/sci/ - Science & Math

>>9425969
>What went wrong?

Nothing went wrong. There's just no money in space travel for the existing economy; even though what has already been done did help shape the current economy. We are just lucky that a "regular" guy struck it rich and decided to do some crazy dreams with the money.

>colonized Mars

That whole jello babies thing might be a meme, but it is also a very serious concern.

SpaceX stumbles

Blue Origin surges ahead

>>9426309
>What it feels like to chew five gum

>>9426262
>jello babies
???

>>9426309
Hush Bezos, adults are talking

>>9426346
Mars has 0.377g.

>>9426355
So? Won't they develop with muscle mass adequate for the conditions?

>>9425969
But the space race largely collapsed well before the cold war ended, with the US and USSR both falling back into a LOE posture once the expensive "race to the moon" was won. Hard to see a drive for Mars coming out of that.

>>9426367
People enjoy imagining that bones won't grow properly without 1g, and that, if so, there will not be any way found to overcome that.

>>9426373
Has it really not been tested on animals on the ISS yet? You'd think they had done so by now given how much interest in Mars colonization there is

>>9426377
Yea, everything goes to shit in microgravity. Mars has a bit more than microgravity, but people will still have problems. Babies and children would have terrible problems. People like this >>9426373 are absolute ignorant fucking moron double brainlets with their head up a unicorn's ass.

NASA got the Saturn V design from the military, along with the teams and engines and technology.

They turned it into an utterly pointless footprints & flags mission.
Then their first attempt at a vehicle was the boondoggle known as the shuttle

>>9426377
>Has it really not been tested on animals on the ISS yet?

scott kelly spent a year up there and came back pretty messed up

>>9426367
desu we don't know because we've never grown an animal to maturity in less than 1G, let alone a human.

It could be that they easily adapt, or it could be they are born retarded and unable to move.

>>9426309
Wow, that's almost as impressive as what SpaceX showed us over a year ago with Raptor.

Raptor's both more advanced and closer to going into production than BE-4. BFR will fly before New Glenn, and New Glenn will take years after the first flight before it's even competitive with Falcon Heavy, let alone BFR.

>>9425969
>What went wrong?
Nixon thought space was boring, Vietnam was fun and that oil just appeared out of thin air.

Then Vietnam was no longer fun, Arabs made oil expensive and inflation ate all the money.

>>9426537
That engine is 3x the size of Raptor

>>9426537
>Wow, that's almost as impressive as what SpaceX showed us over a year ago with Raptor.
SpaceX has never built a Raptor.
They don't even know what the final size of the engine will be let alone built it and tested it.

>Raptor's both more advanced
it literally isn't
ffsc is just a less-used cycle
orsc is actually far more difficult to achieve (and Blue Origin is the first American company to do it)

>BFR will fly before New Glenn
hahahahahahahhahaha
*inhales*
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

>will take years after the first flight before it's even competitive with Falcon Heavy, let alone BFR.
it will beat Falcon Heavy on price immediately by nature of being a single-core design

There's a reason nobody takes you musk nutters seriously. You all ignore the facts and believe anything that comes from his mouth.

What would people do in those "colonies" again?

>>9426309

Now do that in a vacuum.

>>9427657
Grow space potatoes

>>9426346
The claim that viable offspring cant be produced at roughly 1/3 G.

>>9427653
>SpaceX has never built a Raptor.
Why would you set up an assembly line for building an unfinished engine?

>orsc is actually far more difficult to achieve

a: not true
b: so you claim they did something thats both more difficult and yet worse?

>>9425969
communists took over academia and used their positions in academics and popular culture to ruin everything.

>>9426309
>muh blue origin
call me when they deliver a payload to orbit.

Saturn V launcher could have easily been made by simply bying superior Russian engines.

It hasn't been done because there is no need for large rockets.

It's not 60's anymore and dick waving contests are gone.

>>9427657
>declare independence
>space war 1

>>9428028
>It's not 60's anymore and dick waving contests are gone.

Now it's the 2010's and in place of dick waving we have NuVag gaping

>>9427653
You know the BE-4 isn't really that advanced or good of an engine right? It uses staged-combustion that's been used by the Russians since the 60's and has a relatively low chamber pressure; which is why despite it's large size, 7 of them can't even equal half the thrust generated by the 5 F-1 engines of the Saturn 5. The only advanced aspect of the BE-4 is the Methane and Liquid oxygen fuel which it uses just like the Raptor. It's a conservative design that is hard to fuck up (although BO have blown it up during testing twice) which is why ULA have selected it to replace their Russian engines which are also very reliable. The Raptor on the other hand, is an entirely different beast, it's a cutting edge design which will be the most advanced rocket engine in the world when it first enters service (which explains the large USAF interest and funding it has attracted) This is because of it's unique full-flow combustion cycle that makes it incredibly efficient as it burns 100% of its fuel and it's incredibly high chamber pressure that allows the Raptor, which is only slightly bigger than SpaceX's currently used Merlin 1D to output over three times the latter's thrust.

>>9427653
>>Wow, that's almost as impressive as what SpaceX showed us over a year ago with Raptor.
>SpaceX has never built a Raptor.
...and Blue Origin has never built a BE-4, but SpaceX is over a year ahead in the prototyping and ground-testing process.

>ffsc is just a less-used cycle
>orsc is actually far more difficult to achieve (and Blue Origin is the first American company to do it)
But that's wrong, you moron. The FFSC has two pumps, and one side is ORSC, and they have to work together and feed each other (which greatly complicates development, since they're not independent of each other and can't be developed separately). FFSC is more technically difficult and produces higher chamber pressures. Raptor will have higher specific impulse and higher thrust-to-weight than BE-4.

>>will take years after the first flight before it's even competitive with Falcon Heavy, let alone BFR.
>it will beat Falcon Heavy on price immediately by nature of being a single-core design
It will never match Falcon Heavy on price, because less of it is reusable, and the expendable portion is more expensive. New Glenn will use a large, costly BE-4 engine, and an additional BE-3 engine whenever it goes beyond LEO, where Falcon Heavy will only use one cheap Merlin 1Dvac engine.

New Glenn's a much less ambitious design. Lacking any experience with orbital launch, Blue Origin has gone with a high-empty-mass booster design and accepted a major performance loss to add lots of recovery hardware. They have to both land downrange and use a large upper stage. The size of the upper stage required means the empty mass makes it unsuitable for beyond-LEO missions, so they have to add a third stage for those.

Blue Origin is older than SpaceX but has lagged far behind it. They haven't gained the experience, they can't attract the most talented and capable people, they don't have the cash flow that SpaceX has. They're years behind, and not really comparable.

>>9428149
>The only advanced aspect of the BE-4 is the Methane and Liquid oxygen fuel
Not true or fair. Like Raptor, it will use no-wear fluid bearings (for long-life reusability), instead of the conventional ball bearings, and have fast, precise throttleability (for use as a landing engine).

It's not as advanced as Raptor, but if Raptor weren't being developed, BE-4 would be the most advanced engine ever.

You can't really compare how fucked up people on the ISS are when they come back from space. They spend the whole time in 0g. Even at 0.37g there are the downward forces acting on your body whereas at 0g there are none.

All this talk of mars colonisation is fucking retarded anyway. Setting up domes and shit, terraforming and building up a whole planet will require an insane amount of resources and you could instead build thousands of 1g oneill cylinders.

>>9428261
Oh, and I stand by BFR flying before New Glenn.

Remember, Blue Origin has *never* put a vehicle into production before, and never put anything to orbit. They have only ever built a few small suborbital prototypes. They're going to run into so many problems as they try to get their factory running.

For SpaceX, this is not their first rodeo. They're going straight from getting one vehicle up to mature design and production rates, to their next vehicle. And it's not as much of a step up as people think. Rockets are very scalable, there are many advantages to making them bigger. Saturn V flew barely a decade after the first orbital rocket of any size. It's not that hard to make a big rocket.

SpaceX will be going into BFR with experience from Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy, Dragon, and Dragon 2. They'll just be doing what they've done before, bigger and better, like when they jumped from Falcon 1 reaching orbit in 2008 to Falcon 9 in 2010 to Falcon 9 1.1 in 2013. That's a very natural progression for a young company, just following their upward track.

What Blue Origin's aiming for with New Glenn is a huge leap from having done basically nothing so far but experiments.

>>9428343
>building up a whole planet will require an insane amount of resources and you could instead build thousands of 1g oneill cylinders.
The resources are on the planet, and you don't have to do the whole planet at once to live on it. Space stations are just out in space, where there's nothing.

You might say, "Well, there are asteroids." Now you're talking about asteroid colonization. What makes an asteroid better than a planet to colonize?

>>9428375
For a start you don't have to contend with bringing shit up and down a gravity well on an asteroid which is a pretty huge advantage. The resources in asteroids are a lot easier to obtain when you can just grab a 99% whatever composition asteroid you want rather than mining a bajillion tons of dirt to find what you want. There are way more resources in space than on mars and at 1g you don't run any risk of potential low g problems.

>>9428343
>you could instead build thousands of 1g oneill cylinders
we know who is going to pay for colonizing Mars. who is going to pay for oneill cylinders?

>>9426466
>>9426446

>mars has mirogravity conditions.

You guys need to read a book.

