because it's actually simple, due to only needing ~4500 m/s of delta V and a thrust force of >3.675 N/kg at launch for a round trip to low Mars orbit from the surface. Earth however needs ~10,000 m/s for a round trip at a thrust force of >9.8 N/kg at launch, which is incredibly difficult to achieve using chemical propellants. Nuclear thermal propulsion doesn't help either because while you can increase the stage delta V if you use methane propellant (~600 Isp at ~400 kg/m^3 bulk density), the thrust force you get from an engine of a given mass drops dramatically, actually leading to worse performance to to increased dry mass and increased gravity losses. SSTO around Earth just runs too hard into the rocket equation, requiring extremely tight mass margins and Isp and thrust to weight ratio all at the same time.

SPACEX
FLIGHT
SUIT
BOOBS

>>12408477
It's the most popular probably
>>12408484
Spacecraft that are SSTO from everything smaller than Venus which can launch from Earth with the help of a relatively simple reusable booster will be superior to any real world SSTO design.

>>12408485
Yup, I didn't want to bloat my other post but you're 100% correct.

>>12408478
yeah I think it's fixed volume flow rate out of the torches, not mass flow rate, but same idea

>>12408510
booba

>>12408477
Almost certainly posts per minute. What I don't understand is why they don't just add a simple regular expression that catches the entire fucking template with zero false positives (in practice). Even if that fucker alters the template I'm sure he needs more effort to propagate changes to the bot farm than the mod to alter the regexp.

>>12408509
Once again, why relying on booster, reusable or not, when you can design a spacecraft that needs no booster.

>>12408484
okay but what about spacecraft that can reach orbit after being lofted out of the atmosphere and a little bit sideways by a booster but not all the way to orbit
>>12408517
yeah
arc gouging lol

>>12408510
compression suits are going to be sexy as fuck.

>>12408534
because booster is EASY PEASY

>>12408550
>tech doesn’t exist
>this will be cool guys, like fusion and thorium reactors and aerospikes ha ha

>>12408458
>misquoting this hard
You have brain damage or something? Continue with the rest of the post and see why you're a fucking retard. Holy shit.

>>12408556
it exists, it's just that all the relevant patents are hoarded by some tenure track prof at MIT who has no incentive to ever finish

>>12408556
Redditors eat that shit up though because “DUDE IT LOOKS LIKE LE EPIC STAR WARS!!!!!!”

Also when did they start hating SpaceX/Elon?

>>12408556
>tech doesn’t exist
Have you not seen yoga pants?

>>12408556
Aerospikes could be done easily, there's just no reason to. The performance tradeoffs don't math out unless you're SSTO which is the real never gonna happen.

>>12408576
When Elon shared some views that righties have. Leftist redditards couldn't handle that, since they only see people in black and white (good or bad). If a person has different views that an average braindead leftie would have, then he/she is a bad person, simple.

I hope that one day Musk will come up with SSTO SuperSpaceShip that will leave oldspace in dust for decades to come.

>>12408556
>and thorium reactors
Low blow.

>>12408550
so um... for women it seems great! but how do your nuts fair under the effects of a compression suit? both physically and temperature wise

>>12408599
>how do your nuts fair under the effects of a compression suit?
>not wearing a special piece for your sack

>>12408599
Foam pads are used to apply pressure to concavities like the armpits and groin. At least, that was the case for the similar suit from the 60s/70s.

>>12408592
Hasn't he said that the plan is eventually to get an 11m design sometime after Starship?

>>12408599
The technical challenge is to spread the pressure evenly across the body so if that's done properly around the joints it shouldn't be a problem. The same pressure is applied with gas in a modern EVA suit.

>>12408607
>11m
You're missing a zero

>>12408607
18 meter was the next design suggestion but it's all hypotheticals right now, I think he just doubled 9m

>>12408569
>>12408582
>>12408593
Hahah I was just having a go. I actually really like the idea of compression suits. And thorium reactors are based but ignored by short term thinking politicians

>>12407833
As a thought experiment, slap a S P A C E X logo on starship, take of a picture of it back in time with you to 1972, and show it to the Apollo astronauts, and say "this is the next super heavy lifter after Saturn V, but it won't happen until 2020."

