/sg/ Space/Spaceflight General

[Anonymous No.10522947]

Previous thread: >>10516182

Moon landing edition

[Anonymous No.10522952]

In order news, Falcon Heavy slipped to the right

>And we have CONFIRMATION that #FalconHeavy's static fire has slipped to tomorrow, Friday, 5 April. Test window is 10:00-19:00 EDT (1400-2300 UTC). Launch date is slipping, too. Will not be Sunday.

https://twitter.com/ChrisG_NSF/status/1113927904168169473

[Anonymous No.10522976]

>>10522952
No surprise, it's only the second launch of this thing.

[Anonymous No.10522982]

>>10522947
heebie on the moon

[Anonymous No.10523015]

>>10522982
I can't believe that the jews are on the moon

[Anonymous No.10523064]

When SpaceX gonna start launching non-geo comsat constellations? Soyuz is having all the fun right now.

[Anonymous No.10523066]

>>10523064
when's the first batch scheduled? I'll go look it up

[Anonymous No.10523077]

>>10523064
next month, might move right, they're waiting on FCC approval or some other shenanigans

[Anonymous No.10523081]

>>10523066
OneWeb is supposed to start launching mass numbers of their sats later this year but on Soyuz and Ariane.

[Anonymous No.10523089]

>>10523077
How sats many are they going to launch at once I wonder? It would be cool to see swarms of Starlink satellites being deployed from a Falcon 9 upper stage.

[Anonymous No.10523091]

>>10523064
Currently mid-May
This is a good page to bookmark:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_and_Falcon_Heavy_launches#Future_launches

[Anonymous No.10523099]

>>10523089
nobody knows but several people calculated that 30 could be a realistic number

[Anonymous No.10523101]

what did we think of this? https://spacenews.com/new-studies-provide-fresh-insights-into-the-escalating-space-arms-race/

it looks like space warfare is heating up

[Anonymous No.10523113]

in case you missed it

[Anonymous No.10523143]

>>10522952
Man it's been a while since I've filled out a SpaceX launch thread OP for a FH launch!
It'll be up at T-24h or so. Don't forget to get your launch snacks ready

[Anonymous No.10523148]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lh4iFyMRWZg

[Anonymous No.10523149]

>>10523143
scientifically speaking, what would be the best launch snacks?

[Anonymous No.10523154]

>>10523143
No payload on the top?

[Anonymous No.10523155]

>>10523149
one-handed foods so you can shitpost at the same time. I also enjoy space-themed ones like Cosmic Brownies

[Anonymous No.10523157]

>>10523143
I thought it's going to launch on the 7th?

[Anonymous No.10523158]

>>10523154
not since AMOS-6. Ever since then SpaceX has done static fires without the payload

[Anonymous No.10523160]

>>10523157
yeah so launch thread will be up on the ~6th. Depends when the press kit comes out, gotta have the patch as the OP image

[Anonymous No.10523168]

>>10523148
so Japan just shot an asteroid, huh?

[Anonymous No.10523171]

>>10523149
bulk sausage meatloaf with onions wrapped in a baconweave
and a salad

[Anonymous No.10523201]

>>10523149
Deep fried mars bars

[Anonymous No.10523210]

>>10523149
astronaut ice cream

[Anonymous No.10523230]

Why does Amazon suddenly want to launch a massive satellite constellation?

[Anonymous No.10523231]

>>10522947
Joos have Billshit probe about to kand.

[Anonymous No.10523235]

>>10523210
No I'm sick of breaking up the strawberry one and throwing it out.
Just give me all chocolate or all vanilla.

[Anonymous No.10523236]

>>10523230
they think it'll be lucrative, and they're not the only one
there are actual billions of investor money in LEO internet constellations right now

[Anonymous No.10523237]

>>10523235
I feel like you can buy that in some dark corner of the web. Time to go searching, be back in half an hour with nothing to show for it.

[Anonymous No.10523243]

>>10523236
>Amazon launching thousands of LEO satellites
>Facebook launching thousands of LEO satellites
>SpaceX launching thousands of LEO satellites
>OneWeb launching hundreds of LEO satellites and maybe more later
>Telesat launching hundreds of LEO satellites
Seriously this is starting to get ridiculous

[Anonymous No.10523244]

>>10523235
>>10523237
Nevermind, turns out there's a lot of that. Search for chocolate or vanilla freeze dried ice cream on amazon.

[Anonymous No.10523245]

>>10523243
what the fuck, Facebook?

[Anonymous No.10523248]

>>10523245
google "facebook athena constellation"

[Anonymous No.10523256]

>>10523245
So you can get Farmville invites even if you're in the middle of the Pacific.

[Anonymous No.10523257]

>>10523243
I hate it when Kessler is right.

[Anonymous No.10523282]

>>10523257
They should just connect all these LEO satellites with a piece of string and start building a dyson shell around the earth

[Anonymous No.10523370]

>>10523243
Space should only be for governments. Corporations getting involved will doom us all with a new era of feudalism.

[Anonymous No.10523381]

>>10523370
I for one welcome our neofeudal corporate overlords

[Anonymous No.10523422]

FH lunch when?

[Anonymous No.10523430]

>>10523422
soon

[Anonymous No.10523456]

>>10523370
>He says this a few days after a government almost Kesslered the planet

[Anonymous No.10523494]

>>10523370
Good

[Anonymous No.10523537]

>>10523430
Smug af

[Anonymous No.10523562]

>>10523537
>Fucks given about just selective extortion department
>0

[Anonymous No.10523614]

>>10523562
And look at that pathetic cunt from fox news.
Be gone bitch...

[Anonymous No.10523631]

Is it just me or is Space exploration news hard to follow. How do i keep abrest if everything thats going on now that its finally kicking off again?

[Anonymous No.10523642]

>>10523631
Just come to /sg/ bro, we will hook you up with all the deets.

[Anonymous No.10523648]

>>10523631
nasaspaceflight.com
spacenews.com
/sg/ unironically

[Anonymous No.10523691]

>>10523148
>>10523168
the explosion was confirmed by a separated camera

[Anonymous No.10523694]

>>10523691
sorry wrong image

[Anonymous No.10523706]

>>10523648
>>10523642
Alright thanks.

[Anonymous No.10523731]

>>10523691
>>10523694

[Anonymous No.10523887]

>>10523694
Sooo, whats next

[Anonymous No.10523968]

>>10523887
hayabusa2 is gonna touch down on the crater formed by the impact and collect exposed subsurface samples

[Anonymous No.10524071]

>>10523149
Crab Legs

[Anonymous No.10524073]

>>10523168
they launched an EFP at an asteroid. They already shot the asteroid

[Anonymous No.10524089]

>>10523968
Any estimate on crater size?

[Anonymous No.10524096]

>>10523244
whoa whoa, we're not talking about freeze dried ice cream here, we're talking about astronaut ice cream

[Anonymous No.10524099]

>>10523537
kek, one of us

[Anonymous No.10524137]

India's ASAT test created 46 debris with apogee higher than the ISS. So much for being "responsible" and debris will only be at low orbit.

[Anonymous No.10524145]

>>10524137
And those are just the pieces large enough to "see".

[Anonymous No.10524175]

>>10524137
With such low perigee, they ought to reenter in a matter of months.

[Anonymous No.10524193]

>>10523694
That looks a bit underwhelming, can we expect better quality images in the future?

[Anonymous No.10524251]

>>10524193
next week I think they said

[Anonymous No.10524271]

>>10524096
That exists too. I even saw banana split https://www.amazon.com/Astronaut-Vanilla-Cream-Sandwich-Pack/dp/B07GGMW9Q9

[Anonymous No.10524288]

>>10523113
Did Spacesex said anything about how it went?

[Anonymous No.10524319]

Static fire finished

[Anonymous No.10524338]

>>10524288
all systems green

[Anonymous No.10524360]

>>10523113
BRAAAP

[Anonymous No.10524386]

>>10523731
these are 2hus, right

[Anonymous No.10524571]

top kek

[Anonymous No.10524596]

Roscosmos posted some interesting stuff. I think it first time we see Hall thrusters being fired in space.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opM5pEkMuWs

[Anonymous No.10524605]

>>10524571
>One SLS launch
>Three commercial launches
>2028

[Anonymous No.10524612]

>>10524605
Based and uncucked

[Anonymous No.10524616]

>>10524605
At least it's supposedly getting a launch. Maybe the pork barrelling will stop once SLS starts flying. Kinda hard to justify more expenses and delays when it's been proven that it can work.

[Anonymous No.10524623]

>>10524616
I hope so, I mean I make fun of SLS but I really do want to see them fly and get some good work done.

[Anonymous No.10524672]

>>10524616
Maybe it keeps getting delayed because they know it will probably fly only once. Longer it gets delayed, longer they get payed.

[Anonymous No.10524717]

>>10522947
Will society be able to leave behind the human form to explore space?

[Anonymous No.10524754]

>>10524623
I hope it flies too. SLS is a perfectly usable rocket for it's size, but politics has damaged it throughly.

>>10524672
The only reason it may only fly once is because it got so delayed that by the time it flies alternatives (BFR and New Glenn) would be almost ready.

[Anonymous No.10524762]

>>10524717
yeah that's what these rovers and probes are, anon
you're going to need to bring your expectations back in line with reality

[Anonymous No.10524831]

So why hasn't anyone besides O3b built a MEO satellite constellation to provide broadband internet? For example, Spacex could have started with an MEO constellation to bring in revenues and gain early market share. Apparently you only need 7 satellites to provide global MEO coverage so it could be operational long before Starlink which needs hundreds of LEO satellites. A Falcon 9 could probably orbit an MEO constellation in one flight.

[Anonymous No.10524882]

>>10524831
shut the fuck up retard

[Anonymous No.10524985]

>>10524882
Excuse me?

[Anonymous No.10525012]

>>10523168
Ran into it with a piece of toast.

[Anonymous No.10525033]

>>10524616
Anon. They have 4 different versions in mind. The proper upper stage for this vehicle wasn‘t even in these pork barrels to date. Let alone all the other upgrades they have in mind.

[Anonymous No.10525105]

>>10524985
DESIGNATED SHITTING ORBIT

[Anonymous No.10525161]

>>10525033
Weren't upgrades beyond Block 1 cancelled?

[Anonymous No.10525182]

>>10525161
On hold sort of

[Anonymous No.10525229]

>>10525161
Hold, so it could be anything from actually on hold to NASA-limbo-for-eternity. NASA limbo is an eternal hell for unfortunate rockets from which no design ever returns no matter how useful it could have been. I'll have a little moment of silence for all the great projects which could have been but never will be, languishing in a state of bureaucratic un-life, suffering, forever.

[Anonymous No.10525257]

>be me
>be european
>took monday off work so i could get wasted and have a pre-launch party ahead of the falcon heavy launch scheduled for late sunday night/early monday morning
>launch is postponed

[Anonymous No.10525263]

>>10525257
always expect delays, always

[Anonymous No.10525271]

>>10525263
Nigger what are you meant to do, take a week block off to watch one launch?

[Anonymous No.10525315]

>>10525271
Don't take time off, alternatively take sick day

[Anonymous No.10525355]

>>10525229
>have a little moment of silence for all the great projects which could have been but never will be
Gone but not forgotten

[Anonymous No.10525471]

>>10525355
How big can you build a rocket using today's materials? What are the limiting factors besides money?