>>9426450
>NASA got the Saturn V design from the miliary

This is incorrect. The Saturn series was specifically designed for the Apollo project. Earlier boosters used by NASA were adapted military issiles (Redstone, Atlas and Titan.)

Booster designers and engineers during the Saturn project were largely formerly military designers, since the military had been the previous and only other employer of those who build missiles. Notably the Von Braun team which had previously been employed by the army.

Saturn had no military applications, it was way too powerful for lobbing warheads about, and the USAF dropped its man in space program (which would have needed some sort f big booster to loft stations into orbit) which is why the Saturn series did not continue in any sort of production after the Apollo project ended,

It was not a military rocket, and was of no interest to the military.

>>9427657
Same things they do everywhere else.

Largely get up to the dickens and eat and shit.

>>9428423
>you don't have to contend with bringing shit up and down a gravity well on an asteroid which is a pretty huge advantage
Not so much, when the asteroids are widely separated and moving on different trajectories. The idea that planetary gravity wells are horribly hard to deal with is a relic of the weird post-Apollo lack of progress in rocketry, which is ending now with efficiently reusable rockets. For Mars, you don't even need staged rockets.

>you can just grab a 99% whatever composition asteroid you want
This is pure fantasy. Asteroids are interesting for mining, but nowhere near this ideal. They're rocks and dirtballs, not gold nuggets and springs of drinking water.

>mining a bajillion tons of dirt to find what you want
Don't be confused by analyses of the average or typical soil on Mars. Mining on Mars will be like mining on Earth. If you look around, you'll find good ore bodies.

>There are way more resources in space than on mars
In all of space, sure, especially if you include Mars as an object in space, but Mars is about 100 times more massive than all of the asteroids around the sun put together.

>at 1g you don't run any risk of potential low g problems.
You can build big 1g centrifuges on Mars, if you want them that badly. The difference is, you at least start out with ~0.4g, and you're surrounded by materials.

>>9428444
Let O'Neill pay for them.

>>9428343
>you could instead build thousands of 1g oneill cylinders.
but we cant, do you really actually think that we have the materials to build a fucking O'neill cylinder? Going from the ISS to an O'neill cylinder is a much larger step than you seem to realize

>>9425969
>nuclear powered rockets

This would be the solution to a lot of problem. We have the technical ability to go further and faster but we do not use it because normies are afraid of that.

It's still strange because we have nuclear submarines.

Ok, but should we even consider building O'neil cylinders before we've even mined 1/5 of Mercury

>>9428478
Saturn V used the F-1 engine, which was developed by the military, starting in the mid-50s. Its design was *finalized* by NASA, not developed from scratch.

The military was working on moonshot plans well before NASA was formed, and NASA mostly carried on from that work. The moon was considered likely to become important strategic high ground, so the military was interested in building a base there.

>>9428507
>Saturn V used the F-1 engine, which was developed by the military
Nope.

https://history.nasa.gov/SP-4206/ch4.htm#104

Hopefully the bad guys keep trying to put malsats up there and the good guys keep destroying them

>>9428521
>https://history.nasa.gov/SP-4206/ch4.htm#104
>The F-1 engine had roots outside NASA: the big booster came to the space agency in 1958 as part of the Air Force legacy. The F-1 engine, developed by Rocketdyne, dated back to an Air Force program in 1955.
Wow, very disagreeing. Much counterpoint.

>falcon heavy took 10 years from announcement to first flight
>"b-but BFR will fly 4 years after it's announced!"
This is how retarded you sound.

>>9428149
Wow you're fucking retarded.
>It uses staged-combustion that's been used by the Russians since the 60's
Nobody in the US has ever managed to create this "archaic" engine type before until now.
>and has a relatively low chamber pressure
BE-4 is purposefully built with room for improvement across the board (twr, isp, chamber pressure) similar to the original merlin
Its thrust can theoretically be uprated to 3500KM (3.5x that of the "Raptor" prototype)
>7 of them can't even equal half the thrust generated by the 5 F-1 engines of the Saturn 5
falcon heavy has 2/3 the thrust of saturn v but delivers less than half the payload to orbit
>(although BO have blown it up during testing twice)
flat out wrong
>will be the most advanced rocket engine in the world
by what metric
the only thing it will be "best" at is twr
the current winner of twr is merlin and it's hardly an "advanced" engine
>(which explains the large USAF interest and funding it has attracted)
actually, spacex has hundreds of lobbyists and friends in congress (more than ULA ironically)
government funding for raptor is cronyism at its finest
plus, spacex will never win another defense contract after how bad they fucked up Zuma
>his is because of it's unique full-flow combustion cycle that makes it incredibly efficient as it burns 100% of its fuel
lmao that's not how ffsc works you dimwit
> it's incredibly high chamber pressure that allows the Raptor
its chamber pressure has been downgraded more than 50% since last year (it's already 30% lower than RD-180)
>which is only slightly bigger than SpaceX's currently used Merlin 1D to output over three times the latter's thrust.
flat out wrong
The "final version" of raptor (which isn't even designed yet) will only have 1.86 times the thrust of Merlin

>>9428261
>FFSC is more technically difficult
not true
stresses and temperatures on all components is lower than in orsc

high chamber pressure is a design choice and is not determined by cycle type (and spacex has since retraced their ridiculous 300-bar design for one that's even more conservative than RD-180)

>>9428483
>You can build big 1g centrifuges on Mars
No you can't.

>>9428613
It's possible, just obscenely more complex than spinning a drum in space and if any of the components attaching the centrifuge to the ground fail then everyone dies a horrible death.

>>9428623
You can't do it because Mars gravity is too high and you would always experience dynamic forces at the crest and trough of each rotation (varying as much as .6g) due to it.

>>9428633
??? you know we have centrifuges on Earth right ?

>>9428640
You can't live in those centrifuges.

>>9428642
Because we are already at 1g, but if you wanted to build a massive one and live at 1.5g's, there is nothing stopping you

>>9428556
>to first flight

Afaik it didn't fly yet and it already is 6-7 years late right?

The fact that there are still people believing a single word that this south african fraud says is amazes me.

>>9428601
>>It uses staged-combustion that's been used by the Russians since the 60's
>Nobody in the US has ever managed to create this "archaic" engine type before until now.
What are you talking about? The space shuttle main engine is a staged combustion design. As for ORSC in particular, it was not pursued in the US.

>BE-4 is purposefully built with room for improvement across the board
You're grasping at straws, with this claim.

>>will be the most advanced rocket engine in the world
>by what metric
>the only thing it will be "best" at is twr
Don't be such a monkey. Raptor will be a highly reusable design, unlike any rocket engine that has ever existed before it, and it will have higher specific impulse and twr than BE-4, making it generally superior.

>actually, spacex has hundreds of lobbyists and friends in congress (more than ULA ironically)
This is the most absurd claim. ULA is Boeing+LM. That's most of the American aerospace industry.

>>9428608
>stresses and temperatures on all components is lower than in orsc
You're describing how ORSC is shittier and less suitable for a highly-reusable design, not how it's technically more challenging.

>high chamber pressure is a design choice and is not determined by cycle type
Practically achievable chamber pressures depend on cycle type. It's no coincidence that Blue Origin's talking about chamber pressures around half Raptor's.

>spacex has since retraced their ridiculous 300-bar design
Nothing ridiculous about it. They're being conservative for their first iteration, so they can get it flying sooner (Raptor's expected to be flight-ready later this year - the subscale prototype was done like a year and a half ago). They still intend to work up to 300 bar after it's flying.

>>9428633
Jesus Christ, how fucking stupid do you have to be, to assume that the centrifuge has to be on it side like a wheel? Do you have an actual intellectual disability? Do you have to live in a home where they dress you and feed you?

>>9428659
>Don't be such a monkey. Raptor will be a highly reusable design, unlike any rocket engine that has ever existed before it, and it will have higher specific impulse and twr than BE-4, making it generally superior.

>will will will

It's always the future that WILL fix it right?

Let's not talk about how we perform right now we WILL fix it.

Muscovites are the most pathetic beings on this planet.

>>9428673
>how we perform right now
As of right now, SpaceX is the most active orbital launch provider in the world, and Blue Origin hasn't come anywhere close to putting anything in orbit.

>>9428673
SpaceX had several failures that set them back years
It's lunacy to pretend that Blue Origin will stick to their schedule

>>9428680
Lowest reliability not making money being dishonest with failures....

Btw I do not compare thrm to BO

Drive your tesla off of a cliff you 19 year old piece of hipster trash.

>>9428682

>Drive your tesla off of a cliff you 19 year old piece of hipster trash

I, too, get mad at people on the internet because I need people to talk to. How was your day, honey?

>>9428659
>The space shuttle main engine is a staged combustion design.
frsc is far easier, a detail you conveniently left out

>You're grasping at straws
nope
it's literally purposefully built this way
in Blue Origin's own words "a low performance version of a high performance architecture"

>Raptor will be a highly reusable design, unlike any rocket engine that has ever existed before it
uhhh
merlin? be-3? half a dozen prototypes built by pratt & whitney in the 60s?

>and it will have higher specific impulse and twr than BE-4
What is BE-4's ISP? Yes, this is a shit test for you because you're obviously making stuff up at this point.

>This is the most absurd claim. ULA is Boeing+LM. That's most of the American aerospace industry.
ULA lobbying is separate from Boeing and Lockheed, dimwit.