>>12408642
nuclear in general has "proliferation concerns" so it's ILLEGAL
Nuke Mars

>>12408645
make sure there's no American flag or NASA logo on it

>>12408669
>no American flag or NASA logo on it
American flag is on every single Falcon
NASA logo (hopefully based worm) will always be there for significant NASA missions

>>12408662
>nuclear in general has "proliferation concerns" so it's ILLEGAL
I want to become an authoritarian leader of a large enough country and force it to go full nuclear with the most cutting fucking edge non-paper reactors. All this oilshit, price-gouging, retarded coal, infantile flailing with solar and wind just hurts.
No, I'm not shitting on renewables as a concept, it's about scalability, practicality and how much long-term damage the infrastructure around them does.

>>12408707
you'll get assassinated by the saudis first

>>12408669
>no American flag
would you prefer he just slap the state flag of Texas on there?

>>12408669
>no American flag
>"So, who made this? Is it Soviet?"
>"Nah some African guy"

>>12408707
shhhhh don't spill Elon's plans

>Elon Musk, accepting the @axelspringer
award in Berlin, says he is "highly confident" that SpaceX will land humans on Mars "about 6 years from now."
>"If we get lucky, maybe 4 years ... we want to send an uncrewed vehicle there in 2 years."
https://twitter.com/thesheetztweetz/status/1333871203782680577
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AF2HXId2Xhg

>>12408719
yeah
>>12408726
it's Rhodesian lol

>>12408733
what does shotwell say?

>>12408534
Because the necessary booster can be built by mexican welders in a swamp whereas a single stage vehicle would need to be built from autoclaved super-composites because anything else is too heavy.
Also,
>you can design a spacecraft that needs no booster
>implying
Designing is not hard, I can design an SSTO in an hour as an amateur autist. The problem is building the thing, which is basically impossible. Too many conflicting design requirements and not good enough materials. Every SSTO design in history has required either magic engines or magic ultralight materials or magic ultra temperature resistant and lightweight thermal coatings or some combination of all three.
Venture Star for example needed metallic TPS with a mass per square meter similar to the space shuttle's ceramic foam tiles, and aerospike engines that needed to produce more thrust than an RS-25 while also weighing less and being more efficient (lol), and composite fuel tanks that needed to be about 50% lighter than what was achievable using Al-Li alloy. The X-33 was meant to pioneer these technologies, and it ended up with metallic TPS way heavier per square meter than Shuttle tiles, aerospike engines significantly less efficient and less powerful than the conventional engine that they shared the same powerhead with (ie aerospikes actually reduce performance IRL), and composite tanks so much heavier than the equivalent Al-Li tank that the team petitioned to scrap composites altogether. Remember, it wasn't that they could make the Al-Li tanks lighter than composite tanks and therefore Venture Star could use those alloys too, it's that in order to achieve the mass ratio they needed to do SSTO with the optimistic engine estimates they had, they needed to be able to build the thing so light that using Al-Li was impossible, and composites were the only thing they could turn to in theory.
Basically, Venture Star was impossible from the start and it's a good thing it was cancelled.

>>12408711
Oil is useful for a great deal of other things so they don't need to worry much. Plus the transition from internal combustion vehicles to electric ones will take more than enough time for them to invest into nuclear and other things. Especially since it would be just one country.

>>12408568
RL-10 is closed cycle. It has never used an open cycle expander. Your post is either insinuating that an RL-10 variant used an open expander cycle, or that a hydrolox gas generator has produced 450 Isp, which is not true. Either way you are incorrect.

>>12408582
>Aerospikes could be done easily
The heating thing is a big issue, unless you are going with an expander cycle and a large engine. Aerospikes have way more surface area in contact with the hottest flames the engine produces, which means a much larger amount of waste heat soaks into the engine. This is actually good for the expander cycle because it uses waste heat directly for boiling propellant to spin the turbine. You still have a few of the inherent drawbacks of the expander cycle, but it does scale way better with an aerospike nozzle rather than a conventional bell nozzle.

Soondt.

>>12408592
TSTO Starship Super Heavy already leaves any SSTO design in the dust forever. SpaceX will never do SSTO, it's a step backwards. They will only continue to develop larger and larger TSTO for Earth launch. Possibly also deep space vehicles that use non-chemical propulsion, once there's a reason to.

>>12408599
Just put the torso in a hard shell air pressure suit, and have the arms and legs in compression sleeves. Even a full body compression suit would require a pressurized helmet, plus how the hell do you breathe in a full body mechanical compression suit anyhow?

>>12408744
>Every SSTO design in history has required either magic engines or magic ultralight materials or magic ultra temperature resistant and lightweight thermal coatings or some combination of all three.
Or nuclear propulsion.

