/sci/ - Science & Math

Starting off with a more obscure LLV in development here. Has anyone been keeping up with this thing? Never seen it mentioned anywhere on this board before, yet it seems to be moving along quite well... for space standards, at least.

>>9641659
>another fucking general on a board this slow
>also manage to ruin the case
lurkmore

>>9641699
good contribution, thanks for the bump

>inb4 ruined by anti SpaceX baiter

>>9641659
Can't believe everybody is falling for the vertical landing meme despite SpaceX not being able to reuse them economically even after landing dozens of Falcons. "I swear you guys our next rocket is totally going to be the real deal". Yeah, fuck you Elon.

Just build a Launch Loop across the Atlantic and get over with rockets.

>>9641738
Kek just called it in time

>>9641757
The biggest objects in space right now are fucking tiny compared to the shit that you would need to make a launch loop.

>>9641761
And i bet you think he's gonna make le epin hypermeme real as well

He gets really mad if you ignore him.

>>9641763
It can be fully assembled on earth. It's basically a 2000km long Maglev. Nothing fancy or outrageously expensive about that.

>>9641772
Yeah except you have to suspend it insane heights off the ground. How do you propose to do that?

Big rockets are unnecessary and we can't utilize their capacity with our existing budgets. They also promote inefficiency as some ignorant people propose preposterous things like not optimizing the mass of the payload or even using off the shelf components with dubious reliability somehow supposedly alleviated by simply using redundancies! Wasting mass, in a field where every single gram counts! Ridiculous. Insulting! Dangerous!!

Ergo the solution is to go smaller and promote miniaturization as well as material sciences.

>>9641788

Can't tell if you're fake or the same lunatic who's been turning up in threads lately and raving inarticulately. Eg the thread about magnetic shielding.

>>9641775

If you run loops of wire around it really fast their momentum will hold it suspended.

Hey don't blame me, I didn't invent it.

>>9641813
and then it destroys itself because materials don't work like that

>>9641757
Launch Loops don't work because they can only carry around 5 tons, but yet you would need an engine to bring the payload to its actual orbit. This means you are drastically reducing the payload again, because engine and fuel for it will weigh a lot. Then you will have to seperate the kick engine from the extra payload, which means with every 1 ton or so of payload you are burning away an engine, which probably cost a few ten grand to build. So it's really extremely expensive.

Increasing the payload is not possible, because otherwise you would need to increase the size of the rotor, which would make it impossible to build.

The only somewhat possible launch systems to build are space guns and ram accelerators. We actually already achieved shooting 200kg objects to LEO using space guns. Don't know why this approach isn't followed. You can't shoot humans to space, but satellite and cargos would be no problem.

>>9641884
launch loops don't work because you physically can't build them

>>9641757
Same goes for SpaceX. Let's just wait and see

>>9641788

>muh space is hard meme

we will never achieve anything significant in space with this toxic mindset

>>9641975
>xkcd

>>9641659
OP, I love discussing this stuff as much as you do, but maybe you should hold off on reviving this thread after each aborted attempt until there's actually something new to discuss. Right now it's just serving as a breeding ground for trolls and BO/ULA shills.
If BFS does actually start short hop testing later this year then I bet it won't be long before more substantive news/photos of it start appearing.

>>9641667
>muh srb

>>9642194
Like 60% of the first two threads were quality, but yeah you have a point

What about laser ablative methods? Ever read High Justice by pournelle? He explains it in one part

>>9641757
Just wait for block V dude, their last version of falcon. Then we'll see if spaceX is truly a meme or not.

>>9641859
They do, though. The physics all works out. There are no exotic materials required.

There are two major problems with a launch loop:
1) It's a huge expenditure and use of space for what remains a very niche application, and a totally unproven means of serving it.
2) It's a vast, high-performance mechanical system that can never stop working at any point or the whole thing collapses structurally, and likely blows itself apart in the process.

Compare the space fountain and orbital ring. They all could work, in theory, but it wouldn't take much going wrong for them to come apart. They're more likely to work with future technology capable of continuous self-repair.

For the time being, it's very hard to make a case for anything other than rockets.

hey muskbros have u herd any news of strarman??!?

>>9642435
yeah that it was fake.

>>9642449

musk haters get lost starman is reale

>>9642453
As long as he still hasn't hit his ambitious goals I'll critique and shitpost about him. Fanboys of him are the worst do you really want Musk to get comfortable with all the soymales sucking him off and become lazy?

>>9642470

musk is an genuius he wont ever get lazy or let his fans down i want himt o be my dad

>>9642470
That's very convenient for you since a person like Musk will always have more ambitious goals to aim for once their current ones are accomplished. That way you can keep shitposting indefinitely while asserting that the goals he's already accomplished weren't really ambitious at all.

>>9642719
https://www.rt.com/business/422758-tesla-recall-market-capitalization/
or until investors hop off the bubble

>>9642726
Not sure what a Tesla recall has to do with Musk's ambitious goals but I'd much prefer a car company that immediately recalls defective units over one that waits for the class action lawsuits to materialize before acting.

>>9642726
>rt
butthurt vatnik overdosed on crocodil detected

>>9642848
t.CNN

>>9642726
>https://www.rt.com/business/422758-tesla-recall-market-capitalization/

Man Elon really fucked up with doing all the manufacturing and shit within Tesla, he should have contracted that out. At least they have enough hype to keep selling as much as they can produce though I guess.

>>9644288
There's an old industry wisdom: If somebody had major production issues and is scaling up his production using some improvised plan, he is probably delievering shit, so be prepared for a compensation law suit.

E.g. the Tesla 3s are of shit quality and customers will notice.

Also, EV-market is not like the rocketlaunch-market. The market is full with very competetive car manufacturers that have a century of experience with how to build cheap and reliable cars. And Tesla has no technological advantage, major car manufacturers just didn't build EVs yet because they though there is no demand, not because they can't do it. Now there are around a dozen EVs on the market that are cheaper than the Tesla while having a similar range and a similar equipment.

tl;dr, Tesla is dead.

>>9644308
Oh well at least SpaceX is doing well and making it's money back.

>>9644288
>>9644308
Musk reminds me of this south american mining magnate that expanded into a variety of mining industries only to have all of it collapse.
Any one of his industries would have been a full time commitment for any CEO, but he spread his focus thin over multiple companies.

and musk isn't that bad of a parallel to that. Tesla could be a success if it and its related industries (lithium batteries, solar cells, ect) were only things that he was focusing on.Think about it; Gates did nothing but software, Carnegie did nothing but Coke and Steel, Rockefeller primarily Oil refining and Oil transport.I really do know of any magnates that tried to do a million different things at once. Musk should just do one thing well and not hype things up, if that was the case much of the criticism about him would dispensar.

>>9644319
Disregard automobiles, acquire rockets.

>>9641659
small launch vehicles are people too

>>9644308
Yea rocket launch had stagnated for decades, there was no rocket on the market which had incorporated any technologies developed in the last 30 years
Plus everyone is a fat government contractor

You can understand WHY he did Tesla, I highly doubt Tesla is going to die, it'll lose money & maybe Musk will have to sell parts of his stake in it, but it's still producing cars at an increasing rate.

Anyways, you need autonomous battery powered vehicles for Mars/Moon, same reason he wants to do electric Trucks, you need big electric vehicles on Mars/Moon

>>9644476
Smallsat rockets are going to be ded in five years. What will happen is every once in a while BFR will launch a fuckton of them, and then manuver around and spit them out in the proper orbits

>>9644928
>BFR
What makes you think some tiny private company will achieve what superpowers have been trying to since the 60's?

>>9644992
Nobody has been trying anything. Russia is literally launching the exact same rockets and capsules that they were launching in 1966, the Chinese are laboring 24/7 to replicate the Russian space program and NASA exists solely as Senator Richard Shelby's private slush fund for his Boeing and Lockheed Martin lobbyists.

The most advanced space program in the world before SpaceX came along was probably Arianespace, who ironically are ideologically opposed to the very concept of innovation in spaceflight.

>>9644992
What have Superpowers been trying to do since the 60's?

>>9645007
Keep enough of a space industry alive to launch spy sats once in a while

>>9644928
Because SpaceX is magical and can totally create massive rockets for cheap. Please ignore all the failings that SpaceX have had, they are fake news.

>>9641757
>'Just' build a launch loop

>SpaceX not being able to reuse them economically

Do you have inside info about something?
If you haven't been following, they're now just throwing away their landed boosters to make way for the final version.
Because they were just prototypes.

>>9645129
Who is operating the world's cheapest $/kg to LEO rocket right now, at this very moment?

>>9645149
Ahh yes, the whole "our last rocket overpremised and undelivered but our next rocket will be everything we promise!" shtick. I fully expect that once Block 5 is a failure for them to shout "BFR will replace everything!" Except that won't be built.

>>9645155
Oh boy, as expensive as the Proton with nearly the same reliability. How ground breaking. Does anyone remember when the Proton shook up the launch market in the 90s? Fun times.

>>9645001
R7 derivatives will be flying a thousand years from now. It’s not bad to have a proven design around

>>9645208
Only it costs more than expendable Falcon 9.

>>9642821
This. That is the modus operandi of the current auto industry and the immediate recall practice is an improvement in the current standard, which is shift for consumers

>>9645172
It's the same rocket, only tweaked to be more rapidly reusable.
The only reason they're not reusing the current ones as much as they can is because NASA made this random statement that they need 7 launches on a 'stable' version before allowing astronauts on it.
You can bet there would be Blocks 6,7 and 8 otherwise.
It's all a learning process, from the first time they landed a rocket.
And nothing tells you they're not gaining massive amount of moneyz just selling reused flights at the normal price for customers.
Even then, they're the cheapest launch provider out there.
That's what I would do.
Use my re-usability advantage to make bucks, while other providers still can't even compete on price.
As soon as Vulkan/Ariane 6 start flying, SpaceX will just undercut them immediately with lower prices.