>You're describing how ORSC is shittier and less suitable for a highly-reusable design, not how it's technically more challenging.
moving the goalposts
Blue Origin went with orsc because it's a proven cycle (by the Russians) and they have actual important goals to meet like defense payload launches and not some retarded Mars fantasy

>It's no coincidence that Blue Origin's talking about chamber pressures around half Raptor's.
RD-180 uses an identical cycle to BE-4 and has a higher chamber pressure than Raptor is claimed to be aiming for.

>Nothing ridiculous about it. They're being conservative for their first iteration, so they can get it flying sooner (Raptor's expected to be flight-ready later this year - the subscale prototype was done like a year and a half ago). They still intend to work up to 300 bar after it's flying.
literally everything in this statement is false

>>9425969
the cold war hasn't ended anon, now they steal each other's data basically hack each other instead

>>9428691

>ULA lobbying is separate from Boeing and Lockheed, dimwit

>...ce 2006, United Launch Alliance, a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin, has served as the nat...

Ok. So the lobbying is separate from either Boeing or Lockheed. Instead it's just FUNDED and CONTROLLED by Boeing and Lockheed. Totally different. Glad I understand that now.

>>9428659
>Jesus Christ, how fucking stupid do you have to be, to assume that the centrifuge has to be on it side like a wheel? Do you have an actual intellectual disability? Do you have to live in a home where they dress you and feed you?
Are you genuinely retarded?
Did you fail high school physics?

>>9428682
>Btw I do not compare thrm to BO
BO has yet to make any real payload launches, or make the bug fixes that are required after said yet-to-be-completed launches. So you're definitely right; they're not really comparable past the point that they're both companies that want to launch shit into orbit around gravity wells.

Meanwhile, as BO contemplates what stardust tastes like, Spess Teslah is doing coke lines of it off the Defense Industry's ever-expanding rack. SpaceX has had numerous successes, failures, and the launch experience to actually shoot things into space reliably. This is unbelievably expensive, however, to do actual work and not just WANT to do something.

You're like those kids on /k/ who read a report from the Airforce and immediately run to 4chan to tell everyone how shitty the A10 is and how the fleet of them should be scrapped, despite the fact that it is a successful, efficient, and reliable vehicle that does its fucking job.

>>9428715
Their last launch had paying commercial payloads.

>>9428714
Now orient your centrifuge 90* to the left or right. You now have a centrifuge with no g discrepancies.

>>9428702
https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?id=D000057934

>>9428718
I'm actually interested in this, any links?

>tfw there may be more companies flying space stuff in the next decade
>tfw I may not actually be born twenty years to early or late

>>9428746
https://www.inverse.com/article/39705-blue-origin-reveals-its-first-commercial-payloads-on-board-new-shepard

>>9428714
Put it sideways
Spacex pls pay me

>>9428726

>Salvatore T. “Tory” Bruno is the president and chief executive officer for United Launch Alliance (ULA). In this role, Bruno serves as the principal strategic leader of the organization and oversees all business management and operations.

>Prior to joining ULA, he served as the vice president and general manager of Lockheed Martin Strategic and Missile Defense Systems.

We can keep trading posts but that's pointless. I think we disagree over the definition of a "joint venture." Boeing and Lockheed run it. That's what being a "subsidiary" means!

>>9428752
>>9428723
That would be like living in a car that's constantly driving in a tight circle

>>9428763
Imagine, now get this, that you live on the WALL
Because, you know, that's where force is pushing you.

>>9428763

With diagonal walls you can make it work, sort of.

>>9428691
>frsc is far easier, a detail you conveniently left out
If it's so much easier, why are are there so few of this type? Since kerosene and UDMH are unsuitable for the FRSC cycle, historical FRSC engines are hydrogen-fuelled engines, which are much harder to develop than hydrocarbon-fuelled engines.

The Soviets developed ORSC engines because they were poor and had to develop versatile tools, not because they were geniuses who could do things Americans couldn't. Americans put hydrogen-fuelled upper stages on top of their rockets, and strapped solid boosters to the bottom. They didn't need to get fancy making the most of all-kerolox or all-hypergolic rockets, because they had the development funding to fill out their toolbox with variety.

You know why ULA uses RD-180? Cheap Russian labor. If the Russians were making gas-generator engines, they'd have talked up a different line of bullshit to pretend the purchase was about something other than offshoring and cutting American workers out of the deal.

>What is BE-4's ISP? Yes, this is a shit test for you because you're obviously making stuff up
For the same propellant combination, sea-level Isp is primarily determined by chamber pressure. If you don't understand this basic stuff, keep your bitch mouth shut while the men are talking.

>RD-180 uses an identical cycle to BE-4 and has a higher chamber pressure than Raptor is claimed to be aiming for.
RD-180 is an expendable engine. It runs for 4 minutes, and then it's garbage. That means they can push it harder.

And 250 bar is not the pressure Raptor is "aiming for", but the pressure they're going to run the initial flight model at. They're still aiming for 300 bar, they just don't need that much performance to make BFR work, and prefer the margin initially, for confidence in the schedule.

>>9428767
then it would be like living in a car going around s-curves constantly

>>9428771

I already live in a car and this thought experiment is making me stop wanting to be an astronaut.

>>9428751
Neat! Thanks, anon.

>The next article is about fucking pokemon go
I have a serious issue with this being the NEXT thing I am supposed to read after a historical event in a history-altering field.

>>9428770
>If it's so much easier, why are are there so few of this type? Since kerosene and UDMH are unsuitable for the FRSC cycle, historical FRSC engines are hydrogen-fuelled engines, which are much harder to develop than hydrocarbon-fuelled engines.
>The Soviets developed ORSC engines because they were poor and had to develop versatile tools, not because they were geniuses who could do things Americans couldn't. Americans put hydrogen-fuelled upper stages on top of their rockets, and strapped solid boosters to the bottom. They didn't need to get fancy making the most of all-kerolox or all-hypergolic rockets, because they had the development funding to fill out their toolbox with variety.
>You know why ULA uses RD-180? Cheap Russian labor. If the Russians were making gas-generator engines, they'd have talked up a different line of bullshit to pretend the purchase was about something other than offshoring and cutting American workers out of the deal.
Soviets made orsc engines because they could. They were and still are better at building engines. frsc was never done because the russians didn't need it and the american's barely managed to make it work when they made one

russians don't even put orsc engines on upper stages you stupid faggot

>For the same propellant combination, sea-level Isp is primarily determined by chamber pressure. If you don't understand this basic stuff, keep your bitch mouth shut while the men are talking.
I'll ask again, what is BE-4's isp?

>RD-180 is an expendable engine. It runs for 4 minutes, and then it's garbage. That means they can push it harder.
they test the engine before flying it
there's no reason to believe that raptor will be as reusable as they claim

>And 250 bar is not the pressure Raptor is "aiming for", but the pressure they're going to run the initial flight model at. They're still aiming for 300 bar
source?

>and prefer the margin initially, for confidence in the schedule.
literally what?

>>9428766

That runs into the same problem as creating artificial gravity in spaceships.

The ring/centrifuge has to be really big or the discrepancy between the forces across the length of a person's body cause all sorts of issues.

>>9428779
>>suborbital test
>>history altering
hardly.

Man I'm really enjoying all the rocket engine shilling in this thread

>>9428771
You mean a car going around a circular, banked track constantly.

Rather than a cylinder, It would be a section of inverted cone with a 24 degree slope from upright. The gravitation strength would vary from the bottom to the top (as the gravitational strength would vary from floor to floor in a multi-floor building in a cylindrical habitat), but as is generally the case with centifugal weirdness, this effect could be made arbitrarily small by increasing the diameter of the cone section and limiting the proportional height.

>>9428760

Boeing and Lockheed only make very high level decisions for ULA. It is 95% autonomous - ULA makes its own decisions regarding how to spend its money, what to pursue, how to handle contracts, projects, etc.

>>9428789
>history altering field
>field
>not event

I'm sure you may think sending people into space is a quaint little hobby, but it's a little more important than you think.

>>9428780
>russians don't even put orsc engines on upper stages
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RD-0210
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RD-120
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RD-0124

I'm out of patience with your ignorance and stupidity.

>>9428802
second stages are not upper stages you stupid faggot

>>9428808
You're losing, anon. Just deal with it and stop being a triggered sore loser.

>>9428793

There in lies our difference. We won't agree. I think that qualifies ULA for being controlled by it's investors and therefor representative of the mainstream aerospace industry.

It also maintained an effective monopoly on US space launches for about a decade. Again, mainstream as shit IMO.

>>9428793
Boeing and Lockheed Martin are the companies that will make or lose money if ULA succeeds or fails. Boeing and LM's political pull are therefore applied for ULA's benefit.

>>9428826

I'm not that guy, I'm a different anon. I guess it depends on how you define 'controlled'. ULA has a mandate to deliver profits to B/LM, but other than that the parent companies don't interfere with its daily business and operations. Yes, I'd agree that it represents 'mainstream aerospace', but that -in and of itself- isn't necessarily a bad thing. ULA was also created by the government, people forget that. Boeing and Lockheed traditionally don't play well, and we're content to try and compete for launches, until the government stepped in and forced them to partner together to provide assured access to space - thus ULA.

