/sg/ - Spaceflight General

[Anonymous No.10499358]

Previous: >>10495327

[Anonymous No.10499364]

>>10499232
Politics fucking up NASA plans is as old as american spaceflight itself.

[Anonymous No.10499370]

>>10498925
He'd participate in after-hours quake tournaments in the spacex hawthorne building according to the vance biography

[Anonymous No.10499375]

>>10499358
When's da Hopp??

[Anonymous No.10499386]

>>10499364
I know, but it will always be a problem without a very strong commercial space industry.

Anyone got any ideas on how to separate NASA from the politics? I'd think that programs that aren't tied to presidents (or even parties) should be the way to go, but that would obviously be a problem since each president want to be like a mini-Kennedy.

[Anonymous No.10499404]

>>10499386
Unlike a lot of people I still believe SLS has somewhat a purpose, we will not have a rocket with these capabilities unless BFR happens, and that is far from certain. I do believe most of the launches should be done by Falcons and New Glenn, but having a bigger rocket is something that will be useful no doubt. Now politics is coming in again and fucking everything up, and the sole reason for that is that Trump wants to have a moon landing during his second term (which he hopefully won't win).

[Anonymous No.10499405]

>>10499375
I guess it's tomorrow.
https://twitter.com/austinbarnard45/status/1110591065688547328

[Anonymous No.10499417]

>>10499405
>source is some teenage boy on twitter

Don't know why anybody cares anyway, that first hop will be a firing for a second and the lift will be so small you won't see a thing.

[Anonymous No.10499426]

>>10499417
As small as it probably will be, if it looks decent at all on video Musk will upload it just to capitalize on Pence's speech
>"If our current contractors can't meet this objective, then we'll find ones that will."

[Anonymous No.10499431]

>>10499426
He didn't talk about Starship when he said that. He was talking about rockets that already exist, e.g. Delta 4 and Falcon Heavy.

[Anonymous No.10499433]

>>10499404
>Unlike a lot of people I still believe SLS has somewhat a purpose
I agree with this. BFR and New Glenn are still in their initial design phases and anything can happen to put those rockets at risk. SLS can be built in short order if needed.

>Now politics is coming in again and fucking everything up, and the sole reason for that is that Trump wants to have a moon landing during his second term (which he hopefully won't win).
I'm not going to dive much into politics, but I do like Trump's stance on progress sooner than later, even if it's just because he wants to be the president to bring America back to the Moon. I like it because his actions are showing to NASA's "trusted" contractors that they can't take forever on a project to hoover up as much money as possible. This, along with the disruptions SpaceX is making, may shift the space industry to value progress over concepts. Which I feel it's a good thing.

Sorry if my post is hard to read. Just had a wisdom tooth taken out, and I'm on painkillers right now.

[Anonymous No.10499439]

>>10499431
Five years is a long time, and SpaceX already has as an internal goal of having the manned version of Starship ready for lunar free return before the end of 2023.

[Anonymous No.10499446]

>>10499433
>I'm not going to dive much into politics, but I do like Trump's stance on progress sooner than later, even if it's just because he wants to be the president to bring America back to the Moon. I like it because his actions are showing to NASA's "trusted" contractors that they can't take forever on a project to hoover up as much money as possible. This, along with the disruptions SpaceX is making, may shift the space industry to value progress over concepts. Which I feel it's a good thing.

"Oldspace" is the way it is, is because they know politics will come in sooner or later and fuck everything up again. IIRC Koenigsmann said something like subsidies are a double-edged sword, you do get a lot of money but it comes with thousands strings attached.

[Anonymous No.10499491]

>>10499446
The real killer part of Newspace isn't the low vehicle cost, it's that the big players (SpaceX, Blue Origin) are very much in favor of Fixed-Price contracting. If you can go to congress and say "We will do X for $Y, and any overruns are on us," and you have a history of backing up your offers, that's a big deal.

[Anonymous No.10499516]

>>10499446
>"Oldspace" is the way it is, is because they know politics will come in sooner or later and fuck everything up again.
Anyway to "un-fuck" that? I know corruption in politics is as guaranteed as taxes, but is there something that can be done about this?

[Anonymous No.10499543]

>>10499516
>Anyway to "un-fuck" that
Nope. In the face of existential threat like Soviet annihilation or an asteroid coming for us it may get minimized (even then there'll still be profiteering) but it is as you said, guaranteed with national government projects

[Anonymous No.10499548]

>>10499516
Fixed-Price contracting.
>>10499491
ULA being more expensive isn't as big of an issue as it seems, but the extra costs from overruns are a serious problem. Contractors competing for funds can undercut cost-plus bids pretty savagely.

[Anonymous No.10499579]

>>10499491
>>10499516
The solution is to not get government involved at all. See Red Dragon for example, SpaceX had to scratch it because NASA didn't want the Dragon capsule to have landing legs. So NASA killed an early Mars-mission by SpaceX just like that. If SpaceX does get involved into the government's moon plans you can generally scratch all Mars missions for the next decade, not going to happen.
What would need to happen is the private sector doing it completely on its own, Bezos and Musk are both rich, and you can also keep space-colonization running by commercialization. Sure "no ads in space" is a nice idea, but if that is the only way to finance space exploration without government involvement then so be it.

[Anonymous No.10499589]

>be yuro
>have no hope of working in any interesting area of space industry because SpaceX/Blue Origin/NASA etc all require you to be a US citizen

;_;

[Anonymous No.10499596]

>>10499589
Britain is trying to sell shit to SpaceX

[Anonymous No.10499598]

>>10499579
I agree with your assessment in general, but I thought that Red Dragon was canceled because it would distract from BFR and NASA didn't need a capsule that could go to Mars. So dropping Red Dragon was due to practicality, not government interference.

[Anonymous No.10499610]

>>10499598
Dragon 2 was supposed to have propulsive landing and landing legs, NASA said no, SpaceX killed the concept and with it their plans to send a Red Dragon (which would be a Dragon 2 with more fuel) to the surface of Mars.

[Anonymous No.10499618]

>>10499610
In the end the propulsive landing wasn't what NASA was more worried about, they were worried about the seams around the legs that pop out from the heat shield.

[Anonymous No.10499619]

>>10499610
Elon had better give the Red Dragon a snazzy red-orange paint job to match that name.

[Anonymous No.10499622]

>>10499610
>SpaceX killed the concept
They burned the blueprints and shot everyone involved? Because otherwise it is merely postponed.

[Anonymous No.10499625]

>>10499622
if you postpone something beyond it's replacement?

[Anonymous No.10499627]

>>10499618
In fact, I'm pretty sure they still have the propulsive soft-landing as an emergency backup just in case something goes horribly wrong with the chutes.

[Anonymous No.10499629]

>>10499618
Yeah, I mean for a capsule that lands on earth landing like that is kind of pointless anyways, the point is NASA interfered with SpaceX' Mars plans and will keep doing so. The closer SpaceX gets to the government, the further away it gets from Mars.

[Anonymous No.10499631]

Place your bets, /sci/

What year will a human being set foot on Mars

[Anonymous No.10499634]

>>10499631
Late 2030s at the earliest I fear.

[Anonymous No.10499639]

>>10499631
I have faith in Musk-sama

Mid-2020s. He'll whip his SpaceX indentured labourers until they make it happen.

Provided he doesn't have yet another mental breakdown from Tesla, of course

[Anonymous No.10499641]

>>10499631
Assuming SpaceX doesn't JUST itself like Boeing or something then 2030's. Faster if they get unexpected bumps in funding, slower if they hit some snags or get held down by paperwork and bullshit. Very late 2020's to early 2030's if they have exceptional luck and everything goes well, late 2030's early 2040's if they encounter issues either technologically or bureaucratically.

[Anonymous No.10499642]

>>10499631
2030's as long as nothing terrible happens.

[Anonymous No.10499644]

>>10499641
How did Boeing JUST itself?

[Anonymous No.10499647]

>>10499627
I doubt it!
>>10499644
Boeing is drowning in bureaucracy and a shit corporate culture, basically it's too big for its own good.

[Anonymous No.10499649]

from the previous thread

>great video on the current state of fusion
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0KuAx1COEk

does anyone you have something similar about other subjects?

[Anonymous No.10499652]

>>10499631
closer to 2040 then 2030.

>>10499647
>Boeing is drowning in bureaucracy and a shit corporate culture, basically it's too big for its own good.
This, if it wasn't for the constant lobbying the company would have gone up the shitter a long time ago.

[Anonymous No.10499659]

>>10499652
a buddy of mine told me that every project he worked on at Boeing died, because he tried to figure out who was using it and to generally improve it but it turned out the answer was "nobody"

[Anonymous No.10499668]

>>10499631
anyone wanna get an Augur going and put some (fake) money on this?

[Anonymous No.10499675]

>>10499644
>How did Boeing JUST itself.

[Anonymous No.10499682]

>>10499652
>20 years

What makes you think it'll take that long?

[Anonymous No.10499694]

>>10499675
Wouldn’t it be great if we added this system that nosedives the plane if two sensors disagree? If the pilot tries to pull up, HAL just says Sorry Dave I can’t let you do that.

[Anonymous No.10499695]

>>10499682
I'm not who you're replying to, but I think that it may take that long if lots of test flights were required to ensure that everything works perfectly.

[Anonymous No.10499751]

>>10499694
Already exists insofar as avionics+FBW systems already do most of the flying in modern jets.

[Anonymous No.10499780]

>>10499695
This isn't NASA doing it
Tests don't need to be once a year
They can perfect BFR in 1-2 years
They'd need a gigafuckton of launches for starlink anyhow, free tests there
Then you got companies interested in the moon and near earth asteroids to have even more launches done
All these can be done before the first manned mars run in 2024

[Anonymous No.10499783]

>>10499644
>Starliner capsule problems, plane problems, SLS problems

[Anonymous No.10499791]

>>10499751
You either don't undestand what's wrong with 737max or didn't read my post!