[Anonymous No.10525520]

>>10525471
I don't know the specific cutoff point but at least for launching in 1G you do get diminishing returns, but you can go bigger than Sea Dragon before hitting that point. You can already see the diminishing returns setting in with Sea Dragon though, you'll note that it produces more than ten times as much thrust but only carries a bit more than 4x the payload of the Saturn V. Eventually you'll reach a point where the delta-V inefficiency and material properties of your sea level engines can no longer support any larger of a rocket.

[Anonymous No.10525525]

>>10525471
Three words:
Sea.
Drag.
on.

[Anonymous No.10525534]

>>10525471
Who’s asking

[Anonymous No.10525541]

>>10524571
Source

[Anonymous No.10525553]

>>10525471
I'm not sure of exact figures, but I can hazard a guess.

One of the biggest limiting factors in making big rockets are the first stage engines. A big rocket requires a huge amount of thrust at launch to lift it off the pad. More thrust requires either larger engines or more engines. There is an upper limit to how big kerolox engines can be before combustion instabilities become a huge problem, the F-1 engines from the Saturn V. There is also an upper limit to how many engines can be used on one stage before the plumbing required would be an issue, thirty engines on the N-1.

m0 = F*N/(R*g0)
m0 = Mass of rocket at launch
F = thrust of one engine
N = number of engines
R = thrust to weight ratio at launch
g0 = acceleration due to Earth's gravity

Assuming a thrust-to-weight ratio of 1.35 (which is pretty low, but usable), it can be found that thirty F-1 engines (each with a thrust of 6770 kN at sea level) can lift a 15,340.5t rocket off the pad (note, that this is the total mass of the rocket, not the payload). The F-1 is 3.7m in diameter at it's widest. If they were ideally packed so that they took up the least amount of space, then the rocket would be approximately 20.35m in diameter (the actual diameter would be larger because you don't want engines to be so close to each other).

So the largest possible rocket would have a total mass of 15,340.5 metric tons with a diameter of over 20 meters.

Obviously this takes some very general assumptions. Such as thirty engines being the hard limit of number of engines as the BFR and later ITS will challenge that. Once much higher numbers of engines can be used, then it may not be necessary to use F-1s.

[Anonymous No.10525570]

>>10525553
>30 F-1 engines going off at once.
I didn't realize a human being could be as hard as I am at this very moment and remain alive.

[Anonymous No.10525572]

>>10525570
Just play six of these.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2he6vHEI6Q

[Anonymous No.10525576]

>>10525534
sauce?

[Anonymous No.10525585]

[Anonymous No.10525590]

>>10525553
Thx, nice math.
I wanted to come back to you with 30 engines not being a real limit, but you were the quick brown fox.

>>10525570
I wish the Russian engineers had that fourth chance to send N-1 to space. They've almost got it.

>>10525525
It was a crude concept even for the '60.
But yeah... they actually did more interesting stuff in space back then. I don't expect NASA to be capable now of doing the things it did back then.

[Anonymous No.10525597]

>>10525576
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1803.11384.pdf

[Anonymous No.10525602]

>>10525590
* fifth chance, fifth's a charm

[Anonymous No.10525617]

>>10525597
>It should be noted that, while the subject of this paper is silly, the analysis actually does make sense. This paper, then, is a serious analysis of a ridiculous subject, which is of course the opposite of what is usual in astrophysics
Dude

[Anonymous No.10525669]

>>10524985
space littering

[Anonymous No.10525682]

>>10525585
Only one makes sense

[Anonymous No.10525699]

>>10525597
>https://arxiv.org/pdf/1803.11384.pdf

>>10525617

[Anonymous No.10525713]

>>10525597
hate

[Anonymous No.10525717]

>>10525713
arXiv: Oops, it was a mistake
me: here's me killing your family on purpose

[Anonymous No.10525724]

>>10525699
>>10525534
>>10525597
>tfw love super-Earths
>nothing gets me going like imagining an Earth-like world 10x Earth's mass
>learn about how space travel as we know it would be extremely difficult on such worlds

man fuck the fucking laws of fucking physics ruining all the fun,

fuck your rocket equation

fuck your roche limit too

[Anonymous No.10525730]

>>10525724
>mass

I mean size

[Anonymous No.10525743]

>>10525585
I'm entertained by the number of asparagus and chungus Delta IV variants.

[Anonymous No.10525754]

>>10525730
>>10525724
If you mean ten times the diameter and similar density then you're looking at a planet with hundreds of times Earth' mass, in fact an Earth-density planet of that size would outweigh Jupiter and is pretty much impossible since as something that heavy formed it'd pick up huge amounts of hydrogen and helium and become a gas giant instead, possibly even ending up as a brown dwarf.

You really can't go much beyond twice Earth's diameter without inevitably getting a water world, where the upper few thousand kilometers of the planet are entirely water. Bigger still and you start getting into ice giant territory like Neptune and Uranus.

[Anonymous No.10525758]

>>10525754
fucking lame

Does Neptune/Uranus at least have solid surfaces underneath all that hydrogen/helium?

[Anonymous No.10525781]

>>10525724
You wouldn't want to visit a super earth of similar density to the earth, what with the easily broken bones, joint injuries, and heart attacks. There are some very large terrestrial planets that are much lower density, but if I'm remembering it right they tend to be ocean worlds.
At the same time, while a civilization on a dense super earth wouldn't be able to get to orbit with chemical rockets, nuclear rockets and more exotic proposed launch systems would still work just fine.

[Anonymous No.10525783]

>>10525724
Maybe it's easier just to imagine smaller people?

[Anonymous No.10525795]

>>10525783
We know intelligent birds literally have more efficient, more densely-packed yet smaller neurons. We also know the top-end of bird intelligence it at the bottom end of human, but African Greys' and Corvids' brains are a fraction of the size of a young toddler's.

[Anonymous No.10525856]

>>10525553
>>10525570
>>10525585
>>10525590
So I've decided to try to model what this would look like. Note that this is a VERY ROUGH drawing of it and it's size is most likely off.

I hope you guys like it.

[Anonymous No.10525864]

>>10525597
I'm pretty sure I'm reading someone's shitposting disguised in the form of scientific papers.

>When such planets are in the habitable zone, they may be inhabited by “Super-Earthlings” (SEALs). Can SEALs still use chemical rockets to leave their planet?

>While we hand-wave away many things in this paper, we do respect rocket science.

>Indeed, the largest mountains in our solar system are on less massive bodies. We recommend that the SEALs use shovels to make a gigantic mountain, exceeding the atmosphere, and launch their rocket from the vacuum on top. We encourage further research in this rather under-explored field.

>Many habitable (and presumably inhabited) planets might be waterworlds (Simpson 2017), and intelligent life in water and sub-surface is plausible (Lingam & Loeb 2017). How would Nautical Super Earthlings (NavySEALs) launch their rockets?

[Anonymous No.10525895]

>>10525864
>MH is thankful to Elon Musk and Paul Krugman for inspiration.

[Anonymous No.10525896]

>>10525864

[Anonymous No.10525922]

starship hopper fired again

[Anonymous No.10525931]

>>10525922
Brappp

[Anonymous No.10525939]

>>10525931
2nd fire in 3 days. Maybe the next one will be longer...

[Anonymous No.10525982]

hmmm

[Anonymous No.10525990]

[Anonymous No.10526013]

>>10525982
>>10525990
5 km when

[Anonymous No.10526014]

>>10525541
https://youtu.be/N1tEh8SgbDw?t=596
Industry forum from Feb 14

[Anonymous No.10526015]

>>10525982
>>10525990
Makes sense, fuel flow then sparking tends to be the regular order of operations for rockets.

[Anonymous No.10526021]

>>10526015
correct, I doubt it actually moved at all. Is just interesting to see how the combustion shifts around when you have a nice diffuser (fog) to help with the tracking.

[Anonymous No.10526081]

HOPPER HOPPED
THIS IS NOT A DRILL

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1114390314565787648

HOLY FUCK

[Anonymous No.10526087]

>>10526081
>>10525990
>when /sci/ gets the scoop 41 minutes before everyone else

[Anonymous No.10526089]

>>10526081
HOLY SHIT! That's so cool!

[Anonymous No.10526092]

H O P P

[Anonymous No.10526094]

counted the pixels; ~1.02m

[Anonymous No.10526095]

>>10526081
3 of those raptors is gonna be crazy. I can't even imagine 31 at once!

[Anonymous No.10526097]

>>10526094
nevermind forgot it was 9m not 8m diameter. So, 1.14m hop!

[Anonymous No.10526108]

>>10526081
A flying water tower, Elon is truly a master of memeing.

[Anonymous No.10526112]

>>10526081
So was this Raptor's first "flight"?

[Anonymous No.10526116]

>>10526112
yep

[Anonymous No.10526118]

>>10526112
first flight of a methalox engine
first flight of a full flow staged combustion engine

[Anonymous No.10526119]

expect BCG video eventually


>>10526108
I don't think that people realize.... it was literally built by a water tank company. Caldwell Tanks.

[Anonymous No.10526133]

>>10526119
How embarrassing for nasa to get btfo so hard by a water tank company and an autistic meme man with 1% of the budget while they had a 60 year head start

[Anonymous No.10526151]

>>10526119
SOON

[Anonymous No.10526153]

>>10526133
it's been FIVE MONTHS since they started serious starhopper development, since the switch to stainless steel. They've now built a launch pad with CH4 & LOX plumbing, set up a tent, constructed a test vehicle, TESTED the test vehicle after only a handful of rehearsals (and an ice problem), all while everything soaks in the Texas weather while punisher-sticker-welding-mask welders & other local generic construction contractors toll away at the thing in scissor lifts

[Anonymous No.10526158]

>>10526153
AND IT WORKED DAMNNIT

[Anonymous No.10526171]

>>10526153
At this point its really gonna reach orbit before SLS, isn't it?

[Anonymous No.10526174]

>>10526171
depends how many taco trucks they bring in

[Anonymous No.10526184]

>>10526081
It hopped!
IT HOPPED!

[Anonymous No.10526186]

>>10526118
Quite a list of accomplishments actually.

[Anonymous No.10526190]

>>10526081
OLDSPACE ON SUICIDE WATCH

[Anonymous No.10526196]

I guess the question now is: Did it land okay? Or are we going to see crumpled legs in the morning?

[Anonymous No.10526222]

>>10526186
they got that engine turned around extremely quickly with minimal refurbishment, which bodes well
I want to see how many mission duration burns/hops they do before they take it out and ship it off

[Anonymous No.10526246]

>>10526081
The sheer sense of POWER off a single engine.

The full stack launching is going to be overwhelming, I think I'll need to be alone for the first launch because I'm probably going to have tears in my eyes and a raging erection at the same time.

[Anonymous No.10526263]

>>10526186
and, it's being fired without a flame trench or anything... all of that Texas dust and dirt is being kicked up. bodes well for debris ingestion robustness

[Anonymous No.10526285]

>>10526081

You ever just BTFO out of every space agency and private company trying to go to space?

[Anonymous No.10526288]

>>10526263
all the smoke is actually from the concrete ablating

[Anonymous No.10526289]

pls respond
>>10526271

[Anonymous No.10526300]

>>10526081
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfmrHTdXgK4
LAUNCH WAR ROCKET AJAX

[Anonymous No.10526302]

>>10526300

[Anonymous No.10526321]

>>10526302

[Anonymous No.10526323]

>>10526289
Since rings are mostly composed of ice I'm gonna guess no. Unless you consider something like the asteroid belt to be a ring.