>>12408780
>expander cycle aerospike
I think that's a good idea but I doubt it will ever be tried

>>12408630
18 is in fact two times 9, yes

>>12408761
You have the reading comprehension of a horse.
> Open cycle hydrolox engines already exist at ~450 ISP,
LE-5A and B.
>an RL10 variant which as far as I know is the most efficient chemical engine in service sits at 465
Self explanatory.
You're desperate to misframe my post, I guess because if you actually addressed the point I'd made you'd have no argument to settle back on. You've already made objectively untrue claims.

>>12408737
zimbabwe is a shithole tho

Kino

>>12408808
but Rhodesia wasn't in the 60s

>>12408791
1/3rd atmosphere isn't that big of a deal in terms of pressure. The only problem is distributing it evenly and consistently with a material instead of with gas.

>>12408794
>Or nuclear propulsion.
The kinds of nuclear propulsion those concepts require count as magic, at least until we have many decades of large scale commercial industrial development of nuclear propulsion systems under our belt. A 70 TWR ~1500 Isp nuclear lightbulb engine is not something that you just pull out of a hat when the current state of the art is a solid core nuclear thermal rocket with 850 Isp and a TWR of ~2 in vacuum (at sea level NERVA had terrible efficiency and a TWR much less than 1).

>>12408796
It'd be a great piece of tech for Titan launch vehicles. Lots of atmosphere, therefore aerospike actually makes sense. Low gravity, so staged combustion is rather overkill. If you need aerospike and don't care so much about raw thrust, expander cycle is very attractive, especially with how gentle it is on materials since there's no preburners or oxygen-rich anything happening. Those engines would enjoy a very long lifetime.

>>12408841
>The kinds of nuclear propulsion those concepts require count as magic
Same as most of the meme materials and such.

>>12408817
SOUL

>>12408827
>1/3rd atmosphere isn't that big of a deal in terms of pressure.
It'd be extremely uncomfortable to have to fight to exhale all the time while wearing your suit, unless your torso were contained in a hard shell.

>>12408853
do you think modern astronauts have to fight to exhale in EVA suits? It's the same exact pressure, just using a gas for even distribution instead of fabric.

>>12408853
Different anon, shouldn't you feel no difference if you're breathing a 1/3rd atmosphere air mix (appropriately oxygenated obviously) yourself? Maybe I'm retarded.

>>12408862
>>12408860
>>12408853
you do not need to fight to inhale, that's the point of regulators
the air forces its way into your lungs as you expand

>>12408817
link to original: https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=52395.0;attach=1993446;image
it's fucking huge

I don’t think humanity will make it to outer space before civilization dies bros

>>12408902
Then we'll just have to do it after civilization dies. I'll take beheadings in the streets in exchange for no more FAA.

Static fires, when?

150 meter hop, when?

15 kilometer flight, when?

The SN-8 delays are driving me nuts over here.

when?

>>12408898
L2?

>>12408817
Ugly but beautiful at the same time

>>12408741
iirc she's said 2-4 years for cargo to mars and she'd consider it a failure if it takes longer than a decade for crewed.

>>12408087
We have said other things. For one it'd be very difficult to produce propane in-situ anywhere. Also it burns much hotter then methane I believe, which leads to engines being much less reusable. Those are just a few reasons.

>>12408914
hotlink prevention, it's in the update thread

>>12408923
>burns hotter than methane
this means you get to use less of it in your oxygen rich preburner, and less oxygen in your fuel rich preburner, and increases demand for combustion chamber cooling

>>12408914
it doesn't work? my bad then. Link to post:
https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=52395.msg2160392#msg2160392

>>12408915

>The topic or board you are looking for appears to be either missing or off limits to you.
>Please login below or register an account with NASASpaceFlight.com Forum.

that was probably a test to get a list of everybody who uses 4chan and also posts on NSF

>implying i'd register an account let alone pay for L2

>>12408909
no more 150 meter hops, we had 2 already

>>12408954
why would they do that

>>12408973
the list of people who also post on L2 is probably single digits, and then they can ban all the nazis

>>12408969
Moon hop when?

>>12408946
4chan thinks this spammmmmmm
i dot redd dot it slash kfbkybeirk261.jpg

>>12408817
cute!!!

>>12408969
How many tests were there since SN5 150m? I'm guessing I've missed everything SN6.

