/sfg/ Space Flight General

[Anonymous No.11396224]

H-IIA Edition

On the last episode of /sfg/ >>11389009

[Anonymous No.11396238]

https://twitter.com/SpaceAdventures/status/1229768605115600896

Hammered website edition? What's the cost of sending a Crew Dragon up? $50 cool millions or something? Say they pack a full complement of 7 people and 2 of them are employees for safety, that's a cool $10 millions just in cost.

Fuck space tourism. Too rich for my pockets. Space Janitors when?

[Anonymous No.11396245]

>>11396238
>Space Janitors when
that reminds me about that Star Wars web series about space janitors. I think might have even been called "Space Janitors"—I remember it fondly, but like all things from the pre-2010 internet it was probably unbearably cringey...

[Anonymous No.11396247]

>>11396245
I was thinking more along the lines of the original Space Quest games. I was an 80s kid.

[Anonymous No.11396256]

>>11396238
Idea doesn't have much going for it imo but there's probably some billionaire out there willing to fund a few flights just like that Japanese dude with the Starship mission.

[Anonymous No.11396291]

>>11396238
Space tourism has always been a meme.

[Anonymous No.11396299]

>>11396291
Yes, it has.

[Anonymous No.11396302]

>>11396291
Why do so few wealthy people do it? its been possible for decades.

[Anonymous No.11396307]

>>11396302
Because throwing $10M around just for a couple of hours to days of floating in micro-g is still asking for too much. Also, most people (and that includes the wealthy) don't really care about space flight in the same way they care about yachts or fine dining.

[Anonymous No.11396311]

>I trade stocks
>I have to listen to idiots constantly go on about how Virgin Galactic is the Tesla of space and how they're going to take over both the space tourism and commercial cargo market, as well as do point to point travel en masse.
It's all so tiresome.

[Anonymous No.11396315]

>>11396311
>A glorified hybrid booster
>That can barely keep together when it's not being held up by a support plane
Go build a real Chad Rocket instead of the Virgin booster.

[Anonymous No.11396317]

>>11396238
It's definitely a millionaire's kind of amusement, however the cost would be driven down if it became a regular thing. Honestly because of the very fast pace SpaceX have set, and assuming all goes well, then Crew Starship will make Crew Dragon obsolete not too many years after Crew Dragons start flying. Even with Falcon Heavy you could get a craft double Crew Dragon's size to GTO with the same 6000kg payload, the small 6-8 man capsule is kinda on it's way out I think. Everybody might not be flying Starship sized vehicles in 20 years, but I doubt also that capsules with separate cargo and service/propulsion modules will remain the norm, not when the technology that allows vehicles to be more easily recovered and refurbished continues to progress.

[Anonymous No.11396319]

>>11396291
Cramped capsules that are pretty much limited to LEO or the ISS (or suborbitals like BO and virgin were developing) are a meme for tourism because they're ridiculously uninteresting. Starship will be the first vehicle that makes it look viable

[Anonymous No.11396321]

>>11396311
>Virgin Galactic is the Tesla of space
who would make this comparison when SpaceX exists? What a dumb thing to say.

[Anonymous No.11396322]

>>11396317
The problem is, the target market for "dirty stinking rich" and "space nerd" is extremely fucking narrow. And the few who fit the bill have already started their own companies.

[Anonymous No.11396323]

>>11396311
>The Virgin Galactic vs The ChadX, Chad Origin, National Chadonautics and Space Administration, EuroChad Space Agency, CopenChaden Suborbital.

[Anonymous No.11396325]

>>11396322
either started their own company, or are so physically unfit for space travel they'd immediately pass out and puke

[Anonymous No.11396336]

>>11396321
>who would make this comparison when SpaceX exists?
I think it has something to do with Tesla and Virgin Galactic both being very reliant on their stocks. SpaceX is private, so there are no stocks.

[Anonymous No.11396338]

>>11396311
The point isn't to fight the market, but to go with the flow. You don't win by arguing. You win by moving with the stream.

[Anonymous No.11396343]

>>11396338
>ignore your knowledge of the fundamentals and follow the lemmings
kek good advice anon

[Anonymous No.11396358]

>>11396343
No, you follow the fundamentals. Its just the fundamentals differ when stock is at rest and when its moving. When its static, the fundamentals are down to earth. When its moving, the fundamentals are gauging the reason for the move and understanding its limits. There's no unlimited move, but there are bumps here and there.

If you really want to fight, short the SPCE right now. You'll be left in pain. The smart thing is to gauge the public understanding of the stock and find out where the limit is,not your own understanding. Stock moves like a herd, not an individual. Your own understanding matters less than the herd's understanding.

[Anonymous No.11396365]

>>11396307
>yachts
Starship is literally the first spacecraft that could become anything like a yacht.
>>11396311
>going to take over both the space tourism and commercial cargo market
...when literally all they've done is test fly a suborbital carnival ride that was supposed to be flying years ago. But yeah, SpaceX is private, and VG is one of the few with public stock.

[Anonymous No.11396378]

>>11396343
>>11396358
Also if you really want to short, you have to do it with intense pressure. TSLAQ did it by controlling the narrative by passing their conspiracy theory as fact to mainstream media. Then court in union press sites and government officials who have it out for Tesla, and you get a great short run. However once the public learns they've been tricked by short, the stock will move to $5000+ and any remaining short will be burned endlessly.

[Anonymous No.11396382]

>>11396323
Don't forget
>The 4Chad Space Program

[Anonymous No.11396383]

>>11396378
I was reading the stonks to pass some time at work and noticed that Tesla shorters got anus-obliterated for something like 10 billion+ in the past two months.

[Anonymous No.11396389]

>>11396224
https://spacenews.com/spacex-launches-fifth-batch-of-starlink-satellites-misses-booster-landing/

Damn it, I missed it. I had tons of work all day long.

[Anonymous No.11396390]

>>11396383
Yeah, their narrative fell apart and the stock surges as a result. It will be lot harder to fool people twice once they're aware of the game being played.

[Anonymous No.11396393]

>>11396311
Well, good luck to everyone who is trying to get to space. Expect the CCP, they can go fuck themselves.

[Anonymous No.11396397]

>>11396378
TslaQ are the lemmings in this instance. Outside of the most recent spike there has never been a time when it made sense but they keep flocking to it because of poorly informed """analysts"""

[Anonymous No.11396398]

>>11396393
Careful, or they'll drop spent boosters on you.

[Anonymous No.11396403]

>>11396338
There's a difference between wanting rational valuations of these companies and betting against them. Nearly all the analysts are wrong about SPCE, and they have practically zero understanding of space so they miss the key differences between them and other spaceflight companies so their arguments are framed incorrectly from the start. They don't question the key differences between SpaceShipTwo and its competitors. They don't even blink at the fact that it's incapable of reaching much beyond the Kármán line so it is barely in space or that point to point travel that is 25 times more expensive than a flight on a Concorde jet.

This is likely the biggest episode of mass delusion the market has seen in a while and there's no end in sight.

[Anonymous No.11396406]

>>11396398
I'm too far away for them to even attempt that. Besides, they have other problems right now.

[Anonymous No.11396408]

>>11396403
I blame general public apathy to space flight.

[Anonymous No.11396411]

>>11396406
Piss them off enough and they'll probably do a special delivery, just for you.

[Anonymous No.11396413]

>>11396403
>point to point travel that is 25 times more expensive than a flight on a Concorde jet.
Correction: I'm referring to just Virgin Galactic flights, not Starship.

[Anonymous No.11396414]

>>11396406
That is an unsettling image.

[Anonymous No.11396423]

>>11396390
It was also pretty gratifying to watch people so far up their own asses get bogged, I think some of them are STILL shorting too, not sure if it's buyers (well I guess shorter's) remorse or if they're actually just brainlets.

[Anonymous No.11396427]

>>11396411
No, they've delayed all my orders from China entirely and set back the arrival dates to over a month from now. I think the vendors died for two of them.

>>11396414
If is a scene from the 2013 south Korean movie The Flu. Though, it may be that bad over there, we sorta don't know right now. There's too much info/disinfo going around.

>pic
Weird tilt-shift blurring on that render.

[Anonymous No.11396428]

>>11396423
Sunk cost fallacy/pride/emotional attachment to their own narrative/etc.