[Anonymous No.10499799]

>>10499649
https://livestream.com/viewnow/niac2018/videos/180776356
44:00 timestamp
Direct Fusion Drive

[Anonymous No.10499803]

>>10499780
I don't know about that. I think you (or SpaceX) is overestimating how much the public is willing to forgive SpaceX for manned spaceflight failures. I don't think that SpaceX can't just push ahead with testing BFR (and manned Mars missions in general) like they did with fly-back boosters. If a booster crash lands, then it's a cool blooper reel. If BFR crash lands on Mars along with it's crew, then it'll be a tragedy. And that tragedy can easily kill public support especially for a private company doing a non-government funded project.

[Anonymous No.10499811]

>>10499799
>wow, it's nothing

[Anonymous No.10499817]

>>10499803
that's what testing is for? there will be plenty of opportunity for LEO testing before they do any LFR testing, which IS in the plan and will give a pretty good idea of how it handles high energy trajectories

[Anonymous No.10499824]

>>10499817
>that's what testing is for?
I meant NASA paced testing vs. SpaceX paced testing.

>here will be plenty of opportunity for LEO testing before they do any LFR testing, which IS in the plan and will give a pretty good idea of how it handles high energy trajectories
Maybe, but I'll be fine if SpaceX delayed their Mars missions if they later learn that they need to do more tests.

Isn't SpaceX going to set up a Mars base before crew is sent? If so, then that would be a perfect place to test BFR via remote control.

[Anonymous No.10499841]

>>10499824
Starship (not BFR, that name is dead) would need to be autonomous, not remote control during an unmanned landing

[Anonymous No.10499860]

>>10499841
>Starship (not BFR, that name is dead)
Sorry, force of habit.

> would need to be autonomous, not remote control during an unmanned landing
I meant the same thing. I.E. "Okay, tell Starship to make a more aggressive Martian entry to see if can keep the G's at a survivable level if it had crew."

[Anonymous No.10499877]

>ULA shills still defending their obsolete money sinks.

[Anonymous No.10499882]

>SLS will fly in the next decade

[Anonymous No.10499888]

>>10499882
>SLS will fly in the next century.

[Anonymous No.10499895]

>>10499882
It'll definitely fly sometime in the early 2020s considering how much flak it's been getting lately.

[Anonymous No.10499898]

>>10499386
As much as I despise Johnson I'm forced to remind you that engaging the Soivets in the space thing was more his babby than Kennedy's. Kennedy gets too much credit when all he did was say to Johnson, "I'm gonna write you a memo which we will then leak making it look like the moon race was my own organic stroke of genius, and you're gonna agree."

[Anonymous No.10499910]

>>10499888
>It is the 41st Millennium. For more than a hundred centuries The Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth
>He is the Master of Mankind by the will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies
>He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology.
>He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that he may never truly die

>Yet even in his deathless state the Emperor continues his eternal vigilance
>Mighty battlefleets cross the daemon-infested miasma of the Warp, the only route between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the Emperor's will
>Vast armies give battle in his name on uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst his soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, bioengineered super-warriors
>Their comrades in arms are legion: the Imperial Guard and countless planetary defence forces, the ever vigilant Inquisition and the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few
>But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat from aliens, heretics, mutants - and worse

>To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable
>These are the tales of those times, and in an ancient boardroom of the ULA corporation, in a haze of incense, a man in an ill-fitting suit is speaking:
"The only way to build new spacecraft is with tried-and-true derivatives of the STS. With only another $5 Billion, we are confident SLS Block 1 will be ready in only three years!"
>Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned.
>Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war
>There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods

[Anonymous No.10499929]

>>10499910
>>He is the Master of Mankind by the will of the gods
>>by the will of the gods

[Anonymous No.10499936]

>>10499929
>https://warhammer40000.com/setting/
It's right there.

[Anonymous No.10499939]

>>10499910
I feel sorry for the people working on SLS or any of the multitude of other promising space projects that the government has cancelled or delayed into permanent limbo. I'd be constantly in a state of extreme frustration to know that all of my work has been for naught because some politician who barely even knows what a rocket is has on a whim or due to some political game caused it to be delayed or axed all together, never to feel the vacuum of space.

[Anonymous No.10499950]

>>10499939
I have a feeling if SLS never does carry humans to space, a few will be made to launch extremely large objects. If it was up to me, you would use 2-3 launches with the widest fairing possible to launch the reactor, drive, basic chassis for an interplanetary VASIMR or something along those lines. You would use SLS because it may be the only vehicle capable of flying with a 10m fairing for a surprisingly long time.

[Anonymous No.10499953]

>>10499910
kol

[Anonymous No.10499958]

>>10499950
>VASIMIR

Meme as fuck, get out of here unless you have a magical power source that produces 9000 jiggawatts and weighs next to nothing with no heat disposal requirements

[Anonymous No.10499961]

>>10499950
>If it was up to me, you would use 2-3 launches with the widest fairing possible to launch the reactor, drive, basic chassis for an interplanetary VASIMR or something along those lines.
But then money would have to be taken away from those "trusted" contractors for the development of the SLS. You need to think more about the wallets of Boei- er I mean, think about those poor poor jobs. /s

> You would use SLS because it may be the only vehicle capable of flying with a 10m fairing for a surprisingly long time.
I agree, SLS is the only super heavy rocket right now that can guarantee a launch. One of the biggest problems however is that it has been delayed so much that it might not get much use until better options come along. By that point, all of those billions spent on SLS would be a waste.

[Anonymous No.10499973]

>>10499958
A small naval reactor, and an absolute assload of radiators. Like, 100 tons of radiators.

[Anonymous No.10499978]

>>10499973
Congratulations you just blew out the mass budget by a ridiculous amount and your engine is now far worse than a chemical rocket.

[Anonymous No.10500017]

>>10499958
I don't know a huge amount about VASIMR except that it only needs around 200kW to operate, very small nuclear reactors have been possible since the 50s-60s and NASA has also been playing around with nuclear power sources for space application (although kilopower is not the kind of reactor you'd want to power a VASIMR rocket). Jet and tank engines can generate more than 1000kW of horsepower and a very small MSR operating perhaps as some kind of expansion condensation closed cycle turbine could probably rival that at similar sizes. Enough to power four or five 200kW VASIMR rockets at full power. Propellant for magnetoplasmadynamics is a lot more compact and less troublesome compared to the cryogenic monopropellants or volatile hypergolics used right now. As to radiator weight more favorable performance could be achieved using carbon fiber as a fin material, the UMAS study I'll post uses Inconel alloy tubes but for an MSR I'd switch them to Hastelloy-X. Radiators will invariably make up close to half the weight of your power system, if you want a ship to use any kind of powerful magnetoplasmadynamic rocket radiator weight will be factored into your mass budget and better, bigger rockets are right on the horizon to fill those kinds of needs. If you have specific criticisms of VASMIR though I'd be interested to hear them because I don't know much about it outside of what you'd get from surface level perusal of google.

chrome-extension://oemmndcbldboiebfnladdacbdfmadadm/https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20130001608.pdf

[Anonymous No.10500028]

>>10499936
gods are bad, stop worshiping them
.t Big E at the beginning of the Unification Wars, and continuously during the Great Crusade

[Anonymous No.10500032]

>>10499936
GW found exiting new ways to be retarded, I'm astonished.

[Anonymous No.10500038]

>>10499895

It'll definitely explode sometime in the early 2020s*

[Anonymous No.10500080]

>>10500017
None of those power sources you mention are even remotely close to the 1kg/kW density you need for VASIMIR to be useful. If you want to run 5 VASIMIR engines your power source needs to weigh one tonne, there is absolutely no way you are ever going to get anything with radiators, shielding, turbines, etc... Down to that kind of weight. Your best hope is thin film solar, but even then that is only really usable in the inner system and the best numbers I have seen claim around maybe 3kg/kW.

[Anonymous No.10500090]

>>10500017
Expanding on this, using a radiator calculator, assuming the reactor is generating 1250kW of waste heat, and that the hot coolant flowing through the radiators will reach a temperature of 650k (not unreasonable for an MSR) with carbon fiber radiator fins with an emissivity of .9, the ship will need about 140m2 total radiator area to reject it all, you could break it down into four scissor-action folding radiators each with a total radiating surface of 35m2, 17.5m2 per face. This is of course assuming the ship is firing all five VASIMR's at 100% power and demanding 100% reactor output. This is close to the same surface area as the ISS's radiators, however these carbon fiber/hastelloy-X radiators can be much lighter, the only metal parts of these radiators will be the heat pipes themselves and the frame to hold and extrude them, the frame can be lightened by replacing aluminum with a magnesium alloy and the fins themselves will be very little more than carbon fiber canvas held to their heat pipes by a highly conductive epoxy. Those of the ISS are composed entirely of aluminum, inconel and ceramic so while this fictional ship may have radiators of the same approximate size, they will be nowhere near the same weight.

[Anonymous No.10500091]

>>10500017
>>10500080
VASIMR does not need to be kept to clown car sizes, you can scale it up if the power generation is there to fuel it, and when it comes to rockets, the bigger they are, the better they are

but despite all this, if you're going nuclear at all, you might as well toss electric engines out the window and just use nuclear rockets directly since they're superior in every single way
the whole concern about nuclear is sending the material and reactors up there, if you're doing it at all, you can do it twice no problem

[Anonymous No.10500099]

>>10500090
Again, there is no way you are getting a megawatt MSR with turbines, shielding, coolant, pumps and other shit down to under a tonne even if you have lightweight radiators.

>>10500091
Again, just because you scale up the rocket doesn't mean the energy density requirements change, but yes direct nuclear is the way to go.

[Anonymous No.10500103]

>>10500091
>direct nuclear over ion/plasma
Except nuclear thermal rockets only have an ISP twice that of chemical rockets. That's still an enormous fuel demand, sure the spacecraft will get much lighter proportionally as it flies but that doesn't seem to square with the efficiency gains by going the other direction in terms of engine technology.

[Anonymous No.10500111]

>>10500103
fuel is cheap, Time is the real concern here
It doesn't matter how much it costs, the rads are fucking crewmembers in the ass and they need to get to their shielded destinations ASAP
leave the fuel penny pinching to sats doing stationkeeping

[Anonymous No.10500113]

>>10500091
>the bigger they are, the better they are
The problem with this logic is that you're conflating two very different technologies. VASIMR requires very heavy power supply and heat rejection systems that prevent it from achieving as much of a performance advantage as you may expect just from looking at the Isp figures.