>>9645232
Actually, Elon has said that they want to stop with B5 simply because BFR will be the new engineering priority. No reason to improve F9 when BFR will make it irrelevant- Elon himself has said that F9 will be phased out after BFR is matured

>>9645253
Well, there's that too.
But I'm sure they'll still want to upgrade the vehicle if they see things that may gain them more bucks/durability/ease of refurbishment for the vehicle.
It's just that they'll be cock-blocked by NASA to throw Astronauts with it.
And, let's be honest, I don't picture BFR actually flying on a regular basis for 10 years at least.

>>9645266
>10 years
I think the ramp will be much quicker than that. Once per month by 2020 at least

>>9645253
>>9645266 (me)
Actually, let me add to this.
This 7 flight requirement is fucking ridiculous to begin with.
Dragon v2 has a launch escape system, so the rocket blowing up is a non-problem.
Let's not add that competition doesn't have to comply with such things, even though they'll be flying an untested upper stage.
I'm wondering how large of a new swimming pool the corrupted politicians that voted for it actually got.

>>9645271
Well, I think even Elon Musk would call you optimistic.
2020 is 2 years from now.
In between, they have to
-produce a fleet of block 5 f9s
-Test the Ship for the BFR
-Build ground infrastructure for the BFR
-Actually build the whole stack
-Test the whole stack and analyze the data from it, to make tweaks.

There's a lot of thing that definitely won't go as intended along the way.

Even then, the early models will be fucking prototypes, and, unlike Dragon v2, BFR doesn't have a launch escape system, so you want to be careful about that.

>>9645280
partly the SpaceX testing requirements are self imposed, which not many people know. Like the extended parachute tests, in flight abort test, and a few others. But the stable config thing is not one of those

>>9645322
It's even worse than that:
Dragon v1 was supposed to carry astronauts to the ISS.

And here we are, Boeing's Starliner will launch at about the same time as Dragon v2.

NASA bitched around and they said, OK, we'll do a v2.
SX drops a bomb by revealing a propulsive landing capsule.
NASA bitches about it being 'unsafe' even though it still carries a full set of parachutes, just in case.

Now Dragon 2 will fly, but it will just be Dragon V1 with a custom skin.
The very thing they could have flown years ago.

rocketry is a branch of engineering.

there is no new scientific principle in rockets. it was all known in beggining of xx century

rocketry is baout engineering not science

oh... unles you
hhaa
HAHAHA
he doesnt know about the difference between science and engineering sucks to be you rlitttle unedacutead retarded astroboy

>>9645001
>>9645001
>Russia is literally launching the exact same rockets
except thats wrong because its disposable, its not the exact same rocket
>WELL OK THE SAME MODEL
except thats wrong because both the rockets and capusles have been updated a lot


oh... you dont know what youre talking about... poor thing

>>9644992
A "tiny" company of several tens of billions of dollars working hard honestly towards one real goal that they really want in a non evil way can achieve waaay much than the evil capitalist goverment of united states that is confirmed for stealing 95 dollars out of 100 they spend on something via corruption and lack of efficiencty on porpuse

>>9645393
Well, anon, on the basic level, he's kinda right.
It will take a while for SpaceX to catch up to their reliability figures.

>>9645399
>It will take a while for SpaceX to catch up to their reliability figures.

sure, dying in the worst most painful way possible in a death trap made by the only dictatorship in history that tortured more people than the nazis and routinely tortured to death even their most condecorated citizens is comparable to riding something that is created by someone whos a confirmed genius, the most smart and caring man since socrates and has done in 5 years with almost not budget what all of the superpowers in the world combined couldnt do in almost a century

yep makes very sense boy

>>9645393
So this... is the power of technological progress... whoa

>>9645419
haha a machine that is so complicated that even changing the material of a bolt inside of a sleeve in the launch pad could mean failure or a 50 & performance update

and you
haha
no wait
nad you think that showing that it looks completely difference from the outside is not COMPLETELY ADMITING THAT I WON AND YOURE A RERTARDED IDIOT SLAVE OF MINE HHAHAHAHAHA I FEEL SO GOOD TO BE SUPERIOR

good lukc we dont live in a meritocrace, because if we did your wife would be my posession now

Autism

>>9641667
I was talking with an ATK dude at a career fair and mentioned, with regards to a club on campus, our next generation launcher and he was like "what's the next generation launcher?" and I had no idea what he was talking about lmao

Man SpaceX is really cranking up their launch cadence. They have averaged a launch every two weeks this year, that's fucking awesome and i can't wait to see how well these block 5s turn out.

>>9646102
They want 30 launches this year
Then next year their 4th launch pad comes online and perhaps they can reach 40-50 launches a year
So by 2020 their backlog is done

>>9646102
wonder when we'll get the first commercial BFR payload made public. BO has already received three or so publicly announced commercial customers

>>9645271
>I think the ramp will be much quicker than that. Once per month by 2020 at least

the first bfr won't even be built by 2020, probably not until 2022-2023 and then ramp after a few years of iteration and fixing all the problems with it.

>>9645343
>Now Dragon 2 will fly, but it will just be Dragon V1 with a custom skin.

And a LES

World's first fully reusable LES at that

>>9646929
The capsule isn't being reused, so first recoverable LES would be more accurate.

>>9646946
The in flight abort test should be top kino

Wonder if the booster will explode

>>9644476
Beck is a jerk but the company is nice

>>9646962
probably not
They've gotten pretty good at preventing explosions

>>9648393
yeah, but I don't think that after a violent abort separation of the capsule the 1st stage can still go land. Not due to damage, but due to the fact that there will be too much fuel remaining, so the stage will be overly heavy.

Wonder if the latest Trump spazzing out at Bezos will impact BO in any way

>>9648835
Hopefully

>>9648835
BO is patenting rocket landing so soyX is doomed no matter what.

>>9645425
>I WON AND YOURE A RERTARDED IDIOT SLAVE OF MINE HHAHAHAHAHA I FEEL SO GOOD

Not the guy you're talking to, but I don't think you ever feel good. Not really.

>>9648937
yes, but BO lost in court over that.

>>9648925
Hopefully not. Bezos is a nob for sure, but he is rich as fuck and competition for SpaceX is all good.

>>9644476
The best thing about Electron is that it proves that even a tiny company making tiny rockets can develop liner-less carbon fiber tanks that can hold liquid oxygen.

>>9644928
ISRO have already been doing this with PSLV and things seem to be going fine

>>9641667
Isn't this just Ares-1 with a new upper stage and a couple of strap-ons?

>>9650024
not reusable though

>>9650182
New Line 1 will be pretty neat if they get it to orbit. It’s like a tiny f9

Their engine can throttle down to something stupid small, like 6%

>>9645419
>soy US
SAVAGE
A
V
A
G
E

>>9650131
bretty much
>solids
ayy lmao

>>9650182
Don't forget that NASA and Boeing were working together to try to make carbon fiber tanks like 3 years ago for their expendable rockets but didn't seem to implement anything. Meanwhile a new company that's never even flown a rocket before develops and actually flies an all-carbon fiber rocket in a couple years.

Huh, so dragon 2 will be lifted out of the water with the astronauts still in it. Different than Apollo where they got out into rafts

https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/ast/environmental/nepa_docs/review/launch/media/draft-ea_spacex-dragon-gulf-landing.pdf

>15 missions w/ recovery in 2017-2018.
>4 recover both fairing halves
>2018-2024 expected fairing recoveries (both halves) on 240 missions total

that's a lot of fairings

>>9652302
REUSE

E V E R Y T H I N G

>>9652302
its one of their bottlenecks for increased launch rate

>>9652654
they're even going to reuse the drogue chutes on dragon

>>9652664
transport is an issue too. They've had to scramble together some AN-124 flights to get fairings to the integration assembly on time, for things like Zuma.

No other plane can fit them

>>9652665
waste not want not I guess, good shit.

>>9652674
well its just kinda a basic strategy to recover whatever you can
Very strange how no else attempted any such thing, but I guess no private for profit launch company has existed before

>>9642204
>>9650473
Why are solids bad? People make fun of them all the time here but I've never heard why.

>>9652695
Because it's ancient garbage technology. Methane engines are absolute no questions 100% fuel of the future.

>>9652673
This is just embarassing, why doesn't an American company make a larger aircraft?

>>9652699
WHY? What makes them better? I want to know.

So how is P2P BFR supposed to work if they have to wait 2 weeks for a launch window? Don't get me wrong I want BFR to happen, but P2P seems pretty unlikely.

>>9652695
Well for a llong time it was just a silly meme by people committed to liquid fuels, with expensive expendable rockets, solids are the way to go.
but now with reuse, solids are shit since they preclude any reuse.

The cost of solids is in their fuel.

>>9652705
>Lower pressure loops
>Eliminates a few complexities
>Big dick thrust capabilities
>More reliable (very important)

>>9652705
>LNG is cheap as shit
>can manufacture it off world without much difficulty
>is liquid at a sizeable common range of temperatures with LOX, reducing the complexity if in flight temp management
>clears itself out of fuel lines without the need for any line-clearing system
>doesn't deposit shit in the engines like RP1 and easier to handle than hydrogen

I saw a great post a couple weeks ago that included the points above and a lot more but sadly I didn't save it.