[Anonymous No.11396431]

>>11396423
Meant sunk cost mentality, not buyers remorse, maybe I'M the brainlet?

[Anonymous No.11396454]

>space adventures website is still down
I wonder if they can quantify how much money they've lost

[Anonymous No.11396464]

>>11396454
None. People are hammering it to have a look, practically nobody is willing to lay down a cool $10-15 million or whatever a trip into LEO is going to cost them.
Anyone serious about it would just contact them directly, not go browse their website.

[Anonymous No.11396467]

>>11396454
$0 loss. People wanting to go to space wont be stopped by some website.

[Anonymous No.11396499]

>>11396406
source?

[Anonymous No.11396501]

>>11396499
See >>11396427

[Anonymous No.11396502]

>>11396383

[Anonymous No.11396506]

>>11396454
>>11396464
>>11396467
The cancelled Bigelow seats were valued at $52 million each, whilst seats for Space Adventures’ past Soyuz flights came in at around $30+ million. Who cares if the website is down due to high traffic, when their going to struggle to find 4 people willing to shell out that much?

[Anonymous No.11396517]

>>11396506
I'm just pulling cost numbers out of my ass, I have no idea what they'll actually charge people for this joyride.

[Anonymous No.11396575]

>>11396427
>we sorta don't know right now. There's too much info/disinfo going around.
yeah, i'm really seceptical about the numbers that china is bringing out, this from a nation that is notorious for not giving a flying fuck about human life and has a history of not wanting to look weak to the outside world.

[Anonymous No.11396700]

I can't imagine some millionaire thinking "I wasn't going to fly in space for 50+ million but now that SpaceX offers it slightly cheaper I changed my mind"
It seems like most of them are simply not interested in space enough for the price difference to matter.

[Anonymous No.11396726]

>>11396700
>It seems like most of them are simply not interested in space enough for the price difference to matter.
That's always the case. Few people care about space flight, and plenty are against it.

[Anonymous No.11396745]

>>11396700
It's different now, the public perceives spaceflight as much safer than it used to be. Launch costs have greatly come down and companies can afford to create space hotels and other destinations. The infrastructure is going to get built out.

[Anonymous No.11396770]

>>11396745
Lol

[Anonymous No.11396809]

What do you think would be the type of propulsion used for the future interplanetary cargo transport vehicle, barring super advanced technology like fusion and beyond?

Nuclear thermal engines definitely have the specific impulse to be able to power transports economically, but there is a wide concern about the use of fissile materials. This concern is even greater if the concept of lots of commercial trade vessels were introduced. Electronic thrusters have the specific impulse needed too, but they're limited in power options. Atomic is out due the the above reasons, and solar limits where the transport can go. The "next best option" is a hydrolox chemical engine, but the specific impulse is just low enough to where refueling is required for both legs of the journey which can impact the economics of the transport.

I think that hydrolox would be used unless something happens that allow for most governments to feel comfortable with lots of nuclear reactors flying about in space.

[Anonymous No.11396812]

>>11396700
There’s also the whole thing about being trapped in a capsule for 5 days without a toilet...Lockheed Martin could make a killing by offering Orion for space tourism, they’d have a big edge over their competitors.

[Anonymous No.11396820]

>>11396809
>interplanetary
If we're sticking to ye olde liquith rockethe fuele:
Metholox is the future. Easy to make, don't need the extra thrust kerolox would supply due to lesser gravity wells, hydrolox is just bulky as fuck due to hydrogen being a pain in the ass no matter what state it is in.

[Anonymous No.11396830]

>>11396820
Fair enough, but what about the (relatively) low specific impulse issue which would require more frequent refueling? Wouldn't that cut into the economics of carrying cargo?

[Anonymous No.11396833]

>>11396809
>Nuclear thermal engines definitely have the specific impulse to be able to power transports economically, but there is a wide concern about the use of fissile materials.
On and around Earth.
When the industry exists to mine and incorporate this shit off Earth, not enough people will care close enough to the source to actually put on significant pressure. There will probably still be non-nuclear launch and descent and general proximity regs for rocks and infrastructure, but for actually burning between locales NTR or better nuclear pulse are just so overwhelmingly beneficial compared to chemical that holding them back will be a non-starter.

[Anonymous No.11396838]

>>11396812
Dragon has a toilet. You are thinking of the Orion and Starliner.

[Anonymous No.11396861]

>>11396830
I don't really know man, specific impulse is right where it needs to be for shit like Mars. By the time we're pottering around the solar system, we've probably improved upon designs quite a bit if not found new fuel systems.
Don't get me wrong, hydrogen is great, but the drawback is everything involved becomes XBAWKS FUCKHUEG. That cuts into cargo capabilities too. What the fuck are you gonna do? Dump stages and pick up a new one every time you have to land some cargo and get ready for your next destination?

[Anonymous No.11396869]

>>11396414
Our crew and service modules are no longer aesthetic and complementary in design, how do we fix this.

[Anonymous No.11396873]

>>11396869

[Anonymous No.11396883]

>>11396073
>"and this generation does not intend to founder in the backwash of the coming age of space. We mean to be a part of it - we mean to lead it."
Holy fucking based, we better keep that intent and spirit up even more now- because CHYNA
https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/06/china-moon-mining-ambitious-space-plans/?itm_source=parsely-api

[Anonymous No.11396885]

>>11396883
Fuck space UBI first.

[Anonymous No.11396886]

>>11396869
I think Dragon is reasonably attractive, but nothing made moving forward is ever going to satisfy people with strictly boomer aesthetics. Just rest easy knowing capsules are a dying stopgap as we transition away from the era of putting people in space just to say we put them there and into the era of utilization.

[Anonymous No.11396916]

>>11396886
>Just rest easy knowing capsules are a dying stopgap

I'm fine with that if we revive Venture Star and its shuttle-like aesthetic and utility

[Anonymous No.11396926]

>>11396886
we're probably going to have to wait until the entire manufacturing process can happen in space before we get actually aesthetic space ships.

[Anonymous No.11396937]

>>11396926
Oh yes, grape like blobs of protruding tumor-like spherical fuel tanks, rat nests of antennae and radiators sure are going to look aesthetic.

[Anonymous No.11396954]

>>11396937
Holy shit get better taste, pure function over form aesthetic is KINO

[Anonymous No.11396955]

>>11396954

[Anonymous No.11396959]

>>11396954
>picrel
Am fully erect

[Anonymous No.11396963]

>>11396959
ikr one of the best most aesthetic function > form spehsships I've seen, dumping my set

[Anonymous No.11396967]

>>11396389
It’s a 20min watch, so easily doable on your commute. Commentary was slightly improved compared to the last launch.

[Anonymous No.11396968]

>>11396954
>>11396955

[Anonymous No.11396970]

>>11396963
imagine something like this actually traveling in our solar system permanently, planet to planet, station to station, god I can't wait until humanity builds its first spacecraft in orbit for space travel only

[Anonymous No.11396973]

>>11396968
ugleh

[Anonymous No.11396975]

[Anonymous No.11396980]

[Anonymous No.11396988]

[Anonymous No.11396995]

>>11396317
I think they should keep some smaller rockets around so crew and material can be transferred to and from an orbiting Starship without having to land the 1200 ton gigachad rocket. Have a little baby capsule dock to it’s nose or something

[Anonymous No.11396999]

>>11396988
Make war, not peace.

[Anonymous No.11397004]

[Anonymous No.11397005]

>>11396999
>>11396988
>>11396980
>>11396975
>>11396973
>>11396970
>>11396963
>>11396955
>>11396954

[Anonymous No.11397007]

>>11396999
Trips confirm, peace is no longer an option

[Anonymous No.11397008]

Orion is such a popular name in spess

[Anonymous No.11397012]

[Anonymous No.11397016]

>>11397012

[Anonymous No.11397023]

>>11396861
>Don't get me wrong, hydrogen is great, but the drawback is everything involved becomes XBAWKS FUCKHUEG

Does the volume really matter all that much? Build them in orbit and launch them from orbit.

[Anonymous No.11397027]

>>11397023
Of course volume matters inside an atmosphere.

[Anonymous No.11397033]

>>11397007
Peace was never an option.

[Anonymous No.11397044]

>>11396967
Anon, watching a recording is nothing like shitposting with you guys while watching it live.