VASIMR flights to Mars in one month transit times are a fantasy requiring literal magic power supplies. Something as low thrust to weight ratio as VASIMR would only be significantly useful on missions to very distant targets requiring lots of delta V, like orbital probes around the ice giants and Kuiper belt objects, in which case VASIMR would behave like a big ion drive.

[Anonymous No.10500120]

>>10500103
Nuclear thermal isn't direct nuclear, Orion drive/Z-pinch microfission engine/fission fragment thruster/fusion plasma drives are direct nuclear.

[Anonymous No.10500128]

>>10500099
There might be something I'm missing, but why does the entire power system have to be under one ton? Also as I said, my calculations were for a reactor sufficient to power five VF-200's at 100% thrust, if you wanted just one VF-200 operating you could do so with a tiny baby reactor generating only 200kW and change and you could do with only a fourth or less of that necessary radiator area. Or just one single 100kW VF-100. Don't think though that I'm wedded to VASIMR, I'm much more interested in powerplants and heat rejection than I am in propulsion.

[Anonymous No.10500140]

>>10500128
If your power source weighs more than 1kg/kW then you might as well toss it away because a chemical rocket is better unless you don't care about the time it takes to get there. This is pretty basic stuff.

[Anonymous No.10500144]

>>10500128
The people trying to get more funding for VASIMR make claims about its performance including a ~1 month flight to Mars. It's not a complicated calculation to take the delta V required, the propellant mass required, the minimum level of thrust needed to accomplish the accelerations and top speed needed to make the trip that fast, and work out that it's impossible unless your power source has a power to mass ration of several kilowatts per kilogram, which is orders of magnitude beyond any electrical power plant ever designed (before someone says it, fusion power plants get significantly worse power to mass ratio than fission plants because they have the same need for radiation shielding yet also require a shitload of massive magnetic confinement hardware).

[Anonymous No.10500145]

>>10500120
>Orion
Not happening in under 50 years unless it's a military vehicle
>Z-pinch
Problem: we don't have fusion reactors capable of this yet, and won't for at least 10 years. You might as well install Zefram Cochrane's warp coils.

[Anonymous No.10500155]

>>10500145
>Problem: we don't have fusion reactors capable of this yet
READ nigga, READ. I said Z-pinch FISSION, as in using electromagnetism to crush pellets of uranium until they go critical. Literally thousands of times easier than z-pinch fusion and offers way higher maximum thrust at the cost of lower specific impulse (but still phenomenal, better than ion drives). You're not the first anon to get hypnotized by the deuterium jew.

Basically it's like if you scaled down Orion to the point that it was using microscopic nukes, except instead of tiny nukes you just have fuel pellets which require the Z-pinch device to actually detonate. Also since you detonate several hundred of these pellets per second you get as smooth an acceleration as a chemical engine, so no huge shock absorber structure required.

[Anonymous No.10500156]

>>10500155
right, where are you going to get the kind of power needed to do that?

[Anonymous No.10500165]

>>10500140
>>10500144
I see now, as I said I'm much more fixated on power supplies and heat rejection equipment than on propulsion systems. I also don't see the need to fixate on exactly one month, just cutting it down to a couple months instead of the 260+ day Hoeman. Cutting the travel time to 2-3 months would be enough that a full round trip wouldn't be extraordinarily beyond what humans have already experienced during the longer ISS expeditions, and might even be more comfortable for them since our interplanetary space ship should obviously be packing a rotohab capable of giving them at least fractional G.

[Anonymous No.10500166]

>>10500156
A nuclear reactor
you can have more than one nuclear flavoured device on one craft, you know

[Anonymous No.10500174]

>>10500156
The engine will get really hot because of neutron radiation, gamma rays, physically being hit by fission fragments, etc. This heat needs to be removed, obviously. Typically this calls for a thermal loop that moves a coolant from the hot parts of the engine to the radiators. In this case however the thermal loop cooling the engine is dumping its heat into a heat engine, and the thermal loop dumping heat in the radiators is taking heat away from the heat engine. This way the waste heat of the engine is used to generate electricity before it is radiated away and the engine powers itself.

There are people who think this would be possible using Z-pinch fusion or laser-induced fusion, personally I don't think so. However since the activation energy requirements for fission fuels are so much lower than fusion fuels (literally so low that they are negligible, it takes almost no power to crush a hollow pellet of uranium into a tiny supercritical mass compared to the energy released when that fuel fissions and explodes), it means you have a massive overhead margin for energy losses to work with that makes it comparatively easy to design a self powered Z-pinch fission engine.

By the way if you're insane there's another fission based direct nuclear powered engine, the nuclear salt water rocket. In this engine the fuel is uranium or plutonium salts, dissolved in water, such that a cup of the liquid forms a supercritical mass under normal conditions. The vehicle stores its nuclear salt water in a 'sponge' tank where the liquid is kept divided into sub-critical masses by strong nuclear poison materials. To run the engine a single valve is opened and the fuel is sprayed into the reaction chamber, where it suddenly finds itself free from shielding and surrounded by nothing but itself, causing it to go prompt critical and generate a continuous nuclear explosion that provides thrust to the vehicle.

[Anonymous No.10500186]

>>10500174
That NSWR might theoretically be nice but it's going to expel a lethal flashlight beam of fast neutrons and other radiation and presumably some unfissed fuel as well (some of it I assume will get hurled out from the rocket before it has time to fission). This would make it a highly undesirable ship to be used anywhere even remotely near space stations, other ships, LEO, or anywhere else you'd want people to be. Am I mistaken on that count?

[Anonymous No.10500187]

>>10500186
Nope you're spot on
Nuclear has always been a thing you use for deep space
Nothing better than nuclear, for both propelling ships and killing people so hard they die to death

[Anonymous No.10500188]

>>10500186
>Am I mistaken on that count?
Like I said, it's a nice engine design if you're insane. NSWR is the closest thing to a possible-in-real-life torch drive we've come up with so far. The nice thing about NSWR's hideous exhaust is that it's going so fast that it's not going to stick around anywhere unless that place is an actual object being washed with it. You wouldn't want to point this thing at any atmospheres you liked, but so long as there was nothing in the rear view mirror you'd be fine.

[Anonymous No.10500210]

>mfw Trump is going to be re-elected and will succeed to get us back on the moon in my lifetime assuming I live the next few years

I am constantly and daily delighted that I voted for that man.

[Anonymous No.10500212]

>>10500187
>>10500188
Assuming that pretty much any quantity of your near-critical reactant immediately fissions on release, you might build a rocket wherein only a tiny quantity of reactant is fissioned off to superheat some other propellant, that presumably would get you more thrust (more material ejected) and help somewhat mitigate the radioactivity. Shitty MSpaint rendition related.

[Anonymous No.10500219]

>>10499631
The year is 2027, corporations have more power than the government....

[Anonymous No.10500220]

I think dear moon is key to this. 2025. That will be the biggest show of BFR level tech, security and all other parameters. It will be an incredible show of trust, and all eyes will be on SpaceX. 2026 would be the next window to launch, I think that's what they'd aim for and if they get dear moon they can probably get a slam dunk on to mars.

I am not sure if it'd be a manned mission but with all steel bfrs, I would not be surprised if they had the launch cadence to launch multiple ships with the last one manned.

[Anonymous No.10500241]

>>10500212
Also, is it described anywhere how the nuclear salt water reactant/fuel is actually manufactured without spontaneous unscheduled ignition (big fucking explosion)?

[Anonymous No.10500243]

>>10500220
no fucking way would it be manned, there's so much more that needs to be done to safely get humans there and set up. SpaceX may well have the tech to get people there, everything else still needs doing and they don't have the manpower for all of that. Apollo took 1% of GDP and they got two dudes on the moon for a few days, this'll be, extremely conservatively 10 times the effort of that

[Anonymous No.10500294]

>>10499358
so bfr is like a nigger spaceshuttle?

[Anonymous No.10500310]

>>10499695
That's if NASA were doing it

If it's Elon I could see him rolling the dice a bit early

Eventually it'll bite him badly, but it may also get him to Mars a bit quicker

[Anonymous No.10500311]

>>10500080
>If you want to run 5 VASIMIR engines
Why five? I seem to remember that they need to be used in pairs because of opposite magnetic polarity or something.

[Anonymous No.10500331]

>>10500294
>does the job 10 times for the same price
maybe a Mexican space shuttle

[Anonymous No.10500338]

>>10500294
it's a trashcan ass blaster, and it will accomplish more than the shittle or the corrupt turbofaggots that made it ever dreamed of doing

[Anonymous No.10500346]

>>10500311
I just arbitrarily picked 5 to use for my example regarding the size of reactor and radiators I speculate would be necessary to power a VASIMR propelled ship.

[Anonymous No.10500381]

>>10500331
>>10500338
>no launch abort
https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/7whiqx/launch_escape_system_for_bfr/
>The difference between the Space shuttle and BFR though is that BFR can fly in uncrewed mode, which allows SpaceX to test the rocket rigorously before putting crew on it, which means the only failures that could/should occur would be fatigue or mission-specific ones, which can hopefully be prevented by extensive computer modelling and regular inspections (just like in airtravel).
>just like in airtravel
>just like in airtravel
>just like in airtravel

>>10500338
also fuck that ren stimpy art style

[Anonymous No.10500385]

>>10500381
bfr will never be as safe as cars, let alone air travel

[Anonymous No.10500388]

>>10500385
>x will never be y
no

[Anonymous No.10500395]

>>10500388
>x will never be as y as z
>x will never be y
>the same thing
kys

[Anonymous No.10500408]

[Anonymous No.10500409]

>bfr has no
>U
>S
>A
into the trash it goes

[Anonymous No.10500411]

>>10500408
>the virgin hair transplant
>the chad chrome dome

[Anonymous No.10500421]

>>10500409
If it doesn’t have an american flag I’ll literally drive down to Boca Chica and pop it full of holes with a Barrett and some AP ammo

[Anonymous No.10500424]

>>10500421
then again maybe they literally can’t due to the shield

But I doubt that

[Anonymous No.10500425]

what did google mean by this?