>>9428832

To a certain extent, but it's more of a 'halo' effect - B/LM might lobby for more aerospace funding, or something similar, but they don't and won't lobby for specific ULA policy, ULA handles that on its own. There are multiple reasons, but the primary one is that one of the parents may inadvertently lobby for something that hurts them in the long run.

>>9428839
>they don't and won't lobby for specific ULA policy
So are you a paid shill, or just someone who likes pretending to be informed but has no clue and is constantly making stuff up that you think sounds plausible?

Of course the parent companies put their lobbying assets and connections to use, trying to make ULA profitable for them. You'd have to be an idiot to believe otherwise.

So who's drinking tonight?

Post your

>drink of choice
>what's been bothering you lately
>cocktail ideas

>>9428800
>>I'm sure you may think sending people into space is a quaint little hobby,
and it is if you're only going suborbital.

>>9428854
What B.O. is gearing up for is basically an amusement park ride.

>>9428844

OK anon, what are your sources then? I'm trying to help dispel some common misconceptions, and I've been trying to just have a rationale conversation.

So far your rebuttal is:

>name calling
>un-proven assertion

Overlooking the first part, where are your sources then? If I have over-looked something and you can show me where I'll retract my statement.

>>9428881
>>>provides no sources, makes grossly implausible claims
>>those claims are grossly implausible!
>where are your sources for that claim?!
I'm applying reasoning. Lobbying isn't something that's all done out in the open. It's 99% whispered conversations and back room handshake deals.

ULA doesn't exist independently. It's a joint venture of Boeing and LM. Any money it makes goes to them. Any money it loses, they lose. OF COURSE they're applying what pressure they can to make it profitable.

>>9426537
>BFR will fly before New Glenn,

BFR won't fly before 2030, new glenn will be flying either this year or the next at the latest.

If BFR doesnt fly by 2026 Spacex is done

Assuming Elon's pals at Googl wont partner with him to create Skynet before that

If one nation makes the innovation then the others will just steal the tech and no one will follow patent laws with an invention as useful as nuclear powered rockets, were kind of at a mexican standoff

>>9428783
well yeah the idea is that it will be big enough to mitigate that, thats why space assembly should be priority 1

>>9429187
Only if you are stupid enough not to nuke them from space using your nuclear rockets. American in other words.

>Space X
retard

>>9426309

>>9426367
Why not just breed some rats on the ISS? Seems easy enough.

>>9428763
Make the "floor" of the centrifuge inclined. Like how a NASCAR track is banked on the turns.

>>9426309
congrats anon

>>9428492
There's no underwater treaty to prevent it.

>>9428492
>pic

That open space between the bomb placement gun and the hole in the pusher plate makes me nervous. I can see it fucking up if for some weird reason the craft's attitude changes even a tiny bit. Like sudden unscheduled attitude change just as the bomb leaves the gun and the bomb hits the rim instead of flying through the hole. It'd better have some sort of remote trigger that only triggers the bomb when it detects it has reached x distance or the entire thing is fucked. Oh sure, you say "that can't happen, there won't be an attitude change like that!" but, I still wouldn't trust it, because weird shit happens all the time.

>>9429670
pussy

>>9429678
>bad design = manly
>t. engineer

>>9428492
>We have the technical ability
Project Orion was a 1950s physicist pipe dream, from the same kind of people who said, "Controlled fusion reactors? Sure, we'll do that in a couple of years!"

It was never anywhere close to being a realized technology. Rather, it was always just a sketch at the sliderules and blackboards physical analysis level, like space elevators or fusion rockets. So no, we don't "have the technical ability". It's one of many sketchy concepts, of the kind where the cost and schedule length estimates go up, and the ultimate probability of success go down, by orders of magnitude when you stop asking physicists and start asking good engineers and experienced project managers.

Why don't they just set up an adjustable centrifuge for mice babbys to grow up in?

It wouldn't even have to be massive, and it would provide more valuable results than half the shit they send up there.

>>9428808

>second stages are not upper stages

what the fuck am I reading

>>9429936

I'm retarded.
http://spaceflight101.com/iss/mouse-habitat-experiment/

>>9429976
It sounds like these shitters have been keeping mice in 1g, so they can try to isolate the space radiation effects from the microgravity effects.

I think they've been deliberately avoiding partial-gravity experiments from the start, in order to justify the existence of ISS. If partial artificial gravity is easy to provide and drastically reduces the health issues of prolonged spaceflight, then there's little urgency to the humans-in-microgravity research which is the main reason for spending such absurd amounts of money on ISS.

They don't want to know, because the answer might be extremely embarassing.

>>9430011
>It sounds like these shitters have been keeping mice in 1g

I didn't dig up any actual experiments but I would not doubt that at all.

And your other points are also valid.

Its a shame.

>>9430011
>>9430022

"The Mouse Habitat will be set up in the Cell Biology Experiment Facility CBEF in the Kibo module that provides two research sections. One Cage Unit facilitating six mice will be set up in the Micro-g section where mice experience the full space environment (microgravity, radiation)".

>>9430056
"Microgravity" means effectively zero-g (perfect 0g is basically unattainable, due to things like drag in space, electromagnetic forces, radiation pressure, other objects moving onboard, etc.), not substantial partial gravity like on the moon or Mars.

It's too dangerous to fly out of orbit because of all the space debris.

>>9430022
>>9430011
>>9430056
Phantom grant chasing will doom us all. I wish I had billions. I'd send up all manner of shit for real science.

>>9430102
>>9430102
They would not let you send up real science that would embarasss them
In the whole existance of the ISS they have not done anything practical

Yet the scam of the ISS has successfully tricked all sorts of amatuer space enthusiasts that the shuttle was good, that the shuttle needed to build/service it, and that the ISS is good for "research"

>>9430405
I'd form my own country, outside the space treaty and have nuclear rockets all over the place.

>>9430422
>Forgot hookers and blackjack.

>>9428970
New Glen will not be flying this year or the next. They haven't finished the factory. They haven't started work on a launchpad. They have no landing ship bought and they haven't even begun to retrofit one. I give three years minimum, and given BO's glacial fucking pase it's more like 5 years before NG's first flight, which will probably take another year and a half before they can even land reliably.

I am sick of this shit. Let's make friends with Russia and redo all of our nuclear treaties.

>>9426346
A lot of human development is dependent on gravity. if you develop in a fraction of earth's your bones will never mineralize properly and your will have lots of loose collagen coating them.

>>9426377
>Has it really not been tested on animals on the ISS yet? You'd think they had done so by now given how much interest in Mars colonization there is
None that simulates mars gravity. The centrifuge module they would have used for such experiments got cancelled.

>>9431533
You would never get that shit of the ground and if you tried everything would be dead, deaf and blind for miles around.

>>9426520
We've grown cell cultures in space and they always end up being soft and having an altered metabolism.

>>9431539
False. And why would you stand close to a nuclear explosion? That is fucking dumb. It is the best way to get large payloads into space. There more I read the less I think it is the best propulsion system once in space.

>>9425969

The cold war didn't end.

>>9431544
>>9431533
How the hell would you steer that thing, especially during liftoff?

>>9431812
smaller nukes as side thrusters

>>9431812
probably by the hydrolic shock absorbers

>>9431812
The small ones can be build in space and even if you launch from Earth you dont need steering where you are going

>>9428792
if you make it a bowl shape instead of a cone gravity will always be acting towards the floor, the middle of the bowl will still be at martian gravity so perfect for warehouses or whatever, and topside will be for 1g habitation.

what are manned missions supposed to accomplish?
admit it, there's no point besides politics and propaganda, just send robots.

>>9431533
Yeah man, let's saturate all of our useful orbits with clouds of high energy radioactive plasma and destroy all of our satelites.

>>9432012

developing technology to enable settlement and colonization

I know this is /sci but bear with me here for a moment: what if I told you that science and exploration is not the only, or even main, goal of spaceflight

mind blown

>New Glenn

No reusable upper stage. BFR on the other hand is fully reusable.

If we can't colonize Antarctica what makes you think we can colonize other planets?

>>9432079
Valid point.

>>9432079
Nobody wants to colonize Antarctica and there is very little incentive to right now unfortunately.
>can't
There are people living in Antarctica already.

Your argument is essentially
>we can't colonize my backyard; therefore, we can't colonize another planet.
Unless you're trying to say that a Mars colonization program would have issues stirring up enough government support to take off. That's definitely possible.

I'm a massive brainlet but i love coming to /sci/ just for autism arguments about rockets and mars.

>>9426466
>scott kelly
The singer from Neurosis?

>>9432211
>>9432079
There's colonies on Antarctica you massive fucking shitters, no one has an interest in permanently staying there.

>>9432012
>>9432056
The only thing I can think of is specifically for building colonies off world. We won't be settling on any planet in our solar system, but we can build in space and spin shit up for 1g. I think Venus and Neptune we can build floating colonies since the g and pressure are just right at those levels. but, I'm not to sure about the weather at that level and corrosion. Radiation can always be blocked with extra shielding. I think that's mentioned in the bottom part of this image.

>>9432079
But, we have you fucking mouthbreather. Peopel even raise families there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Antarctica

>>9432029
Space is a big space.