>>9652730
greater isp
greater impulse density
easy to light & can be used to pressurize tanks meaning you can switch to only 2 fluids in the whole system rather than 5+

They'll be using pressure fed gas ch4-o2 manevuering thrusters

It's one of those things that just makes a ton of sense, but since noone in the past was sincerely designing vehicles, they ignored this logical approach.

>>9652730
>can manufacture it off world without much difficulty

There is already a prototype for this
>Pioneer Astronautics has developed a system that harvests CO2 from a simulated Martian atmosphere and reacts it with H2 into rocket propellant at a rate of 1 kg/day. A prototype system operated autonomously for 5 consecutive days, during which it maintained a 100% conversion rate (to detectable limits) of CO2 and H2 into products, maintaining a constant O2:CH4 ratio in the product stream with only minor adjustments. The integrated Mars in situ propellant production system (IMISPPS) uses a mixed catalyst bed to conduct the Sabatier methanation reaction and the reverse water gas shift in a single reactor. A recycle loop makes performance resistant to operational changes, with product ratios stable regardless of reactor temperature changes of as much as 100°C. An optimized IMISPPS is projected to produce 1 kg/day of O2:CH4 propellant and have a mass of 50 kg with a methane purity of 98+% while consuming 700 W of electrical power.

17KWH for one KG of liquid methane and Liquid O2, while weighing only 50KG is fucking impressive. That's the kind of thing that scales up very big, very quickly. To put that in perspective, the BFR 150t payload allows you to bring 3 fucking thousand of these (Assuming they fit in the cargo bay). That's three thousand fucking tons of propellant each day if you can power it, because remember it recycles it's own H2 fuel once it is going. Really mind blowing stuff.

>>9652695
can't shut them down once lit, can't throttle them on the fly, only basic throttling can be achieved by casting the fuel grain in a certain way, can't adjust it once cast

terrible Isp as well, high thrust but they're very heavy so it's not as much of a benefit as one may think

in the event of a failure the only way to shut them down is to blow them up which sends burning chunks of solid fuel flying in all directions, meaning any launch escape system that relies on the spacecraft landing with parachutes is a no go because the chutes will simply be burned up (not, Orion uses parachutes along with SLS which uses solid fuel because NASA doesn't care if people die in preventable ways unless it's on a commercial vehicle, lol)

overall if you are a space program and not a military you have no business with or need for solid fuel rockets. Orbital ATK uses solid rockets a lot because they're deep in the military industrial complex and building boosters for launch vehicles is really a jobs program meant to keep the USA's nuclear missile manufacturing capability up to snuff.

>>9652673
...but they transport the fairings by truck. They can do it in under 40 hours. I can't imagine they'd develop a whole new transportation procedure for the occasional time they need to save one day.

>>9652710
They don't, if you're going to Earth from Earth you can launch any time and land where you want to. Think about it, from the launch pad, other points on Earth remain fixed in place.

I don't know where you're getting the two weeks thing from, launch windows to the Moon are once per 24 hours, launch window to Mars is once every two-ish years, and so on. Nothing has a launch window of two weeks that I'm aware of.

>>9652758
In fact doing some maths on this at a 700W consumption rate, you only need 2.1MW of power to run the entire 3 thousand of them. That's fucking nothing. Whatever nuke plant they put there will be at least 20-50MW.

>mfw 3 thousand tonnes of propellant each day

Where the fuck would you even store that shit jesus christ.

>>9652776
No wait I'm retarded it's only 3 Tonnes per day, still, holy shit.

>>9652772
I'm talking about weather windows, you know how every launch gets delayed because there is a mild breeze? And they have to wait until the weather is cleared up so the rocket doesn't tear itself to shit.

>>9652776
That would be 3 tonnes of propellant each day, or 3,000 kg, not 3,000 tonnes.

>>9652766
Ah, I see. It was for emergency transport of the fairings back to the SpaceX factory in LA for study, and then back to Florida. By truck, it would have taken four days just in transportation, but by plane it's under one day.

>>9652776
>nuke plant
fucking memers
who is building modular fission reactors? under 100 tons ? noone
clown
Solar is better power/weight anyways

Dragon 2 has a new ruffled look

>>9652701
Airbus Beluga and Guppy cost too much?

>>9652801
http://news.mit.edu/2018/mit-newly-formed-company-launch-novel-approach-fusion-power-0309

>>9652758
See, this is the kind of stuff i want NASA to push/focus on. Getting shit into orbit has been delegated to the private sector, or at least should be.

Let NASA focus on groundbreaking shit, like
ISPPS, VASIMR and other deep-space drive shit, reactor tech, habitats, landers, shielding, all that cool shit.

>>9641659
what's after BFS if it works?
Let's say everything goes well and the launch market demands it. Does SpaceX just start mass production or develop a larger (ITS size) version? How far could they go?

>>9653489
Hopefully the rest of the world plays catch-up

Blue Origin has New Armstrong on a distant drawing board but other than that are China/Russia/ESA really going to go "Welp we had a good run but I guess we're done with this whole space thing"

>>9653489
with humans on mars, it is irresponsible to push forward with new designs until safe return and a buffer period of supplies is guaranteed for the present colonists. So I think we’ll see BFR flying for a very long time, like the R7 of interplanetary travel. As for the next step up, I’d imagine that we’ll see a split to massive earth specific LEO shuttles and then space configured transporters

>>9653489
>ITS size
Most likely. Bigger is possible but transporting it will be an issue even with barges.

>>9654415
it's probably going to be entirely built at boca chica in Texas, a mile from the launchpad

>>9652665
>reuse the drogue chutes on dragon
>risk losing a 50 million dollar spacecraft over a couple hundred bucks of plastic

WELL BUT IF IT EXPLODES AND KILLS 7 PEOPLE THAT JUT THE WAY EXPERIMENTATION WORKS, DONT BE SO CLOSE MINDED

>>9652699
>Because it's ancient garbage technology
It's literally not much more complicated than a garbage can filled with explosives.
>>9652695
>>9652699
>>9652705

Also, literally the only reason solid fuel exists its because its infinitely better for military technology because it allows for the best launch readiness.
For peaceful CHEAP spaceflight liquid fuels are literally 100% confirmed to be better in every single god damnf ucking way possible

>>9652801

https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/spacetech/kilopower/

>>9653466
>NASA dramatically fails at the easiest stuff, engages in zero cost reductions over decades of operation
>WELL WE SHOULD LEAVE *thing NASA failed at* TO THE PRIVATE SECTOR, AND ONLY HAVE THEM DO *far more difficult, complex, weight/cost sensitive stuff*

o well, idiots will be idiots I guess

>>9654645
hhhnngg god yes

>>9654645
>develop preliminary concepts and technologies
aka nothing

>>9654774
I think once BFR is proven and they start making it available for launch we will see a fucking huge explosion in private company investment in space. Anyone with a brain can see how much potential for ultra gigabux there is in a 150t payload for 9m dollars, that's so cheap it might as well be free. Shit, if I had the capital I would be investing in 0g mining equipment right fucking now.

>>9654645
Cool stuff, but no mention of weight which is the real critical factor.

>>9654797
lol, you people are nutty who think there will be some explosion of economic activity in space

>>9654817
You are fucking retarded, the amount of wealth even in near earth asteroids is absolutely phenomenal, not to mention whoever can shunt an ice asteroid into orbit and start produce methalox fuel is going to make a fucking killing.

>>9654819
Fucking clueless, there is NOTHING in existance that has enough value to be worth mining in space then brought to Earth

>>9654824
Current value of gold is 42k per kilo. I can pay for 5 BFR flights with one tonne of gold. There are many near earth asteroids with near pure gold composition. To pay for my entire venture I just have to cut off a one tonne chunk and splash that down in earth to pay for my venture many times over. You are the clueless one my friend. Gold is merely one example, there are far more valuable materials that I could have used but gold is a good one.

>>9654824
>>9654833
yes this. a ton of platinum is like 30 million dollars

A BFR can put 150 tons in orbit for 9 million

One bfr to get 150 tons of equipment in orbit

Thats MORE than enough to go to an asteroid and ferry say 10 tons of platinum back.

Another BFR to get it back to earth. And thats overstating it because it would be an almost empty bfr it would need no fuel.


So thats 2 bfr flights, 9 million each 18 million, and say 20 million extra for the cost of recovering the rocks? thats around 40 million in cost for 300 million in profit (and were assuming worst case scenario for all, thats an investment return of 750%, literally better than any busines ever conducted on earth

>>9654833
2000 x 42k = 84 million
good luck mining an asteroid for that price
good luck finding "pure gold asteroid" memes

>>9654817
>>9654824
If chartering a BFR costs $10 million, it's even open to uneconomical activity. People spend more than that sailing cruise ships around Antarctica for zero rational reason.

Every Ivy League and major research institute will be sending scientific parties into orbit constantly, Hollywood jerkoffs and Russian oligarchs will have their birthday parties there

>>9652928
Beluga is Eruopean. Boeing has the 747 Large Cargo Freighter in the same job though. The main issue is that as far as I know neither Airbus nor Boeing rents out their large transports.Doing so would impact their production schedules. In terms of western aircraft their only real option would be to ask NASA to use their sole remaining Guppy or to borrow one of the two C-5Cs from the USAF but I don't see that as realistic or cheap.

New news from musk:

>@teslamotorsclub: Elon. I noticed on all reused F9s the legs are new. Are the legs not reusable? Are there new legs on each reused F9, or are the just repainted?
>@elonmusk: They are reused. Repainted for now, but won’t be in the future. Note, F9 Block 5 (arguably should be called Version 7) will have legs V2. Similar overall geometry, but easier to reuse. Aiming for two flights within 24 hours w V7. In theory, all we will need to do is reload propellant.