[Anonymous No.10526327]

>>10526321
>>10526302
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8M4d9iONnI

[Anonymous No.10526331]

at this point I wouldn't bet any money on starship not making orbit in 2020. 2019 seems likely, even

[Anonymous No.10526356]

>>10526331
I'll be more conservative, and expect we'll see a mostly complete, unmanned Starship before the end of this year and it may even do its first heat shield test before the end of the year.

Orbital shit is going to need Superheavy, and that's going to be the aerospace star of 2020-2021.

[Anonymous No.10526362]

>>10526356
SH should be easier than SS in some ways. No fancy heat shield needed, doesn’t need an extended source of power like PV panels, no fine control thrusters needed for orbital rendezvous, no in orbit fueling hardware needed. The tricky part is just all of the raptors, but FH shows that SpaceX can do it

[Anonymous No.10526365]

>>10526289
the asteroid belt

[Anonymous No.10526367]

>>10526289
the asteroid belt

[Anonymous No.10526416]

Non tethered jump, when?

[Anonymous No.10526423]

>>10526416
probably once all 3 engines are installed.

[Anonymous No.10526436]

>>10526416
S O O N

O

O

N

[Anonymous No.10526448]

>>10526356
That reminds me, how are they supposed to do the heat shield test in the first place?

[Anonymous No.10526450]

>>10526081
NONONO! IT'S JUST A WATER TOWER MOCK UP! IT'S JUST BAIT FOR INVESTORS! IT WAS SUPPOSED TO EXPLODE ON LIFT-OFF! NONONONONO! WHERE ARE ALL THE EXPENSIVE YEAR-LONG STUDIES! WHERE IS THE CLEAN ROOM CONSTRUCTION AND THE AEROSPACE GRADE MATERIALS? THIS CAN'T BE HAPPENING! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

[Anonymous No.10526453]

>>10526416
Never this is just PR you can't just weld scrap in a field and call it a rocket.

[Anonymous No.10526456]

>>10526453
Except, you know, they just did.

[Anonymous No.10526457]

>>10526450
Shut it down
Reeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Imagine being NASA right now

[Anonymous No.10526464]

>>10526450
>WHERE IS THE CLEAN ROOM CONSTRUCTION AND THE AEROSPACE GRADE MATERIALS?
Building it outdoors in a shed is the best part

[Anonymous No.10526467]

No way will this fulfill the strict safety and environmental protection requirements needed to send things in space let alone on other worlds.
Unless NASA takes control of the project making sure it fulfills all requirements this is as far as spacex are gonna get.

[Anonymous No.10526472]

>>10526331
Sooo... that MS Paint webm of Musk and Bezos is gonna be reality soon?

[Anonymous No.10526476]

>>10526472
No because the government is never going to fund musk's vanity project.

[Anonymous No.10526478]

>>10526362
Yeah, but then Falcon Heavy took fucking ages and they admitted how hard it was just to redesign the center core to carry a bit more load. Here, they'll have to start from scratch despite the design presumably just being Falcon 9 but way bigger.

[Anonymous No.10526479]

>>10526464
>in shed
they didn't even fucking bother with the shed
it's right in the middle of a fucking field

[Anonymous No.10526481]

>>10526171
Boeing is planning to further reduce testing in order to accelerate schedule, so the SLS might actually liftoff from the pad next year.

[Anonymous No.10526484]

Aerospace grade open field.

[Anonymous No.10526501]

>>10526479
the one that fell over had a cover over it at least

[Anonymous No.10526503]

>>10526478
FH took forever because the FH that flew wasn't the FH that was initially proposed.

[Anonymous No.10526514]

>>10526153
Old Space will be SEETHING

[Anonymous No.10526515]

>>10526133
I think NASA is hiding their boners with binders full of safety regulations right now. NASA is quitely supporting SS, as shown with the heatshield support SpaceX is getting. It's the oldspace contractors with their bribed congressmen contractors that has been holding NASA back getting BTFO'd.

[Anonymous No.10526529]

>>10526515
There is a law that forces nasa to share available knowledge so any company may request info on various things unless they are property of third parties.

[Anonymous No.10526544]

>>10526094
Bet you forgot to take perspective into account

[Anonymous No.10526578]

>>10524596
Hella nice.

Thoses thrusters looks almost identically to the thrusters blocks from starmade.

[Anonymous No.10526591]

>>10526501
So, it's better to have it on the open field.
NASA btfo

[Anonymous No.10526597]

Moon base 2030, 1 million active moon base personnel by 2040

[Sage No.10526661]

>>10526450
OHNONONONONONONONO

[Anonymous No.10526664]

i want to play voar.io

[Anonymous No.10526708]

>>10526467
>strict safety and environmental protection requirements needed to send things in space

You mean the ones that don't exist? Unless you're sending nasa crew, there's no safety requirements.
SpaceX can just get their own crew.

[Anonymous No.10526831]

>>10525856
>Apollo capsule on top

[Anonymous No.10526836]

>>10523370
idk, if it opens up a business for deorbiting space junk and debris it could be a good thing.

[Anonymous No.10526837]

>>10526708
>what is planetary protection

The existing treaties essentially ban any human landing anywhere and private companies don't get a freepass.

Either new more lax treaties are made, or nobody's going anywhere simply because it's illegal.

[Anonymous No.10526838]

>>10526133
It could be worse, they could get BTFO by a junkyard with a concrete mixer.

>>10526501
The one that fell over WAS the cover.

[Anonymous No.10526847]

>>10526133
This is how all government agencies are. Lobbyists in bed with bureaucrats producing negligible results at best unless under direct threat of prison or death.

[Anonymous No.10526860]

>>10525856
BIG CHUNGUS

[Anonymous No.10526869]

>>10526515
NASA openly supports SS and spacex. Congress long ago shifted NASA's focus away from lift vehicles and onto payloads. They desperately want someone else to do this because every time they propose something congress/air force feature creeps the project into another shuttle.

NASA: can we launch our own astronauts to ISS?
Congress: sure if the launcher can also do everything else we might ever want like maybe another moon landing. That might look good.
Air force: ok but it needs to be able to land at least 300 tons on the moon for reasons I'm not at liberty to discuss. Oh and can also launch from either coast while we are at it, just to be safe.

[Anonymous No.10526895]

>>10526869
Wrong berenstein universe bro take your bags fire up your machine and leave I'm telling you you ain't gonna like it here.

[Anonymous No.10526912]

>>10525758
No, their atmospheres transition from mostly hydrogen and helium to mostly water vapor, methane, and ammonia, and then as the pressure continues to increase the further down you go those gasses pass their critical points and transition smoothly into supercritical fluids, so not only do you not get any gas-solid boundary, you don't even get any gas-liquid boundary either.

They do probably have solid cores waaay down there, but again there wouldn't be a definite cutoff boundary layer, just a sort of transition between super dense semisolid liquid water and super dense semiliquid solid water with trace contaminants of things like silicon, iron, and other heavier elements mostly wrapped up in oxides or hydroxide compounds.

[Anonymous No.10526939]

>>10525781
>At the same time, while a civilization on a dense super earth wouldn't be able to get to orbit with chemical rockets, nuclear rockets and more exotic proposed launch systems would still work just fine.
Depends on what you mean by nuclear rockets. nuclear thermal engines are indeed more efficient than chemical rockets, but the ~200% Isp gains they allow are overshadowed by their abysmal thrust to weight ratio, so even though a nuclear thermal rocket can get way more delta V out of every ton of propellant it carries, it can't actually carry even a tenth as much propellant off of the ground compared to a chemical rocket, so they actually do pretty badly as a standalone launch vehicle propulsion system.

Launching off of a Super Earth doesn't just mean you need to carry more delta V capacity, though you certainly do. It also means you need to maintain a much higher thrust per unit mass just to achieve upwards acceleration. A planet that had a low orbit speed of 11 km/s (as opposed to Earth's 7.5 km/s) would require roughly 14 km/s of vehicle delta V to achieve from the ground, roughly what the entire Apollo-Saturn V stack had on board. However, the Apollo-Saturn V stack only had a thrust to weight ratio on Earth of just ~1.1, which meant at liftoff it was accelerating upwards at around 1m/s^2. Put that rocket on a planet where the gravity is 1.5 G, and now the Saturn V cannot even lift off of the ground until it burns off enough propellant that its TWR in Earth gravity would equal 1.5, and even then the rocket will only start accelerating upwards at a few cm/s^2. You could short fuel the first stage of the Saturn V in order to give it an upwards acceleration of over 1 m/s^2 to begin with, but then you're sacrificing delta V, and thus probably won't make it to orbit anyway.

That being said, if you use nuclear pulse propulsion, your limit for maximum gravity well you can launch from is pretty much just at which point the acceleration would kill you.

[Anonymous No.10526940]

>>10526467
Lmao just bake it in an over for a ehile to kill the germs.

[Anonymous No.10526945]

>>10526837
If that stupid shit is holding back space development and expansion in our solar system we should just disregard it

[Anonymous No.10526953]

>>10525856
Now do one where the J-2 engines are replaced with RS-83s (proposed but never developed, would have aimed for 3300 kN of thrust in vacuum at 446 Isp) and the F-1 engines are replaced with RD-170s (7904 kN in space at 337 Isp)

[Anonymous No.10526960]

>>10525864
>extremely big fucking rocket

we don't have engine technology powerful enough to allow for a rocket that tall, rockets scale in such a way that making them taller is hard but making them wider is easy, because to make them taller you need more thrust per unit area at the bottom of the rocket to lift the greater mass but if you're making it wider you have room to just add more engines. Whoever wrote this '''paper''' is a moron.

[Anonymous No.10526963]

>>10526837
Nope, look up "Outer Space Treaty". Only military installations and claiming ownership of space bodies is banned. Anyone can legally land on Mars.

[Anonymous No.10526969]

>>10526263
I mean it's not like the rocket engine ingests any atmosphere, it's nothing but clean cryogenic propellants being pumped into that thing. All Raptor really needs to do is be tough enough that it can be hit by a few ricocheting stones and not be damaged.

[Anonymous No.10526982]

>>10526289
>what is a protoplanetary disk

Stars cannot maintain rings because their solar wind and even just the photon pressure they give off causes tiny particles around them to be accelerated away until they reach escape velocity. The theoretically smallest thing that can permanently orbit a star ('permanent' just meaning for the lifetime of the star) gets bigger as you get closer to the star; way out in the outer Kuiper belt and the Oort cloud there are trillions of primordial dust particles at the nano scale just hanging around, meanwhile in the inner solar system we may have some evidence for some asteroids permanently orbiting in the vicinity of Venus and really nothing else permanently orbiting closer than that except for Mercury.

Rings depend on their being strong tidal forces present to prevent the ring material from just collapsing together into a few small but larger objects. If you were to place a structure that resembled a massive ring around the Sun far enough away to be permanent, it would rapidly collapse into a series of bigger objects that would continue to merge with one another over time, because the tides that far out are far too weak. If you were to place a ring where the tides are strong enough to support one it would be blasted apart by solar wind and radiation quickly.

The only stars that could possibly have ring structures around them would be the very coldest red dwarf stars, as well as any brown dwarf stars, though the latter aren't really stars. Stellar remnants, like a cold neutron star or a cold white dwarf could have rings, but I don't think there's been enough time in the universe so far for any white dwarf stars to have cooled to the point that they'd be better able to support a ring than a red dwarf, and if a cold neutron star suffered a star quake it'd instantly vaporize any rings around it, so you'd probably have to wait for a cold, stable neutron star to exist, which would take trillions of years.