>>10500421
based

[Anonymous No.10500442]

>>10500424
it's like: bruh, just turn the shield off first, then paint it

[Anonymous No.10500447]

>>10499803

Why have you incorrectly assumed the private enterprise to be the ontological inferior to the public sector, and why have you likewise incorrectly assumed that public opinion prefers the latter to the former? (do not say: "because evidence says so." Because it doesn't.)

[Anonymous No.10500486]

>>10500385
>>10500388
>>10500395
>bfr will never be as safe as soyuz

ftfy

also take your try hard modus ponus shit to reddit feget

[Anonymous No.10500567]

>>10500408
Cultists are cringe.

[Anonymous No.10500570]

>>10499694
Hah! You‘re implying that they were using both sensors and actually looked for disagreements! Cute. The disagreement indicator in the cockpit was a premium upgrade as well.

[Anonymous No.10500576]

>>10500038
"Fuck, why did we reuse Columbias O-rings!"

[Anonymous No.10500593]

>commercial rockets out of the running
>SLS back on track for 2020 launch
>EUS back on the table and funded, and moved forward
>moon landings moved from 2028 to 2024
>dark night boosters for block 2 moved up
Apologize.

[Anonymous No.10500599]

>>10500486
You mean that space craft that comes with holes in it? You mean the rocket that couldn‘t make orbit a couple months ago? Roscosmos is a fucking joke these days.

[Anonymous No.10500603]

>>10500593
*blocks your path*

[Anonymous No.10500609]

>>10500599
at least they can abort just like your mom should have done with you filthy muskite

[Anonymous No.10500623]

>come on /sci/ to find rocket science talk and be educated
>thread is /pol/
Why

[Anonymous No.10500625]

10500567

[Anonymous No.10500626]

>>10500623
first week off reddit?

[Anonymous No.10500629]

By 2024 SLS would have landed Americans on the Moon.

Can spacex even compete?

[Anonymous No.10500630]

>>10500626
No. I'm from /m/.

[Anonymous No.10500631]

Can anyone just board poet at the ISS? Did Musk ask for permission? What if I had my own space-worthy rocket, can I just park at ISS?

Is ISS a slut?

[Anonymous No.10500632]

>>10500385
If every fucking western country wasn't so obsessed with safety, we'd be on Mars by now.
We're strapping people onto giant tanks of liquids that happily explode if given a reason, powered by engines that are contained explosions, traveling at speeds not thought possible just 100 years ago, while facing incredible thermal and mechanical stress on the airframes.
We can't pretend that they won't ever fuck up. Fuckups will occur, and that should be accepted as a risk of space travel. It's not like airlines where 300 people can die in a crash, people really should stop obsessing over safety so much.

[Anonymous No.10500637]

>>10500631
like with any port or harbor, no

[Anonymous No.10500648]

>>10500630
I'm sorry. Drink?

[Anonymous No.10500650]

>>10500381
I think we can all agree that not every idea that Elon has is brillant (for example creating tiny tunnels that can only fit one car, earth-to-earth travel with rockets, solar roof tiles, etc.) and I also believe that the fan base of him is "cultish" enough that they will defend them to death regardless.

But BFR will obviously stay cargo-only for a very long time, as SpaceX will have a tried-and-tested Dragon 2 to transport humans to space. So talking about a lack of launch abort is pointless.

[Anonymous No.10500653]

>>10500650
Dragon is not certified too and will experience difficulties with copvs.

Soyuz, Orion, Starliner - if you want safety.

Shuttle or other vehicles if you like risk and seek adrenaline rushes...

[Anonymous No.10500655]

10500650
>I'm going to pretend to support him by referencing items nobody cares about
>in order to "justify" spreading FUD about this critical item
just go the fuck away and stay the fuck away
no amount of spamming is going to achieve anything

[Anonymous No.10500657]

hey L2 fag you still around?
how much better is BCG's video of this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R10tUrQLKwk

[Anonymous No.10500667]

>>10500648
Sure. Thanks. Salmon pink rockets when?

[Anonymous No.10500670]

>>10500667
I can't wait for moon and mars base so that space independence can happen

[Anonymous No.10500671]

>>10500657
It's going to be a fucking cloud. What are you expecting?

[Anonymous No.10500678]

>>10500671
I want to understand how justified their smug fuck attitude is

[Anonymous No.10500679]

>>10500653
Dragon will certainly carry humans to space. Starship will not for a long time but that doesn't matter much. People can go up and down using Dragons and then transfer to Starship and fly to Mars.

[Anonymous No.10500681]

>G-guys SLS will n-never happen

[Anonymous No.10500683]

>>10500593
Can't wait for that old parasite to kick the bucket.

[Anonymous No.10500685]

>>10500683
SpaceX has profited greatly from this parasite keeping a big aerospace industry alive. Where do you think SpaceX got most of their qualified personnel from?

[Anonymous No.10500690]

When will this fucker leave?

[Anonymous No.10500692]

>>10500690
I don't know, when will you?

[Anonymous No.10500697]

I don't know why fanbois hate the SLS so much. It isn't competing with any existing SpaceX rocket and Starship will be so busy carrying people from earth-to-earth and earth-to-mars that a few Orion missions can't be that relevant, amirite?

[Anonymous No.10500698]

>>10500655
>Copy pasting reply reference number
Kill yourself pls

[Anonymous No.10500703]

Why do you feel compelled to do this?

[Anonymous No.10500709]

10500698
No, I clicked the post number as normal for a quick reply, then specifically deleted the two arrows to prevent it from giving you a (You)

[Anonymous No.10500711]

>>10500709
Wow, you are so clever. Ah no shit, you are the most annoying retard in these threads, and that really means something because these threads have a lot of retards.

[Anonymous No.10500713]

>>10500709
Why the fuck do I need (you)
I'm not kike

[Anonymous No.10500717]

>>10500709
>to prevent it from giving you a (You)
It's an anonymous message board anon, the number of (you)s is meaningless to everyone

[Anonymous No.10500725]

Damn look at that samefagging, he's going all out.

[Anonymous No.10500726]

GOT EM

[Anonymous No.10500729]

>>10500725


>>10500717
>>10500713
>>10500711
Not a samefag matey

[Anonymous No.10500732]

>>10500729
proof

[Anonymous No.10500736]

>>10500729

[Anonymous No.10500741]

I wish we had mods on this board that would do their fucking job and clear up all these gay shit posting spergs

[Anonymous No.10500747]

>>10500683
he's a blight on the earth, so he'll probably live for decades more
it was only by blind luck that the arch lich of arizona finally fell

[Anonymous No.10500755]

>>10500741
>WHY WON'T THE MODS CREATE ME A SAFE SPACE REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

[Anonymous No.10500770]

This board does have fucking rules.

[Anonymous No.10500779]

this has all happened before
of all the things to make the shill mad, denying it (You)s makes it go fucking nuclear every time without fail
Perhaps he's paid by the reply, rather than by the post

[Anonymous No.10500780]

>>10500741
Me too, anon, me too.

[Anonymous No.10500788]

>>10500779
You sound like a paranoid shizophrenic. Isn't your lot at home in /pol/, where they discuss the newest revelations of Alex Jones?

[Anonymous No.10500794]

Can we have an order please.
Special ops here.
Fags go to your containment board.

So, is this tinfoil going to fire up today or not?

[Anonymous No.10500827]

>>10499910
>and the laughter of thirsting contractors

fixed that for you

[Anonymous No.10500836]

>>10500697
It is diverting valuable public spaceflight funding into a pointless project, that is why.

[Anonymous No.10500866]

Can somebody explain to me why they aren't putting the JWST into a GSO, but the for humans practically unreachable L2?

[Anonymous No.10500869]

>>10500866
gets it further away from the moon and earth so they don't interfere with its instruments. You have to keep in mind JWST is an infrared scope that does some optical at the higher end of its light range. Putting it in GSO would get the moon and earth in the way of observations as it orbited the planet.

[Anonymous No.10500875]

>>10500869
Point it away from earth then and use a second one for the other half. Would certainly be much cheaper than this unserviceable clusterfuck.

[Anonymous No.10500881]

>>10500875
Its a clusterfuck because Northrop Grumman keeps fucking things up.
It still doesnt do anything with the moon getting in the way.
The whole point of it is having all of the heat sources that could possibly affect the mirror and sensors be on one side of the sunshield, and the whole point of the sunshield is so that active cooling (liquid helium, which is then vented into space) isn't required to get the components down to operating temperature.

Once up and active, it won't have a limited lifespan like Spitzer due to coolant.

[Anonymous No.10500885]

>>10500881
Bro, the moon is small and not stationary. It will be in the way almost never.

If there are more than one heat sources, big whoop, just put 4 heat shields around it. Congratz, no fucking heat will come to your mirror.

Let's face it, putting a telescope at L2 is just an awful idea as long as we don't have advanced space travel where we could service it easyily.

[Anonymous No.10500895]

>>10500885
I dont think you realize just how stupidly sensitive the JWST's sensors are. They're meant to operate at sub-50 kelvin temperatures. Having the 126-373 kelvin moon suddenly occupy a huge portion of the telescope's field of view is going to fuck the sensors over and heat the mirror above the 50K mark. Then there's radio and themal interference from other GSO sats and the fact that belt is constantly and continuously bombarded with radio waves from the ground.

Its getting put way the fuck out in L2 because there's nothing else really out there that can interfere with it. Hell, Spitzer was launched into a heliocentric orbit.

[Anonymous No.10500904]

>>10500895
GUESS WHAT BRO AT GSO YOU JUST FLY UP THERE AND REFILL THE COOLING LIQUID.

[Anonymous No.10500908]

>>10500904

[Anonymous No.10500912]

>>10500881
It's a clusterfuck because, as always, politics interfered. Servicing Hubble was expensive due to every Space Shuttle launch costing half a billion, so politicians said the next big telescope should "save money" by not needing servicing. Turns out it completely BTFO Hubble in terms of cost already, because constructing a telescope that needs to be perfect is really, really hard.

Funny thing is launching it into GSO, and also launch some big heat shields individually, would have most definetely been much cheaper, and you could service it if need be.