>>9654833
>There are many near earth asteroids with near pure gold composition

Like which ones?

>>9654938
>Aiming for two flights within 24 hours w V7. In theory, all we will need to do is reload propellant

Say it with me lads

P R I V A T E

C

O

M

P

A

N

I

E

S

>>9654938
fucking musk and these naming conventions

>>9655013
fucking redditors and their autistic obsession with retarded naming conventions

>>9654847
>A BFR can put 150 tons in orbit for 9 million
Source? I had no idea that BFR was flying already.

>>9655164
fucking pasta posters

>>9655174
go back to where you belong

wew, another thread ruined by r/spacex shitposters

>>9655188
if you haven't noticed, it's someone pretending to be retarded. They post the same images in every thread. It's just standard 4chan shitposting, not some reddit conspiracy

>>9642470
your life is pathetic compared to him, u just gel

>>9655191
It seems to be a group of about 2-3 people, no more than that I don't think though.

>>9655197

200 days in orbit now

>>9654938
Yea the old legs only move one way, so once deployed they are locked and have to be manually removed from the rocket and reassembled in launch position.
The new legs will be able to fold back up into launch position without being removed from the rocket.

>>9652710
I reckon by only doing sub-orbital hops they can afford lower acceleration launches which would reduce stress on the vehicle some.

They're going to have to fly the thing a gorillion times and be certain it's extremely reliable before they ever start flying commercial passengers anyway. If they can't make to at least 1000 flights without one blowing up and killing 100+ passengers they'll be in a PR hell they may never recover from.

>>9655246
If NASA can get away with it I think SpaceX could.

>>9655253
Losing astronauts isn't the same as losing commercial passengers though.

>>9655263
who the hell cares, they'll sign a waiver

>>9655265
Sure that will keep them free of lawsuits and such, but they still have to maintain confidence with the public or nobody is going to want to fly on the things. Especially when they have the option of just taking a regular plane ride.

>>9655276
Haha mate I will sign any piece of paper you put in front of me for a ticket to Mars if the survival rate is better than 75%. I'm sure many people are of the same opinion, if not then fucking sweet, list is shorter for me.

>>9655282
I'm not talking about trips to Mars, I'm talking about the suborbital flights from New York to China and so forth.

>>9655284
Those are memes

We have to tolerate Musk being retarded 50% of the time as long as he keeps delivering them big rockets

>>9644319
Hughs tried branching out and that didn't work very well.
>>9652695
On top of all the other reasons, they're dirty as fuck too, in terms of >muh environment,
with all the perchlorates used as the oxidizers.

>>9654797
Honestly, that could be a boon for earth based mining too.

>>9655544
>Hughs tried branching out and that didn't work very well.
my point exactly, i really can't think of any businessman who tried to establish multiple companies in very disparate industries all within the same decade or so, and came out successful in all of them or didn't fuck up the juggling act.

>>9654833
>>9654847
but that assumes that news of mining that much metal won't collapse prices before you sell.

>>9655559
It assumes there aren't vast amounts of resources availible to mine on Earth, which is totally friggin wrong.

>>9655572
Except they are all tied up behind huge sums of bureaucracy, asteroids are free for the taking.

>>9655576
Yea cuz rockets aren't surrounded by an immense amount of bureaucracy? Look at how SpaceX has to wait months for a fucking permit to have a camera on their 2nd stage.

>>9655582
Nah, he's got a point.

On the colonization front, it will probably literally be easier to solve the technical challenge of building a city on Mars than the diplomatic challenge of building a city in Antarctica

>>9655584
what about the international and diplomatic challenges about building a city on mars

>>9655586
What, the Sierra Club gonna sue you into oblivion for polluting another planet too? Maybe get the Ninth Circuit to file an injunction saying it's illegal to ever leave Earth and potentially contaminate other planets?

>>9655588
>Maybe get the Ninth Circuit to file an injunction saying it's illegal to ever leave Earth and potentially contaminate other planets?

Man imagine the unholy shitstorm if they actually did that.

>>9655588
Space X still has to play by the US government's rules.
Not to mention that even if it does happen when they're a lot of grey, area i can imagine it causing a starting some shit back here on earth

>tfw a judge in hawaii says you can't deport the illegals from Mars

~___~

>The Sea Dragon was a 1962 conceptualized design study for a two-stage sea-launched orbital super heavy-lift launch vehicle. The project was led by Robert Truax while working at Aerojet, one of a number of designs he created that were to be launched by floating the rocket in the ocean. Although there was some interest at both NASA and Todd Shipyards, the project was not implemented.

>At the massive dimensions of 150 m (490 ft) long and 23 m (75 ft) in diameter, Sea Dragon would have been the largest rocket ever built, and it still is by far the largest rocket ever fully conceived.

>The rocket would have been able to carry a payload of up to 550 tonnes (540 long tons; 610 short tons) or 550,000 kg (1,210,000 lb) into low Earth orbit. Payload costs were estimated to be between $59 to $600 per kg. TRW (Space Technology Laboratories, Inc.) conducted a program review and validated the design and its expected costs.[5]

>However, budget pressures led to the closing of the Future Projects Branch, ending work on the super-heavy launchers they had proposed for a manned mission to Mars.

RIP the rocket that would have been

>>9655611
just some nonsensical paper rocket

>>9655613
It was actually thought to work and work very well with a low cost per kg but was never built because of budget cuts

>>9655618
also there really was no demand for a rocket that could lift payloads that big even if the cost per/kg was absurdly low

>>9655611
>>9655618
Here is its size compared the to rocket Musk wants to build for a manned mars mission

>>9655618
What do you mean "thought to work" ?
Did they make prototypes to demonstrate massive pressure fed engines work?
Did they demonstrate construction techniques that allow 23 meter diameter rockets ?
Did they demonstrate 23 meter diameter nozzles?

Its real easy for them just to draw shit out on paper, and then talk about "projected costs"..

>>9655626
They mad smaller prototypes of it yes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6e5B7EKVg48

>>9655628
Sea dragon is fucking cool, I think in the future if companies are going to make shit bigger than the BFR they will just scrap the launch pad entirely, too expensive, just launch that shit at sea.

>>9655704
Salt water is shit to deal with and ruins everything

>>9655728
So idk have a cheap watertight pod that it burns through the bottom on takeoff and sheds at 50m altitude.

>>9655745
launch pads are not that expensive, and you need everything in them anyways.

Rockets are super loud as you get bigger, you need to properly manage their acoustics so they don't destroy themselves

You need to fill them, which can only be done a little bit before since its cryogenic fuel in a non-insulated tube...

Lots of other stuff

Ay yo according to the live SpaceX video there is going to be a centrifuge on the iss. Fucking finally.

>>9655586

We are going to need an internationally recognized treety. Mars will likely become it's own country or countries when it reaches legit colony stage.

>>9655982
Haha that treaty will get thrown out so fast either by companies out to make big bucks or native Martians giving you the finger.

>>9655211
I love the theories about this thing and what its doing.

Anything from "testing recon equipment and sneeky breeky" to tinfoil-levels of "helping cover up the Moonhoax".

>>9655576
>>9655572
>
>>9655582
>>9655584
>>9655586
>>9655588
>>9655594
>>9655596


Just waiting to sign up for the MCRN, filthy Earthers

>>9655997
I gotchu senpai fuck this shithole.

Reminder humans won't ever set foot on mars on environmental concerns so throw your colonization (great word btw its sure to inspire a lot of people) fantasies in the garbage where they belong.

>>9656010
>season 3 starts in 4 days

>>9656028
>muh ann clayborne

i will never ever ever get retarded idiots like you. Why would we ever stop doing human progress to preserve A FUCKING LIFELESS ROCK WITH NO LIFE AT ALL.

That's like shuting down a gold mine to save the gold from being grabbed because it cant tell us if he likes it or not.

I expect that people with any real power who propose this will be very very few and will probably be laughed at (and luckily shot on sight)

>>9655728
>Salt water is shit to deal with
launch from a big lake then, there you go regular water

>>9655572
>>>9655559
>It assumes there aren't vast amounts of resources availible to mine on Earth, which is totally friggin wrong
mining is really expensive and hard you have to dig a lot in some cases with lots of explosives and ultra dangerous chemicals.

Some asteroids are just almost pure rocks of platinum. Its literally there for the taking

>>9655994
>I love the theories about this thing and what its doing.

100% chance that it's doing what Boeing does best, delivering taxpayer dollars to shareholders

>>9656572
If you actually research a bit about it, it was surprisingly cheap to develop with the overall development costing $129 million over a 4 year period. This is likely due to it's small size and the fact that it was based off a long line of a long line of Boeing experimental shuttles. What it's doing is probably not military or surveillance related but really advanced science experiments for the airforce, such as testing the EM Drive.

>>9656669
em drive is a meme. What it is probably doing is simple spy stuff testing, like new encrypted comm links, prototype mirrors, and other things

>>9656669
>such as testing the EM Drive

>>9656669
>such as testing the EM Drive

Hey man, i want to believe as well..but you know...come on

>>9652705
There's nothing bad about them. They're a fantastic way to get cheap thrust for the initial launch. They're also amazingly reliable since they are essentially a can full of explosives open at one end. All the Musk cucks saying that they're old technology have been drinking the koolaid too much.

>>9656767
they're old tech because you can't use them to land a stage, and you can't easily mfg them on other planets

>>9655188
Did you really see the OP image with BFR and not think this will be a /r/SpaceX repository?