[Anonymous No.10526984]

>>10526453
>REEEEEEE THEY CAN'T DO THIS
>WHERE IS THE CERTIFICATION

[Anonymous No.10527003]

>>10526478
FH was hard to redesign because they had to make the core stronger, but they also needed to be able to build it using their existing assembly line, otherwise there would be literally no economic advantage to reusing the Falcon 9 core design. The hardest thing about Falcon Heavy was simply justifying the development costs, because as they had chosen to upgrade Falcon 9 it had quickly become about as capable as Falcon Heavy was originally supposed to be anyway, so it kinda defeated the purpose beyond just expanding SpaceX big dick energy by having the most capable operational rocket to any orbit of any organization on Earth.

Also in Falcon Heavy's case they were taking a core design optimized for single stick loading and had to make it work for significant side loads, including both compression and tension. Single stick loading is super easy to design for, adding boosters that have a higher TWR than your center core and thus want to pivot inwards and crush it like a pop can is hard. Super Heavy is a single stick design, and should be really easy to design and build. After all the Starship part of SSH has to deal with a wider variety of forces including the aerodynamic loads on its large flap surfaces, so by comparison to that SH should be easy, and they are clearly not worried about Starship taking a long time to develop either.

[Anonymous No.10527005]

>>10526481
KABOOOOOM
b-but at least we had it on the pad first guys :)

[Anonymous No.10527009]

>>10527003
>adding boosters that have a higher TWR than your center core and thus want to pivot inwards and crush it like a pop can is hard

Why don't they just add more struts?

[Anonymous No.10527010]

>>10526837
>>what is planetary protection
not a concern if you aren't a NASA contractor building something for a NASA mission

[Anonymous No.10527023]

>>10527009
Struts only work if the thing your strut attaches to is capable of handling the compression loads on it. Tanks in Ksp don't count because they'd have to be made of 2 inch thick steel plate in order to have mass fractions as abysmally low as they do. Pro tip that's how the rockets in Ksp are actually nerfed, that and the engine thrust to weight ratio although in real life the ability to smoothly throttle from 0% to 100% and have 100% reliable engine start without needing to settle propellants or even wait for turbine spin-up may be worth it.

[Anonymous No.10527028]

>>10527009

[Anonymous No.10527058]

>>10526133
>Be NASA
>Hire the top aerospace company in the nation to build a revised, Shuttle-derived launch vehicle to serve as a superheavy lift rocket
>Be billions of dollars over budget and almost a decade late
>Be SpaceX
>Hire a water tank contractor to build a rocket outdoors in a field in Texas
>Finish in five months

[Anonymous No.10527061]

https://youtu.be/v6QIxK-EHgQ

BCG video

[Anonymous No.10527062]

>>10527010
Not true actually, nations are responsible with what private companies do in space and the latter are expected to adhere to all requirements for planetary protection. This means if spacex is to send people to Mars it has to
>guarantee no forward or backward contamination of any kind may happen (impossible)
>not do it
>do it if the us gov is willing to give the international community the middle finger

[Anonymous No.10527064]

>>10527062
Source? Because you're talking out of your ass

[Anonymous No.10527065]

>>10527023
I wonder what a more realistic KSP would be like, a middle ground between KSP and maybe Orbiter, where you still have the freedom to build what rocket and spacecraft designs you want but are more constrained by realistic physics and rocket mechanics and real-world considerations all though only to a point where it doesn't get in the way of creating cool shit.

So like if you had unlimited budget and slightly advanced technology compared to today, what could such a space program achieve

[Anonymous No.10527069]

>>10527058
>be Congress*

[Anonymous No.10527107]

>>10527064
Outer Space Treaty.
Relevant article is VI:
>"States Parties to the Treaty shall bear international responsibility for national activities in outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, whether such activities are carried on by governmental agencies or by non-governmental entities..."
And of course IX which is the basis of the whole no-contamination thing.

So yes, no people on Mars or anywhere else unless its 100% sure there is no contamination going on. Unless the government is willing to support such efforts and oppose international outrage.

[Anonymous No.10527108]

>>10527065
Unlimited budget gives you SLS.

[Anonymous No.10527115]

>>10527108
>Unlimited budget
>SLS
You just gave Shelby a hard on.

[Anonymous No.10527116]

>>10527065
KSP with the realism overhaul mod strikes a good middle ground. You dont want the game to he so realistic that people have to do math to play the game. Wouldn't be that fun then.

[Anonymous No.10527122]

>>10527062
>>do it if the us gov is willing to give the international community the middle finger
No one will care except maybe some stuffy scientists who would rather we spent the next gorillion years sending one probe to Mars every six years to perhaps uncover yet more evidence that yeah, water used to flow across the surface and yeah, there are organic (as in containing carbon) molecules in the soil. Rather than send one manned mission with guys with shovels to dig a hole and outright discover moist soil at low elevations, put it into a pressure chamber with some additional water, and discover life directly.

[Anonymous No.10527123]

>>10527116
Semi-related. I really like how KSP has added delta-v calculations for each stage, that really speeds up my design process in the game.

[Anonymous No.10527127]

>>10527122
Scientists + Russia/China + interest groups will have some weight to throw around probably enough to prevent private-only attempt without us gov support.

[Anonymous No.10527132]

>>10527005
>inb4 they blame drumpf

[Anonymous No.10527133]

>>10527116
>You dont want the game to he so realistic that people have to do math to play the game. Wouldn't be that fun then.
Yeah thats Orbiter territory which I don't find as fun as KSP, but KSP has its limits too especially when it comes to non-rocket spacelaunches which aren't really possible in game.

[Anonymous No.10527136]

>>10527133
There have been attempts but I don't think they work anymore, abandoned mods

[Anonymous No.10527170]

>>10527107
That gay shit will stop being relevant the minute two different countries have technology to do manned flight to mars.

[Anonymous No.10527188]

>>10527107
>Unless the government is willing to support such efforts and oppose international outrage.
but who could possibly have the audacity?
oh yeah
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_treaties_unsigned_or_unratified_by_the_United_States

[Anonymous No.10527212]

>>10527065
Ksp with realism overhaul as the other anon suggested. Basically does what you said, requires you to consider things like ullage to settle propellants, propellant boil-off, random chance of engine failure, totally custom fuel tanks with realistic mass fractions and any size or shape you want, multiple propellant combinations, pretty much all relevant historic engines plus many modern ones and a few near-future ones like nuclear thermal rockets, solid rocket booster thrust curves, variable engine thrust at a given throttle setting (not just a perfectly smooth 500 kN for example, fluctuations of a couple percent with an average at 500kN), and so on and so forth. Also much more realistic reaction wheel torque and power generation/consumption, manned vehicles require life support supplies, you can generate wings of any shape and size, the list goes on.

Really the worst things about realism overhaul are the fact that with all these mods the game is much less stable and takes forever to load up, and that once you're in the game actually progressing takes a long time. You can't just whip up a launch vehicle for every payload like you can in Ksp, you are pretty much forced to spend a few hours designing a launch vehicle that can put a block of whatever mass into orbit first, then save it, then start designing payloads that must fit into that mass and volume constraint. Also you'll have to do that multiple times because you are GUARANTEED to fuck up your design and forget something vital that doesn't show up until you're arriving at your target, and even if you get the design perfect you'll probably fuck up a maneuver somewhere and end up short.

If you want to see some of the cool shit you can do in realism overhaul Ksp though check out cosmonaut crash on youtube, I've never seen someone so autistically devoted to doing as much complex shit in space simultaneously as possible.

[Anonymous No.10527221]

>>10527127
>China
China would cause a fuss only to slow everyone else down, they'd happily let their own astronauts dump their dehydrated wastes directly onto the ground on Mars.

[Anonymous No.10527225]

>>10527133
they aren't really possible in real life either :^)

[Anonymous No.10527229]

[Anonymous No.10527307]

>>10527225
row row

[Anonymous No.10527408]

>>10526953
Sorry for taking so long.

I've scaled down the idea from 30 RD-170's, 19 RS-83's, and 855 tons to LEO to something more "realistic". And sorry if the Russian is bad, I used Google Translate.

I hope you like it!

[Anonymous No.10527413]

Can starship be used as the upper stage for sls?

[Anonymous No.10527431]

>>10522947
How could the Saturn V cost 1.6 billion? How much does the modern SLS cost?

[Anonymous No.10527436]

>>10527413
F R A N K E N R O C K E T

[Anonymous No.10527451]

>>10527431
A quick Google search puts the SLS project cost to $14B, and the launch cost being $1.5B to $2.5B per launch (but I can't find a source that explains why it costs that much).

Also notice that the Saturn V cost is in 1964-1973 dollars, in 2018 USD the project cost was about $36B. As to why the Saturn V cost so much per launch? Old manufacturing techniques. No CAD software to make more efficient designs. Parts were hand fitted. Where today we would use fewer parts, back then they used more parts simply because they couldn't make parts as complicated as we can today.

[Anonymous No.10527452]

>>10526263
If it can't refire from a Texas parking lot it's going to be useless on Mars

[Anonymous No.10527457]

>Interviewed for Flight Controller position in Houston
>They told me to expect a callback last week
>no callback
doubt.jpg

[Anonymous No.10527461]

>>10526837
You think the Chinese will give a damn about that?

[Anonymous No.10527480]

Shouldnt this read "Images taken by Voyager"?

[Anonymous No.10527488]

>>10527480
is Voyager Took a hobbit?

[Anonymous No.10527498]

>>10527408
that would be nice

[Anonymous No.10527502]

>>10527488
that's racist

[Anonymous No.10527520]

>>10527488
Yes: the protagonist of the fourth entry in the Middle-Earth franchise, which wasn't particularly well-received, owing to it being perceived as too readily abandoning its original premise and inconsistent characterization, due to many of its chapters being abandoned concepts for "The Lord of the Rings."

The next entry, "The Hobbit: Enterprise," focusing on the adventures of Mungo Baggins, continued these trends and was outright cancelled, though it was said to be turning around in quality too late to avert its end.

[Anonymous No.10527549]

>>10527520
Looking forward to Orville Gamgee's chapter.

[Anonymous No.10527550]

>>10525856
In awe at the size of this lad.

[Anonymous No.10527562]

>>10527229
Reminds me of javs with older women that have few wrinkles increasing the kawaii factor.

[Anonymous No.10527567]

>>10527451
That doesn't count orion or the money spent on constellation.

Also the "cost savings" from using available shit.

The excessive launch cost is largely a factor of the abysmal flight rate and the need to maintain a ground army that does nothing most of the time.

[Anonymous No.10527585]

>>10527567
I thought that the $14B includes the Orion capsule?

Okay, so I looked it up and it doesn't. Orion is about $15B on its own. Wow, I'm glad the guys running SLS and Orion did run Apollo. If they did, then there might be a moon landing by the time I get born.

[Anonymous No.10527595]

>>10527585
it's basically a big scam

[Anonymous No.10527596]

A cargo version of bfr that's just used to haul goods and not rated for human travel and used to test heat shielding could be developed really quickly.

I am not sure most of us realize how simplified this design and design philosophy is in this case.
The kicker is just the cargo variant is going to do damage to old space. and they might use it for their constellation launches

[Anonymous No.10527601]

>>10527585
Yeah SLS supporters, including official ones, love to fudge the numbers a bit and not including Orion is one of the common tricks involved.
Keep in mind there's no lander involved with that pricetag too, or a rocket that can put one and the capsule in lunar orbit.