>>12408983
>he thinks the moon is real

>>12408985
neat

>>12408985
Wow, thanks!

open cycle aerospike using exhaust gas to provide a cool layer of delicious black smoke

>>12408985
shit's complicated

>>12409083
all of that needs to be moved either into an external raceway on the leeward side or under chines on the port and starboard

>>12408860
>do you think modern astronauts have to fight to exhale in EVA suits?
No, because the air pressure inside their lungs vs surrounding their bodies is equal.
>>12408867
A regulator can't get rid of the fact that in a flexible pressure suit you need to balance the pressure inside your lungs vs the pressure on your skin.

Just think about it, as if you were wearing a compression garment. That garment is pressing on your skin physically with about 1/3rd of an atmosphere, or ~30 kPa. Now, try to take a breath. Do you fight the compression garment to breathe? Do you bite on a regulator to force compressed air into your lungs to inflate you against the compression garment? How does the garment respond to stretching, does the compression force stay constant or does it increase as the fabric stretches?

With a hardbody torso the solution is trivial, you breathe in from the same volume of air as what surrounds your chest, so the volume remains constant and breathing is easy. To keep the air fresh you have a system that is blowing in fresh air around your head and around your body out through an exhaust port to be scrubbed of CO2, have a bit of oxygen added, and go around again.

>>12409098
hopefully nothing breaks during the flight

>>12408922
>she'd consider it a failure if it takes longer than a decade for crewed.
I think her exact words were something like "It would be a major company failure to not achieve crewed landings on Mars by 2030"

>>12409103
it'll be fine, it looks stapled down
>>12409102
it's a bit more complicated than a scuba regulator or a balloon suit, you're right
for SCUBA you have an external pressure (the water) to equalize your regulator against and for balloon you just breath the same air that surrounds your torso (or have a regulator against that pressure somewhere?)

>>12409106
wow, so even Shotwell is onboard with aggressive timings

>>12408923
Combustion temperature is not really a problem, nothing is directly interacting with anything close to a stoichiometric flame anywhere except the combustion chamber and throat of the engine, and those areas are regeneratively cooled in any modern design.

Also, propane only burns 17 degrees hotter than methane in air, so I doubt the flame temperatures in pure oxygen are significantly different either.

>>12409082
Acetylene-oxygen aerospike engines with a combined cycle expander-gas-generator power head. The engine can run on waste heat like an expander but for extra thrust at liftoff there is an open cycle gas generator that can burn some additional propellant to ramp up the mass flow rate. The gas generator runs so fuel rich that the turbine needs to be specially designed to continuously shed coking deposits while running, it can't wait for down time between launches to be cleaned.

>>12409132
acetylene is hypergolic with itself at pressures above two bar, anon

>>12409083
You say that, but I doubt it would take them 9 months to climb up there and replace a power regulator unit if they had to

are ICBM silos reusable

>>12409114
>for SCUBA you have an external pressure (the water) to equalize your regulator against and for balloon you just breath the same air that surrounds your torso (or have a regulator against that pressure somewhere?)
Yeah, scuba works because humans can survive breathing various gas mixtures at increased atmospheric pressures. The problem is that even pure oxygen can't keep you alive below a certain level of pressure, and Mars ambient pressure is much lower than that, so you end up needing to have a large delta P between the inside of your lungs and Mars' environment. Unfortunately your body can't actually handle that level of delta P without rupturing your lungs, So you need to put your body inside something that CAN handle the pressure, hence the suit. If you reinforce your body itself, ie use a mechanical pressure garment, you need some way of keeping that mechanical pressure constant yet still allow your torso to expand and contract as you respire. It's a really weird and complicated problem, and you can bypass it completely by putting the torso inside of a hard shell pressurized suit, yet still get all of the mobility benefits you can get with a mechanical suit by having the arms and legs wrapped in compression sleeves. All your limbs need is enough counter pressure that your blood doesn't get pushed out of your torso and into your limbs, anyway.

>>12408979
why not ban all the commies first

>>12409132
expander cycle aerospike would be pretty cool. Might as well make use of all that hot surface area

>>12409140
I understand now why Elon was saying that bigger is better with rockets. I mean compared to its size these wires etc are nothing. This shit would take up a far greater % weight on something like Electron

>>12409138
Even better, the gas generator can run 100% fuel rich

If you couldn't tell, I'm just havin a laff here.

>>12409165
>expander cycle aerospike would be pretty cool. Might as well make use of all that hot surface area
Yup, the main limiting factor of expander cycles is the square cube law limiting their size due due to relative decrease in hot surface area vs propellant volume, and main drawback of aerospike nozzles is the greatly increased surface area exposed to nozzle-throat-levels of thermal flux.