>>9655613
So is the BFR yet it's talked about like it's already launched and delivered everything promised.

>>9656781
none of the vehicles pictured in the OP have launched yet tho. It's funny how much contention BFR gets, heh.

>>9656770
I'd hate to tell you this, but landing the first stage isn't the be-all-end-all of rocketry. A reusable Falcon 9 only costs 5M less than a completely expendable Proton-M while delivering less to orbit.

>>9656789
SLS has finished its design stage and is being tested right now. You can go and look at pictures of all the massive parts being moved around and the tower for the core stage test being constructed. Where's all the BFR stuff? A tank? An engine that hasn't even been tested fully yet?

>>9656791
no shit, why would you undercut more than you have to? SpaceX is cadence limited right now.

Reusability is the future, and anyone that ignores that fact will not survive.

>>9656807
You'd undercut more because they're losing business to the Euros. The Ariane 5 is doing fantastic right now and Arianespace signed 27 satellite contracts last year. How many contracts did SpaceX sign?

uh oh, the Ariane "contract signing" troll is back. Every single space thread he fishes for (you)'s by repeating the same statements over and over and over.

Please just ignore him.

>>9656819
Uh, what? How is Arianespace signing a bunch of contracts trolling? Do you have any rational arguments?

lmao

>>9656819
Fuck that. If there is a constant troll, you'll have your refutation ready to copy-paste by now. Just calling somebody a troll is not a refutation.

>>9656807
>Reusability is the future, and anyone that ignores that fact will not survive.

That does not mean landing the first stage will be the most effective way to achieve reusability - SpaceX took years to even successfully land the booster and there's still a significant refurb period to get it operational again. SMART style reuse might prove out to be the better technology for easy and fast reuse.

>>9656828
should they get any better treatment? Honest question.

>>9656837
SMART is fucking stupid. You're throwing away components, you can't use it on other planets, and it adds in a huge number of additional failure modes. Plus, it is much more weather sensitive than regular F9 style landing.

There is a reason that BO is landing ass-first. It's the only sensible method for reusability.

>>9656842
>You're throwing away components,

Only the tanks, which are by far the cheapest part of the first stage (less than ~20% of the cost). Landing the entire thing confers a pretty big payload penalty, catching the engines doesn't confer any more than a few hundred kilos of penalty.

> you can't use it on other planets,

so what? The first stage of Vulcan obviously won't ever be on another planet anyway.

>>9656842
SMART is not meant for use on other planets. And the engines alone are 2/3 the cost of the entire rocket. The main problem with vertical landing is the payload penalty that it entails so why recover everything sometimes when you can recover the most expensive portion all the time?

Because a 20% payload penalty still means that you can launch a huge number of payloads. "Penalty" is the wrong word to use. BFR will never be used expendable, but you could still call the full reuse a "penalty' if you wanted. But it would be dumb

>>9656854
>BFR will never be used expendable

peak delusion, there will be dozens, if not hundreds of BFRs flown at ludicrous cost before full reuse is achieved on it - and that's after the mandatory 5-10 year delay from musk time.

>>9656858
full reuse on BFR means landing the 1st stage... and then landing the 2nd stage. No fairings to worry about. How will that take years to do, when the whole fucking point of BFR is to do those two tasks?

>>9656854
SMART allows for solids to be used which gives the rocket flexibility and lowers the cost for lighter payloads. A Falcon has two price points: reusable and expendable while Vulcan will have a variety of price points for the same range of missions.
If a payload weighs a couple hundred kilos above the reusable max then it has to be thrown away, which will bump up the price significantly, while the Vulcan or Ariane 6 will just slap on some more solids.

>>9656851
>2/3 the cost.
Retard. Do you really think the ejected scrap will magically reasonable itself in a rocket? SMART is anything but smart and that is why it will never leave the PR room.

>>9656875

reusing BE-4's is as simple as bolting them to a new booster.

>>9656860
Vertical landing for a second stage can't work, the math simply doesn't check out. Either they are using so much fuel that they are barely able to put any payload on it, or they are going to use heat-shields at which point you should go full horizontal landing and just glide to earth and renew the heat shields each time.

>>9656875
What? The engines are the most complex and expensive portion of the entire rocket. The rest is just a dumb empty tank that anyone can make. The RD-180 that ULA currently use costs $25M a pop. Also remember that only half the total launch cost is the launch vehicle construction costs.

>>9656881
You seem to be misinformed.

2nd stage reuse isn't some mathematical impossibility. BFR's 2nd stage *is* the orbital stage with the payload. It can do 150t to LEO and land on earth with current specs.

Let's actually discuss big launch vehicles. What do you guys think the Block 2 SLS will use for its new boosters? Dark Knight looks like the most likely option, but they wouldn't have given money to Rocketdyne to draw up the F-1B if they weren't considering using liquids.

>>9656886
>only half
The Rube Goldberg style "engine reuse" is a good way to fix that. 25m a pop will seem like a smart deal then.
I actually hope boeing and lm force ula to do that and not in the distant future of the late 2020's.

>>9656910
What is there to discuss? Block II will never fly. EM-1 will fly, then EM-2 will fly, and after that the whole project will die one way or another.

>>9656945
Why do people keep saying this? Even if New Glenn and BFR somehow go online, which I sincerely doubt they will, that doesn't mean that they will replace the SLS. That's like saying "oh the Space Shuttle will launch one or twice and once they realize that it won't be a cheap launch vehicle they'll cancel it."

>>9656961
Go SLS fly like the American Eagle!

>>9656910
>rocket to nowhere

>>9656895
No, I just can into math. Landing the first stage while still carrying big payloads only works because the first stage seperates very early. It only reaches Mach 6, or roughly 8000km/h. With his kind of speed you can indeed land it and still carry lots of payload, because the fuel required isn't too much.

A seond stage though is up to 50.000km/h fast. De-accelerating from those speeds using engines only would take much more fuel than the second stage can possibly carry. It's simply impossible that they make it work. They basically need to carry the fuel to de-acclerate the part the first stage accelerated, and then plus the even bigger part the second stage acclerated. This can't work out.

So I guess they will heavily use heat shields, in which case I wonder what the point is of vertical landing. If you are going to burn up heat shields, you might as well go full horizontal landing and glide to earth. It would free up a hundred tons of payload (based on the specifications of the BFR), and it would be more reliable and safe than vertical landing.

>>9656961
because SLS is a 50 billion dollar scam on the American public.

>buh we're reusing SSME's and similar solids!!!!!!!
ok mr Pork Politics shill. There is practically nothing thrifty about the project. For instance, SLS uses PBAN, while the Shuttle SRBs used ammonium perchlorate. And don't forget the half a billion dollar one-use mobile launcher. Or anything else for that matter

The only - ONLY - purpose of SLS is to keep high paying oldspace jobs on government life support.

>>9656983
wew, you really are delusional. 50k km/HOUR? lmao. You got Kruger'd, dude.

Money on the SLS are spent entirely for the benefit of the American public.

Indeed one could say the SLS program is the heart on soul of American space science.

Only America has the SLS and we must protect that crucial part of America's interests.

SLS is the heart and soul of America's science and we can't let that go.

We need the SLS, America needs the SLS, Science needs the SLS.

SLS is the rocket that symbolizes the American Dream.

Go, SLS, fly high, like a true American Eagle!

>*pops srb cap and blows up the main engines*
>heh...
>*ascent aborts behind your budget*

>>9656994
Ah there it is

>>9656986
*yawn* can you provide literally any arguments that aren't the usual "m-muh pork projects, m-muh oldspace" meme that Reddit types spam? Nice Reddit spacing by the way.

oh, hello. Did someone say SLS? SLS is great. There are no problems with SLS. Move along.

Wait, what about this? Putting people on EM-1? Sure, no issue here.

>>9656998
>*yawn*

talk about reddit, hahehe.

Theoretically, the different rocket makers could specialize in a different area.

The SLS can carry a bigger payload, so it should be used for sending larger single payload objects into the outer solar system.

SpaceX would cover the majority of the rest of launches, while Blue origin I guess can focus on getting low orbit launches as cheep as possible for tourists and getting passengers to a theoretical space station, without worrying much about going pass Earths orbit.

Have no idea about what Virgin galactic is doing to be honest.

This is your average spacex fan in 2018.
And that's a good thing.

>>9657008
it would be nice for that to be the case, but the truth is that the half a billion dollar price tag(!) per SLS launch could be more efficiently spent on redesigning the payload to me modular (thus flying on two 7 MILLION dollar BFR flights)

>>9657013
not testing rockets in the middle of a city and making manned capsules safe are bad things?

Also, you apparently can't read. The next sentence acts to show how there are also bad regulations. It's not cut and dry.

>>9657014
>7 MILLION dollar BFR flights
see >>9655166

>>9656994
M-mr. Shelby? I m-mean Senator, sir!
I'm happy you are visiting us but what is the r-reason? Are you perhaps dissatisfied with our work? I can assure you! Everything is going fine and we are successfully raising the popularity of the SLS among the American public to unheard of levels!

>>9656886
>The rest is just a dumb empty tank that anyone can make.

>>9656991
Well, I was thinking the BFR is supposed to be able to fly to the moon, in which case you need 40.000km/h at least, but it looks like it's not supposed to be able to do that. You can calculate the numbers with 27.000km/h though, it doesn't change much. It's not possible to do it.

>>9657018
are you fucking retarded or something?

>>9657024
It was sort of sad seeing the Orion test. Sure, Delta IV's are fun to see launch, but the whole thing felt forced.