[Anonymous No.10500914]

>>10500904
90-110 mil per launch minimum, the telescope mirror and instruments have to be redesigned for active cooling (shrinking the mirror and the amount of light it can collect), and if something goes wrong with the launch the telescope just lost cooling and can no longer perform deep infrared science until the next shipment of coolant goes up. If a coolant line breaks, the liquid helium could contaminate instruments or the mirror.

You'd also still have to deal with the earth and moon interrupting observations and overloading your instruments, active cooling or no.

I don't like the clusterfuck its become any more than you guys do, but I blame the contractors and politicians more than anything else.

[Anonymous No.10500955]

>>10499491
>Fixed-Price contracting

That doesn't work for missions that are doing what has never been done before, as it is impossible to give a reliable cost estimate for those. So a company would have to give a ridiculously high price estimate to account for a lot of unknowns that can drive development price up, and those ridiculously high price estimates would mean that congress won't approve them.
NASA "playing" congress by giving low price estimates, and then overstepping these price estimates is the only reason we are getting things like Curiosity ar all.

[Anonymous No.10501153]

>>10500955
>That doesn't work for missions that are doing what has never been done before

It could work for those missions, even a high fixed price estimate may turn out to be lower cost in the long term than cost plus contract. Anyway, neither orbital launch nor manned capsule nor a lunar lander is a new technology. All of those are half a century old and ripe for fixed price contracting.

[Anonymous No.10501156]

>>10500955
wtf I love budget overruns now. I unironically never though about it like that

[Anonymous No.10501172]

>>10501153
Neither of those are struggling with cost overruns.

[Anonymous No.10501193]

>>10501172
>neither orbital launch nor manned capsule nor a lunar lander is a new technology
>"Neither of those are struggling with cost overruns."
>orbital launch not struggling with cost overruns
Did you forget that the SLS exists?

[Anonymous No.10501293]

>>10501193
Rockets of that size are a new technology, because it's 50 years ago we built things of that size. Considering that, the development cost really isn't that bad.

[Anonymous No.10501309]

>>10501293
Development cost is ridiculous, we did it 50 years ago, anything over $10 billion is blatant fraud on the taxpayers. But it is not even about the cost, main problems of SLS and Orion are endless delays and the fact that there is literally zero technical advances compared to Saturn V (inb4 friction stir welding). It is a rocket that would be totally obsolete even if it was free. It is worse than nothing, because it creates this illusion of progress, as if NASA is doing something worthwhile, when in reality they are dragging the industry back into the 1960s.

[Anonymous No.10501321]

"Pics from the launch site this morning"

[Anonymous No.10501326]

>>10501309
>there is literally zero technical advances compared to Saturn V
we could even make an argument that Saturn V was more advanced, as it used neither solid boosters nor hydrogen first stage

[Anonymous No.10501330]

>>10501309
It will be the most capable rocket in existence and the second most capable in history after Saturn 5. It cost around 10 billion so far. That's not that bad given its capability. Especially considering that just for the cost of re-modifying the RS-25 you could have developed the F1B and skipped Block 1 and go to Block 2 directly. But politicians said they need to "save money" by using the RS-25s that were still lying around.

[Anonymous No.10501335]

https://spacenews.com/jwst-review-board-raises-schedule-concerns/

>JWST review board raises schedule concerns

why am I not surprised

[Anonymous No.10501341]

>>10499364

And older than NASA -- the politics of "don't want captured Germans to launch the first satellite" and then "the President was in the Navy, let's let the Navy(???) launch the first satelliteand forbid the Army team from launching despite having a vehicle and payload ready to go" gave the Soviets the opening to get the first satellite into orbit.

Not to take anything away fro Korolev and his team, and there is no way of knowing if they would have launched sooner had the American effort been pursued with more seriousness. But the American effort had the hardware standing by and ready to fly, but in the wrong hands, politically and so sitting in a warehouse instead of launching, when the Sputnik launch occurred.

[Anonymous No.10501346]

>>10501341
FOr comparison.

[Anonymous No.10501350]

>>10501330
>It will be the most capable rocket in existence

Strong declarative statements about a future launch vehicles make my spleen itch. Seen too many of them turn out to be in error.

I am always hopeful, I am strongly in favor of more and better space capabilities. But I've gotten to the point where I'll judge the rocket once it is flying, not based on the goals and hopes of those building it.

[Anonymous No.10501353]

>>10500794
Yes

[Anonymous No.10501361]

>>10500593
>moon landing
>2024
>SLS

Impactor maybe.

[Anonymous No.10501377]

>>10501330
>It will be the most capable rocket in existence and the second most capable in history after Saturn 5.
Not until Block 2, of which the odds are incredibly long. How long has it taken so far to get even half a rocket that hasn't even launched yet?

[Anonymous No.10501379]

With the new dates set we're finally seeing a real space program and one that's gonna deliver far sooner than anyone expected.

I really wanted 2019 flight to the Moon but trading that for a landing in few more years is a hell lot better deal and we're getting a lunar space station maybe even a base on top of that.

I just hope this causes *some* people to dial down on the fanboyism about scifi starships and crap like that cause it's obvious NASA doesn't care about fantasies and has to work with what's real and possible.

[Anonymous No.10501381]

>>10501377
It will be ready by 2024.

[Anonymous No.10501385]

>>10501293
>Rockets of that size are a new technology
No they're not. The Shuttle is roughly the same size as the SLS and it's been flying for years.

>Considering that, the development cost really isn't that bad.
How so? The SLS was advertised to be a cheap and quick vehicle to develop, and it should've been considering that it was taking parts that were already built and rebolting them together. Now it's taking more time and money to develop than the Saturn V.

Meanwhile the Saturn I is similar to the SLS. A rocket that was in a new and higher payload mass range at the time. It took older parts and bolted them together. And the whole thing was still faster and cheaper to develop than SLS by a wide margin.

It's obvious that the SLS program has some blatant corruption inside and that needs to be taken care of if SLS were to ever launch.

[Anonymous No.10501389]

>>10501335
I want to see that thing in space before I off myself dammit.

[Anonymous No.10501399]

>>10501381
>program started in late 2011 (not even counting the Ares/Constellation fiasco before that)
>it was originally planned by the end of 2016
>current estimate is 8 years later
It is literally going to take twice as long as the original plan, and we can't even be sure it will keep to that date.
THIRTEEN FUCKING YEARS TO MAKE A ROCKET?

[Anonymous No.10501406]

>>10501385
>>10501399
Big rockets are hard and expensive.

China will need another 10 years to match the SLS and anyone else starting work on similar sized rocket now is going to face even bigger challenges as they won't have NASA's experience.

Moon landing by 2024, it's already set in stone.

[Anonymous No.10501410]

>>10501399
>THIRTEEN FUCKING YEARS TO MAKE A ROCKET?
What if Apollo was managed like that?

>1962, We choose to go to the Moon before the end of the decade!
>1975, Apollo 4

[Anonymous No.10501419]

>>10501410
>1972, N1 finally stops exploding
>1973, First cosmonaut on the moon
>1974, Apollo program cancelled after unpopularity of Vietnam War

[Anonymous No.10501423]

>>10501406
>Big rockets are hard
What about them would be hard? Again, the Shuttle worked fine and it's nearly as big as SLS. The boosters are done. The upper stage is done. The core is taking forever. Why? It's not that hard to make a tank strong enough to handle all the forces of launch.

[Anonymous No.10501425]

>>10501406

>Moon landing by 2024, it's already set in stone.

steel

[Anonymous No.10501429]

>>10501423
The corestage uses completely new welding techniques used on scale never tried before.

It's entirely different from what the shuttle had.

[Anonymous No.10501434]

>>10501406
>Moon landing by 2024, it's already set in stone.
Wait, you were saying moon landing by 2024, not first SLS launch? I almost spritzed my laptop.

[Anonymous No.10501437]

>>10501434
SLS could very well launch this year if the contractors accelerate work, but early next year is more likely.

[Anonymous No.10501438]

>>10501429
What was bad about the old techniques? Why can't the SLS be launched sooner with the "old style" tanks while the "new style" tanks are developed? It's not for the lack of SLS-sized payloads, Europa Clipper and Orion have been sitting around for a while.

[Anonymous No.10501444]

>>10500212
More thrust but less efficient, good if you want to save expensive fission fuel while doing relatively short missions over and over (allowing you to refill your cheap propellant) but not good for missions requiring maximum delta V, like interstellar hops.

[Anonymous No.10501449]

>>10501438
The old tooling used for manufacturing shuttle external tanks was incapable of producing core stage of the size needed for the SLS and was scrapped.

[Anonymous No.10501451]

>>10500241
A little bit at a time, just like how highly enriched fission fuel is made on Earth right now.

[Anonymous No.10501455]

>>10501377
Block 1 can put 95 tons into low earth orbit, more than any other existing rocket.

>>10501385
>No they're not. The Shuttle is roughly the same size as the SLS and it's been flying for years.

It's a completely different system.

>The SLS was advertised to be a cheap and quick vehicle to develop

By politicians. Not by engineers.

>Now it's taking more time and money to develop than the Saturn V

Not at all, Saturn 5 cost almost 100 billion in today's dollars to develop.

>Meanwhile the Saturn I is similar to the SLS. A rocket that was in a new and higher payload mass range at the time. It took older parts and bolted them together. And the whole thing was still faster and cheaper to develop than SLS by a wide margin.

Your numbers are way off. Saturn I is comparable to the Falcon 9. Block 5 is 5 times more capable.

>It's obvious that the SLS program has some blatant corruption inside and that needs to be taken care of if SLS were to ever launch.

It cost overruns are somewhat okay considering it's a program where politics are constantly interfering.

[Anonymous No.10501469]

>>10500629
>only 5 years late
daily reminder that Apollo starting from scratch accomplished its goal ahead of schedule

[Anonymous No.10501473]

>>10501455

It's not Saturn vs SLS. The alternative to SLS isn't digging Saturn 5 up from the grave. SLS is worse than contemporary alternatives to it at every stage of development and operation.

[Anonymous No.10501479]

>>10501469
You get what you pay for.

[Anonymous No.10501481]

>>10500904
You can't get close to JWST using rocket propulsion once it's deployed or you'll fuck up the mirrors with deposits from your exhaust. It is literally unserviceable once launched.