[Anonymous No.11397050]

>>11397027
Well, don’t use them in one.

[Anonymous No.11397052]

>>11397050
Well, "building in orbit" is some ways away.

[Anonymous No.11397057]

>The virgin build in orbits vs the chad water launch.

[Anonymous No.11397079]

>>11397052
So is interplanetary freighters!

[Anonymous No.11397083]

>>11396916
Imagine Venture stars being sent beyond low orbit via nuclear ferries.

[Anonymous No.11397085]

Since we're all sharing cool space flight stuff.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAl_72eVrgM

[Anonymous No.11397086]

>>11396809
off world will be nuclear all the way.
who gives a fuck about radiation in space in your unmanned space trucks?

[Anonymous No.11397088]

>>11397057
Why not both, though I do love the idea behind the sea dragon and how much shit it can carry in one launch, would be perfect for sending up all the materials to construct spacecraft in orbit

[Anonymous No.11397090]

>>11397085

[Anonymous No.11397091]

>>11397088

[Anonymous No.11397092]

>>11397090

[Anonymous No.11397094]

>>11397086
>Cargo manifest
>16 gf containers
And I can't even get one.

[Anonymous No.11397096]

>>11397090
ugh... what could have been

[Anonymous No.11397098]

>>11397092

[Anonymous No.11397100]

>>11397083
Way more feasible than doing so with the Shuttle.

Shuttle was a mistake, we should have gotten Venture Star to replace it, we wouldn't need to be dealing with designing whole new capsules and service modules now, fuck, we are so behind

[Anonymous No.11397104]

>>11397098

[Anonymous No.11397109]

>>11397096
At least it'll serve as a new roadmap for the future.

[Anonymous No.11397113]

>>11397109

[Anonymous No.11397116]

>>11397100
All these years and we still don't have a true SSTO Spaceplane

[Anonymous No.11397120]

>>11397113

[Anonymous No.11397122]

>>11397091
>>11397088
>>11397057

>MUH SEADRAGON

The seadragon on paper works, actually building that rocket engine&enginebell is close to impossible even with today's understandings of metallurgy and advanced building techniques.

Believe me, the seadragon would have been a awesome rocket, if it was actually possible to build.
There is a reason why companies like spaceX choice to combine many small rocket engines instead of a few huge ones.

[Anonymous No.11397127]

[Anonymous No.11397132]

>>11397100
>>11397116

The thing about venturestar that pisses me off the most was, it was almost ready, they could have tested it once to find out if it was a good idea, and then pull the plug, but no, political bullshit stoped the program, the army even wanted to fund it to see it finished but washington cockblocked that too.

[Anonymous No.11397133]

>>11397122
It's a fun rocket to imagine about though.

[Anonymous No.11397134]

[Anonymous No.11397148]

>>11397132
Everyone who was involved with fucking over Venture Star and LM is directly responsible for this embarrassing backwards spaceflight gap of ours when you think about it. This thing should have replaced the shuttle, and then NASA could focus all efforts on the next Apollo rather than CCDEV, which is still a good thing for commercial space dev but a stepback for us

[Anonymous No.11397150]

tfw you grew up in the one tiny stretch of time when the US gave up on its space aspirations and now you're too old to feel anything but contempt for the government. I envy all the kids who got to watch the moon landings.

[Anonymous No.11397155]

>>11397132
But the project was an "Al Gore Project", so the administration at the time HAD to cancel it or else they would be indirectly admit that it's opposition had some good ideas. And if you know American politics, then you'll know that any form of compromise between the parties is suicide.

[Anonymous No.11397159]

>>11397150
How old are you?

[Anonymous No.11397165]

>>11397148
>>11397155

The fact that so much effort went in to it to stop it and make sure it never got finished probably means a lot of people were sure that it would deliver good results and would in turn take away a lot of work from oldspace.
And that's why they destroyed it, otherwise they would have let the army take over the cost of funding it if it really was a budget problem.

[Anonymous No.11397174]

>>11397150
Found this clearing out a house recently. Wasnt able to keep it but reminded me of the good days. Concorde and the Shuttle.

Things are going to be just as good as the 90s soon. It would take first contact to match the 60s however.

[Anonymous No.11397176]

>>11397165
If that were the case, then SpaceX and Blue Origin would've been stopped long ago. Especially with SpaceX dominating the global LEO market.

[Anonymous No.11397187]

>>11397176
SpaceX and BO are not strictly beholden to the whims of govt or oldspace is the difference.

Funnily enough though BO having much less of an independent streak might end up being the lifeboat that keeps oldspace tottering along under its wing going forward.

[Anonymous No.11397196]

>>11397116
It essentially became that super secret space drone everyone knows about tho right?

[Anonymous No.11397202]

>>11397176
They havent been making it easy for them, and recently they tried to push for a bill that would make boeing the sole provider of the moon missions.

It's just that the goverment doesnt have as much control over spaceX as they have over boeing or lockhead martin.
And spaceX is in luck because the army has a serious boner for starlink, thats why the FCC is even approving so many starlink sats.

[Anonymous No.11397214]

1 min to ariane launch

[Anonymous No.11397218]

>>11397214
stream?

[Anonymous No.11397219]

>>11397214
>>11397218
This? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAog1flzb5k

[Anonymous No.11397226]

>>11397219
>that fairing clapping on camera
Does ESA buy it's fairings from the US or what?

[Anonymous No.11397255]

>>11397219
why are they broadcasting a discord chat

[Anonymous No.11397267]

>>11397255
I was just going to ask this. What the fuck?

[Anonymous No.11397272]

>>11397255
They're shilling their discord channel in the chat.

[Anonymous No.11397274]

>>11397196
No the X-37B is a much gimped and smaller inferior version with classic engine bell and not aerospikes, etc

[Anonymous No.11397287]

>>11397274
This is what we have to settle for instead of the X-33 or Venture Star because a bunch of cocksuckers couldn't face their own obsolescence and had to hold back the next advances in American spacecraft and engine design

[Anonymous No.11397288]

>>11397098

[Anonymous No.11397290]

>>11397202
>the army has a serious boner for starlink

I would think the Navy would want it even more due to beaming down wifi on their ships out in the middle of the Pacific or Atlantic, why is the Army so hyped?

[Anonymous No.11397298]

>>11397290
The whole military is because it makes an enemy state's task at disabling US communications and navigation almost impossible. That, and it has some fat bandwidth pipes compared to what we use right now.

[Anonymous No.11397305]

>>11397298
Good point, no single point of failure, only several hundred satellites, if China or any near peer adversary wants to tale them out they risk losing their own space assets to Kessler syndrome, its almost a form of MAD when you think about it only applied to satellites

[Anonymous No.11397310]

>>11397290
drone swarms, probably. I keep hearing about drone swarms and counter-swarm drone swarms and honestly I'm pretty pumped for the day that we have two huge swarms of drones doing battle like schools of fish.

[Anonymous No.11397321]

>>11397305
Yeah, to do it "safely" would require fairly advanced laser weapons and it would probably be relatively slow.

[Anonymous No.11397322]

>>11396238
>What's the cost of sending a Crew Dragon up? $50 cool millions or something?
more like $100-120 million.

[Anonymous No.11397386]

>>11397310
And using a stealth mothership, submarine, or like a ballistic missile to transport the drones as close to the enemy as possible.

[Anonymous No.11397389]

>>11396869
We simply turn crew modules and shit into fighters and stuff, just attach railguns and a thruster with tanks to a falcon service module. The draco engines can serve as an emergency transport to the starship mothership
>>11397083
I made a conceptual ferry. Basically, you have a starship that separates its crew fairing and uses RCS. Then you have bigelow modules connecting between the 2 parts of the starship. To stabilize the structure, you add many P-trusses to the thing.

[Anonymous No.11397403]

>>11396382
Speaking of, what happened to the guy who was welding together his own rocket engine? Did he die? Get stopped by the feds?

[Anonymous No.11397449]

>>11397403
The welds failed a pressure test and I haven't been able to get them rewelded. Considered breaking those welds and using some kind of temperature resistant sealant instead. I also have no machining tools where I live right now. I've debated on scrapping this thing and starting over with a properly machined engine if I get the chance.

[Anonymous No.11397462]

>>11396406
what is that pic?