>>9428444
mexico

>>9428556
Falcon Heavy was announced, but SpaceX didn't start working on i until a couple years ago, because they realized they needed to make Falcon 9 a lot bigger and more capable in order to make it reusable and still have useful payload. If they went ahead with Falcon Heavy they would have completed it in a couple years, but then they'd have two non-recoverable non-reusable rockets that they'd need to develop into what we have today, which basically means throwing all that original Falcon Heavy work out the window.

BFR isn't another rocket in the Falcon family, it's its own thing. That means it doesn't need to wait for the design of some other rocket to be finalized before work can go ahead. Really the only thing BFR needs completed before it can be heavily worked on is the Raptor engine, and that's nearly completed as we speak.

>>9428601
>the current winner of twr is merlin and it's hardly an "advanced" engine

>highest TWR of any liquid fueled engine ever
>capable of multiple restarts in flight
>capable of multiple reuses without refurbishment
>serves as both the lower and upper stage engine in two different forms
>'hardly advanced'

fuck off

>>9428601
Northrop Grumman fucked Zuma lol not SpaceX

>>9428680
roasted

>>9428691
>RD-180 uses an identical cycle to BE-4 and has a higher chamber pressure than Raptor is claimed to be aiming for.
KEROSEEEENE

>>9428718
"""""payloads""""" on a slightly suborbital rocket flight of several minutes, sure.

>>9428779
>tape on the outside
tape goes on the inside of your helmet so the air pressure is working to seal the cracks instead of working to lift the tape, imbecile

>>9428770
>For the same propellant combination
true, except BE-4 doesn't use the same fuel as Raptor. BE-4 uses liquefied natural gas, not pure liquid methane. This means there's some fraction of heavier hydrocarbons like ethane and propane in there, which as a result decrease the specific impulse further. I assume BO will remove any sulfur compounds from the natural gas of course.

>>9428780
>I'll ask again, what is BE-4's isp?

less than Raptor's; lower chamber pressure, natural gas as opposed to pure methane, both decrease the Isp.

>>9433397
I'm sure that becomes a concern after you have time to take your fucking helmet off.

>>9428808
kek
downvoted tho

>>9428849
>water
>social alcoholism
>ice water with mint for flavor and lemon for vitamin C

>>9428864
At least they won't be waiting in line

>>9433402
They just call it "LNG" to make it sound a little different from what SpaceX had already announced it was doing, in a sad attempt to not sound like a copycat.

They're not going to just take bog-standard commodity LNG for their rocket, any more than kerosene rockets use ordinary jet fuel. They'll want as consistent a fuel as possible, to minimize the chance of anything going wrong with their engines.

>>9428970
>new glenn will be flying either this year or the next at the latest.

>>9433395
round earthers taking pictures of the horizon

>>9429533
those pond plants look healthy

>>9429664
There are no treaties involving nuclear reactors/nuclear powered vehicles, anon.

>>9431544
>It is the best way to get large payloads into space.

Except the thing isn't reusable, and nukes are an expensive rocket fuel.

Nuclear pulse propulsion makes the most sense for missions where chemical and nuclear thermal don't cut it, like manned missions to the ice giants and Kuiper belt.

>>9432079
Read the Antarctic treaty, basically no country can claim ownership of Antarctica.

If someone wanted to they could build a self sufficient nuclear powered country on Antarctica, supplying all their own energy and food and materials and fuels.

>>9433427
You can get hundreds of times the payload into space than a rocket like Falcon Heavy can. The cost savings is there if you use the potential capacity.

>>9433427
>>9433446
And for things like space stations, moon bases, etc.. It gives engineers a lot more space to design parts. You can potentially build much better and larger structures because your individual components can be much larger.

If you are just launching a crew or some supplies to a space station it of course does not make any sense.

>>9433446
BFR will be cheaper to develop and cheaper to fly hundreds of times than a Project Orion would be to fly once.

>>9433427
>and nukes are an expensive rocket fuel.
Not true, nukes are cheap, and for the same fissile material you can indefinately scale the vehicle

>>9433455
>nukes are cheap
Not by the ton.

>>9433450
I'm skeptical of that.

>>9428007
underrated post

>>9433460
By the amount of energy they produce they are certainly cheaper than oil
Uranium is a very common material, and a single reactor will produce multiple tons of plutonium a year.
You only need something like 5 kg for a bomb.

>>9433450
Not per ton to LEO.

>>9433484
Uranium enrichment is incredibly expensive. Nuclear bombs are finely tuned machines, not as simple to set off as chemical explosives. Plutonium production has been shut down for decades and we don't have very much left, and in fact what we do have isn't useful for bombs anyway which is why it was set aside for RTGs on space probes.

>>9433489
Yes per ton to LEO.

>>9433502
https://www.popsci.com/plutonium-238-is-produced-in-america-for-first-time-in-30-years

>>9433513
Obviously once full scale production is started then costs dramatically decrease for something like this. There are immense economies of scale here. Even if >>9433508 is right but current costs, if we were building Orion spacecraft the cost of nuclear material would exponentially drop as production increased/hit a steady state.

>>9433461
BFR development should cost under $10 billion. A flight of this highly-reusable vehicle will cost under $10 million, so hundreds of flights will cost only billions of dollars.

Putting 100,000 tonnes into LEO with BFR should cost about one year of NASA's budget, including development of BFR. One million tonnes would be about four years' worth, including paying for development.

The lowball estimates for the costs of nuclear bombs for Orion were from the "too cheap to meter" age of nuclear power optimism, and didn't account for things like the cost of the extreme security measures that need to be taken in the real world. They're not within an order of magnitude. No matter what quantity you order them in, nuclear bombs are going to cost multiple millions of dollars each.

>>9433521
Who cares anyway? Orion will always be faster and have a larger payload than BFR which is what matters for interplanetary travel.

>>9433531
If you're doing it as a one off mission, but if you want actual two way regular transport you need BFR type chemical vehicles.

>>9433535
What we really need is BFR with nuclear thermal upper stage.

>>9433521
>A flight of this highly-reusable vehicle will cost under $10 million,
I thought that was for things like NY to Tokyo, not for launching full payloads into space.

>>9433531
I favour development of the moon before Mars, and the construction of a large transit habitat with artificial gravity and excellent radiation shielding for interplanetary travel, but the direct BFR plan seems workable for me, and can certainly be done sooner for initial exploration.

Orion wouldn't be faster for getting to Mars, Venus, or Mercury, but indeed, some kind of advanced propulsion is called for to reach the outer solar system on a reasonable schedule.

>>9433566
There's little difference between a rocket launch between continents and one that goes to orbit. That's why so many launch vehicles are modified ICBMs. BFR might be able to take a heavier payload on a long suborbital trip, but the flight would have about the same cost.

They were actually projecting costs around $2 million per orbital launch of simple propellant-tanking missions for the ITS, which would have been twice as big as BFR.

>>9425969
> nuclear powered rockets
no we wouldnt, sticking a bunch of radioactive material on what amount to a giant bomb is and will always be a retarded idea if it at any point must operate in the atmosphere

>>9429664
>>9428492
The reason no one cares about nuclear submarines is because if it fails catastrophically while on patrol it literally makes no difference as it sinks to the bottom and water is excellent shielding

>>9425969
>nuclear powered rockets
And how do they achieve lift? By spewing fallout into the atmosphere? That might be a problem.

>>9433603
It isn't really. It isn't like a power plant melting down. Cars spew out more radiation every day. Which is a massive problem almost no one knows about. I'm not saying that makes nuke rockets get a total pass, but it adds perspective.

>>9433668
Oh my God, Orion is a nuclear pogo stick that takes 800 atmospheric nuclear bomb detonations just to get to orbit, per launch! That's more than all of the atmospheric nuclear tests in history! Don't try this "cars spew more radiation" bullshit!

You have no concept of the actual numbers involved, do you?

>>9425969
global warming would have been up 15%, can't be doin that

>>9433603
he might be talking about exploding nukes in space, behind your spaceship

>>9433711
Oh

>>9428007

>>9433546
Nuclear thermal is more efficient but it is also expensive. You're essentially building a several gigawatt nuclear reactor with a nozzle wrapped around it. Since the BFR upper stages that actually go to Mars can only do so when the plants align every ~2 years, and a spacecraft can realistically operate for 30 years, that's only 15 trips to pay for the vehicle. Of course that's assuming each Mars vehicle only flies to Mars, and isn't used for something else after a couple Mars flights to increase the usage. Also, there's little advantage to an NTR if you aren't using hydrogen propellant, and hydrogen is absolute shit tier as a propellant, being very low density and having a very low boiling point, as well as being difficult to contain and embrittling metals it contacts. Whether the benefits of NTR outweigh the costs, at least for nearby interplanetary travel, isn't clear at this point.

Of course for anything farther than the asteroid belt you need NTR. Not because of the delta V to get out there, but rather the delta V required to get there fast enough for a bearable transit time. Large scale electric propulsion like VASIMR is a meme at this point, and getting that kind of delta V with chemical propulsion is not feasible.

>>9433707
R A D O N G A S

>>9433707
It's not that many and most of them would be outside the atmosphere
Nukes can be very clean, the military tests were more concerned with size and didn't care much about pollution

God I hope I can get off this shithole planet and onto a mars or space colony before I die.

>>9433940
>Nukes can be very clean
Big nukes can be relatively clean by being mostly based on fusion. Each bomb still has some minimum dirty fission core. Orion needs a huge number of small nukes, and that makes it very dirty.