>>9657014
SpaceX continues to show just how good their PR is when a rocket that is being constructed and tested right now with every nut and bolt being public record is being dismissed off-hand for a rocket that doesn't exist and has impossible promises.
Tell me this, reusability only works when the rockets have a very high launch rate so what will the BFR be launching so often to get a $7M price tag? Don't say BFR P2P.

>>9656910
>>9656914
>>9656929
F1 was a great engine and should have seen continued development instead of forgetting how to build them.

oh, I see where your misunderstanding comes from. With BFR, most missions require tanker BFR's to be launched as well. For instance, it takes seven BFR launches - 1 payload and 6 refueling ships - to get a full 150t to the lunar surface (and return all seven BFR's back to earth and land).

By itself, a single BFR can launch 150t to LEO. but from there a tanker has to meet up and do a refueling operation in order to have the DeltaV to get anywhere interesting.

>>9657047
meant to reply to >>9657030


also, this video is useful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtwixqKaCmo

>>9657035

BFR is dead in the water even with lower pricetag than $7M and it is obvious to anyone in the industry.

There are no payloads for it.

It is that simple.

Deep space probes take decades of planning and investment and as a result the current launch rates are perfectly capable to satisfy all requirements, a hundred times and more.

Human missions will be limited to the LOP-G and possibly the ISS if its life is extended, and will not be using the BFR when there are flight proven and safe alternatives such as CST-100, Orion, and even Soyuz.

The very idea of BFR ever becoming reality is highly dubious - but its use even more so.

>>9657069
don't forget that the $7 million number is not only made up fantasy, but it's actually the cost of a launch and not the price

I expect them to price the launches no less than $100 million initially or they will never make their money back

>>9657069
have you been living under a rock? BFR's main purpose is to enable the contraction of a mars & moon base. Everything else is secondary.

>>9657069
Even if you're a real pessimist, if a 150 ton rocket is cheaper than a 20 ton rocket why the fuck would anyone pay an order of magnitude more for the smaller rocket?

For instance a BFR should definitely by design be cheaper to launch than a Falcon 9, which means if you had a 20 ton payload it'd be financially sound just to launch the fucking thing with a bunch of empty space left over

>>9657035
>a rocket that is being constructed and tested right now with every nut and bolt being public record is being dismissed off-hand
You mean the rocket that's been under development continuously since 2005 at the expense of over $10 billion with no sign of an actual launch yet, but a hypothetical future heavy payload launch capability that they MIGHT be able to achieve if given another $25 billion by the 2030s?

>>9657090
furthermore, that empty space might as well be full of raw construction materials or bags full of water to drop off at a big space station.

Or, a fuckton of student payloads.

>>9656914
why do the engines have a second small nozzle next to the big main nozzle?

that's a heat exchanger. the nozzel gets hot

>>9657094
It turns out that constructing big rockets is very hard. In other news, water is wet and the sky is blue.

>>9657069
With a really low price tag lots of payloads would suddenly have to be flown.

Let's say you could have a flight around the moon for 500.000$, and land there and walk around for 2 million, there would literally be tens of thousands of people who would want to do that. There are a lot of millionaires and billionaires on the world. Just to satisfy that demand you would need hundreds or thousands of flights/year.

So space tourism alone has the potential to increase the payload/year by a gigantic factor.

Then you also have the prospects of asteroid mining, as well as building big research facilities or telescopes on the moon or in a space station.

The only reason we never tried anything beyond probes is because the price tags for anything even slightly more ambitious would become astronomically big.

>>9657108
>t. augustine commission

w..what's that? EM-1 is now 2020? Oh, what a shame. That means we get payed more.

>>9657087
Who will pay for the bases?

>October 11, 2010
>President Obama declares that the SLS will be carrying American astronauts to the ISS by December 31st, 2016

I sure am glad we left this in the hands of competent government professionals instead of a cowboy operation like SpaceX with their constant stumbles and delays

>>9657111
Payloads are always much, much more expensive than the rocket. Making the launch cheaper means nothing if the payload still costs billions.

>>9656816
Launching 20 deg off the proper angle is Russia tier fuckup not premium 200mil$ launch

>>9657094
SLS started development in 2010

>>9657117
>>9657121
Show me all those man-rated super heavy rockets that didn't cost billions to develop.

>>9657127
n1, energiya

>>9657122
This is only true for small payloads. For something more ambitious like a big space station the bottleneck is obviously the launching costs. And obviously for space tourism, which could be a huge cash cow for a rocket launch company. If flying around the moon costs 500.000 instead of 500.000.000, obviously more people would pay that.

>>9657101
It is the gas generator exhaust from the turbine that is powering the main pumps for propellant.

>>9657127
Falcon Heavy, development cost $500 million

>>9657035
The rocket that is being constructed is gonna cost over 50.000.000.000 dollars including R&D costs.

It has less payload capacity that the already succesfuly tested Falcon heavy which costs literally 2500 times less! and is mostly reusable

>>9657141
are you a moron or just 12

>>9657140
lol. you do realize they basically took a russian engine and made it as cheap as possible? spacex didn't develop shit yet.

they can come back once they actually did some r&d on their own.

>>9657130
>N1
Underfunded and rushed so it was a complete and total failure.
>Energiya
Successful rocket, but took 10 years from the finishing of the preliminary design to the first launch. Was also never manrated due to the fall of the Soviet Union.

>>9657127
Falcon Heavy? Half a billion spent for development, so if you can find the mysterious organization responsible with "man-rating" rockets around the world you could potentially spend few hundred million in bribes for them to do their magic.
And still come out with under a billion for a super heavy lifter that is certified man rater. Killer deal.

>>9657146
1/10 troll attempt, literally the weakest one in this thread. Work on it.

>>9657122
Payloads being super expensive is a consequence of rockets being expensive. Since they usually have only one chance to launch.

If you can launch 10 probes for the same price you used to launch 1, you can design it with a little less extreme reliability for 1/10.000 the cost and just rely on one of them working

>>9657122

Once we got a moonbase that becomes a spaceport and resource mining and processing facility, getting equipment into space becomes a far smaller concern because stuff launched from the moon is much cheaper than stuff launched from earth.

When we have a solid grasp of the moon, it will change everything.

>>9657139
why isnt it feed to the main bell to make it also thrust with the bell?

wait so the engine itself powers its own pumps? why not use a battery and make the engine less complex?

>>9657148
Not sure about your arguments regarding the second but the first one definitely fulfills the requirements of not costing billions and being memerated by NASA.

>>9657152
"man-rating" means sucking NASA's dick enough so that they let your capsule pass their internal MMOD models. Even though Soyuz completely fails at it.

Also, 7 launches of a static rocket configuration

>what's that? SLS is going to put humans onboard with the 2nd launch?
>oh, what's this? ULA will launch humans with an new 2nd stage on the first launch?

it's pathetic

>>9657152
Falcon Heavy can maybe lift 62 tons to LEO. Maybe. It has never done so. Plus it's not manrated and has a pathetic fairing size. Manrating a rocket is extremely expensive. Why do you think SpaceX haven't revealed how much it cost to manrate the Falcon 9?

>>9657158
how it works is the heat from the bell is fed into the pump. That runs the pump

>>9657162
Are you retarded? Manrating a rocket is always expensive and hard. Why do you think the Angara isn't going to be manrated so Russia's new capsule will have to rely on a new rocket that's being built from the start to be manrated. If SpaceX don't like it they can give back all the money NASA gave them.

>>9657168
I don't think you know how to read desu

>>9657047
So they are literally betting it all on them being able to re-fill in space? Something that is extremely hard and dangerous to do on the ground?

They surely aren't serious. This is probably just some CGI stuff to make the fans wet.

>>9657155

That's not how it works.
If anything big rockets will only make the issue worse as payload development will require even bigger budgets in order to squeeze every gram worth of payload capacity. 150 tons are a lot of grams.

>>9657165
Your butthurt shows.

>>9657171
the refueling method they're going to use is a simple sloshing one. you apply slight thrust in one direction with two BFR's ass-to-ass. This moves the fuel over to the other ship.

Refueling won't be the difficult part. ULA will do it in LEO. BO is planning to do it.

>>9657181
LOL IF THIS EVER HAPPENS I WANT TO SEE REQUIEM FOR A DREAM MEMES ALL OVER THE FUCKING PLACE

>>9657127
>>9657108
Wait, you're saying that SLS is taking so long because safety is the top priority

And that's why they're building the entire platform around the same engines that killed 14 astronauts?

>>9657181
>BO is planning to do it.
Source?

>>9657191
the silly thing is, if safety is the top priority we wouldn't see them put humans on the 2nd (or maybe 1st, considering how things are going) SLS flight. heck, why not launch it 270 times in a row to prove that it has a true higher-than-1-270 LOC capability?

>>9657194
NASA and Russian vehicles are not subjected to certification.

>>9657192
bezos mentioned it in an interview ~last year, when discussing the gigantic orbital manufacturing hub he's envisioning. It's not a near future plan like the ULA tug I suppose, so it's not a good example.


dunno the exact interview, sorry. He was sitting down..?

>>9657181
This is way more dangerous than fueling on a launch pad.

New Glenn has a third stage.

>>9657191
>>9657194
Imagine the memes if the first SLS launch blows up on the launchpad because of all the cobbled-together old Shuttle hardware

The firecracker that cost $35 billion and a decade of work

>>9657171

They could refuel on the moon and launch from there.