[Anonymous No.10501486]

>>10501326
Yes, Saturn was pretty much an ideal design for either sending decently heavy payloads to the Moon and beyond or sending super heavy payloads to LEO (in the latter case you remove the third stage and operate Saturn as a 2STO, which is the most optimized design)

[Anonymous No.10501488]

>>10501455

Specs don't matter. A rocket like SLS is integrated into the program based on it. SLS warped that program to lesser outcomes than one based on alternatives, alternatives predicated upon lesser spec vehicles or even inclusive of spec matching or spec exceeding metrics.

[Anonymous No.10501490]

>>10501449
Source?

>>10501455
>It's a completely different system.
Yes, but the hardware shouldn't be that hard to re-purpose.

>By politicians. Not by engineers.
Whats so hard about developing a new tank?

>Not at all, Saturn 5 cost almost 100 billion in today's dollars to develop.
Yet it was developed faster than the SLS, and had more payload capability using 60s style testing an manufacturing. The SLS shouldn't be taking this long.

Also, the Saturn V didn't take $100B to develop in 2018$. It took $42B.

>Your numbers are way off. Saturn I is comparable to the Falcon 9. Block 5 is 5 times more capable.
Yes, but the Saturn I was the largest rocket developed by NASA AT THE TIME like the SLS, and like the SLS it re-purposed rocket parts and was still developed faster.

>It cost overruns are somewhat okay considering it's a program where politics are constantly interfering.
It's not okay. Shelby took money away from the Commercial Crew Program to fund SLS. And yet that program managed to accomplish more in less time and money than SLS. Imagine how much faster and better that program or others could be if SLS supporters weren't trying to get more funding for a rocket that's out of date.

[Anonymous No.10501502]

>>10500679
but you know that's not what theyre going to do and you know elon will try to say it's safe without abort

[Anonymous No.10501506]

>>10501346
>>10501341
>antennae omitted from Sputnik height
>no mass given for Explorer 1
is this an example of trying to flex on soviet niggas by implying Explorer 1 was more impressive because it was taller? explorer was 31 pounds btw.

To be honest Sputnik shouldn't have separated from the R7 that carried it into orbit, because then this diagram would be forced to include the fucking massive 98 foot long and 10 foot wide core stage that was also placed into orbit during the launch.

[Anonymous No.10501509]

Here's a technical question about the state of the art in rocketry, somebody here probably knows the answer.

Are modern solid fuel rockets able to be throttled? Able to be shut down?

[Anonymous No.10501510]

>>10500650
>for example creating tiny tunnels that can only fit one car,
>spend billions on tunnel
>make it too tiny to fit a metro/subway

SO BRILLIANT

ALMOST AS BRILLIANT AS PAYPAL.. OH WAIT BITCOIN BTFO PAYPAL AND THE ONLY REASON PAYPAL IS SUCCESSFUL IS BECAUSE THEY BRIBED THE GOVERNMENT TO NOT PUT THEM IN JAIL LIKE THEY DID TO RONPAUL LIBERTY DOLLARS

he's a statist communist pig like steve jobs TAKING ADVANTAGE of working class by ruining their FREE MARKET

[Anonymous No.10501511]

>>10501490
>Yes, but the hardware shouldn't be that hard to re-purpose.

Try building a bicycle out of spare bicycle parts you find and then come back and say that again.

>Whats so hard about developing a new tank?

For beginners, since they were forced to use the RS-25, they were forced to make the first stage hydrogen which in itself is an unnecessary increase in complexity and development cost.

>Yet it was developed faster than the SLS, and had more payload capability using 60s style testing an manufacturing. The SLS shouldn't be taking this long.

>Also, the Saturn V didn't take $100B to develop in 2018$. It took $42B.

Even assuming those numbers are correct, that's still four times more.

>Yes, but the Saturn I was the largest rocket developed by NASA AT THE TIME like the SLS, and like the SLS it re-purposed rocket parts and was still developed faster.

That comparison is completely retarded.

>It's not okay. Shelby took money away from the Commercial Crew Program to fund SLS. And yet that program managed to accomplish more in less time and money than SLS. Imagine how much faster and better that program or others could be if SLS supporters weren't trying to get more funding for a rocket that's out of date.

CCP cost almost 10 billion, for developing two small capsules. Where's your outrage over that?

[Anonymous No.10501513]

>>10501429
>completely new welding techniques used on scale never tried before.
Lol in terms of welding the only difference between a yuge rocket and a little rocket is the curvature of the plates of metal and the thickness of the panels. That's something you can adjust for in an afternoon lol, unless you're being horrifically hamstrung by management.

[Anonymous No.10501514]

>>10501509
No.

[Anonymous No.10501517]

>>10501438
>Europa Clipper and Orion have been sitting around for a while.
Orion is not flight ready and Europa Clipper hasn't even started being built yet as far as I know.

[Anonymous No.10501519]

>>10501509
>Are modern solid fuel rockets able to be throttled?
No. Unless you remove the oxydizer from the solid fuel grain, make it liquid, and connect it to the motor with a controllable valve. But then thats no longer a solid rocket motor, it'll be a hybrid motor.

>Able to be shut down?
Nope. Not without destroying the motor (unless its a hybrid).

[Anonymous No.10501525]

>>10501506
I think you're reading more into this than is warranted. It's just trying to show the scale of the two satellites. I thought that was interesting, mildly, and since this is an image board I like to include a somewhat-related image with a post.

The Soviet boosters at that time were WAY more powerful than anything the US had, so putting heavier payloads into orbit gave them an advantage at that time. Compare the mass of Vostok with the mass of Mercury as another example.

My interest in the history of the "golden age" of space flight is not bond up in fanboi-ing for either side.

>>10501506
>98 foot long and 10 foot wide core stage that was also placed into orbit during the launch.

Yeah, I always wondered why that was not considered a two-way tie for placing a satellite in orbit.

It always amused me to read about people around the world going outside just after sunset to try and catch a glimpse of the Sputnik. When they were able to see anything, what they saw was the booster.

[Anonymous No.10501527]

>>10501513
SLS core stage uses advanced Friction Stir Welding.

There are no torch welders and panels involved.

[Anonymous No.10501528]

>>10501517

>>10501519

Thank you.

[Anonymous No.10501532]

>>10501509
No, the nature of a solid rocket is such that the fuel and oxidizer are already mixed, so once it's lit off there's nothing you can do to stop the reaction. If you took a chunk of burning solid fuel and dropped it into a lake it would continue to burn underwater because the reaction is not dependent on any outside source of oxygen or heat.

The only way to 'shut down' a solid rocket motor is to blow the top off of the fuel casing and let the hot gasses jet out in both directions. Unfortunately if you try to do that with your solid motor attached to your vehicle your core stage gets sprayed with explosion debris and a huge plume of white hot solid fuel exhaust, so it's really not a good solution.

You can also design a solid motor with a built in thrust curve, but you can't throttle one in flight. To generate a thrust curve you adjust your fuel casting so that the middle channel that the propellant burns inside has more or less surface area to begin with. Over the course of the motor's burn its thrust will start off high, then level off, then drop, all as the entire vehicle gets lighter and thus you avoid exerting massive G loads on your vehicle. Like I said though this thrust curve is baked in and cannot be adjusted either in flight or at any point after the fuel has been cast.

[Anonymous No.10501533]

>>10501519
Solid motors may be throttle controlled by controlling grain mixture and other things related to the solid fuel.

[Anonymous No.10501543]

>>10501533
True. Although I meant actively controlled. Sorry, I should've been more clear on that.

[Anonymous No.10501557]

>>10501527
I never said torch welders. I was actually talking about friction stir welding. Yes, panels are involved, you have to have something to weld together obviously, the friction stir bit is forced into the seam between two panels and the shoulder of the bit prevents material from flowing out of the weld area as the bit travels along the seam.

With a given thickness of material you need a longer friction stir bit, and with a given tank size you need to program in the correct curve to follow. The nature of friction stir welding means that it produces the best welds on flat material, and it gets progressively harder to produce a good weld the more sharp the curve in the metal (in the case of a rocket tank, the smaller the radius the harder). SLS with its large tanks should not be difficult to weld using friction stir, in fact it should be easier than other friction stir welded rockets (Falcon 9 for example).

If the people welding SLS together are having problems it's because of their methodology and not because of the limits of friction stir itself.

[Anonymous No.10501567]

>>10501330
>It will be the most capable rocket in existence and the second most capable in history after Saturn 5. It cost around 10 billion so far.

It cost $15 billion so far, and that is without accounting for the cost of SSME and SRB, which were mostly paid for from Shuttle budget. It will cost many more billions through 2021 before it even launches.

[Anonymous No.10501572]

>>10501567
>For fiscal years 2011 through 2018, the SLS program had expended funding totaling $13,999 million in nominal dollars. This is equivalent to $15,109 million adjusting to 2018 dollars using the NASA New Start Inflation Indices.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Launch_System#Funding_history_and_planning

[Anonymous No.10501573]

>>10501533
and grain shaping. The shuttle SRBs had like 3 different grain shapes along the bore to control the thrust profile during the burn: 11 (?) slot star at the top of the booster, smooth cylindrical bore through most of the center, and a pair of truncated cones near the nozzle.

[Anonymous No.10501574]

>>10501335
>Explodes on launchpad

[Anonymous No.10501578]

>>10501509
>>10501532
>>10501519
>>10501514
>>10501533
>>10501543
>>10501528

YES

http://eprints.gla.ac.uk/155610/
>This paper describes the instrumented test firing of a rocket that seeks to combine the throttleability of a liquid-fueled engine with the simplicity of a solid motor. The concept is that a differentiated fuel and oxidizer rod is forced into a vaporization unit where its constituents transition into separate propellant gases, which are then mixed in a combustion chamber. The vaporization unit is heated by the combustion, and the throttle setting is adjusted by changing the force used to drive the solid propellant rod into the vaporizer, which naturally influences the propellant feed rate. In experiments using a solid propellant rod consisting of polypropylene fuel and a 1∶1.5 mixture of NH4ClO4 and NH4NO3 oxidizer, operations have been sustained for around 60 s. During testing, using propellant feed forces of between 250 and 900 N, propellant feed rates of between 100 and 300 mm/min have been achieved, which are in turn correlated to chamber pressures of between approximately 300 and 700 kPa. These correlated cycles of control input (the feed force), throttle response (the propellant feed rate), and implied thrust (the chamber pressure) demonstrate, for the first time, a simple solid rocket that can be throttled in real time.