>>9434223
>this deluded mindset that nuclear bombs are "dirty"

Christ, you really swallowed a (((cock))) it seems.

>>9434223
>muh nukalear rays and mutants!

>>9433940
>most of them would be outside the atmosphere

That's the problem, nuclear explosions in space pump large amounts of high energy electrons into the Van Allen belts and can actually make artificial radiation belts as well. These belts only last a few years but in that time they can cook the electronics on whatever's orbiting through them.

>>9434285
>radiation
>electrons

>>9434288
yes
what do you think radiation is anon
high energy particles
the electrons just hang around for the longest time after detonation

>>9426309
wow, almost like what SpaceX did a year and a half ago . . .

>>9425969
Jews

>>9434237
>>9434265
> i dont actually have an argument so take this insult instead
classic

>>9428601
Mouth breather doesnt even begin to demonstrate how much of an idiot you are

>>9428714
JESUS CHRIST IM DYING LMAO, NECK YOURSELF AND SAVE THE HUMAN RACE FROM YOUR DEFECTIVE GENES

>>9428763
You just have to live in it for the duration of your pregnancy. Freedom after your baby pops out.

>>9428770
>The Soviets developed ORSC engines because they were poor and had to develop versatile tools, not because they were geniuses who could do things Americans couldn't.
This is what Americans really believe.

>>9433838
What whent wrong with VASIMIR?
NTR was barely developed, if things had continued it would have likely been even better than the NERVA design
I'm glad you at least concede that we will need nuclear at some point in ouw colonization of the solar system.

>>9435099
>What whent wrong with VASIMIR?
5N thrust for 200 kW version. Have fun spiralling around Earth for months just to get to escape velocity.

>>9435080
Worse yet they take the same narrative and apply it to everything.

>>9435080
>>9435664
You clowns really believe Americans couldn't have quickly replicated 1960s Soviet technology if they thought it was important enough to invest in?

Oh no! A turbine driven by hot oxidizer! What advanced, difficult technology! How will they ever find a compatible material?! Oh wait, that's what the V2 used with its hydrogen peroxide decomposition turbines.

>>9436090
murifats didn't have the alloys or fluid mech knowledge you mongoloid.

>>9436099
You can't possibly believe that.

>>9436107
so why couldnt they replicate the soviet engines?

>>9436122
>couldnt
Don't be an asshole. The question isn't "why couldn't they?" as if they desperately wanted to and tried everything they could think of but failed, it's "why didn't they?" because they didn't really try to.

I already explained why: >>9428770

Americans didn't have the motivation to optimize the hell out of kerolox or UDMH/NTO technology. They had solids, they had hydrogen. For their workhorse rockets, they saw the advantages of sticking with reliable gas-generator technology over messing with finicky staged-combustion designs, in the same way the Soviets, and then the Russians, saw the advantages of just flying Soyuz forever. If they were going to take risks and be ambitious, they were going to do it with something less boring than kerolox or hypergols.

>>9428375
tie two heavy things together and spin it, then put a rotating section at the center of gravity for docking if you dont want to constantly spin it up and slow it down.

Boom, gestation and childcare facilities in orbit

>>9428375

>What makes an asteroid better than a planet to colonize?

Lets see:

1. Planets: abundant resources, however unnaturally low gravity and yet strong enough to make launches and landings an issue

2. Space station: natural gravity but complete lack of local resources

3. Space station orbiting an asteroid: natural gravity, abundant resources, no deep gravity well to get in the way

>>9436526
>and yet strong enough to make launches and landings an issue

If we are doing regular space travel then landing/launching is NOT an issue anymore

>>9436526
best I'll give you is spinning a planetoid like Ceres up and living inside. There is no asteroid you can orbit and get anything besides microgravity.

>>9428040
>not star war 1

One job

>>9436912

>There is no asteroid you can orbit and get anything besides microgravity.

a spinning space station orbiting an asteroid would have 1g gravity

>>9436526

Best of both worlds: a space station located near a small moon orbiting a planet

Example would be a spinning station near Phobos.

Natural gravity, a large pile of resources just a few kilometers away, and an entire planet worth of resources down the gravity well.

>>9436920
it' have to be large to counteract the coriolis effect

fake news

>>9436932

it will have to be roughly 500 meters in diameter

https://www.artificial-gravity.com/sw/SpinCalc/

note that this distance could be accomplished by simple beams or maybe even a tether

so the mass of the entire station may be comparable to ISS

>>9436945
so basically my post
>>9436459

>>9425969
Von Braun a Nazi war criminal that the Americans used for their own gain.
Kinda shows what they really are.

>>9436526
You can't just sum up what you can get at one asteroid as "abundant resources" and equivalent to what you can get on all of Mars. There aren't any asteroids like that, that will provide for all the needs of a growing colony.

Furthermore, this presumption that you just have an ideal space colony is silly. You have to bear the total cost of building the ground to stand on. And as has been pointed out before, you can build a centrifugal habitat on Mars if you really want one.

As for the gravity well of Mars, you only need a single-stage rocket to get to Mars orbit, and there's abundant material for propellant. The heat shielding for aerobraking is much less than is needed on Earth, since the orbital speed in LMO is less than half that of LEO, and so the orbital energy to be dissipated is only about one fifth.

Taking Falcon 9 for example, it has 10 engines and is about 500 tonnes for about 20 tonnes max payload to LEO, maybe 5 tonnes to escape velocity. From Mars, just the upper stage, with one engine and about 100 tonnes total mass, would be enough to throw 20 tonnes to escape velocity.

That's why SpaceX talks about doing orbital refuelling of an upper stage to send it to Mars, but then just filling it up on the Mars surface and flying it back to Earth. It's about 5% as difficult to launch a rocket from Mars as it is to do so from Earth.

So don't just equate all planets. When it comes to gravity wells, being on Mars is like being in a little dimple, where being on Earth is like being in a chasm. From the moon, it's even easier.

>>9436945
>the mass of the entire station may be comparable to ISS
So you're talking about having a small apartment as the entire living space of your "colony"?

What about radiation shielding? You're in deep space. At least on Mars, you've got a planet blocking half the sky plus dirt to burrow into, and the atmosphere's thick enough to stop solar protons, so you don't need radiation shelters for solar storms.

Radiation shielding and centifugal gravity don't go together so well. You have to beef up the whole structure to carry all the mass of that shielding.

>>9437033
Americans had already themselves also designed a long range ballistic missile by the time Nazi's got to america.

>>9437182
Okay, what was its name?

From what I've heard, their first large missile was Redstone, a von Braun project and heavily based on the V2.

>>9437182
This is what Americans really believe.

>>9434508
>miniature prototype vs production engine
wow good job SpaceX!

>>9437214
>>9437433
Atlas, Titan and Delta had no design input from Nazis.

>>9437661
Do I really have to explain that the BE-4 Blue Origin has shown us as its first working prototype, barely firing for a few seconds, is not a "production engine"?

>>9437033
>Von Braun
He was a hero of humanity. You are a cuck.

>>9437665
Delta derives from Thor, which involved Adolf Thiel, a Nazi rocket scientist, in a top position.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PGM-17_Thor
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Thiel

I find it grossly implausible that either Atlas or Titan had "no design input", and it would be absurd to try to claim that any liquid fuelled rocket engine used by the owed no lineage to the work of Nazi scientists. For the most part, attention was not drawn to the involvement of Nazi scientists in American research and development, with the exception of von Braun.

>>9437689
Nazi.

>>9437719
>any liquid fuelled rocket engine used by the [1950s and 1960s American rocket program]
whoops, wasn't sure how to phrase that, so I figured I'd come back and edit it in, but forgot to

>>9437723
>guilt by association
What were some of Adolf Thiel's war crimes?

>>9437719
Nazi rocket work was derived from Robert Goddard (an American)

I guess that makes all Americans complicit in Nazi war crimes.

>>9437672
What about BE-4 will change between now and when it first flies on Vulcan?

What will change about Raptor between now and when it first flies on BFR tests?

>>9437723
>Nazi
>Builds rockets that kill people
>Enormous leaps in rocket research and development due to ridiculous funding
>Defects to America
>Builds more rockets
>These one send PEOPLE as payloads
>Becomes devout Christian
>Enormous boon to rocketry and propulsion
Neutral. True neutral researcher. A man who just wanted to make rockets, willing to take money from anyone.

>>9437747
Goddard didn't hire himself out to the Nazis. The American government hired Nazi scientists, and prevented their trial for war crimes. They didn't just study their work, they sheltered them from the consequences of their previous affiliation and worked with them.

Anyway, this is getting off track. I don't care about the morality of it, just the fact: the Americans took in a lot of useful Nazis after the war, particularly to use in their rocket program.

>>9437760
>consequences of affiliation
see >>9437735

>>9437754
So what does that make all the scientists that helped America make weapons? How about now?

Cuck. He did his duty to his country. Then he did his duty to his new country. He was a stand up guy.

>>9437760
>NAZI NAZI NAZI
You are an intellectual and moral joke. Most Nazis were no worse than most French or English or Americans.

>>9437754
>>Builds more rockets
>>These one send PEOPLE as payloads
Every test flight was loaded with Jews, tons of them. It was a condition the Nazis imposed on their American employers.