[Anonymous No.10527609]

>>10527595
*Investment in critical for the national security industries

[Anonymous No.10527610]

>>10527595
Source on the list?

Also, while I'm not a good team manager, I think I could've ran SLS better than what NASA did. Or at the very least tried to discourage whatever the hell they're doing that's taking so long.

[Anonymous No.10527615]

>>10527610
https://www.nasa.gov/specials/ESDSuppliersMap/

[Anonymous No.10527616]

>>10527601
>Keep in mind there's no lander involved with that pricetag too
neither have there been any development of a capable upper stage.
What a meme program.

[Anonymous No.10527623]

>>10527610
If you have interest in how things are, may I suggest you read on the last OIG report related to the sls program?
>https://oig.nasa.gov/docs/IG-19-001.pdf
You'll find plenty of gems there my favorite of which (from memory), were how the contract does not require Boeing to report on actual development costs of the hardware, or how NASA provided bonuses in the range of 300 million to Boeing for job well done despite delays.

[Anonymous No.10527632]

>>10527616
It's awful that this happened. It'll be a huge crime if it came to pass without a serious investigation into it. I know key contractors will sue the government if the government so much as thought about punishing a contractor, but there needs to be an example set. I know Apollo set a high standard for manned spaceflight, but that doesn't excuse almost 2 decades of zero real progress towards just one manned lunar flyby mission. That should be incredibly easy for NASA.

[Anonymous No.10527639]

>>10527632
What's the current estimate for the first flight of SLS?

[Anonymous No.10527646]

>>10527639
IIRC, middle of next year, but that might slip.

[Anonymous No.10527659]

>>10527307
row your boat

[Anonymous No.10527663]

>>10527408
Very nice, though it needs a silhouette of a Saturn V for scale, plus a silhouette of the 30 RD-170 version off to the right with a question mark and an 'about his much payload to LEO' figure would be cool too

[Anonymous No.10527672]

>>10527413
No, Starship with full tanks weighs more than the entire core stage of SLS. I think a lot of people underestimate just how massive BFR is compared to SLS, since they are similar in volume, but BFR uses methalox propellants which is literally ten times more dense than the hydrolox used on SLS.

[Anonymous No.10527683]

>>10527639
Next year. Every year.

[Anonymous No.10527687]

>>10527488
>she's 3.5 feet tall, ages a third as fast as a human
imagine the possibilities

[Anonymous No.10527693]

>>10527595
holy fuck

[Anonymous No.10527696]

>>10527413
You might need to double the thrust.

[Anonymous No.10527706]

>>10527596
If the orbital prototype is near completion this year I also wouldn't be surprised if the dear moon turns into a landing.

[Anonymous No.10527720]

>>10527596
The cargo variant is most disruptive by far, and will set up the commercial climate that the manned variant will succeed in. Cargo variant will allow companies with several orders of magnitude less money to go ahead and design their own space payloads since they can just use steel everything and simple electronics and stuff that doesn't cost infinite money since they have infinite mass margin instead. Once it becomes possible for literally any country on Earth to just decide to do their own unmanned Moon missions by buying a flight on BFR it will light a fire under everyone's ass to be the first to set up a Moon base, since it will cost less to land stuff on the Moon than it currently does to just send shit into low Earth orbit.

Under that paradigm many countries will be drooling and chomping at the bit to buy manned Starship flights to the Moon, just to plant their flags there and get their own supply of Moon rocks at the very least. Do not pretend like most political leaders aren't petty enough to spend a hundred million dollars on doing this just to say they did it. From there it will be suicide for NASA and anyone politically involved with NASA to not push for a permanent surface settlement on the Moon, to accomplish those prestigious 'firsts' such as 'first astronaut to spend an entire month on the Moon', 'first iron smelting on the Moon', 'first habitat space constructed on the Moon from Lunar materials', etc. They'll also be the most likely to push for actual Mars exploration because everyone and their cat will be doing shit on the Moon.

The enabling of cheap manned Lunar spaceflight will result in an accelerating pissing contest with a low barrier to entry that every middle eastern and sub-saharan African country will pay to get their name into. It'll be space race 2.0 but instead of two countries developing launch vehicles it'll be >50% of countries developing relatively simple and cheap payloads and spamming them at the Lunar surface.

[Anonymous No.10527723]

>>10527610
>I think I could've ran SLS better than what NASA did
I mean, you'd probably have to put more effort into fucking it up as bad as it has been than it would take to make the entire program run smoothly and deliver on time.

[Anonymous No.10527726]

>>10527646
It has already slipped to 2021 IIRC, though it won't be 'official' until literally the day before the launch was supposed to happen in 2020. They also probably knew since mid 2018 that they wouldn't make 2020.

[Anonymous No.10527734]

>>10527696
see >>10527672
Starship also has more thrust than the SLS core stage, in fact it has almost double the thrust.

Rather than Starship making sense as a second stage for SLS, it'd actually work better if you put the SLS core stage on top of Starship. Obviously you'd have to put the boosters onto Starship as well.

[Anonymous No.10527737]

>>10527734
>>10527672
wow SLS is literally a baby rocket compared to SSH

[Anonymous No.10527738]

https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/1114611309180411905

[Anonymous No.10527766]

>>10527663
Here you go. :)

[Anonymous No.10527768]

>>10527766
my nigger

[Anonymous No.10527776]

>>10527738
how do i download a video off of twitter

[Anonymous No.10527779]

>>10527776
http://twittervideodownloader.com

[Anonymous No.10527795]

>>10525896
>How much of Florida will go with it?
Hearty kek.

[Anonymous No.10527797]

>>10527779
I owe you my life

[Anonymous No.10527800]

>>10527720
Too optimistic. Nasa will stick to the SLS and you overestimate the interest from other countries as well as the nationalistic gains of doing such feats using us based private company. Universities though, and other similar institutions, could possibly have some scientific interest in samples and things like that.

[Anonymous No.10527809]

Why is solid fuel being abandoned for heavy commercial launch?
When cost is critical (and you have to pay for development too), it seems like it's hard to beat the crude approach of just using an XBOX HUEG solid rocket for the first stage.

Saw somewhere that SpaceX didn't go for it because all the patents and production facilities are owned by their direct competitors (Aerojet, OrbitalATK, Raytheon, etc).
But that doesn't explain why those guys don't do it themselves.

Have they just slipped into complacency after 30 years of guaranteed profit as contractors?
Or is there actually some crippling problem that makes the SRB more-or-less the upper limit for solid rockets?

[Anonymous No.10527814]

>>10527809
Expensive, underperforming, difficult to transport, and needs a fughuge crawler or similar to lug it to the pad. Big ones are noisy and vibrate badly too.

Only useful if you want to make use of existing icbm or other military derived hardware and manufacturing.

[Anonymous No.10527817]

>>10527809
Unstable thrust and if something goes wrong that shit will not stop burning until all of the fuel is consumed.

Also what >>10527814 said. Aries would have never made human rating due to the SRM first stage.

Someone post that one youtube video of the Delta II that went boom just after launch and showered the entire area in burning SRB fuel.

[Anonymous No.10527825]

>>10527800
It's not about actual scientific interest, it's about the UAE wanting to prove how great Allah is by sending muslims to the Moon to pray up towards Mecca. Once one relatively poor/third world country does it, the rest will attempt to follow suit. For example with a few Starship cargo flights to a small crater on the Moon a 20 person base called New Vietnam is born, for a total cost of aroudn 300 million since it's just made of some big steel bottles welded together and buried in Moon rock, with an airlock and some solar panels installed plus the creature comforts placed inside.

[Anonymous No.10527828]

>>10527825
I actually didn't even consider the emirates. Interesting, they are indeed one of the few that could be interested in something like this.

[Anonymous No.10527834]

>>10527817
Crazy idea of the day: sand-form solid fuel rocket, combining the (dis)advantages of both solid- and liquid-fueled rockets! Fine granules of solid fuel (and separately oxidizer, maybe?) flow into the combustion chamber like sand in an hourglass. Obvious upside: no need for cryonics; obvious downside: hideous mechanical wear, especially on the components that need to force the granules into the combustion chamber.

[Anonymous No.10527836]

>>10527834
Are there even any solid substances that can be used as an oxidizer that aren't hideously toxic?

[Anonymous No.10527838]

>>10527809
Solid propellant is inherently less efficient, more expensive, less easy to throttle, components are less easy to reuse. It's sufficient for weapons applications and mechanically simple boosters but has never been a viable long-term solution for space travel.

[Anonymous No.10527844]

>>10527809
>Or is there actually some crippling problem

Solid rockets don't work like in Ksp, where they're cheap and simple. They're actually fairly difficult to get right, and the fuel casting and quality inspection process is an expensive nightmare. It's also something you have to do every single time you make your booster, unlike with a liquid rocket, where the vehicle is essentially a dumb set of propellant tanks and the engine is complex but once developed it can in principal be mass produced for relatively cheap and only requires a quick verification on the test stand before use.

Merlin 1D costs something like $600,000, whereas a solid rocket with the same amount of thrust could easily cost upwards of a million. Literally the only reason solid rocket motors are prevalent is because of their ONE advantage over liquid rockets, which is their ability to be put on a shelf or in a missile silo for years, then fired instantly as soon as you need to launch. That makes them well suited for weapons tech, but that kind of 'Oh shit launch right now" capability doesn't mean shit to a launch vehicle because they go up during specific launch windows known months in advance.

In short solid rockets are about as expensive as liquid ones to develop, have a significantly HIGHER minimum theoretical cost compared to liquid engines, and in general don't really represent a fundamental cost savings effect. That's before you even touch on the fact that a solid rocket motor can't be shut off, has zero throttle response (though a thrust curve can be baked into the fuel grain, which also adds cost since it needs to be essentially redesigned for payloads of significantly different mass), has way lower efficiency, is generally a rougher ride than a liquid engine, and is fucking HEAVY. That last bit means that despite having a lot of thrust, more of that thrust capacity is being used simply to lift the booster itself than is lifting the core stage it's supposed to be boosting.

[Anonymous No.10527847]

>>10527828
Right, and like I said, it only takes one before every big head leader of a small country wants to wave his political dick around as well.

[Anonymous No.10527849]

>>10527836
KNO3

[Anonymous No.10527850]

>>10527737
Hydrogen: not even once

[Anonymous No.10527852]

>>10527849
OK, but now how would you adequately mix the solid fuel and solid oxidizer after you've somehow managed to get them to the combustion chamber?

[Anonymous No.10527858]

>>10527847
>North Korea liked that
If the sudden increase in space capability of China made the US government start acting less nice to Boeing to get SLS flying, then imagine the Sputnik level of panic from North Korea putting a statue of Kim Jong Un on the moon.

[Anonymous No.10527863]

>>10522947
earth is flat, lmao how stupid can you be.

[Anonymous No.10527864]

>>10527737
They can probably also save mass and cost on cooling and insulation too because L-CH4 doesn't need as much cooling to get into a liquid state and won't require as much insulation to keep it from boiling off.

[Anonymous No.10527874]

>>10527850
>b-but the specific impulse!
What brainlets don't understand is that specific impulse only matters if you consider two rockets with an equal mass of propellant to work with, and since hydrogen only weighs 70kg per thousand liters, you end up either not being able to fit nearly enough propellant mass into your vehicle to compete with a denser but less efficient propellant, OR you inflate the tanks on your vehicle to a hueg degree, which of course has the side benefit of adding a bunch of dry mass for the same propellant mass as well as making your rocket much more expensive to build and move around.