[Anonymous No.11397463]

>>11397462
See: >>11396501

[Anonymous No.11397464]

>>11397449
Just make another with the same type of stuff. The second or third attempt can drastically improve.

>>11397462
see: >>11396427

[Anonymous No.11397477]

>>11397464
>Just make another with the same type of stuff. The second or third attempt can drastically improve.
I want to, but I don't have the welding training nor equipment to do it myself. It'll be a pain, but breaking those welds and just using a paste to seal might be the better option.

[Anonymous No.11397482]

>>11397477
Go to welding school.

[Anonymous No.11397489]

>>11397477
That part is just casted. You could metal cast your own. That is really easy and you should be able to do it with a show string budget and no training. There's like a million tutorials on how to do it and how to make the tools you need. If you can carve it out of foam, to your specifications then you can do it.

[Anonymous No.11397499]

>>11397482
I'm more worried about finding a job.

>>11397489
Is casting really that easy? Know any good tutorials specifically? Maybe I can buy some cheap aluminum stock and use that. The thruster is expected to generate 800 K for 5 seconds at the most so the aluminum shouldn't melt too badly.

[Anonymous No.11397516]

>>11397499
>I'm more worried about finding a job.

Get a job as a welder.

[Anonymous No.11397539]

>>11397449
What pressure are you looking to reach?

[Anonymous No.11397541]

>>11397516
Well I have been applying for jobs at SpaceX.

>>11397539
~200 psi

[Anonymous No.11397552]

>>11397541
There is some high temp epoxy like JB Weld Extreme heat that could work. They say it can reach 2400°F / 1300°C and up to 800 PSI at room temperature, but I'm not sure how much heat would effect it. Maybe another option would be to use some type of engine gasket sealant.

I would leave the welds there and cover them with epoxy, but I also have no idea about how to build anything like this.

[Anonymous No.11397585]

>>11397541
>Well I have been applying for jobs at SpaceX.
If you're serious you ought to know that they're going to push you into suicide hours for low (for the skillset) wages. SpaceX's business model essentially abuses idealists.

[Anonymous No.11397612]

>>11397585
T. Boeing

Their wages are higher than the industry average and they give stock options on top of this so it's much higher compared to anywhere else.

[Anonymous No.11397615]

>>11396224
H-IIA hayai

[Anonymous No.11397616]

>>11397552
>I would leave the welds there and cover them with epoxy
Sounds much easier. I'll give it a shot.

>but I also have no idea about how to build anything like this.
Me neither, that's why I want to do this.

[Anonymous No.11397625]

>>11397541
>Well I have been applying for jobs at SpaceX.

I’d have thought they’d want experienced welders, honestly. Get an apprenticeship for a few years and you can work on making the inevitable Starship fleet.

[Anonymous No.11397626]

>>11397612
You poor naive child...

[Anonymous No.11397628]

>>11397122
The engine and pressure vessels are the only real sticking point, and the pressure vessels not because their size fundamentally prohibits their function, only because nobody has had a need or reason to build a pressure vessel that large before. I think an autogenously pressurized methaLOX version could be done using a cluster of F1-like or similarly powerful boosters. Electric turbopumps using soon-to-be-realized high density batteries and already existing high torque brushless motors could give you very powerful, very compact, and comparatively simple turbomachinery, powerpacks can be dumped as they're depleted and if they were say solid electrolyte glass/sodium cells there really wouldn't be any pollution from them.

It might even be reminiscent of the N-1, since if you're using clusters of smaller engines you might have to introduce slight widening into the base to squeeze in the necessary number of bells.

[Anonymous No.11397637]

An interesting caveat about the JCSAT-17 satellite which launched on a Ariane 5 today: instead of using several smaller steerable-antennae like most satellites, it uses a single, 18m wide unfurled S-band antenna.

[Anonymous No.11397641]

>>11397637

[Anonymous No.11397657]

>>11397616
I would try the high temp silicone gasket maker first since your project seems to operate at around the same pressure and temperature as a vehicle engine.

[Anonymous No.11397675]

>>11397637
>>11397641
pretty cool, why'd they go with that

[Anonymous No.11397699]

>>11397499
>Is casting really that easy?
It takes practice.

>Know any good tutorials specifically?
https://www.backyardmetalcasting.com/
or git gud and git gud tools and go apeshit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QK6iSgRrNXM

There's also,
http://www.bazmonaut.com/rockets/exhaust-nozzles/cast-concrete-exhaust-nozzles/

>cheap aluminum stock
You mean for machining? Cast what you need, in the shape you need, machine it to spec.

[Anonymous No.11397709]

>>11397675
Because the bigger the antenna, the higher the thoroughput (more data the satellite can beam).

[Anonymous No.11397721]

>>11397699
Thank you very much.

>You mean for machining?
I meant to melt down for casting. Although, I might try to find some local scrap if it's cheaper without compromising much on quality.

[Anonymous No.11397751]

>>11397100
SSTO will never work on earth with chemical propellants, VentureStar was a meme, the closest thing to what it promised to do is SpaceX Starship

[Anonymous No.11397815]

>>11397091
Here's another one. Yes, that's methane.

[Anonymous No.11398015]

Let's all take a moment to remember the Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter. Back in the early 2000s NASA wanted to send a nuclear powered space battleship to study Jupiter's icy moons. It was going to have a small fission reactor that made electricity with turbines providing 200 KW of electric power. That's more power than the ISS generates with its solar panels. This powered some big ion engines and a full scale ice penetrating radar. In addition because they had so much power available they could transmit data back to earth faster. Because it had so much delta V it could have explored Ganymeade, Callisto, Europa, and even other moons like Io when their orbit was favorable. Oh and it was gonna drop a lander on Europa. The main thing about it was they started developing a high power fission reactor to power the damn thing. A reactor outputting more power than the ISS would have had applications outside of a Europa mission. The whole project got cancelled when Bush wanted to return to the Moon. That went nowhere and leftovers from that program became the SLS we have today.

[Anonymous No.11398024]

>>11398015
fuck the government, holy shit. I honestly cannot imagine how much more progress we would have made if we had a single dictator like Xi Jinping.

[Anonymous No.11398028]

>>11398015
NASA is such a mess.

>>11398024
>>11398024
>if we had a single dictator like winnie the pooh
FTFY

[Anonymous No.11398032]

>>11398024
What, you mean like all of the zero space progress China has made? They're only just now putting up a station comparable in size to Mir, and they're only doing that because they don't want to completely lose face and be humiliated on the national stage when the US yet again breaks ground in a field. They're only now getting the capacity needed to send little probes to the MOON, after the US landed multiple consecutive teams of living human beings and equipment there.

[Anonymous No.11398034]

>>11398032
We have like a 50 year head start, though

[Anonymous No.11398036]

>>11398024
What has China done with dictatorship and the greatest wealth of sheer human resources ever possessed by one government? As behind as the rest of oldspace and incapable of innovation. The lesson isn't that democracies can't sustain a longterm vision for space, it's that governments can't.

[Anonymous No.11398038]

>>11398034
Yes, because they didn't fucking do shit. When you start a relay and one guy sprints ahead while the other fucking sits on his hands and starves to death because he destroyed a plurality of his agricultural capacity you can't complain and say "well the other guy had a head start though!". Chang, your incompetence is not a justification for your failure to advance human spaceflight, only an explanation for it.

[Anonymous No.11398047]

>>11398036
I'm not trying to argue in favor of autocracies, I'm saying in the specific scenario of massive, government funded projects that need to span decades to complete, swapping leaders with completely different ideologies every 4 years is always going to get in the way. If we didn't have to do that (all other things being equal), I don't know how you can say NASA wouldn't be decades ahead of where they are now.

[Anonymous No.11398049]

>>11398047
Because there is literally a real world example called China which hasn't even achieved what the Soviets did in the middle of having their economy implode in on itself. The world which actually exists around us is providing an actual living breathing counterargument to what you are proposing.

[Anonymous No.11398054]

>>11398015
I never even heard of this, now I'm depressed.

>Bush cancelled it for Constellation
>Obama cancelled Constellation for muh NEO mission
>Trump cancels NEO mission for return to moon (Artemis)
>....

[Anonymous No.11398061]

>>11398049
>>11398047
>>11398036
>>11398034
It's legitimately puzzling how the Chinese are just piecing together Soviet space programs from decades ago.