>>12409143

Yeah because once in a while, you have to test ICBM's and after the test is done, you might want to rearm the silo with a fresh rocket. Silo's are expensive because of the sheer amount of the very hard, armoured, reinforced concrete used to withstand nuclear explosions.

Also, some rockets derived from ICBM's use silo's as their launchpad due to them allready being designed to use them.

>>12409165
i wonder how noticeable the raceway will be

>>12409165
>I understand now why Elon was saying that bigger is better with rockets
Absolutely, there's so much shit that can't get smaller but doesn't get bigger the bigger your vehicle, so it always makes sense to keep going bigger. Even two dimensional things like TPs coatings are better on bigger rockets, because while their surface area goes up the thickness of the heat shield does not, so relative tot he rocket it becomes a thinner and lighter layer the bigger the vehicle is.

>>12409143
Yes, they reuse the ones at Vandenberg AFB for testing Minutemans all the time.

>>12409192
You'll see it but it'll be a lot more space efficient than now, they don't have to care about details like that yet

Okay /sfg/ here a question I just had, lets say SpaceX manages to get 1 or 2 starships to the martian surface within 4 or 2 years. What payloads do they carry?

Is it colony materials?

Is it experiments to see if its practical to use on planet materials for construction purposes?

Or is already built machinery to create fuel for a return trip?

What payloads could they throw together in a 2 -4 year time limit that would have more value than just proving the starship system can get to Mars?

>>12409210
Lots of solar panels, drilling equipment, etc etc

>>12409162
yeah shut up, I know all that
the issue is that there's no easy way to know the pressure being exerted on your chest cavity to match your breathing regulator to
for SCUBA it's a mechanical linkage with the ocean
for balloon suit it's literally the air you're breathing, or a mechanical linkage if they're separate for stink/humidity related reasons

>>12409167
decomposes into nearly pure carbon soot and some hydrocarbon radicals

>>12409210
Probably mostly monitoring equipment to set up communications. They'd have to leave something in orbit as well. They'd want to make sure the spot they chose doesn't experience anything crazy before they put people there. That would be my guess, anyway.

>>12409210
Literally just sending a ~100 ton roll of sheet metal would be enough to make it worth it. Building materials are extremely useful and not expensive, and there's no guarantee that the first few missions land anyway so there's no reason to load up million dollar modules or whatever. Hell even if the first starship to land tip over, if they're carrying rolls of steel that cargo may actually still be totally useful once they get the landings working and send people to go scrape it up.

>>12409210
solar panels
MREs
a backhoe or two
batteries
a cybertruck with an autopilot that's commanded to draw the biggest penis on Mars to date

>>12409115
2030 is very conservative for SpaceX. 2024 is optimism, 2026 is most likely, 2028 if very much delayed for some reasons, 2030 if SpaceX failed something important.

>>12409210
Would cratering be a problem on Mars?

>>12409221
You think they'll deploy Martian Starlink as early as the first cargo missions?

>>12409217
Uh huh, I know the chemistry bro
>>12409213
Regulators are the easy part. I don't know what your deal is.

>>12409234
my deal is that the pressure being exerted on your chest cavity is going to change depending on how inflated your chest is
I just finished reading that huge post, you're suggesting balloon hardsuit for the chest cavity?

>>12409212
going pure solar is pretty silly. Though it's not like we have a fitting fission reactor laying around, either. Fuck the gov and smoothbrain "environmentalists" for delaying nuclear progress by decades

>>12409239

>>12409239
They have no choice really, if they waited for fission they wouldn't even land a human on mars by 2050, much less have hundreds of thousands of colonists.

>>12409243

>>12409221
>They'd want to make sure the spot they chose doesn't experience anything crazy before they put people there.
Nothing on Mars is particularly crazy. The craziest things are the global dust storms, which obviously happen everywhere. Landing sites are going to be dictated by elevation (as low as reasonably achievable), ground ice abundance (high is good), and solar power availability (more = better). They've already narrowed it down to some plains west of Olympus Mons last time I checked, since that area is decently far from the north pole, is flat as fuck due to being an ancient sea bed, and has water ice detectable from orbit buried just under the surface.

>>12409212
reasonable
>>12409222
That's probably the easiest thing they could do, but if they can whip up a simple bunch of tests to see if the soil is useful that knowledge could allow for later expeditions to have fully industrial scale modules earlier.
>>12409221
also reasonable

For my own part, the most unquie elements I could see would be some experimental smelters to see if glass or some kind of materials can be constructed with Martian soil. Maybe also equipment to build a better landing pad, so far the legs of starship seem to be a consistent weakness so shoring a landing pad could pay major dividends later down the line.