Even for nuclear thermal rockets it often makes more sense to use methane propellant at 605 Isp instead of hydrogen propellant at 1000 Isp because in the same volume of tank you can fit roughly six times as much mass in methane than in hydrogen, and that greater mass means you get more delta V. Since 100% of launch vehicles are volume limited in terms of what they can launch, and not mass limited, that means literally any high energy kick stage we would want to build today would be better off using a ~380 Isp methalox engine than a ~455 Isp hydrolox engine, because the methalox stage could have up to over 100 tons of propellant to work with whereas the biggest hydrolox stage you could physically fit into any rocket fairing would be no more than 30 tons or so.

[Anonymous No.10527877]

>>10527852
Obviously you wouldn't, since a powderized-solid-fuel rocket would be stupid and perform worse than either a straight up solid motor or a liquid propellant engine.

[Anonymous No.10527890]

nominal

[Anonymous No.10527891]

>>10527864
What I don't understand about Delta and SLS is the fact that they use insulation on the tanks when they could just save all that weight by continuously topping up the tanks while the rocket sits on the pad, because during the actual launch the rate of boil-off is insignificant compared to the rate of propellant consumption. Shuttle's external tank only needed insulation because the ice that would have formed otherwise would have been shed during liftoff and would have fucked up the orbiter hanging off of the side. Neither Delta nor SLS have any delicate manned space vehicle hanging off of their sides so insulation seems totally redundant and a waste of time and mass.

You are right that Starship won't need insulation though, for the same reason I outlined above plus the fact that the shiny surface will mean that Starship won't absorb enough heat from the Sun to boil off its methane and oxygen at any significant rate, and what little amount does boil off will be able to be compressed and re-liquefied just by using a small cryocooler and pump.

[Anonymous No.10527894]

>>10527890
Who's this

[Anonymous No.10527895]

>>10527890
what happen
Don't tell me we're in the timeline where Scott Manley dies before Starship makes orbit

[Anonymous No.10527897]

>>10527814
>make use of existing icbm or other military derived hardware and manufacturing.
Of course, that's the idea.
Since guys like Aerojet, Orbital ATK, etc already have all that built-up knowledge and experience from producing big solid-fuel rockets for half a century, along with the production facilities to match, why are they limiting themselves to small SRB-based designs like the Omega?

Seems like it'd be easy to undercut a competitor who basically has to start from scratch, even if they're using superior liquids.

>>10527814
>needs a fughuge crawler or similar to lug it to the pad
Come on, an excuse to build this counts in the "plus" column.

[Anonymous No.10527903]

>>10527897
>Come on, an excuse to build this counts in the "plus" column.
The rule of cool in commercial space only applies to things that won't cost ridiculous amounts of money and time to complete. Big crawlers seem cool but really they're dumb if you want to launch often and for as little money as possible.

[Anonymous No.10527909]

>>10527894
Scott 'the man' Manley, known for setting the record for longest hiatus from a kerbal space program youtube series

[Anonymous No.10527912]

>>10527894
Scott Manley, he's famous for giving up his life as a Kerbal Space Program youtuber to become a youtube space news anchor and saying HULLO with a scottish accent

[Anonymous No.10527923]

>>10527891
Well with SLS I assume it's because the orange tank has insulation and they're aiming to reuse it, so they're just going to keep as much of the original design as possible. They might also want to avoid generating clouds of flammable gas as propellant constantly boils off and is replaced, although obviously they could just do what SpaceX does and save the fueling until the very last second, filling the rocket and shooting it off without giving sufficient time for boiloff. Of course though all of SLS is inherently a waste of time and mass because they insist on reusing dated equipment rather than fixing the fundamentally fucked way in which they go about buying, building, and testing space equipment so they could do it faster and cheaper and thus leave more time and money for innovating. Certainly they could put out a fundamentally better rocket if they weren't trying so hard to reuse the Space Shuttle's sloppy seconds.

[Anonymous No.10527927]

>>10527706
oh shit

[Anonymous No.10527939]

>>10527706
0% chance. Designing the crew area to work in both 1/6g and 0 g is a massive design challenge

[Anonymous No.10527946]

>>10527923
>Well with SLS I assume it's because the orange tank has insulation and they're aiming to reuse it
They could literally just not apply the insulation and it would change nothing, and even if it did cause some problem like making it so a certain bleed line for the oxygen tank running along the hydrogen tank would potentially freeze up they could just apply the foam in that one specific area instead of all over.
>They might also want to avoid generating clouds of flammable gas as propellant constantly boils off and is replaced
The hydrogen is going to be boiling off anyway, just slightly slower because insulation. For Shuttle they had a gas return line that sucked away the hydrogen vapors and pumped them a fair distance away, I'm not sure if it was stored again or just flared off but regardless the hydrogen vapor issue was and still will be something they're going to deal with regardless.

Also, none of that explains why Delta uses insulation. As far as I can tell it uses insulation because so did Shuttle. That's pretty much why SLS uses it too in my opinion, not because it actually does anything but because rather than improve the design by cutting out the useless foam they'd rather overlook that and keep the jobs associated with applying the foam intact.

[Anonymous No.10527948]

>>10527890
What happened??????

[Anonymous No.10527952]

>>10527844
why the fuck did we never replace the SRB's on shuttle with liquid boosters

[Anonymous No.10527955]

>>10527939
I would naively assume that if it works in both 1g (loading up on Earth) and 0g (space) it should work anywhere in between.

[Anonymous No.10527957]

>>10527946
>because rather than improve the design by cutting out the useless foam they'd rather overlook that and keep the jobs associated with applying the foam intact.
I wished that the space industry never got into that mindset. Imagine how much better things would be if space exploration and engineering were favored over pork.

[Anonymous No.10527958]

>>10527939
Right, that's why the Lunar lander was so difficult to develop lol.

Starship's interior just needs floors and ladders to go up and down in gravity. In zero G floors become walls and the ladder becomes a hand rail but otherwise it doesn't matter. Floors and ladders work in everything from 1 G down to the point that gravity becomes mostly irrelevant, like on an asteroid.

In fact the only time your spacecraft's interior would look like anythign else other than a bunch of floors with a ladder to move between them is if your vehicle is 100% dedicated to zero G operation, in which case you just put handholds everywhere and set up thin dividers to break up your volume and add more useful surface area to velcro shit into place.

[Anonymous No.10527960]

>>10527955
the dear moon people will be ferried up in dragons, is the assumption

[Anonymous No.10527962]

>>10527957
literally take a look at SpaceX today, but imagine SpaceX started off in the 60's rather than 40 years later. Maybe also imagine they go roughly half as fast up to the late 2000's as computer tech remains a significant bottleneck. We'd still probably be doing manned missions to Jupiter's moons by now.

[Anonymous No.10527971]

>>10527960
By you?

[Anonymous No.10527972]

>>10527939
>Implying SpaceX wouldn't just solve the issue through brute force like pic related

[Anonymous No.10527981]

>>10527972
>inb4 doesn't work (((optional - reasons)))

[Anonymous No.10527982]

>>10527971
Yes

[Anonymous No.10527988]

>>10527981
I don't understand that reference.

[Anonymous No.10527989]

>>10527960
Yeah, the assumption of retards.

In actual fact Dear Moon is likely to involve two launches maximum, one to launch the people in their Starship, and a second Starship soon afterwards just ferrying up some more propellant to transfer. Starship with low payload (~10 tons) can almost do Lunar free return, if the numbers we've been given have not changed, although they certainly have since we were last given them. Starship as we knew it from a few months ago can certainly do Lunar free return with ~10 tons payload if it gets one Tanker flight of ~100 tons of propellant added onto what it will still have left in its tanks after the initial climb to orbit. That's two launches, for less than the cost of a single Falcon 9 (without Dragon by the way) even assuming that SSH reuse is several times more expensive to start with than their final goal of ~$5 million per flight.

The reason they won't bother with Dragon flights is because by the time Dear Moon happens, Starship won't even be an experimental vehicle anymore, and in fact the actual Starship that the Dear Moon mission uses may have already been to space and back a dozen times. The thing about SSH is that unlike Saturn V or SLS, it will be able to use the same hardware over and over to launch dozens of times per year easily, and thus rapidly build up operational experience in the real world.

[Anonymous No.10527991]

>>10527939
Even you have come to believe Starship is not only possible but will happen in the very near future, and have moved the goalposts so far up your ass they are now poking through the mouth.
Musk is a magician.

[Anonymous No.10527994]

>>10527989
I see it that the slight reduction in risk is worth the two dragon flights. Maybe not.

Of course, will SS have IDA functionality? I’d imagine that SpaceX will want a clean sheet design for connecting starships to stations and other starships / spaceships in general

[Anonymous No.10527995]

>>10527952
because 'bama jerbs

[Anonymous No.10528013]

>>10527994
Tail to tail connection for starships is certain and mandatory if they are to work with refueling and all. Standard adapter likely near the cargo hold shuttle style.

[Anonymous No.10528021]

>>10527952
Same reasons why they never improved it in any other meaningful way even after disasters.
JUST WERKS and politics.

[Anonymous No.10528022]

>>10527972
Is this a ship which can turn itself into a tiny platform necessitating that the entire vessel be able to flood it's forward compartments and tip a full 90 degrees? Neat.

[Anonymous No.10528026]

>>10527994
>will SS have IDA functionality?
They've shown it docked to the ISS in the past, using a docking port mounted on the back (dorsal?) area of the Starship. That was a while ago though and I'm not sure if they're going to bother with that capability since being able to go to the ISS is a relatively minor thing in comparison to LANDING ON THE FUCKING MOON HOLY SHIT

[Anonymous No.10528040]

>>10528022
rear compartments, but yeah. Shit's pretty kino.

[Anonymous No.10528064]

>>10527989
life support system won't be a small payload, 10 tons is an impossible dream

[Anonymous No.10528067]

>>10528064
yeah, the air processing alone requires massive systems

[Anonymous No.10528083]

>>10528064
>>10528067
10t might be optimistic but for such missions closed loop long term mars tier life support is redundant.

[Anonymous No.10528086]

>>10528083
yeah but there's no reason to develop two different life support systems when the big system will work just fine for the small mission and you're recovering the hardware

[Anonymous No.10528132]

>>10528064
For Dear Moon it's a life support system to keep a handful of people alive for a week. People use roughly a kilogram of oxygen per day, and about half as much food. Also throw in a liter of drinking water and ten liters of utility water because hey why be optimistic.

That's a total of 12.5 kg of supplies per day, assuming zero recycling. Ten tons of open-cycle life support would give 100 people a maximum mission duration of 800 days. Even if you double the mass requirements per person, so everyone's breathing 2kg of oxygen and eating a kilogram of food plus drinking two liters of water and shitting into another 20 liters every day that still gives you enough in-space longevity to do a trip to Mars, if you can resupply there.

Going to the Moon with 10 people for a week in space total is so little of a deal in terms of life support mass that it is negligible.

[Anonymous No.10528134]

>>10528067
>>10528083
>>10528086
see>>10528132

[Anonymous No.10528176]

>>10528132
Assuming the block 1 Slut Launch System is being used (with a TLI payload capacity of 27 tons) it might be possible to send a ten ton (total) life support module and 17 ton robot landing stage to the moon, assuming those 17 tons are enough propellant and rocket to safely set the module down in a predetermined location. You could then send other surface base components and crew with other launches.