They built a Sputnik, they built a Soyuz, they built a Salyut, they're working on a Mir. It almost looks like they're going to finish the roadmap by building a Buran and then quitting forever.

[Anonymous No.11398079]

>>11398061
Don't look like they're quitting any time soon to me https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/06/china-moon-mining-ambitious-space-plans/?itm_source=parsely-api

When I read their plans all I could think is "my god they don't to deal with petty political squabbling, they can mobilize their entire government and military apparatus to support their space ambitions unlike the US", hopefully this all comes to the attention of our politicians and their constituents, the fact that an authoritarian power is moving on ahead with no internal tug of war between parties of government because there are no parties should give them pause, are they really gonna let China beat us in all aspects of space mining, colonizing and show the world that only an authoritarian dictatorship can keep a nation on the path to space long-term? How embarrassing would that be for us all.

[Anonymous No.11398083]

>>11398079
sounds like a job for a handful of discreet assassinations to destabilize the program

[Anonymous No.11398086]

>>11398079
That thing is an RC car and by the Chinese's own estimates they'll have a Saturn V equivalent (likely more of an Energia equivalent) ready "some time in the 2030s."

[Anonymous No.11398115]

>>11398086
This is of course the timetable on which they will be able to buy and/or steal enough of the Energia design documents to manufacture a copy.

[Anonymous No.11398196]

>>11397449
>badwelds
Protip: don't try to weld a rocket engine with what appears to be electrodes.
And don't try to use a cutting disc to cut away the slag afterwards like some cat who ruined half the room to try and hide he just shat on the persian rug either.

And you're using too low voltage. The metal was too cold.

[Anonymous No.11398222]

>>11398196
Thanks, but my friend did the welds. He knows what happened, but has no clue what went wrong unfortunately.

[Anonymous No.11398243]

>>11398222
You need to do TIG welding for an engine, it really is that simple. That picture there wouldn't even pass first visual inspection, let alone any x-ray.
You can see with your own eyes that there's openings in the weld with slag inside, that means there's slag inside the weld, meaning the weld is a porous piece of shit barely hanging together.
And look at that shit at the bottom? That thin ring barely hanging on? Way too low amperage.

Get yourself a second hand TIG/GTAW, pick up a bottle of argon and practice on old pipes. If you know somebody who can prep a good bevel on them for you, do it.
Fuck letting your friend near any precision parts if you want to get anywhere near success in the future.

[Anonymous No.11398248]

>>11398243
Thank you. Maybe future engine projects will incorporate better welds for the engines. Although, casting seems like a more reliable way of manufacturing. I wonder how easy it would be to cast with something like SAE 304.

[Anonymous No.11398252]

>>11398248
Well, I used to weld, but I don't know jack shit about casting, so I would just weld the motherfucker. But I do know that a problem with casting is cleaning up inside all sorts of nooks and crannies from the cast.
There are pros and cons to everything.

[Anonymous No.11398258]

>>11397132
Nah, X-33 was what was almost done, and that was just a suborbital tech demonstrator. The actual structures and engines for Venture Star used highly optimistic mass and performance baselines which were probably not possible to achieve.

[Anonymous No.11398263]

>>11396812

Orion is 500 million marginal cost at best without a launcher.

[Anonymous No.11398265]

>>11398252
>There are pros and cons to everything.
I know. The hardest part for me is just having the ability to do this. I don't have much tools, and my budget is incredibly tight. Hopefully once I get a job I'll have enough money to at the very least pay a shop to make some of this stuff for me.

[Anonymous No.11398289]

>>11397100

The ideal track is duplicating what Musk did and is doing.

[Anonymous No.11398299]

>>11398015

A neat thing about this thing is that the nuclear engine would have delivered a much greater electricity envelope once at the destination for the science misson, it became a tag along nuclear power reactor. Might be worth looking into again as something NASA could do in the age of Starship.

[Anonymous No.11398341]

>>11398061
it'll probably look more like Starship but it will absolutely be a half-baked clone and then they'll collapse back into warlords and billions dead
aren't they late on that this era?

[Anonymous No.11398342]

>>11398243
I've already given him this speech but you're being way more specific about it
I just told him that both he and his friend are idiots

[Anonymous No.11398346]

>>11398258
thank you, somebody who doesn't have their head up their ass
if you put X-33 on top of a fucking huge hydrocarbon booster engine it'd be a great upper stage, but at that point you don't need an aerospike

[Anonymous No.11398354]

>>11398299
kilopower is honestly a more promising idea and already exists

[Anonymous No.11398358]

>>11398346
>don't need an aerospike
if you don't have an aerospike, how the fuck are you planning to land on vacuum engines?

[Anonymous No.11398371]

>>11398299
>>as something NASA could do in the age of Starship.
The problem with space nuclear reactors isn't weight, it's how you make some complex moving machinery that works without maintenance for decades. But really developing nuclear power and propulsion, is something NASA SHOULD do in the age of Starship. Developing new tech that's literally too hot for private companies to touch is a job for NASA.
>>11398354
kilopower's not the best approach, it just the cheapest one, which is why NASA was able to do it at all. Kilopower was accomplished on basically a shoestring budget Turboelectric might do better for higher power reactors, but developing it is more expensive to develop. There's plenty of room for improvement from kilopower.

[Anonymous No.11398372]

>>11398371
well yeah, but kilopower is juicy enough to run almost anything you could possibly want
either it's big enough for most uses and NASA's done good or they've hamstrung themselves because it's almost good enough for what they want to do and they just get stuck in dev hell forever

[Anonymous No.11398373]

>>11398371
NASA *is* developing a nuclear engine for space, right now.

[:^) No.11398395]

>>11398372
>kilopower is juicy enough to run almost anything you could possibly want
10kW is not a whole lot really

[Anonymous No.11398429]

>>11398395
Imagine the amount of starships you could refuel if you let it work 24/7 for a few thousand years!

[Anonymous No.11398509]

It's real

[Anonymous No.11398678]

starship ion raptors when
imagine filling that whole propellent volume with tasty xenon.
super heavy boosts it to orbit
i dont know what im talking about

[Anonymous No.11398686]

>>11398032
Where have you been? China has stopped everything due to the virus.

[Anonymous No.11398690]

>>11398678
Yes

[Anonymous No.11398693]

>>11398678
Low thrust, low acceleration.
If you got years, it's really fucking efficient, perfect if you're a satellite or a probe headed for a planetary body somewhere in the solar system.
Not so great if you're planning on getting to Mars before dying of old age and/or cancer.

[Anonymous No.11398705]

>>11398678
>"An ion drive would require two days to accelerate a car to highway speed in vacuum."
Xenon is also 1 part per 20 million in our atmosphere, it's very rare. Fucking wasteful.

[Anonymous No.11398726]

>>11398678
My gut feeling is that drag at typical leo altitudes will exceed the thrust from ion drive pushing that kind of mass that is it will deorbit despite the thrust.

[Anonymous No.11398738]

>>11396809
Methalox is the best general-purpose chemical fuel. The only downside is that you need carbon, whereas hydrolox can be made with water, which may be more common at certain destinations.

Beyond chemical, you're pretty much looking at nuclear. NEP, NTR, nuclear-powered VASIMR, or Bob Zubrin's old NSWR (Nuclear Salt-Water Rocket) design. The only other thing that comes to mind offhand is magsail, IF it can be made to work effectively.

[Anonymous No.11398762]

>>11397116
Honestly, TSTO makes the numbers sooo much better; the only drawback is that you throw away a perfectly-good first stage with every launch (oh, wait...).

[Anonymous No.11398765]

>>11398762
There's an easy cheap work around we could just use drop tanks.

If the thrust is too low from the main engines then we could just add some cheap solid rockets to boost it early.

[Anonymous No.11398770]

>>11397290
>>11397298
>>11397305
The only downside is, how do you stop the enemy from surreptitiously using commercial accounts on the network for *their* comms? I really hope Space Force has a plan for dealing with that.

[Anonymous No.11398780]

>>11398765
>talking about dump tanks and solids in the coming era of full reusability
never gonna make it

[Anonymous No.11398782]

>>11398770
I'm sure the glowies have plans for dealing with that.