>>9657203
>NASA and Russian vehicles are not subjected to certification.
Orion has the same LOC requirements as the CC vehicles

>>9657194
> heck, why not launch it 270 times in a row to prove that it has a true higher-than-1-270 LOC capability?
brainlet
why don't we build 10,000 identical buildings so we can make sure that the possibility of a structural failure of one of the beams is really 1/10,000 per year?

>>9657211
BFR can't reach the moon without refilling as I learned.

not needed. You can land on the moon with a full payload (150t) and return to earth, assuming you got filled up in trans lunar space beforehand. This video was posted itt earlier, but it does a good job at explaining it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtwixqKaCmo

>>9657215
meant to reply to
>>9657211


something weird is going on with my quotes today, dunno why

>>9657191
What? Do you know anything about the Challenger/Columbia disasters? Challenger was caused by an O-ring failure as a result of gross negligence by NASA. Columbia was caused by a piece of the external tank breaking off and damaging the wing, causing the shuttle to break up on reentry.

The RS-25s are the most efficient and safest rocket engines ever built. Stop being a memeing Reddit tard.

>>9657219
dumb mobile posters

>>9657224
it's a more widespread 4chan issue across browsers other than just mobile. There's a couple threads on /qa/ about it

Well, that's the bump limit. Like pottery, it devolved into shitflinging near the end. I suppose that's to be expected. But hey, the reddit-mention frequency is only 1.85%, which is a new record!

Space is pretty cool

>>9657210
Ahh, the hallmark of a retard who only listens to Eric Berger and other pop-science sources is the "cobbled together shuttle hardware" comment.
Tell me oh masterfull rocket scientist, other than the RS-25s and external boosters (which are going to be replaced eventually) what on the SLS is reused from the Shuttle era and what should NASA use in their stead?

>>9657121
As NASA officially pushed EM-1 back from 2019 to 2020, the internal gossip has become that it's actually going to be more like 2023

>>9657234
>Twitter is my source of news.
>Eric Beger
Like pottery.

>>9657073
>I expect them to price the launches no less than $100 million initially or they will never make their money back

each BFR will cost over a billion dollars to build, carbon fiber isn't cheap especially on that scale. probably each launch will be the cost of a new one until rapid reuse of both BFR and BFS can be achieved along with the high launch cadence required to make reuse economically feasible.

>>9657233
Shit man, they're taking longer than Saturn V and spending more money than Saturn V to deliver a rocket with less payload than Saturn V, 60 years after Saturn V

Maybe they ought to do a Jonestown mass suicide

>>9657090
>Even if you're a real pessimist, if a 150 ton rocket is cheaper than a 20 ton rocket why the fuck would anyone pay an order of magnitude more for the smaller rocket?

the same reason that electron's launch manifest is booked even though it can only launch ~500kg, customers get more control over the mission and final orbit parameters. there's gonna be tons of payloads that can't just rideshare to the same LEO.

>>9657236
So, it's bullshit? SLS is ready to go by the end of 2016 as promised?

Oops, 2017

I meant 2019

2020 and counting. Definitely 2020.

>>9657241
don't forget the 18 month gap between launches too!

>>9657238
NASA's budget during the Apollo era was 4% of the federal budget. Now it's 1%. Add in the fact that they don't have the goal of beating the Commies nor do they have the goal of fulfilling a dead President's promise.

>>9657238
>Shit man, they're taking longer than Saturn V and spending more money than Saturn V to deliver a rocket with less payload than Saturn V, 60 years after Saturn V

Saturn V cost ~60 billion to develop after adjusting for inflation, SLS so far has only cost 11. SLS won't cost anywhere near the same as Saturn V.

>>9657241
Does it actually matter when it goes?
The money have already been spent and they can't be brought back.
So in a way, you get the most powerful rocket for free.
Cancelling it now is ridiculous.

>>9657252
I smell costs, and they're sinking

>>9657241
>>9657252
In 2015 NASA stated that the first manned launch is locked in for 2023.

It's locked in. Guaranteed. Don't worry about it.

>>9657250
33 billion for the R&D and production between '64 and '73

How much of the SLS budget is going to SpaceX?

>>9657296
what

>>9656910
this is what a government rocket design looks like, a buncha fucking nonsensical paper rockets

>>9656983
retarded NASA shill pretending vertical landing isn't superior to "gliding" + horizontal landing

>>9657168
>Manrating a rocket is always expensive and hard.
literal fucking nonsense
there is no such thing as "man rating" and NASA bureaucrats should be put in prison

>>9657236
I don't get it, is Berger famous for saying anything that was embarrasingly debunked?

>>9657578
in practically every article, yes

he's also famous for quoting "anonymous sources from inside NASA" for shit talking SLS

>>9657583
>in practically every article, yes
So do you have a specific example?

You know, like thunderf00t's "Falcon Heavy will never fly"

>>9657588
The worst blunderfoot thing is when FH lost the center core, and he blabbered on about how that means that reusability is a meme - even though it's a simple fix of adding more TEA-TEB

>>9657168
Manrating would be neither expensive or hard if NASA would butt the fuck out.

>>9657713
NASA astronauts will be the ones who's lives will depend on the rocket. NASA is paying for them to manrate so if they don't like it they can give back NASA the $10B.

>>9657560
Nigger, Google SLS and you'll find tons of pictures of the SLS being built. Where are all those completely rational and well constructed private super heavy rockets?

>>9655618
The problem with Sea Dragon was that even though it had a low cost per kilogram, the cost per launch was actually pretty high, something like $500 to $900 million dollars a pop. That meant that unlike BFR, which should be able to launch small payloads for less money than modern launch vehicles. the Sea Dragon would have to be loaded up to near max capacity to make any sense, and no one had any payloads even approaching that size.

>>9656910
>any SLS design without solids ever getting beyond the proposal phase

not gonna happen unfortunately

>>9656983
>De-accelerating from those speeds using engines only would take much more fuel than the second stage can possibly carry.

which is why BFR has a reusable heat shield

>in which case I wonder what the point is of vertical landing. If you are going to burn up heat shields, you might as well go full horizontal landing and glide to earth.

BFR is not a lifting body spacecraft, it cannot glide. What it can do is maintain a belly-flop attitude during reentry, exposing a larger surface area to the oncoming atmosphere to better slow down. The little delta wing is only there to move the center of lift/drag down closer to the engines, otherwise the vehicle would constantly want to flip back and fall ass-first through the air, which would be bad for the engines during reentry obviously.
BFR does reentry by belly-flopping in the upper atmosphere, bleeding off the vast majority of its speed, until it cannot maintain altitude and starts to fall down. Then it points ass-first into the now much slower flow of air, and when the time is right it lights up its engines for the final braking and landing burn.
Since BFR can stay high up in the atmosphere for most of its reentry and avoid extreme heating, the heat shield wont be burned up t all on most flights. According to SpaceX the only time BFR's heat shield will experience any wear is during Mars capture, because it has to dive into the denser parts of the atmosphere and bleed off ~5 km/s of velocity very quickly, resulting in a lot of generated heat.

>It would free up a hundred tons of payload

No, dumbass, the wings and body shape adjustments required to let the vehicle glide to a landing would prevent it from carrying as much payload to orbit in the first place. Also, there are no runways on Mars obviously, and even if the vehicle could glide to land on Earth there's no way it could do so on Mars where the atmosphere is hundreds of times less dense.

>>9656995
>Orions parachutes get burned up by falling solid fuel debris and the crew dies
>oh well not like we haven't killed 7 astronauts at a time before lol

>>9657030
BFR can go to the Moon if it gets refueled in low Earth orbit, and it can land 150 tons of payload on the Moon with enough fuel to come back to Earth and land if it gets refueled in a highly elliptical Earth orbit first.

>>9657158
The gas-generator/turbine exhaust is low pressure so it's not that useful for making extra thrust.

The F-1's pump operated with a couple of megawatts of power. You can't really supply megawatts of power with batteries, and even if you could they'd be impractically heavy. Burning a small amount of fuel and oxygen in a side reaction to drive a pump is very effective. There are also other much more efficient engine cycles that use pre-burners to run the pumps by don't dump exhaust overboard, problem is they're more complex and hard to develop so they're more expensive.

>>9657166
no, that's an expander cycle enigne, like the RL-10.
F-1 worked by burning a relatively small amount of fuel and oxygen in a gas generator, and the hot high pressure gas flowed over a turbine to generate torque that pumped the propellants into the main combustion chamber (also into the gas generator).
the engine was started by igniting a lump of solid fuel to provide the initial burst of hot gasses needed to get the pump spinning and the propellants into the gas generator.

>>9657171
They will join two ships ass to ass, ullage in one direction to get the fluids to settle, then move them across by pressurizing the tanks they want to empty. Propellants get forced aroudn by gas pressure, no active pumping required, just a supply of pressurant gasses and some valves.

>>9657207
There's nothing dangerous about it.

New Glenn's third stage is an option, does not come standard with every launch.

>>9658120
New Glenn probably won't even have a third stage anymore.

With the switch to hydrogen on the second stage, they can just copy the BFR architecture on a smaller scale with New Glenn's second stage.

>>9657220
>The RS-25s are the most efficient and safest rocket engines ever built.

The RL-10 engine is more efficient than the RS-25. There are also several other engines more efficient than the RS-25.

The Viking rocket engine is the most reliable large rocket engine ever built. Out of over 1000 built, only two ever failed, and one was due to human error (someone left a rag inside a pipe). The engines were so reliable they weren't required to be test fired before use, only one Viking was test fired per year. There are several other engines with an extremely high reliability record (RD-107, RD-108, etc)

The RS-25 being the 'most efficient, most reliable engine ever' is just rhetoric. In reality it is a pretty efficient engine with a good thrust to weight ratio, but is extremely complex and expensive. The RS-25 was reusable in principal but not in spirit, requiring an extensive tear-down after every flight. It's difficult to define a 'best' rocket engine because no rocket engine ever built has been the top of every feature category (efficiency, TWR, absolute thrust, reliability, cost effectiveness, versatility).