[Anonymous No.10528177]

>>10528176
But for what purpose

[Anonymous No.10528184]

>>10528177
A base on the moon that can operate for long periods without resupply seems like it would be a good idea in the long run, and bases have to start somehow.

[Anonymous No.10528224]

>>10526960
They literally just scaled the Saturn V image, chill dude

[Anonymous No.10528231]

>>10528184
But why use SLS I mean, when Starship can go all the way to the Moon, land, drop off 100 tons of cargo, and launch back to Earth, through the power of on-orbit refueling? Even if the ~20 Starship launches required somehow cost as much total as a single SLS launch, you'd still end up with ~100 tons of payload on the surface rather than 5 to 10 for an SLS-launched Moon landing vehicle. Now consider the fact that a Starship launch is meant to cost less than $10 million, and now you can put 100 tons on the surface of the Moon for roughly $200 million total launch costs, which is $2000/kg and better than what we currently pay to get into low Earth orbit.

[Anonymous No.10528232]

>>10528132
Idk, man, that 1L of water figure seems awfully low.
Really makes you wonder why they would bother recycling it on the ISS if that was the case.

[Anonymous No.10528233]

>>10528224
Yeah but they did it retarded nonetheless. They should have actually shortened it, and made it much wider, for the thrust to weight ratios and delta V figures to fall in line better.

[Anonymous No.10528242]

>>10528132
Dude, I might be wrong, but 1 ton = 1.000 Kg.

[Anonymous No.10528258]

>>10528232
>1L of water
If you read my post you'll see I actually said 11L per day, not 1, and that 1L was dedicated to drinking only with the other ten liters being miscellaneous consumption through things like toilets or whatever. The ISS conserves water because they can only have it sent up every few months and at a cost of multiple thousands of dollars per kilogram, and every kilogram of water sent up is replacing a kilogram of science experiments or other more useful equipment.

Starship on the other hand is not a station waiting months between resupplies, it's a vehicle that will be going back to Earth in 7 days after it leaves. It will also cost less to launch than any of the currently flying rockets that send stuff to the ISS, even if you are pessimistic on the cost savings of full rapid reusability. I did notice a math error in my other post though, 10 tons of supplies would last 100 people 8 days assuming 12.5 kg of use per person per day and zero recycling. 100 tons of supplies would last ten people 800 days, though. Even with the revised numbers you could still send 100 people on a seven day trip around the Moon and back with ten tons of supplies and zero recycling, so sending just ten is effectively giving your mission 1000% life support margins.

[Anonymous No.10528262]

>>10528242
Yeah I made a booboo, see >>10528258 for revised numbers. Zero recycling life support still gives huge margins for a ten person Lunar flyby though.

[Anonymous No.10528277]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxcEF81U8p8

These fuck comments man, poos segregated from internet when

[Anonymous No.10528279]

>>10528258
Well I never doubted New moon wouldn't need active life support.
Even the Apollo spacecan was enough for 3 after all, and I don't think they bothered with anything else than CO2 filtering.
But for a mission to Mars, they'll need to shrink that 12.5kg figure down if they want some useful payload to, idk, do science and stuff.

[Anonymous No.10528294]

>>10528279
That being said, since most of that 12.5 kg figure is water, then water recycling looks like a smart move. Not really sure how it's done, though, and what it implies.

[Anonymous No.10528326]

>>10528294
Waste water usually passes through a large particulate filter, fine particulate or grit filter, then goes to a primary clarifier where biosolids are removed and the flow of water is slowed down, water cleaned of biosolids heads to a aerator where oxygen is added to the water and waste-eating bacteria further work to break down contaminants and microscopic waste material. Water then heads to the final clarifier where the majority of the remaining solid waste is broken down and most of the water heads on while some is returned to re-seed the previous stage with the waste eating bacteria. It then heads to a sand filter where the last of the particulate matter is removed, from there it's nuked with chlorine for 20 minutes and then de-chlorinated with sulfur dioxide, after which it can exit the system, either into a river, into a water line, or wherever else the clean water is desired. This system will have to be simplified somewhat to save weight and also be modified to operate reliably in microgravity or null gravity. You could remove the bar filter, there's not going to be any large trash or sticks in spaceship water, and the fine grain filter can be replaced with a series of regularly replaced filters of increasingly fine make, water coming out of these filters would only contain the chemical and microscopic contaminants which would be taken care of in an aerator chamber and then passed through another set of very fine filters (to remove any possible remaining solid waste) and then nuked with chlorine, scrubbed with sulfur dioxide, and returned to the water storage tanks.

[Anonymous No.10528352]

>>10527895
>>10527948
he needed more struts

[Anonymous No.10528364]

NASA rocket experiment in northern Norway leaves very strange traces in the sky.

The page is in Finnish but it's the pictures that matter
https://www.taivaanvahti.fi/observations/show/82169

[Anonymous No.10528365]

>>10528279
>New moon
it's 'Dear Moon' actually

[Anonymous No.10528368]

>>10528364
Whatd'ya know, if you launch a rocket into an aurora the gasses trailing behind the rocket engine ionize just like the surrounding air and glow in colors corresponding to their chemical makeup.

[Anonymous No.10528369]

>>10528365
Yeah, but I figured it was not worth correcting.

[Anonymous No.10528372]

>>10528364
https://www.taivaanvahti.fi/observations/show/82194

[Anonymous No.10528373]

>>10528369
nigga that's how language degrades

[Anonymous No.10528374]

>>10527766
Call it the N-2

[Anonymous No.10528377]

>>10528326
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFnxBXRAr9U
Here's an actual working system for anyone interested, it's good enough for dirty river water but I'm not sure if it would be robust enough for piss or shit water or not, and if you want to deal with your grey water and waste water in the same system you'll may need an extra stage to remove detergents (or whatever cleaning solution is used in space) because ingesting those will seriously fuck you up. I think though that those can be dealt with using carbon filters.

[Anonymous No.10528385]

>>10528326
Well, I don't really get it, but here's what I make of it:
How much clear water do you get from your input?
How often would you have to change them filters?
Chlorine and sulfur dioxide don't sound like stuff I want to deal with. How much of this stuff are we talking about?
And the Million dollar question: how much would it weight to deal with 100 people's worth of wastewater?

[Sage No.10528419]

>>10528326
This seems like massive pain in the ass, why not distill it and dump and leftovers?

[Anonymous No.10528428]

>>10528385
Well if your treatment system is working properly than you should be getting back nearly all of your water, except for the bacteria seed water which is always going to be a fixed and very small amount of your overall water supply. Losses should be practically nonexistent so long as you regularly replace the filters to ensure the water coming out is actually clean. I don't know exactly how often filters would have to be changed, I'm not well versed in the maintenance of such systems but filters are probably more of a volume issue than a weight issue. The water you drink has been treated with chlorine and sulfur dioxide and both are safe to store and use so long as you don't stick any large quantities of them in your mouth. Hell your drinking water still probably contains a few ppm of chlorine because the sulfur dioxide doesn't actually remove all of it. As to 100 people's worth of water (all of it you'd need to keep them in water for a full year before all the clean water is gone) is around 25 tons. How much a person uses a day is about 100 gallons (for everything, drinking, cleaning, showering, toilet, etc), but space will demand much higher efficiency and much less waste so let's assume 25 gallons per person per day, or 2500 gallons of water will have to be cleaned per 24 hours, or 104 gallons will have to pass through the system every hour. Again I have no idea how many kg per gallon of water a treatment plant weighs on average but I think it's safe to assume such a large setup will weigh a good couple hundred kilos.

[Anonymous No.10528437]

>>10528419
That might work, that's just not how most water treatment systems work and I was looking up the method by which water treatment plants deal with waste water. You'd still need a robust filtration and decontamination system though, boiling off the water isn't going to remove all of the chemical and biological waste products from it so it will still probably have to pass through an aeration tank to get bacterially cleaned and then pass through some filters and get chlorine treated and sulfur dioxide treated to be safe to drink.

[Anonymous No.10528447]

>>10528428
>25 gallons per day

Fucking hell what are your astronauts doing? Drinking will be around a gallon, probably less. Toilet will be a space toilet, so no flush, solids go direct into a holding tank that is dumped occasionally, liquids recycled with a vacuum hose. Traditional showers will be impossible in 0g and a sponge bath is more efficient anyway which you can easily do with around 6-7 gallons.

[Anonymous No.10528472]

>>10527720
I feel like people are underestimating how disruptive BFR will be to the space industry. Full reusability will be an absolute game changer. I know we're being cautiously optimistic be this is very exciting. The only thing I'm worried about is the heatsheild. As soon as starship proves itself its game over for old space.

[Anonymous No.10528490]

>>10527890
If he dies I'll literally cry. No joke.

[Anonymous No.10528499]

>>10527890
WTF happened, please fly safe!

[Anonymous No.10528509]

>>10528447
Fair point, I was just being completely arbitrary using 25 gallons. So your 100 person colony water recycling system will have to deal with say 700 gallons a day or about 30 gallons an hour. That actually seems very doable. The largest single part of your unit will be the aeration chamber, I don't know how long it takes but if we assume we can put 30 gallons through it in an hour then that component will only weigh around 30-35 pounds assuming it's just a sturdy plastic drum, there's filters before and after it, then the chlorine and sulfur dioxide decontamination stage which could just be a long wrapped coil of pipe (to keep the water flowing for the necessary decontamination time) and the final set of filters at the end. Probably shouldn't weight that much more than the aeration tank, and then the assorted pumps, sensors, and electronics. The total system could probably be kept to around 200 pounds or less, although of course I'm assuming it will still work after being simplified to such a degree, replacing the major particulate removing stages with simple filters.

[Anonymous No.10528556]

>>10528509
If the whole water recycling system including spare filters and other spares can be kept to a tonne or so then that is pretty fantastic, it sounds like it can be kept to a lot less than that even which is amazing. I wonder about atmospheric life support and recycling CO2 into O2. I ran the numbers on using plants but the amount of foliage required is ridiculously implausible, could probably work in a colony where you are already growing loads of plants for food but not on a BFR, so it looks like some form of carbon scrubber is the best option.

[Anonymous No.10528560]

>>10528447
Also I should mention a system like this should not cost very much, it's not going to be sitting out in open vacuum exposed to UV radiation or fine particulate dust, all the materials and pumps shouldn't even top like 200 bucks, there might be some specialist sensors and whatever kinds of computer water treatment systems use to regulate themselves, some valves to circulate water and introduce the cleaning chemicals, etc. Material costs probably shouldn't exceed 500 freedom papers, but this is space so let's assume we use meme materials and build everything from scratch resulting in it costing 5000 instead, that's still not very much for one of the most vital systems a long term colony will need.

[Anonymous No.10528581]

>>10527890
>>10528352
Please accept this crime against all that's holy

[Anonymous No.10528593]

>>10528556
I can't find out with quick searches how many common air filters a person would go through in a year, but yeah I'd imagine that the ECS components of the air management system will weigh a lot more than the water management system will.

[Anonymous No.10528595]

>>10528556
>recycling CO2 into O2
You can pyrolyse it, which is hard, or you can do sabatier reaction and get methane and water, then electrolyse the water to get the oxygen back. The methane gets pyrolysed into hydrogen and carbon, the carbon is waste but the hydrogen from methane pyrolysis and water electrolysis goes back into the sabatier reactor. That way rather than losing oxygen and carbon, you only lose carbon.