[Anonymous No.11398796]

>>11398705
what was the size of the engine this was talking about? Consider the difference in size & thrust between a starship with one or two fuckhuge 8 meter ion engines vs a small engine on a satellite

[Anonymous No.11398802]

>>11398796
No idea. Point is they're really fucking slow to accelerate, really fucking low thrust, but really efficient if you're not a hurry to get anywhere.
And xenon is really fucking rare, so your theoretic "fuckhuge 8m ion thruster" would be the most wasteful engine made. All noble gases are rare with the exception of argon.

They'd be going for exotic thri- or quad-propellants before going for that design.

[Anonymous No.11398807]

>>11398796
You're looking at a T/W from the engine, max, in the 0.00X range? Adding engine mass is never going to outpace your thrust problem, it just gets worse

[Anonymous No.11398814]

>tfw when pic-related is just supposed to be a variant of...

[Anonymous No.11398817]

>>11398814
>...this rocket....

[Anonymous No.11398834]

>>11398814
>>11398817
>*cough cough* "So sleepy..."

[Anonymous No.11398861]

>>11396224
Anybody catch the Zubrin interview a day or two ago? Elon recently gave him a tour of Boca Chica.

Some highlights:

*Musk is more concerned at this point with building a *shipyard* than with StarShip. He expects Boca Chica to expand from ~300 workers to ~3,000 within a year.
*The expected cost of Starship in mass production is... $5 million. Let that sink in for a moment, and remember that this includes 6 Raptors (Zubrin expects it to be more like $20 million, but still...).
*The dramatic drop in costs allows Musk to simply *not care* about things that Zubrin or others care about, like optimizing the mass budget. Notably, rather than wait for a Mars-capable nuclear reactor to be developed, Musk plans to use existing solar panels. When Zubrin pointed out that the energy requirements just to run the Sabatier chemical reactor to refuel a single StarsShip for a return trip by the next launch window would require 5 or 6 football fields' worth of solar panels, Musk replied, "Then that's what we'll ship".
*Likewise, it doesn't matter if the first 3-4 StarShips don't reach orbit; at those prices, SpaceX will simply eat the cost, and make the necessary improvements to the design so that the next half dozen *will*.
*They didn't really talk about the moon much, but Zubrin spent a lot of time in the interview detailing why StarShip can't land on the moon (tl;dr it's too heavy and the moon is too soft, and the thrust needed to land will dig an uneven crater into the surface as it comes down).
*Zubrin still has concerns about the execution of future steps, but he doesn't seem nearly as down on Musk's colonization plans as he used to. I think the sheer magnitude of the drop in cost/labor/materials really made a lot of his disagreements vanish. Zubrin's always focused heavily on managing the mass budget of his concepts, on the safe assumption that mass directly correlated with cost. Break that, and the impossible no longer appears to be so.

[Anonymous No.11398870]

>>11397116
Nasatards thought they could do it if they willed it hard enough

[Anonymous No.11398876]

>>11398861
The funny thing is Starship doesn't even need to be cheap to produce to be ridiculously cheap to launch with full reusability, yet it's heading for both. 5m is optimistic, but anything within an order of magnitude is huge. Makes the initial projection of 1m launch costs look downright conservative and preserves the feasibility of the occasional expendable launch for extra oomph like the F9.

[Anonymous No.11398881]

>>11398861
>>11398876
All of Musk's plans from Mars colonization to international travel could be retarded and inviable but reducing the cost of space access by over 90% would still be the single most important thing to happen in rocketry in the better part of a century.

If you can send up 100 tons to LEO for $2 million, anybody can do anything. It's actually fucking absurd how many avenues and projects become viable. Godamn imagine the space station you could build for a fraction of the ISS price tag.

[Anonymous No.11398883]

>>11398881
>Godamn imagine the space station you could build for a fraction of the ISS price tag
BIGELOW is banking

[Anonymous No.11398884]

>>11398881
finish your fucking rocket, Musk. I literally cannot wait for this shit to hit market.

[Anonymous No.11398885]

>>11398861
>When Zubrin pointed out that the energy requirements just to run the Sabatier chemical reactor to refuel a single StarsShip for a return trip by the next launch window would require 5 or 6 football fields' worth of solar panels, Musk replied, "Then that's what we'll ship".
The absolute mad man

[Anonymous No.11398887]

>>11398881
By purely tonnage alone you could launch 7,500,000 tons worth of materiel to orbit for the same cost as the ISS. The ISS is less than a million pounds or about 462 tons. The problem faced by a successful Starship programme would be that you currently can't find anybody to mass manufacture millions of tons of habitats, space grade solar panels, heat management systems, scientific and commercial attachments, etc.

[Anonymous No.11398890]

>>11398248
What if you don't weld anything at all and just make joint threaded or brazed at most? I mean it looks like you picked such a difficult way to make it while just about every other hobbyst just does it with either threaded joints or flanges

[Anonymous No.11398893]

>>11398885
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qssa6ec7faQ

[Anonymous No.11398894]

>>11398887
Big part of the problem with producing 'space grade' parts is relieved when you no longer have to work within autistic mass tolerances.

[Anonymous No.11398905]

>>11398887
if we get cucked out of this future by planetary protection and butthurt Chinese and Russians pushing a UN resolution that some soft democrat lets go through because space technology isn't part of his reelection platform I'm going to be pissed. I hope we get a good 10 years of unfettered deployments and huge footholds made on the moon and mars before regulations grip and people want to figure out how laws and property work in space first.

[Anonymous No.11398907]

>>11398894
Even if we assume something which is somewhat autistically constructed, like the Bigelow B330, the closest I can find for the unit cost is how much he'd lease it for a year, which is between 25-30 million. If we assume then the unit cost is around that much, let's even call it 50 mil a piece, you could build 3000 of them for the cost of the ISS, I could have sworn I also saw a unit cost hovering around 300 mil, if we assume that then it's 500 modules, since 3 B330's is roughly equivalent to the ISS in habitable volume, 500 of them would be comparable to about 166 ISS's worth of stations.

[Anonymous No.11398915]

>>11398905
I'd be more than pissed, I'd be nuclear. After patiently waiting the last decade for anything new to happen, being told "ah erm well maybe in another 10-15 years" would make me want to burn shit down out of hateful spite.

[Anonymous No.11398920]

>>11398905
>>11398915
We have to fix the problems and inequalities here before we can even think about going into space

[Anonymous No.11398922]

>>11398920
>the human race has to clean its room before it can go hang out with its friends at the mall
fuck off, mom.

[Anonymous No.11398923]

>>11398920
>We have to fix the problems and inequalities here
Genocide two continents, done okay let's go.

[Anonymous No.11398932]

>>11398861
Musk has earned the benefit of the doubt, but what are the odds he can ACTUALLY pull all of this off?

[Anonymous No.11398934]

>>11398920
N-no columbus you can't go to the new world until the old world is perfect!
Fuck off.

>>11398905
"Alright so you know how we undercut everyone else's rides to space by a ridiculous margin? Well we're just going to use that on our own payloads unless you decide to ignore that resolution"
Closest thing I can see to a way out of that situation. God I hate 'planetary protection' types though

[Anonymous No.11398940]

>>11398920
For comparison, NASA's budget for 2015 was a grand total of $18bn.
For every dollar pumped into NASA, roughly 8 dollars goes into the economy.

But hey, I guess you need another bottle of 40s, right?

[Anonymous No.11398945]

>>11398940
It goes to contractors and bankers pockets, that's where the 8 dollars go

[Anonymous No.11398946]

>>11398923
Kek

[Anonymous No.11398950]

>>11398923
Euros and afros

[Anonymous No.11398952]

>>11398945
>contractors and bankers pockets
While I'm not a big fan of oldspace and endless long lists of subcontractors, people work there and they get paid, the money goes into circulation.
Better then spending that $18bn on a single newport and sip of malt liquor for every welfare recipient.

[Anonymous No.11398953]

>>11398932
Fudge margin's on Musk's projections for actual technical feasibility are much lower than those for timetables. None of this is just pulled out of a hat, it's based on a combination of cheap stainless steel production and efficient raptor production combined with expected drops as they move from the prototyping phase to mass production.

[Anonymous No.11398954]

>>11398932
if he sells just a little bit of his Tesla ownership right now he can bankroll SpaceX through a dozen unrecoverable starship prototype failures. Not even including starlink or outside investors. And even if his estimates are wildly off, it's still vastly undercuts everyone else by a huge margin.