>>9437753
>What about BE-4 will change between now and when it first flies on Vulcan?
There's no telling. That's an absolute minimum of two years away, and more likely four or more years. It may never fly on Vulcan, which is only being approved to proceed on a quarter-by-quarter basis. It may never be completed as a flightworthy engine.

They've already blown up one prototype on the stand, and still haven't demonstrated a full-length burn. If they have more explosions, major design changes may be required, or the effort may even be abandoned.

>What will change about Raptor between now and when it first flies on BFR tests?
Raptor now, or Raptor a year and a half ago? Because SpaceX has been keeping a lid on their Raptor program. There's no telling how close they are to a flightworthy engine.

>>9437796
>That's an absolute minimum of two years away, and more likely four or more years. It may never fly on Vulcan, which is only being approved to proceed on a quarter-by-quarter basis. It may never be completed as a flightworthy engine.
baseless speculation

>They've already blown up one prototype on the stand
100% false

>and still haven't demonstrated a full-length burn
baseless speculation

>Because SpaceX has been keeping a lid on their Raptor program. There's no telling how close they are to a flightworthy engine.
cop-out answer
They're years away from a flight-scale engine and you know it.

>>9437803
>>They've already blown up one prototype on the stand
>100% false
Okay then, they've blown up two prototypes on the stand:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BE-4
>There was an explosion on the test stand during 2015 during powerpack testing.
>A test anomaly occurred on 13 May 2017 and Blue Origin reported that they lost a set of powerpack hardware.
Have you got an argument for why we should interpret these as something other than blowing up prototypes?

Also, if the Amazon stock bubble pops, Bezos simply won't have the money to continue. Blue Origin is burning funds at a tremendous rate and generating essentially no revenue.

>>and still haven't demonstrated a full-length burn
>baseless speculation
They've only shown us a ~10 second burn last week. It was clearly their best effort to date.

>[SpaceX is] years away from a flight-scale engine and you know it.
No, Raptor's expected to be ready this year. They were where BE-4 is now about a year and a half ago. They announced in the September 2017 update that they intended to start construction of the first BFR test flight vehicle in the second quarter of 2018. The expectation of a completed engine in 2018 has also been mentioned in documents relating to the USAF funding of Raptor development.

>>9437847
A "powerpack" is not a full engine, imbecile.

>Raptor's expected to be ready this year.
No it isn't.

>They announced in the September 2017 update that they intended to start construction of the first BFR test flight vehicle in the second quarter of 2018.
They also announced in 2009 that Falcon Heavy would fly in 2011 and yet here we are.

>The expectation of a completed engine in 2018 has also been mentioned in documents relating to the USAF funding of Raptor development.
Those same documents refer to a Raptor upper stage engine for Falcon 9 which will never happen. You might as well consider the original BFR to be a real rocket while you're at it.

>>9425969
>>9426262
>Nothing went wrong. There's just no money in space travel for the existing economy
This is what went wrong - neoliberal indoctrination.
- no money in space exploration,
- no money in helping the worst off countries,
- there is money in creating useless products with planned obsolescence and convincing people they need those,
- there is money in making Earth unhabitable.

Money is irrelevant, "economy" is a joke.
Making money for the sake of making money is not economy.

Communism in USSR was hardly communism, but it started space exploration. Humans might have never left LEO if it wasn't for that.

>>9437862
>A "powerpack" is not a full engine
What the fuck kind of excuse is that? It's the part of the engine that's most likely to blow up! If the powerpack blows up when it's connected to the engine, the engine blew up. If it blows up in testing, it would have blown up if connected to the engine.

>Falcon Heavy
Ah, the last resort of the idiot anti-SpaceX fanatic: "Falcon Heavy is soooo late!" as if Falcon 9 hadn't been upgraded to the point of being able to meet the market need SpaceX was originally going to need Falcon Heavy for. As if Falcon Heavy was an entirely separate vehicle, which SpaceX was trying and failing to develop, rather than a configuration of Falcon 9 which did not make sense to fly during the rapid evolution of Falcon 9.

>Those same documents refer to a Raptor upper stage engine for Falcon 9 which will never happen.
You might be surprised. SpaceX has said they'll do it if a customer pays for it, otherwise they're skipping it. I've described elsewhere in this topic how a single-Raptor mini-BFS that launches on top of Falcon Heavy would be the fastest and most cost effective way for the US government to put men on the moon again.

>>9437862
Powerpack is the heart of the engine.
These documents only say about use for future upper stages and not F9 upper with Raptor.

>>9437754
Fuck Von Braun
t. Londoner.

>>9437915
>What the fuck kind of excuse is that? It's the part of the engine that's most likely to blow up! If the powerpack blows up when it's connected to the engine, the engine blew up. If it blows up in testing, it would have blown up if connected to the engine.
moving the goalposts
the power packs are tested separately specifically so as to not endanger all that extra hardware on a dangerous test

it was not an engine failure

>Ah, the last resort of the idiot anti-SpaceX fanatic: "Falcon Heavy is soooo late!" as if Falcon 9 hadn't been upgraded to the point of being able to meet the market need SpaceX was originally going to need Falcon Heavy for. As if Falcon Heavy was an entirely separate vehicle, which SpaceX was trying and failing to develop, rather than a configuration of Falcon 9 which did not make sense to fly during the rapid evolution of Falcon 9.
it doesn't matter why it was delayed, the point is that it WAS delayed you stupid faggot

Look how long it is taking spacex to build dragon 2; do you really think they can build a man-rated ship 10x its size in half the time? Only a delusional retard would believe the retarded dates SpaceX has set for their "first flights"

>SpaceX has said they'll do it if a customer pays for it
they have never said this about the Raptor upper stage

>a single-Raptor mini-BFS that launches on top of Falcon Heavy
more baseless speculation
I bet you also think falcon heavy could add two more boosters to "eclipse SLS"

>>9437939
>These documents only say about use for future upper stages and not F9 upper with Raptor.
Prove it.

>>9437974
Brits deserve everything that came to them in WWII
They are the single reason why the WWI armistice was so harsh against Germany (Based on Anglo's racist prejudice against Germans) and that treaty is the sole reason Nazis came to power.
Brits caused the deaths of 40 million whites. London should have been burned to the ground.

>>9438110
>the power packs are tested separately specifically so as to not endanger all that extra hardware on a dangerous test
Are you kidding? First of all, "all that extra hardware" is basically just the main combustion chamber. Though physically large, it's relatively simple and inexpensive. The point of omitting it isn't "so as not to endanger all that extra hardware", but to be able to test the power pack under simpler, more forgiving conditions. To have a power pack prototype blow up on its own is a worse sign than to blow up a complete engine.

Secondly, they test it on the same stand as the full engine. When they blow one up, it takes out a test stand, and those are extremely fucking expensive. After their first blow-up, Blue Origin built two new test stands for redundancy. That's why they still had one to test on after their May 2017 "anomaly".

>it doesn't matter why it was delayed
It does matter, though. If the reason it was delayed doesn't apply to a different thing, then it's no argument that this other thing will suffer a similar delay.

>Look how long it is taking spacex to build dragon 2
You mean how long it's taking NASA to approve Dragon 2? When CST-100 is having the same delays at the same times, you have to look at the common factor between them.

Falcon Heavy was delayed due to a shift in design philosophy. They made Merlin 1D, decided to do flyback reusability, and upgrades to Falcon 9 took priority over Falcon Heavy development. What they ended up doing was far more impressive than the original plan with Falcon Heavy sooner.

It's true that there are likely to be delays in BFR development, but not in Raptor at this late stage, a year and a half after they had a prototype running. More likely the delays will be related to the new factory, to overall vehicle integration headaches, to getting the new composite tank technology working right, etc.

It's just as true that Vulcan and New Glenn are likely to be delayed or cancelled.

>>9438110
https://www.defense.gov/News/Contracts/Contract-View/Article/642983/
It seems you are correct my bad i understood it as engine being provided for other EELVs as possible replacement for RD180.

>>9438150
Dude with 110 000 000 000$ is not cancelling his toy even if he can use it just to fuck with Musk ego.Glenn will be a much better rocket than Falcon and will get here on time or just few months behind schedule because Blue actually can keep a schedule because it is set in realistic manner and not a pie in the sky goal their competition is used to.

Other planets won't be colonized to a meaningful degree until capitalism is overthrown and production/research becomes globally planned and centralized. Any effort at colonizing planets atm is essentially porky looking for a way out of the planet once he makes it uninhabitable.

>>9438183
>globally planned
lol
No blacks in space, please. There is no way any SJW driven globalist culture will accomplish anything ever.

>>9438183
personally idgaf
let's just get there

>>9438150
>It does matter, though. If the reason it was delayed doesn't apply to a different thing, then it's no argument that this other thing will suffer a similar delay.
right... falcon heavy was delayed because of technical issues and because "there's no demand for it"

BFR has both of these issues and more

It will fly in 2023 at the earliest.

>>9438150
>It's just as true that Vulcan and New Glenn are likely to be delayed or cancelled.
this is why nobody takes spacex nutters seriously

>>9438188
>No blacks in space, please. There is no way any SJW driven globalist culture will accomplish anything ever.

where in my sentence did i remotely mention anything sjw-esque? also, why no blacks in space?

>>9438189
why? it's not like we've solved our problems on this planet. evolution doesn't do leaps, it does steps.