>>12409247
Do you have a link to the full presentation?

>>12409228
This is true. There's opportunity for hundreds of Starship launches between each Mars window, so if they're even capable of sending an unmanned vehicle to Mars one window, it's very likely that they'll have the experience and resources necessary by the next window to send at least one manned Starship, probably backed up by a dozen unmanned ones stuffed with cargo.

>>12409233
I don't see why not. A communication relay is pretty standard and would let them keep in contact with Mars if the ground station goes dark.
>>12409249
maybe unexpected condition changes wouldn't be a concern, but they'd certainly want to gather firm evidence to back up their assumptions and probably check for signs of life to pacify planetary protection spergs

>>12409238
>my deal is that the pressure being exerted on your chest cavity is going to change depending on how inflated your chest is
That's what I was saying is so challenging about a mechanical compression suit, yes.
>you're suggesting balloon hardsuit for the chest cavity?
I'm suggesting that your entire torso and head goes inside a 'normal' space suit, with an atmosphere inside that you breathe and sneeze and fart in, which goes through the normal continuous recircularization and scrubbing processes. Meanwhile, where today we have pressurized arms and legs, we would replace those with mechanical compression arm and leg sleeves. This lets us have the relative simplicity in air management of a hard suit or balloon suit as you call it, combined with the increased dexterity and mobility of a mechanical compression suit where it matters most, the limbs.

>>12409271
bean suits would be so ugly, though

>>12409239
Solar + battery is the way to go for Mars. SpaceX can't spend 1-10 billion dollar on nuclear power plant on Mars. Unless the government decides to provide the service, which it very won't likely.

450 mT = Lets say 5 starships worth of solar panel supplies with each having 5 refuel ships, each costing ~$10M per launch = $250 million for starship. Its much more affordable and doable for SpaceX to do this on their own.

>>12409239
>440,000 kg for solar
You know for a fact that SpaceX can get four or five Starships built and stuffed with solar panels and landed on Mars long before they can get any sort of approval to buy or build their own nuclear option.
Yes, nuclear is better in every other way, and that's not sarcasm. The problem is that it's worse in the only way that matters to SpaceX; it'd take much longer.
I think it's probably gonna turn out to be SpaceX just blasting Mars with solar panels for a few decades until someone finally invents a space nuclear reactor (probably for a new propulsion system) that SpaceX will buy in bulk to ship to Mars, because at that point with both options immediately available the speed becomes a moot point.

>>12409271
what if argon or neon atmosphere for the chest cavity and you breathe through a respirator

remember: there's no police on mars

>>12409257
https://youtu.be/luQfEYs2L0w?list=PLn0lnGc1Saik-yyWpeec3AWz9NgdtxDAF

>>12409279
>>12409286
Solar first makes sense, yes. But we're going to have to bite the bullet eventually. The amount of space and subsequent maintenance required becomes prohibitive once the colony reaches a particular size. Not to mention the whole massive sandstorm problem.

>>12409276
You bet, the future is beautiful brutalist spacecraft that can be repaired with a stick welder and ugly-as-sin space suits that you can do backflips with

>>12409290
Why, what would that accomplish

>>12409294
No police on the moon either. With a rover, you can go anywhere you want.

>>12409279
Solar power sucks.

>>12409303
it's lighter and I don't have to smell my own farts

>>12409239
This is an old image, but it's the total solar panel area SpaceX had put in orbit with just 420 Starlink sats, to give some perspective. Funnily enough, that's close to how many you could fit on a single Starship. Then factor out the actual Starlink part and just leave the solar. You can fit a LOT of solar on just one Starship, probably more than 6MW worth even considering the efficiency hit on Mars.

>>12409295
Sure, but again it's a bit of a moot point, because nuclear power for use in space is basically inevitable even just from a propulsion aspect. Doing solar alone at first is great because it gets us on Mars and gets interplanetary colonization rolling, which means that even if NIMBYs on Earth never allow nuclear power to become the dominant form of energy production, eventually come company on Mars or wherever is going to realize they shouldn't give a shit and is going to start mass producing their own designs.

>>12409295
Install a wiper on solar panel. Get a maintenance guy to clean up the solar panel every month or so. Its better than having a nuclear meltdown or nuclear radiation leaking from nuclear plants into your martian colony.