[Anonymous No.11398960]

>>11398952
>Better then spending that $18bn on a single newport and sip of malt liquor for every welfare recipient
But they money would also go into circulation!

[Anonymous No.11398966]

>>11398960
And what would we achieve? 60 more years of fucking nothing? The liquor and tobacco industry isn't exactly the new fucking frontier.

[Anonymous No.11398970]

>>11398966
But the taxes would go into NASA! That's your reasoning. You must admit that the baby boomer management of NASA is counterproductive at best and an infinite money sink at worst. How come a random nobody can get enough funds to make a rocket that lands itself and Nasa starts relying on him?

[Anonymous No.11398971]

>>11398966
It will be once Martian bootlegging picks up. You just know drinking on colonies is going to be regulated at first, and people are going to circumnavigate those regulations in order to have a good time and relax.

[Anonymous No.11398974]

>>11398971
do stills even work in microgravity?

[Anonymous No.11398976]

>>11398970
>That's your reasoning
No it isn't.

>How come a random nobody can get enough funds to make a rocket that lands itself and Nasa starts relying on him?
Elon? You seem to forget that SpaceX wouldn't even be around if it weren't for NASA and a cool $1.6bn they threw at him when they were about to throw in the towel after a series of failures.

[Anonymous No.11398977]

>>11398974
Good question, have we any ISS science to tell us? Seems like the kind of thing they'd have tried before.

[Anonymous No.11398980]

>>11398977
googled it, looks like it technically works, but the yeast doesn't like it much and the result isn't great

[Anonymous No.11398983]

>>11398974
Mars isn't microgavity so martian toilet vodka should be a go.
>Mars becomes the central alcohol supplier to orbital colonies

[Anonymous No.11398987]

>>11398977
As a former shiner, I can confirm that there would be issues both with how heat works (no convection) and with how water behaves (condensation as well as how you cool down the ethanol once vapors have formed).
Shouldn't be an issue on Mars, would be a fun experiment on the Moon, but pretty sure No Real Fun Allowed is rule #1 through #100 on the official NASA mission checklist.

Might be one for the Roscosmos crew. Would have to be done in a separate module far away from base for safety though, wouldn't want to risk life, limb and multiple millions of dollars worth of equipment just for literal moonshine.

[Anonymous No.11398989]

>>11396311
I suggest you say the same but remember to sell before the fall.

[Anonymous No.11398993]

>>11398983
That Martian toilet-wine will show you the face of GOD
>>11398980
>>11398987
This should definitely be tried on the moon before we start lugging bootlegging stuff to Mars, but I'm hopeful it would work.
>literal moonshine
I like you

[Anonymous No.11398994]

>ywn sneak a bottle of Jovian rum into an all-hands meeting at the colony and share your flask with a buddy while the asshole who's in charge just because he has a doctorate and was a navy seal rattles off Earth news and status updates
why even bother?

[Anonymous No.11398999]

>>11398976
They threw away even more billion dollars to other contractors with even less result. If anything, Elon is making good use of the money, unlike boomer boeing.

[Anonymous No.11399008]

>>11398999
At least with boomer boeing you're seeing something in return, not just WHITEY ON THE MOON PART TWO ELECTRIC JIGGABOO GIBSMEDAT.
People talk about wasting money on space exploration when people are poor etc etc, then ignore that in 2015, which was my example, the federal budget for social services/welfare etc was $1500bn vs NASA's $18bn.
It's fucking nothing.

Stop turning it into a SpaceX vs Boeing dick measuring contest when that was not what it was about in the first place.

[Anonymous No.11399009]

>>11398358
Venture Star glided to a landing unpowered, dumbass

[Anonymous No.11399017]

>>11399008
>boeing you're seeing something in return
Yes, the same 70's era disposable solid fuel garbage

[Anonymous No.11399019]

>>11398796
anon, the thrust per area for ion engines is NEVER the problem
rather, the problem is thrust for the power

[Anonymous No.11399021]

>>11398905
Pollution is immoral whether it is on Earth or in space.
Lets learn how to take care of our own planet before going to others, okay?

[Anonymous No.11399023]

>>11399017
Go drink your 40s.

[Anonymous No.11399024]

>>11398861
Zubrin's wrong, I think
the moon is hard enough

[Anonymous No.11399025]

Is Starlink going to be good or gay? Will I be able to play video games with it?

[Anonymous No.11399026]

>>11399017
Without Boeing the United States will be powerless to oppose China and Russia. Boeing protects you. Boeing is your friend. Support Boeing.

[Anonymous No.11399032]

>>11399021
>Lets learn how to take care of our own planet before going to others, okay?
Burn the Earth, leave it behind!

[Anonymous No.11399034]

>>11399032
>-2 social credit score

[Anonymous No.11399040]

>>11399026
Ok, here's infinite cash

Blew it all away? It's ok, here's an extra 5 billion dollars

[Anonymous No.11399041]

>>11399021
>For this is what America is all about. It is the uncrossed desert and the unclimbed ridge. It is the star that is not reached and the harvest sleeping in the unplowed ground. Is our world gone? We say "Farewell." Is a new world coming? We welcome it--and we will bend it to the hopes of man.

[Anonymous No.11399045]

>>11399026
It's sad that this is literally true

[Anonymous No.11399048]

>>11399021
>Pollution is immoral whether it is on Earth or in space.
Go lecture India, China and Indonesia then. You do know they're going to increase emissions by 545-1100% before even thinking about cutting down according to the sacred Paris Accords, right?

[Anonymous No.11399049]

>>11399025
10 to 20ms latency. Getting your signal bounced 550km above your head isn't actually that much worse than the ping-pong of copper and terminal buildings that every internet packet makes right now.

[Anonymous No.11399050]

>>11399049
Theory != practice.

[Anonymous No.11399051]

>>11399041
this whole speech was fantastic:
https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/johnson.asp

[Anonymous No.11399053]

>>11399045
Have you ever noticed how when you read anything about Boeing it's all billions and billions and billions and billions and billions and delays after delays? It's a rent seeking scheme.


>“With $5.3 billion spent as of July 2018, NASA expects Boeing to exhaust the contract’s current value by early 2019, nearly three years before the contract is supposed to end and without delivering a single core stage or the [exploration upper stage],” said Ridge Bowman, director of the NASA OIG.

>At the current rate, the report found that Boeing will spend at least $8.9 billion through 2021 — “double the amount initially planned — while delivery of the first core stage has slipped 2 ½ years from June 2017 to December 2019 and may slip further.”

>On a call with reporters last week, Boeing’s Space Launch System vice president and program manager, John Shannon, said the project is on track to deliver the first core stage for the rocket to Kennedy Space Center by the end of the year, where it will be integrated with the other components.

>But the report disputed that estimate, saying Boeing would need an infusion of $1.2 billion through a renegotiated NASA contract for it to meet its goal of delivering to the Cape in December 2019 and then holding a test flight in June 2020. That doesn’t count the billions that would be needed to ensure delivery of the other components of Boeing’s contract.

Billions and billions and billions and billions and billions... and it never ends. You need to finish boeing, because it's finishing you

[Anonymous No.11399057]

>>11399049
inb4 Microsoft and Apple stop offering installed operating systems because latency is so low nearly anywhere in the world they can host Desktop-As-A-Service data centers and allow people to log on to their own desktop from any terminal on Earth. You will own literally nothing when it comes to your personal computer needs soon. Lease the hardware, lease the OS, lease the software.

[Anonymous No.11399065]

If you burned wads of 100 dollars bills just for districting heating, you'd have a better return for each dollar spent than you're getting by handing away free cash to BOEING

[Anonymous No.11399068]

>>11399053
>t's a rent seeking scheme
It's oldspace politics.
Politicians from both parties get oldspace companies to set up shop in their constituencies, they get lots of money so the politicians can go back to their constituents and say "look at how many jobs I created for you since you voted for me! Vote for me again!".
Vertical integration? Cost cutting? Fuck that shit, we're talking jobs! We're talking re-election!
Who gives a fuck if you're burning tax payer money? It's their cushy positions at stake.

As long as politicians are involved, you're stuck with these parasites. It's an age old game called politics.