[Anonymous No.10501580]

>>10499364
>relying on government
shiggy

[Anonymous No.10501588]

>>10501574
I would be mad as fuck

[Anonymous No.10501592]

>>10501567
Maybe read the article you are quoting? That figure includes launch pad modifications and development being done for Block 1B. Block 1 development itself will cost around 10 billion, 9 of those for the core stage, 500 million for SRBs, and 500 million for modifications of the upper stage.

[Anonymous No.10501595]

>>10501578
>Paper rockets
Same as VASIMIR being useful.

[Anonymous No.10501601]

>>10501578
>>10501595
Sorry about that. I should learn to read first.
I understand the rod thing.
But why does the schematic show an air intake?

[Anonymous No.10501618]

>>10501592
>That figure includes launch pad modifications
As it should.

[Anonymous No.10501622]

>>10501618
Whatever suits your agenda, amirite

[Anonymous No.10501696]

>>10501622
>implying the program cost of Saturn V didn't include construction of ground hardware
k

[Anonymous No.10501702]

>>10501601
i think the design can be adapted to air breathing rockets but doesnt exclusively rely on it

[Anonymous No.10501704]

>>10501595
>vasimir
>not useful

[Anonymous No.10501770]

>>10501704
Yeah, it's garbage.
Chemical rockets are still the way to go.

[Anonymous No.10501783]

>>10501704
The only power source that would make it useful is nuclear, and nuclear rockets are already a thing and are vastly superior in every way shape or form

[Anonymous No.10501784]

>>10501770
you can calculate exactly when vasimir is better than any chemical rocket

[Anonymous No.10501796]

>>10501783
>The Virgin Nuclear Thermal with a near-chemical fuel demand for Isp of only 600s
>The Chad VASIMR with a vastly reduced fuel demand and an Isp of around 5,000s

[Anonymous No.10501797]

>>10501784
Yeah, and that's never.

[Anonymous No.10501805]

>>10501797
go read on the rocket equation

[Anonymous No.10501813]

>>10501805
>/sci/
>reading

[Anonymous No.10501826]

>>10501796
with VASIMR, you need to take into account tiny thrust and mass of the power source, then it turns out it is inferior to chemical propulsion for any flight except maybe to outer solar system

in addition to this, VASIMR is hardly better than other electric thrusters anyway

[Anonymous No.10501832]

>>10501826
brainlets always think Isp is the only thing that ever matters when it comes to rockets

[Anonymous No.10501835]

>>10501796
Try 1000 Isp for hydrogen NTR buddy.

Also for VASIMR don't forget that rather than efficient Hohmann transfers you have to take extremely long and wasteful spiral trajectories because VASIMR simply lacks the thrust necessary to accelerate fats enough.

If you only take Isp into account then you ignore the fact that despite being more propulsively efficient VASIMR has much less real utility. This is all before you even consider that VASIMR requires a very large power supply and large thermal radiators, further decreasing the effective payload to vehicle mass ratio.

[Anonymous No.10501839]

>>10501832
this

[Anonymous No.10501847]

>>10501835
You're going to need to deal with all of that heat not only for once you get up to big-boy fusion Z-pinch drives, but to be able to handle thermal management for very large space stations. We might as well figure out how to do it.

[Anonymous No.10501864]

>>10501805
It gets functional when you can get 1000mT in orbit.
Vasismir is still 50 years/centuries away.

[Anonymous No.10501898]

>>10501864
And thast's for it to be barely better than chemical rockets.

[Anonymous No.10501902]

sirens on the stream!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VVXwwtFNCU

[Anonymous No.10501922]

>>10501902
What's going on, engine is outing white smoke?
Is it some kind of test?

[Anonymous No.10501936]

>>10501902
Ok; looks like both 02 and CH4 tanks are topped.
What are they waiting for?

[Anonymous No.10501939]

>>10500709
He collects (you)s and assumes everybody else does too.

Give it up buddy nobody cares about receiving (you)s they only care about giving them. Then every time somebody sees your retarded posts they can easily see everybodies witty insults about just how pathetic you are.

It's not going to catch on.

[Anonymous No.10501940]

>>10501922
its not the engine and its not smoke, its excess oxygen purging from the tanks, you see the same on falcon 9 launches

[Anonymous No.10501941]

This just in! NASA to accelerate SLS, a rocket made in large part by a company that has had two airplanes crash recently, deployment by skipping some safety tests!

[Anonymous No.10501949]

>>10501941
This just in Boeing realizes SLS might die if they don't pretend to launch it.

[Anonymous No.10501951]

>>10501902
damn that's some bad thermocline. Really wish we had some adaptive optics to see shit better. Oh shit, are they flaring natural gas?

[Anonymous No.10501952]

>>10501835
>1000ISP for an LH2 NTR.
Paper please.

[Anonymous No.10501954]

>>10501847
The difference being that with Z pinch fission or fusion the trade-off in handling the waste heat is countered by the actual high performance of the propulsion system

[Anonymous No.10501955]

>>10501922
Super cold steam from the cryogenic propellants.

[Anonymous No.10501970]

>>10501954
You will still need to have the radiator technology, so there is a genuine reason to build plasma propulsion systems today to have the technology ready to go when you start to get to more interesting engines.

[Anonymous No.10501980]

>>10501952
NERVA achieved >900 Isp in the 50's, and project Timberwind found that with our current (90's) level of ability to design and engineer reactor cores we could expect to achieve >1050 Isp with a modern nuclear thermal rocket.

By the way, way back during project NERVA it was calculated that their engine would produce ~600 Isp if it used methane as propellant rather than hydrogen, which was relevant in cases where the NERVA-powered vehicle/stage was volume limited rather than mass limited. For an equal mass of propellant, hydrogen easily beats methane when used in an NTR, but for an equal VOLUME of propellant methane is superior, since hydrogen is ten times less dense and thus despite offering 400 seconds greater Isp than methane the propellant load would be cut by 90%, resulting in a net performance decrease.

Anyway the point here is that 1000 Isp is perfectly attainable for a solid core nuclear thermal rocket using hydrogen propellant. Since a nuclear thermal rocket can use a variety of propellants (in principal, though in specific cases some chemicals would be incompatible as they would decompose/react with the engine itself), this means that there are a variety of Isp upper limits, all of which correspond to a single propellant. Methane's practical upper limit is around 630 Isp. Water's practical upper limit is around 380 Isp. Interestingly this means that if we were to send a nuclear thermal vehicle to Callisto for example, it would be able to use the abundant water ice available to refill itself with propellant very quickly which would give it efficiency performance very close to the upper limit for a methalox engine, meaning NTR essentially replaces the need for high capacity chemical synthesis during outer space missions. You'd be able to get away with this trick for as long as your nuclear engine's core had enough fission fuel to operate effectively.

[Anonymous No.10501997]

10501939
>he's STILL mad
Sir it has been 11 hours, please calm down

[Anonymous No.10502012]

>>10500409

[Anonymous No.10502017]

>>10501970
I don't like this logic. To me it makes a lot more sense to do what is practical to do in space using chemical engines before we start tripping over our feet trying to get ahead by developing brand new thruster technology. Chemical propulsion is absolutely good enough to allow fully reusable transport from Earth to orbit, and from Earth orbit to the Moon and Mars (Venus as well but honestly fuck going to Venus with people). Until we have fully reusable transport options any and all deep space plans are fucked anyway, so why bother trying to do it with an as of yet unproven propulsion technology when we have another option that has been working for literally decades?

The best use cases for VASIMR aren't even useful to us at all right now and won't be until we have manned outposts on the Moon at the very least. VASIMR is best though of as a very slow tug that can deliver non-perishable cargo long distances. It would work for any mission in which you wanted to transport cargo that also didn't have robust chemical refueling operations at either end, or which required delta V budgets beyond what is practical using chemical engines. Assuming we don't develop nuclear thermal rockets, these destinations include everything except for the Moon, Mars, and Earth. However if we do develop NTR technology, especially if those engines are propellant agnostic and can use water and CO2 as propellants as well as the default hydrogen, then the use cases for VASIMR get pushed out all the way to Saturn or even further. Versatile NTR is so much more practical as a means of maximizing delta V budgets over the course of a mission than VASIMR since it can refill at any icy object it can land on, it makes VASIMR's delta V mission budget max look small. The only advantage is that while a nuclear thermal rocket could refill dozens of times, it can't refuel while in the middle of a very long leg of a mission. VASIMR's full-tanks budget would be higher than a nuclear thermal rocket.

[Anonymous No.10502021]

Falcon Heavy RANGE APPROVED for the 7th.

[Anonymous No.10502025]

>>10502012
[freedom intensifies]

[Anonymous No.10502032]

>>10502012
you think this footage inspired that star wars imperial destroyer flyby?
this was probably the most basedbean thing I've ever asked.

[Anonymous No.10502038]

>>10502021
!

[Anonymous No.10502044]

>>10502017
>The best use cases for VASIMR aren't even useful to us at all right now and won't be until we have manned outposts on the Moon at the very least.

SLS or no, that's going to be a reality in five to ten years. So yes, it really is time to think about electric propulsion systems of this type if you want to have a tug ready to go shortly after you get things going.

[Anonymous No.10502048]

>>10502012
GOD
D A M N
A
M
N
I love being an American.

[Anonymous No.10502096]

>>10501980
Shit, I'd watched a couple of presentations about NERVA but I thought that 900s ISP was the theoretical upper limit, not what it already achieved. I was aware of the favorable performance of Methane though, especially as it's easier to store over the long term compared to LH2. I wonder how Ammonia would fair as a potential alternative, it vaporizes much faster than water but demands more energy than methane so it probably wouldn't be as efficient, but is also available in the Jovian system and we produce close to 200 million tons of it a year here on Earth, doesn't require any level of cryogenic cooling to remain in a liquid state, and wouldn't require much in the way of insulation as it's freezing temperature is extremely low. If I'm not mistaken it's also used in radiators so you might be able to circulate some of your own propellant through a ship's heat rejection system so it can be performing multiple functions. Thoughts?