>>9658145
RS-25 had 1 failure (read: successful shutdown after anomaly) in 405 operational uses, and it remains the only American staged-combustion engine ever flown. It's less efficient than RL-10 because of a narrower expansion ratio, due to being optimized for both sea level and vacuum level flight.

They were afraid to make changes to RS-25 because it was impossible to test in flight without crew, and it was already a high-performance engine to begin with, so the tech to make it even more "reusable" simply didn't exist yet.

>>9657233

The center core is a Shuttle external tank with modifications.
Actually, everything below the second stage on SLS is modified or legacy Shuttle hardware, and there's also some Shuttle hardware going into Orion (they actually robbed a water tank out of one of the Shuttle orbiters to install into Orion a while back).
The second stage of Block 1 is a modified Delta IV second stage.

What they should have done is start the core stage from scratch, because modifying an existing drop-tank design into a core stage that needs to take more thrust while carrying an entire second stage plus payload on top is more trouble than it's worth.
They also should have either not used solids or should have developed both a solid booster and a liquid booster, so that unmanned launches could use cheaper solids while manned launches could use the more expensive but safer liquid boosters. Or just say fuck it and drop solids all together.
Instead of using legacy RS-25 engines that actually flew on Shuttle vehicles before they should have skipped straight to the upgraded design that reduces part count by 90% and offers higher performance because the engine doesn't need to be reusable anymore. Either that or just develop an entirely new engine, ideally a FFSC hydrogen engine, which would get a better thrust to weight ratio and higher Isp than the RS-25 anyway.
Lastly the second stage should have been the final one to begin with, obviously, and if we had built a new engine for the first stage there's no reason we couldn't have a vacuum optimized one for the second stage, which would give it a much better thrust to weight ratio and higher performance because of fewer gravity losses.

If you keep the same basic design architecture but get rid of the Shuttle hardware you can make SLS into a pretty decent rocket. Unfortunately SLS only exists to feed Space Shuttle job districts so divorcing SLS from Shuttle is impossible.

Oh, and we should have started decades ago.

>>9657237
>carbon fiber isn't cheap especially on that scale.
Scaling up makes it cheaper per kilogram though.

If BFR marginal launch cost is $6 million then SpaceX can charge $60 million (or whatever they charge for Falcon 9) and take home $54 million every flight. Even a billion dollar BFR would only need to launch 20 times to break even, and since they're banking on this thing being the most reliable rocket ever there's no reason to think of breaking even only after 20 flights as a risk.

>>9657240
BFR is the same launch cost whether the payload weight is 100 tons or 100 kilograms. No ride share required to get low costs.
The point is that if whatever small-sat company that buys Electron flights today can also afford a BFR flight to whatever orbit they want, then why would they buy Electron? Especially when Electron is limited to a few hundred kilograms to SSO, whereas BFR could lob those few hundred kilograms fucking any Earth orbit.

>>9657252
>imagine being so far into the sunk cost fallacy that you regard several billion dollars more over the next few years as 'basically free'
holy shit dude wake up

>>9657773
'scuse me

>>9658137
Pretty much, it makes more sense to just beef up the hydrogen second stage than to have another smaller one on top. Hydrogen third stage made sense when the second stage was LNG-oxygen.

>>9658160
Qualifiers for why it wasn't the most reliable or efficient don't change the fact that it was neither.

>>9658192
>more difficult build, reusable, ect., and practically an identical failure rate
sure thing, honey

>>9658185
>inb4 "its just heavy lift! not super-heavy!"

>>9658204
>A super heavy-lift launch vehicle (SHLLV) is a launch vehicle capable of lifting more than 50,000 kg (110,000 lb) of payload into low Earth orbit (LEO).

Brainlet here, I see that both SpaceX and Blue Origin and working on Methane engines, what makes these superior to a Hydrogen engine?

>>9658289

they aren't.

>>9658299
Then why are they investing in them over Hydrogen?

>>9658289
Higher impulse density, no hydrogen embrittlement, better efficiency than kerosene, cheap propellant (matters for margins on reusable flights), easier to store and work with than hydrogen by a long shot.

>>9658305
They're less efficient but better in every other way.

>>9658307
>Higher impulse density
meaningless

>>9658314
TWR matters for launch vehicles, only on-orbit propulsion can effectively use low thrust to weight ratio propulsion.

>>9658327
kerolox has higher impulse density than methalox
it's a meaningless property

>>9657210
>The firecracker that cost $35 billion and a decade of work
imagine if they decide to crew it:

The 40 billion dollar astronaut execution machine

>>9657246
what does it matter the budget per year, THEY ARE SPENDING MORE MONEY ON THIS ROCKET THAN THEY DID ON THE SATURN V, THATS NOT OK

>>9657252
>Cancelling it now is ridiculous.
literally google sunken cost phalacy.
Oh and make sure to reflect about it because it is a very common mistake to make in your personal life: "I hate this girl but we have already been dating for 8 years, i better marry her or it would be a waste of time, maybe in the future it would be better"

>>9657296
literally 0.000 bucks with 0 cents.

>>9658355
>THEY ARE SPENDING MORE MONEY ON THIS ROCKET THAN THEY DID ON THE SATURN V
False.

>>9658052
but like, besides that did it make sense? like could you really make a rocket out of a cheap material if you make it super big? can you really use one big engine and expect it to be allright? Did they have any plan AT ALL as to how to deal with salt water?

>>9658108
so the pump is to make the fuel get out of the engine fast. I have an idea how about putting the fuel into the tank at ultra high pressures so that when you open the valve the fuel just exists at a great speed by itself not needin something to speed it up

>>9658361
Some guy said they were going to use stainless steel

>mfw stainless steel rocket

>>9658331
>kerolox has higher impulse density than methalox
Yes, but it doesn't have a higher impulse density than sub-cooled methane and sub cooled oxygen.

>>9658366
Your tanks need to be very strong to contain the same pressure that the turbopumps of a rocket engine produce. So strong that the rocket structure would be way too heavy to work. We do have some pressure-fed engines already, but they are very low thrust because they can only run at low inlet pressure, they use heavier tanks than pump-fed engines, and they're generally shit in every way except reliability.

>>9658380
The rocket nozzles and combustion chambers were going to be steel of some kind, the body aluminum.

The plan to deal with the salt water was, no complex parts to corrode, no problem.

>>9658361
>like could you really make a rocket out of a cheap material if you make it super big?
The idea is not that you make it out of cheap materials, the idea is you don't have millions of parts to handle, you have dozens or less. That makes it cheaper to design, test, and build, but you get comparatively terrible performance. Therefore you need to make a very big rocket of this kind in order for it to make sense. That's the only reason Sea Dragon was so big, that was the point where making a 'big dumb booster' starts to produce a vehicle that was cheaper per kilogram of payload.
> can you really use one big engine and expect it to be allright?
combustion instability would have probably been a serious issue, but at the same time there's nothing fundamentally impossible about a big rocket engine like that. It would have been challenging, but probably doable.
>Did they have any plan AT ALL as to how to deal with salt water?
Salt water is really bad for complex rockets. Not bad for big dumb rockets. Slap a layer of paint on it and use brass valves and the rocket will be fine. If the plan is to reuse the Sea Dragon you could do something more expensive like make the nozzle and valves stainless steel for example.

>>9658662
>If the plan is to reuse the Sea Dragon you could do something more expensive like make the nozzle and valves stainless steel for example.
was that even part of the plan? could this be economically feasible?

>>9658115
>>9658120
nigger, the dangerous part is not the pumping, but spilling and sparking while the propellent is moved. there is no way in heaven they can do that in LEO with that retarded ass to ass technique.

>>9658860
no oxygen in space retard

>>9658090
Wings aren't heavy. You can't carry enough fuel from de-accelerating from 27.000km/h. They will burn up heat shields.

It's completely stupid to let the heavy BFS land on Mars, you would obviously go for a smaller lander that isn't as hard to leave Mars with.

>>9658863
The fuel literally is oxygen retard.

>>9658873
What is lifting body the post.
You don't need wings to go below subsonic velocity from orbital velocity just cross range is gone but no one used that in the STS

So I found this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRV_7DPqnTE

It's for the ITS but for the BFR the concept is probably identical.

So they are going to use atmosphere drag for going from 27.000km/h to roughly 1.000km/h and then ignite the engines to land.

What is the point of re-igniting the engines? Just glide back to earth and land horizontally.

Also the argument that doing that on Mars is not possible is wrong. You don't need a perfect rolling field for horizontal landing. It's actually much safer than relying on vertical landing, which can go wrong even if you have a perfect landing pad waiting for you (which the BFR obviously wouldn't have).

>>9658989
Propellant for getting rid off the final 200 m/s is lighter than adding wings and landing gear and hauling that everywhere just to land on a runway

>>9658989
I highly doubt this. The empty mass for the Space Shuttle was only 80 tons or so. The second stage of the BFS isn't much bigger, and has a mass of 90 tons roughly. So designing an orbiter roughly the size of the second stage would probably end up 100 tons or so. So only 10 tons more than the second stage weighs.

>>9659058
was meant for >>9659034


also to add, the propllent reserved for the second stage landing is over 100 tons. I'm finding numbers ranging up to 120 tons for landing.