[Anonymous No.11399101]

>>11399041
Sounds like words coming straight of the darkest vilest years of the last century.

If they weren't so infused with evil they would be comical.

[Anonymous No.11399106]

>>11399053
Boeing's decades of expertise naturally come at a price but what matters is they are the only ones who can deliver in the end.

Quality and assured sucess come at a price.

[Anonymous No.11399110]

>>11399101
Evil hates righteousness.

[Anonymous No.11399111]

>>11398952
The solution to NASA's issue would be really simple to fix, at least insofar as the problems are not hypercomplex. NASA is a subsidiary of the Federal Government, pass legislation that prohibits NASA from preferential treatment of contractors, prohibit them from no-bid contracting, prohibit them from paying out or giving bonuses unless deadlines are met and projects are completed according to their originally projected end dates. By cracking open the established Fed-backed monopolies of the Aerospace giants like Cockheed, Boing, Northcuck, etc you would allow competition and thus innovation to actually occur. Then fix NASA's budget at 10% of GDP as it was during the Apollo era, and limit the number of dedicated projects they can work on simultaneously to say, 3. If they want to do a moon shot, or a mars shot, or a venus shot, they can't also be working on ten other smaller projects, since a lack of monopoly will not allow for as much rampant profiteering and economic leeching, a limited project number will ideally create strong incentives to accomplish only that which is maximally valuable to NASA's mission statements, and thus will return the best for the taxpayer resources dedicated to them.

>"NASA is an investment in America's future. As explores, pioneers, and innovators, we boldly expand frontiers in air and space to inspire and serve America and to benefit the quality of life on Earth. In fulfilling its mission, NASA contributes to America's goals in: -- Economic Growth and Security."

If they aren't doing this, then something is wrong and any amount of money the taxpayer is spending on them is being misused.

[Anonymous No.11399113]

>>11399101
from the same speech:
>Even now, a rocket moves toward Mars. It reminds us that the world will not be the same for our children, or even for ourselves m a short span of years. The next man to stand here will look out on a scene different from our own, because ours is a time of change-- rapid and fantastic change bearing the secrets of nature, multiplying the nations, placing in uncertain hands new weapons for mastery and destruction, shaking old values, and uprooting old ways.

>How incredible it is that in this fragile existence, we should hate and destroy one another. There are possibilities enough for all who will abandon mastery over others to pursue mastery over nature. There is world enough for all to seek their happiness in their own way.
>Our Nation's course is abundantly clear. We aspire to nothing that belongs to others. We seek no dominion over our fellow man. but man's dominion over tyranny and misery.
>But more is required. Men want to be a part of a common enterprise--a cause greater than themselves. Each of us must find a way to advance the purpose of the Nation, thus finding new purpose for ourselves. Without this, we shall become a nation of strangers.

> I do not believe that the Great Society is the ordered, changeless, and sterile battalion of the ants. It is the excitement of becoming--always becoming, trying, probing, falling, resting, and trying again--but always trying and always gaining.
>In each generation, with toil and tears, we have had to earn our heritage again.
>If we fail now, we shall have forgotten in abundance what we learned in hardship: that democracy rests on faith, that freedom asks more than it gives, and that the judgment of God is harshest on those who are most favored.

[Anonymous No.11399118]

>>11399111
As long as politicians get to detail the budgets, it's business as usual I'm afraid.
And they're never giving that up.

[Anonymous No.11399131]

All this talk about distilling had me reaching for my scotch, sláinte mhath.

[Anonymous No.11399136]

>>11399101
This is your """brain"""" on liberal arts.

[Anonymous No.11399143]

>>11399101
Looks like someone lacks a pioneering spirit.

[Anonymous No.11399149]

>>11399049
Yeah but cloud obstruction? If it's going to be like direct tv sat, its going to suck.

[Anonymous No.11399172]

>>11399101
We WILL colonize space, and we WILL bend it to our will. That has forever been the destiny of our kind.

[Anonymous No.11399201]

>>11398765
Yes and once the SRB's are spent and the drop tank is empty only the spacecraft itself remains and it will glide itself back to re-entry and landing, let's call it the Orbiter

[Anonymous No.11399212]

>>11398883
Bigelow holds so much promise, so much hype, can they actually pull it off? Inflatables seriously seem so much better and roomier and faster to set up a full working station for than each module being purpose built and sent up in pieces

[Anonymous No.11399217]

>>11399212
But one drawback is no Earth observation windows or cupola, as it would compromise the integrity of the structure, I think its understated how necessary something like that is for a long-term duration station

[Anonymous No.11399219]

>>11399212
>can they actually pull it off?
Yeah, once they stop bleeding engineers.

[Anonymous No.11399224]

>>11399212
>someone farts on the upper deck
>everyone hears it

[Anonymous No.11399228]

>>11399224
In space, everyone can hear you fart.
But thanks to space brain, everyone is congested as fuck so nobody can smell it.

[Anonymous No.11399231]

>>11399111
I'd say split the budget between robotics and manned spaceflight. Or hell maybe split the agency itself that way.

[Anonymous No.11399234]

>>11399057
God please no.

That would be absolute hell for modding.

[Anonymous No.11399243]

>>11399234
>YOU OWN NOTHING!

[Anonymous No.11399255]

https://youtu.be/qLG0NPtkK88
>@4:23
Lol

[Anonymous No.11399258]

>>11399255
Never worked with rolled stainless steel?

[Anonymous No.11399261]

>>11399041
>"Is our world gone? We say "Farewell." Is a new world coming? We welcome it--and we will bend it to the hopes of man. "
-LBJ

>"and this generation does not intend to founder in the backwash of the coming age of space. We mean to be a part of it - we mean to lead it."
-JFK

Godamn, where has this uniquely American spirit gone to in the past few decades? When American exceptionalism and drive was talked about openly and grandly by our politicians. Neither Clinton, nor Bush nor Obama nor Trump have ever produced such a rousing speech like that, nowadays they focus on matters that speak to the business and equality and wealth and civil justice but nothing that speaks to the soul, to the role of man in the universe and the future that this nation should forge for itself.

[Anonymous No.11399263]

>>11399255

[Anonymous No.11399268]

>>11399057
There certainly are significant steps in this direction, Windows 10 more than ever has embraced this philosophy and tried to force people to swallow the software as a service thing.

[Anonymous No.11399286]

>>11399261
>Godamn, where has this uniquely American spirit gone to in the past few decades?
Not to get too political, but I blame post-9/11 America. It showed that the country can be weak. The following conflicts and actions done to suppress terrorism world-wide placed in the recent public memory of how morally questionable the government can be. Both of these probably made most people feel that America isn't necessarily a good country. It made them think that it's a harmful country world-wide without integrity and thus need 'corrections'. This fueled reactionary extremes on both the left and right, but both failing to see what the true American spirit meant.

[Anonymous No.11399295]

>>11399261
>>11399286
>where has this uniquely American spirit gone to
You have no external enemy anymore and your two parties are canceling whatever the other one started so as to not give the other one something to point at and tell the voters "look, we made that happen, not the other party".
Post 9/11 is a red herring. It's a post cold war thing.

[Anonymous No.11399296]

>>11399261
Thomas Jefferson wrote of this:
>The people can not be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. We have had 13 states independant 11 years. There has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in a century and a half for each state. What country ever existed a century and a half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve it's liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it's natural manure.

[Anonymous No.11399304]

>>11399296
what a fag

[Anonymous No.11399309]

>>11399057
That's exactly what will happen. First thing to go will be local storage, already in the process. Next comes local processing. I suggest everyone should stockpile some hdd's just in case.

[Anonymous No.11399315]

>>11399309
And then Linux desktop will finally take over.
And good fucking riddance.

[Anonymous No.11399317]

>>11399304
what's really gay is when people vote away their civil liberties because they have no concept of the balance between people and government. I hope Trump turns into a legitimate tyrant because the current generation needs to suffer to keep them from doubling down on the disaster that was the baby boomer era.

[Anonymous No.11399322]

>>11399309
I can see the point of cloud storage if you're strictly using it for massive work files or something, but I can't imagine anyone but the biggest sheep selling their identity for a some tb when storage is so fuckin cheap anyway. Cloud processing is straight garbage, if Google can't make it work for gaming Windows certainly can't do it at the OS level. Plus >>11399315