[Anonymous No.10502110]

>>10499358
That's a stupid ass way to enter. Mars is super loose with its atmosphere. they should be able to fly in like a plane.

[Anonymous No.10502148]

>>10502025
>freedom
>more "non violent" offenders in prison cells than any other country
>creates more terrorists than any other country

[Anonymous No.10502152]

>>10502048
>>freedom
>>more "non violent" offenders in prison cells than any other country
>>creates more terrorists than any other countr.
>>more homeless than any other country
>>highest urban crime rate in the "west"

[Anonymous No.10502153]

>>10501951
yeah, they flare their boiloff and they have a lot of boiloff, it's warm down there

[Anonymous No.10502169]

>this thing gonna hop tomorrow guys, I promise!

[Anonymous No.10502205]

>>10502152
May be true, and yet we built a really big fuckoff rocket that put multiple sets of human feet on the moon and whatever pathetic shithole you hail from hasn't and probably never will achieve the same, no matter how many stock photos of your repulsive fetish you post. Here's another image that's actually relevant to this great thread and more proof of the US's superiority to your own country.

[Anonymous No.10502213]

>>10502148
Just keep bringing in those "immigrants" from Africa and you will understand someday.

[Anonymous No.10502223]

>>10501543
>I meant actively controlled. Sorry, I should've been more clear on that.

It's OK, that's what I was interested in.

>>10501533
Thanks, that's not what I was trying to find out, but I appreciate your sharing it, worth knowing.

[Anonymous No.10502227]

>>10501951
>>10502153
Looks like they have at least five flare pipes. These were waving back and forth like flags in the wind.

[Anonymous No.10502230]

>nobody talking about india shooting down a satellite
this is the biggest thing to happen in national security space since the american space force. china is now on notice.

[Anonymous No.10502239]

>>10502227
No, they have one. It's off to one side. Those are lights or other reflections.

[Anonymous No.10502247]

>>10502239
They were all waving in sync, so reflections is a possibility.

[Anonymous No.10502256]

>>10502230
India is really setting itself up as a major space power.

Would be so hilarious if first person on Mars ends up being a poo.

[Anonymous No.10502270]

>>10502230
They were trying to turn it off and on.

[Anonymous No.10502296]

>>10502256
NASA is considering cucking China extra-hard by inviting India along for the Mars missions.

[Anonymous No.10502301]

>>10502230
What's the point of demonstrating you can shoot down your own satellite? Of course you can, you precisely know its orbit. Shooting down satellites whos precise orbits you dont know is a lot harder. Not just against India, it's generally retarded. This "muscle flexing" was started by russia and somehow everybody mimicked them.

[Anonymous No.10502319]

>>10502296
What is up with NASA's distrust with China? The only thing I could find was that one NASA administrator was just really anti-Chicom for some reason. I've heard a myth that before China got kicked off the ISS they tried to bring a firearm onto the station and that is the reason why NASA won't work with China.

[Anonymous No.10502322]

>>10502319
>What is up with NASA's distrust with China?
They steal technology, and their space program is a part of their military. The expectation is they would only provide token assistance while stealing every scrap of US intellectual property possible.

[Anonymous No.10502327]

>>10502322
Got any sources about that? I mean, I know something like that isn't going to be front page news, but maybe there was a statement about that?

[Anonymous No.10502333]

>>10502327
Ask absolutely fucking anyone in business that has had to deal with the chinks, and they will tell you the exact same thing

[Anonymous No.10502348]

>>10502333
This is why SpaceX doesn't file patents. They don't want to even hint to competitors how they might actually be achieving certain things.

[Anonymous No.10502353]

>>10502322
Oh yeah, because the chinese have so much american technology to steal while they are flying up in russian rockets.

[Anonymous No.10502354]

>>10502327
Are you kidding? China is absolutely infamous for industrial espionage and fucking over western businesses in a multitude of ways.

[Anonymous No.10502363]

>>10502353
They're trying to almost directly copy the Falcon 9's landing method, right down to the landing leg configuration and shape.
>https://gbtimes.com/heres-a-first-look-at-a-chinese-rocket-that-will-be-able-to-launch-land-and-repeat
And they would love to get their hands on information to make engines like the Raptor and BE-4
>https://spacenews.com/commercial-chinese-companies-set-sights-on-methalox-rockets-first-orbital-launches/

[Anonymous No.10502365]

>>10502333
>>10502354
I've only heard about questionable Chinese business practices through anecdotal posts on the internet.

[Anonymous No.10502367]

>>10502213
>implying i am loyal to any state
filthy statist cu.ck projection

[Anonymous No.10502369]

>>10502365
You should check out some of the Top Gear episodes where they review Chinese cars. Some are 1:1 ripoffs of well-known brands.

[Anonymous No.10502371]

>>10502205
>no matter how many stock photos of your repulsive fetish you post.
unironic no u posting

c r i n g e
r
i
n
g
e

>this is the average statist iq

t. american

[Anonymous No.10502376]

>>10502152
>more blacks then any other western country
fixed it for you
also
>creates more terrorists
man this isn't the middle east

[Anonymous No.10502380]

>>10502363
It's not like SpaceX invented the concept of vertical landing dude.
China already has an engine similar to those two (YF-100).

[Anonymous No.10502384]

>>10502327
https://www.scmp.com/news/world/united-states-canada/article/2173843/china-has-taken-gloves-its-thefts-us-technology

[Anonymous No.10502385]

>>10502363
Are they also going to copy the dozen or so landings when SpaceX failed to land "free" boosters that had already done their mission and were literally write-off junk?
I mean, I'm sure they're trying, but I'm not so sure they've got the "right stuff" to make it work. I at least hope they know better now than to use a parachute.

[Anonymous No.10502388]

>>10502380
>YF-100: LOX/Kerosene

[Anonymous No.10502395]

>>10502388
Methane and RP-1 are almost identical.

[Anonymous No.10502401]

>>10500219
Ackchually it's 2019 and corporations own government

[Anonymous No.10502404]

>>10502395
>Methane and RP-1 are almost identical.
No. Methane and RP-1 are similar in the same way that gasoline and diesel are similar. Sure they're both fuels that burn but most of their other properties are different enough that engines using one fuel or the other would have to be designed to take those differences into account.

[Anonymous No.10502405]

>>10502395
You may have a point for the BE-4, but Raptor is a full-flow staged combustion engine, they are extremely hard to design and to devise materials for.

[Anonymous No.10502407]

>>10502405
They literally just have a second pre-burner that adds almost nothing in performance, they are pure meme.

[Anonymous No.10502410]

>>10502407
What do you mean by "they"? SpaceX?

[Anonymous No.10502412]

10502407

[Anonymous No.10502413]

>>10502412
honestly you're even more annoying than he is

[Anonymous No.10502414]

>>10502412
Not to mention, if full-flow staged combustion engines were that simple to build everyone would do it.

[Anonymous No.10502419]

>>10502413
I'm not the one denying that China would steal everything not welded down if they were given the slightest access to NASA's IP.

[Anonymous No.10502424]

https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2019/03/maiden-launch-of-onespace-os-m-rocket-fails/

This is why you launch cement blocks, or cars.

[Anonymous No.10502435]

>>10502365
A white saying bad things about a nonwhite is illegal

[Anonymous No.10502448]

>>10502435
Jokes on you! My father's brother's nephew's cousin's former roommate is black.

[Anonymous No.10502497]

>>10502424
>The OS-M rockets may use demilitarized solid rocket motors from retired missiles.
>solid rocket motors

[Anonymous No.10502509]

>>10502497
>fixed nozzle with steerable thrust vanes and fins.

[Anonymous No.10502677]

>>10502419
China isn't invited to the ISS for this reason.

[Anonymous No.10502857]

>>10502509
Literally V2-tier technology, but worse because of solids.

[Anonymous No.10502977]

>starship being built in texas
>india becoming a space power
I'd laugh if Mars ended up like it did in The Expanse where it was settled by Texans and Indians and ended up becoming a super power.

[Anonymous No.10503260]

>>10502096
The heat of vaporization of any propellant is pretty much irrelevant to a nuclear thermal rocket, because the performance of the engine is limited by how hot the reactor can get (and thus how hot the propellant can get) before the reactor melts. No matter the heat capacity of the propellant it will be heated to maximum reactor operating temperature in any engine meant to use that propellant.

Regardless, people have looked at many different propellants when it comes to using them in a nuclear thermal engine, and the ones that come out on top are generally hydrogen, methane, and water. Ammonia offers more thrust than methane but much less efficiency, and significantly less thrust than water but is very slightly more efficient. When I say more or less thrust for a propellant I mean at a given volumetric flow rate by the way; the denser the propellant the higher the mass flow rate and thus the greater the thrust. Anyway, ammonia is essentially a middleground between water and methane, but methane is already a middleground between hydrogen and water. If you want to optimize for maximum efficiency you choose hydrogen and disregard the relatively low thrust. If thrust matters but you still want Isp performance superior to any chemical engine you pick methane. If Isp doesn't really matter to you but you want lots of thrust then you pick water. The biggest reason you pick water as your low efficiency high thrust option is because it is the most common of any of the naturally occurring and potentially accessible propellant options.

If your NTR runs on water and you manage to get it out to the moons of Jupiter, you essentially have access to an unlimited supply of easily attainable propellant on any surface you land on, and since water gives you decent thrust plus the native gravity on the moons is low, you can actually blast off with enough propellant to go pretty much anywhere in the Jovian system one-way at worst, then just refill your tanks again.

[Anonymous No.10503410]

>>10499358

Rocket Lab launch scheduled for 22:30 UTC March 28th, can we please have that as the topic for the next thread?

[Anonymous No.10503451]

>>10502152
Sounds like freedom to me

[Anonymous No.10503465]

>>10502414
They're not simple to build, they're really expensive, but don't add anything useful. So go ahead and figure why nobody bothers building them.

[Anonymous No.10503544]

>>10503410
Bake the new one then, when we reach page 10