>>9438216
who said anything about evolution?
it's the space race not the space creep

>>9438218
what do you mean who said anything about evolution? society evolves, and one step of that evolution will eventually be colonizing and terraforming other planets.

>>9438183
There is nothing we could do to Earth that would make it less habitable than any other planet or moon in the solar system.

>>9438223
>taking colloquialisms literally
could be autism no offense

>>9438163
>Dude with 110 000 000 000$ is not cancelling his toy
He's burning $1B+/year on Blue Origin now, and most of his wealth is Amazon stock, which he can only sell off carefully, or he'll trigger an investor panic and pop the bubble. That bubble can pop at any moment, rendering him simply unable to continue to fund Blue Origin.

>Blue actually can keep a schedule
Do you know nothing about the history of this company? Blue Origin was founded in 2000, only reached space (both arguably and barely) in 2015, and has never had revenue that wasn't a meaningless spec next to their expenditures. SpaceX was founded in 2002, reached space in 2007, has run mainly on revenue from customers since 2008, and is currently the world's most active orbital launch provider.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Origin
>As of 2006, Blue Origin had discussed plans to place the New Shepard in commercial suborbital tourist service in 2010 with flights about once per week
>By 2008, the publicized timetable indicated that Blue Origin intended to fly unmanned in 2011, and manned in 2012.

Whatever you might say about SpaceX, that's a younger company than Blue Origin, with a founder that had less money to burn, and it signed its first major customer contract in 2008, launched its first commercial payload in 2009, and launched a fucking space capsule that they built themselves to ISS in 2010, which humans could have ridden on to orbit and back if everyone was less fussy about safety.

SpaceX has their delays, but still produces results in a reasonably timely manner. This is much more than can be said for Blue Origin. If Blue Origin's history is any indication, 2028 will roll around with no New Glenn and no Vulcan.

>>9438228
the moon won't have angry revolting masses that's for sure

>>9438229
your post was meaningless either way

>>9438200
New Glenn is in doubt for these reasons: >>9438235

As for Vulcan, setting aside potential delay or failure of the BE-4 program at Blue Origin (in today's market, ULA's only selling point is reliability, so BE-4 has some very high hurdles to jump in meeting the USAF's standards), a basic problem with ULA is that it's not a company that has ever developed a new rocket. ULA is an essentially custodial organization, a joint venture between two rival companies with their own independent ambitions, for the purpose of operating vehicles which were already developed and flying before it was founded.

Even if either of the two parent companies had allowed any of their creative engineering talent to go to ULA, rather than holding it back for their own exclusive purposes, the last new rockets they developed first flew in 2002 and 2004, and both failed to compete in the launch market badly enough that the government needed to step in bail them out, by encouraging the merger of operations into ULA and then feeding it generous subsidies to keep it from collapsing.

On top of that, the willingness of the US government to fund Vulcan may nosedive as SpaceX completes Falcon Heavy and its reusable boosters mature. Vulcan is not an ambitious project. ULA has never projected that it would give them the ability to compete even with SpaceX's non-reusable prices. Politicians won't be able to justify Vulcan to taxpayers if it becomes clear it'll cost ten times as much as flying the same payloads on Falcon 9 / Heavy, not just twice as much.

The parent companies are not committed to Vulcan. They're funding it on a quarter-by-quarter basis. Every few months, they have to renew support for it. That means ULA isn't committed to Vulcan. They know it doesn't make sense, unless SpaceX falls apart, and that's looking less and less plausible.

>>9438286
>New Glenn is in doubt for these reasons:
That post is wrong about practically everything. For starters: Blue Origin has FAR less money to work with than SpaceX throughout its entire history. Blue Origin only reached the money that SpaceX had by 2008, in 2013. SpaceX has received in excess of $5 billion from the USG whereas Blue Origin received like $9 million in total. Even with Bezos's new funding push it will take decades for Blue Origin to catch up to SpaceX funding. Blue Origin also doesn't treat its employees like slaves (hence why people hate working for SpaceX and constantly leave looking for other work.)

Falcon Heavy is the most delayed rocket in history. Even Angara which is built by a third world shithole was built in less time.

>>9438309
>>that's a younger company than Blue Origin, with a founder that had less money to burn
>Blue Origin has FAR less money to work with than SpaceX throughout its entire history
Do you have reading comprehension problems, or are you now claiming that Musk has been richer than Bezos all along?

Musk made a much smaller investment before SpaceX started to win contracts. Blue Origin also bid for government contracts. Want to know why they won so little of them? Because they weren't producing results!

SpaceX got the big NASA development contract only after they put a payload in orbit. Then they built a medium-lift rocket and re-entry-capable capsule with an amount of money so small it shocked everyone else in the industry. NASA estimated that they got things done with one tenth the money their usual contractors would have required.

>Even with Bezos's new funding push it will take decades for Blue Origin to catch up to SpaceX
Yeah, that's about the size of it.

Everything I said is true. I notice you have nothing to say about Blue Origin's claims in 2006 that they'd have New Shepard flying space tourists every week in 2010, when here we are in 2018 and they haven't carried a single passenger to any altitude.

>Falcon Heavy
When the only argument you have is that SpaceX used the same name for a concept in their earliest days, as for their newest vehicle about to roll out, and you call that a "delayed program" to try and claim they're slow at doing things, you should suspect that you're not on the winning team.

>>9438479
>Bezos puts all his money into Blue Origin
This is literally how stupid you sound.

>>9437760
>they sheltered them from the consequences of their previous affiliation
Yea the communist lynching of innocent men
Then you people wonder how stuff like witch burnings happen when modern day lynchings are cheered on by the media

>>9438483
What's wrong with you?

Musk started SpaceX with quite a modest investment by aerospace standards. He was no billionaire, having made $165 million off the PayPal deal, and was also starting up Tesla. He could only put a few tens of millions of dollars into SpaceX, and very nearly ran out of money getting Falcon 1 working.

Bezos, on the other hand, was a dot-com billionaire when he started Blue Origin. He could outspend Musk without sweating... and did. That's why Blue Origin started out with buying a huge area of land to do test flights over, and how it has survived for so long without revenue.

SpaceX did more with less, so it made money, so Musk didn't have to keep putting more and more money into it (which he couldn't have afforded). Remember: it's not that Blue Origin didn't want to have customers earlier, it's that they failed to.

>>9438223
>society evolves
So far what we see is degradation and plummeting average IQ's, as well as rampant state subsidized dysgenics
The future will be the third world squalor everywhere, with no hope of space or progress.

>>9438479
Eh Neither has SpaceX carried passengers either.
But its regulatory burdens that prevent that.
Look at the clown fest that is the Commercial Crew Program, billions and billions of dollars, yet ultimately it does nothing to ensure safety because companies like Boeing cannot do a proper test routine.

>>9438809
Passenger flight was Blue Origin's business model from day 1. They had no plan to make money, or do other practical work, without people riding their rockets.

>>9438856
I think their business model was always milk Bezos for as much as possible before he wizens up
Which is the business model for like 99% of Space startups(or all startups, for that matter)

>>9431542
that was 0g though
we have no idea what LOW gravity does, just full and none at all
mars will be a grand place for new biology research

>>9437178
500m is the minimum size, not the only size, you can go however large your material strength allows
for radiation shielding, you put the radiation shielding we normally use on the outside, however thick it needs to be
Materials for it you can get from the same place you got the habitat materials from

>>9435099
>What whent wrong with VASIMIR?
Requires a literally magic power plant to operate at the thrust/efficiency claimed.

>>9440517

Is nuclear not even enough?

>>9440544
Stuff similar to nuclear steam engines aren't very good in space, because the necessary radiator and shielding are heavy. Solar panels require no shielding, and are their own radiators. Photovoltaic collectors produce much more power per kg than conventionally nuclear systems, and it looks like it'll widen the gap dramatically as technology improves.

It would take an exotic design for a nuclear reactor to outperform solar panels in the inner solar system, and when you consider designing one, why are you just looking at it as a power source rather than incorporating the drive into the reactor? There's no sense in spending resources designing a power-hungry thruster design meant to be powered by a nuclear power system that shows no signs of being developed.

>>9427792
L0L

>>9426367
strength training and 1g forces for like dunno 10 minutes a day would fix 99% of problems due to gravity

itt Sports and Physical Activity Exercise Grad Student

>>9441686
That and just not spending time at zero G because there is no point outside of recreation

>>9440574
Noone has really tried making big compact mass efficient nuclear reactors
Hell the US hasn't made new nuclear reactors since the 70's

Around Earth, probably Mars, and certainly further in, Solar panels will be superior.
But we'll still need nuclear reactors for going out past the Asteroid belt

>>9441686

>strength training and 1g forces for like dunno 10 minutes a day would fix 99% of problems due to gravity

Wrong, astronauts on the ISS have a rigorous exercise regime and yet are borderline disabled after spending a year in space. And these are adults in perfect health.

Humans really need that 1g, especially if we are talking about actual colonies with kids.

I don't see why the BE-4 is any better than the RD-180. Seems to me like the only reason the US government is interested is so they don't have to keep relying on rockets provided by their archenemy.

>>9442104
astronauts get fucked so hard because they're in 0g
we still do not know what LOW gravity does, the ISS is not low gravity, it is no gravity

more research is required on this matter before we can write it off