Ideally we'd have some way to chemically react hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon together to make sugars, but as of yet that is an unsolved problem in chemistry. Maybe we could do sabatier to recover oxygen and then feed the methane gas to methanotrophic bacteria that can use it to make formaldehyde which they convert into biomass in the form of other organic molecules. That way we could potentially have a truly closed loop life support system, though the methanotoph chambers would likely be big and heavy and thus only worth it if the ship had to support a population for a very long time with no resupply options, as would be the case on a trip to the outer solar system, or if the habitat was not a ship but a ground base, but in that case you have essentially unlimited access to resources and the capacity to set up the spaces required to grow conventional plant food.

[Anonymous No.10528645]

All of this discussion of various colony components got me thinking of actually landing them so I sketched up a little cargo lander which would be little more than a cheap large plastic drum with a metal honeycomb internal skeleton and outer skin of a few layers of kevlar and insulation. Landing legs, RCS booms, and other structural metal components would all be made up of WE54 Allite (a magnesium alloy lighter and stronger than aluminum and cheaper than carbon fiber meme composites). The module is flown by a little propulsion tug which simply runs off of battery power and which only has the propellant needed to land the module safely (with sufficient margin for error if the landing sight has to be moved slightly or if course correction has to be made). The site is programmed into the tug before launch. The tug then disconnects from the cargo module and lands the mostly empty shell in some designated spot for recovery after which it could be disassembled for parts or refueled and reused, etc.

What parts work, what parts are retarded, how would you guys do it, etc?

[Anonymous No.10528651]

>>10528645
I would use a Starship instead

[Anonymous No.10528666]

>>10528645
Cute drawing, interesting concept.

I can't tell if the shape of the craft is right without knowing what kind of engines and propellant it's using. Can you give an example of what kind of engine you think it'll use?

How much payload do you think it should deliver?

I don't think just using batteries would be enough for a lunar trip (I assume that's the destination), adding solar panels would probably be better. Plus, the solar panels can be salvaged an used to power bases.

The idea of a small cheap lander for moon-base supply mission could be useful. At the very least it could be incorporated into today's commercial launchers rather than having to rely on some government funded super heavy launcher that may or may not launch.

Good job!

[Anonymous No.10528697]

>>10528645
Ok but why? If we don't get starship or a similar vehicle then any colonisation efforts are a non starter. Starship or a similar vehicle renders any kind of lander totally irrelevant.

[Anonymous No.10528710]

>>10528666
I originally sketched it with the SLS Block 1's TLI payload capacity of 26 tons in mind, with the vehicle being roughly in the 20-ton range and like the lunar lander being (very roughly) half propellant and half vehicle by weight, although in this case leaning more towards payload because the propulsion tug wouldn't be intended to lift directly back off all the way to low lunar orbit, and the vehicle itself will ideally be much lighter since it will be using new alloys that are substantially lighter than aluminum, and not much of anything in the way of shielding because the payload would just be cargo like water, machinery, air scrubbers, maybe powerplants like upscaled kilopower-like reactors or large bundles of solar panels.
>>10528697
Not every payload will be in the ballpark of 100 tons, sending a BFRship to the moon is going to be highly expensive and if a particular component or resupply is only going to weigh say 10 tons then fueling up a BFR, launching it, refueling the booster, launching a cargo starship to refuel the moon trip one and then retrieving both is going to cost more than launching a much smaller purpose built rocket that only needs to get 20-25 tons to LLO.

[Anonymous No.10528719]

>>10528710
>then retrieving both is going to cost more than launching a much smaller purpose built rocket that only needs to get 20-25 tons to LLO

So you missed the entire point of BFR right?

[Anonymous No.10528728]

>>10528666
I forgot to mention engines and propellants, since the whole vehicle will be somewhere at or near double the weight of a lunar lander it's 4 engines should be in the neighborhood of 1/2 as powerful as the LMDE and since I'm too tired to imagine an entire new rocket engine from scratch I'd just assume it will be similar, a variable throttle pintile injector hypergolic rocket producing about 5000lbf of thrust with an ISP of 300-320s. They're probably drawn a bit too large now that I look at them but oh well.

[Anonymous No.10528729]

>>10528710
>Highly expensive
>12x10m launches for 100t+ payload and return the vehicle
>120m

So is there a rocket around or projected that will do your payload for less than that? Including the disposable kick stages to take it to lunar orbit from Earth orbit? No one is going to be shipping individual few tonne loads to the moon unless it's a desperate fucking emergency in which case the cost is justified. Any replacement components or whatever else just get tacked onto the next shipment.

[Anonymous No.10528730]

>>10528719
I'm pretty sure the point of BFR is not to use a rocket with 100 tons of LLO payload capacity to get 10 ton payloads to LLO. Smaller launch systems do have niches to fill because even reusable heavy lifters have steep up front costs that don't suit every mission.

[Anonymous No.10528736]

>>10528728
>>10528710
>>10528645
Well I be damned, at least the math checks out.

A suggestion I have is to replace the retractable landing legs with fixed ones to reduce the cost. They can be made so that they'll have a little bit of flex.

[Anonymous No.10528743]

>>10528730
It won't be taking 10 tons to wherever it's going, it will take your 10 tens tons plus 90 tons of other stuff that other people want. A new colony is always going to need huge shipments of shit. If you want to pay for a whole launch just to get your lander including what I assume are disposable stages to get to the moon then fine but no company will be doing that because the cost will be astronomical compared to buying 10t worth of BFR payload

[Anonymous No.10528748]

>>10528743
this, if you're looking for shit to put on the surface Caterpillar has some lunar-adapted material movers that they'd be more than happy to sell you

[Anonymous No.10528753]

>>10528743
Like I said earlier in the thread, I though it up based on the 26 ton TLI payload of the block 1 SLS. As in this is a hypothetical vehicle which in and of itself (should) be cheap and at least mostly reusable which can be launched from the block 1 SLS and deliver around ten tons of payload directly to the surface of the moon. I agree with you though that no company would buy an SLS launch for anything they could fit into a BFRship instead, but I wasn't basing my doodle on the LLO payload capacity of the BFRship now was I?

[Anonymous No.10528762]

>>10528753
Why would you put this effort for a rocket that is going to fly less times than you can count on a single hand.

[Anonymous No.10528775]

>>10528753
>Design cheap, reusable lander for the most massive pork barrel to ever exist

......

[Anonymous No.10528777]

>>10528762
>This much effort.
Anon I thought up and sketched that lander in about five minutes. I spend a lot more time each day on much less productive and enjoyable activities than hypothetical space vehicles.

[Anonymous No.10528781]

>>10528775
Sure, why not? At least one part of SLS could, in a hypothetical universe that doesn't exist, be efficient and economical...r-right?

[Anonymous No.10528782]

>>10528762
You have a point. A commercial rocket version may be a better option for a cheap resupply lander.

I couldn't find the TLI payload mass for a Falcon 9, but I've estimated it to be about 7t. That mean's the lander (using the same math as >>10528736) would have a payload of about 1.3t not including the lander itself. I don't know how usable that is, though.

[Anonymous No.10528791]

>>10528782
use Falcon Heavy instead

[Anonymous No.10528793]

>>10528782
https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/26155/what-is-falcon-heavys-payload-capacity-to-trans-lunar-injection
At least according to these guys roughly 23 tons to TLI, which should be a little more than sufficient, assuming SpaceX's numbers are good and assuming their own assumptions are solid.

[Anonymous No.10528794]

>>10528793
I should mention, that's using Falcon heavy, NOT Falcon 9.

[Anonymous No.10528796]

can somebody webm this please https://twitter.com/MasaCritit/status/1109820814860402688
>>10528794
all about that big dick rocket

[Anonymous No.10528799]

>>10528791
I chose Falcon 9 because I knew that the Falcon Heavy in most statsheets uses older versions of Falcon and I wanted to use the latest commercial rocket.

>>10528793
>23t to TLI
If that's true, then the "SLS Version" of the "Cheap Lander" can still be used.

Also, doesn't the SLS have a TLI payload of 27t? How does the SLS and Falcon Heavy have nearly the same TLI payload capacity? Something doesn't seem right.

[Anonymous No.10528801]

>>10528799
compare the sizes of SLS and Falcon Heavy, then consider that Heavy uses KereLOx, not HydraLOx and so is much denser
I think 27 is for partially expendable Heavy

[Anonymous No.10528802]

>>10528796
>That leg decloaking
I didn't know that the Israeli had cloaking technology.

...then again, Hebrew does sound awfully similar to Klingon...

[Anonymous No.10528805]

>>10528796
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHSNZK4Je-Y
>>10528799
I think that's assuming the Falcon Heavy in fully expendable mode, and using the theoretical maximum payload which I don't think has been attempted yet.

[Anonymous No.10528808]

>>10528801
If the numbers are true, then it's a real shame that Falcon is so thin. If it were wider, then Falcon Heavy (even an expendable one) could've replaced SLS (at least for Moon missions).

[Anonymous No.10528809]

>>10528808
impossible to make Falcon any larger than it is and still be road-transportable, which necessitates building a factory at the launch site, so they're proceeding forward with Starship instead

[Anonymous No.10528815]

>>10528809
I know, but a man can dream of a world without SLS.

[Anonymous No.10528816]

>>10528808
That's what starship is

[Anonymous No.10528825]

>>10528815
that's what Starship is

[Anonymous No.10528839]

There, a reusable Falcon Heavy launched cargo lander, weight somewhere between 20 and 25 tons, something very like a slightly weaker Kestrel engine for main propulsion, solar panels to keep the powerpacks topped off and flexible single piece landing struts to reduce weight, cost, and complexity. Let no Anon ever claim I'm wedded to the SLS, I hope it flies but frankly my expectations are essentially nonexistent.

[Anonymous No.10528842]

>>10528816
>>10528825
>Need a super heavy lifter?
>That's what Starship is
>Need a lunar lander?
>That's what Starship is
>Need a space station?
>That's what Starship is
>Need a Martian base?
>That's what Starship is
>Need something that'll make your son talk to you again?
>That's what Starship is
>Need something that'll save your crumbling marriage?
>That's what Starship is

[Anonymous No.10528843]

>>10528842
Starship can't save your marriage but it might make your son talk to you again
but much like Saturn V it has the potential to be all those other things as well

[Anonymous No.10528845]

[Anonymous No.10528846]

>>10528839
>something very like a slightly weaker Kestrel engine for main propulsion
If there are an even number of engines, then just keeping the "full thrust" Kestrels could be beneficial. If you need to shut down a pair of engines because one of them is acting up, then the lander would still have the TWR needed to land safely.

Other than that it's a great idea! Send it Elon to see if he likes it. Cute drawing btw.

[Anonymous No.10528847]

>>10528842
This but unironically

[Anonymous No.10528848]

>>10528847
SpaceX will become a coachbuilder in a way

[Anonymous No.10528852]

>>10528843
Every night I pray that next term Trump quadruples NASA's budget and just tells them "I want Saturn V but yuuuger" and we get something like >>10527766

[Anonymous No.10528854]

>>10528848
*chassis builder FOR coachbuilders
always get that backwards

[Anonymous No.10528855]

[Anonymous No.10528857]

>>10528852
He is too busy throwing money at Israel my dude.

[Anonymous No.10528858]

[Anonymous No.10528864]

[Anonymous No.10528868]

>>10528857
Well obviously! Have you seen >>10528805? Israel has some serous space stealth tech.

[Anonymous No.10528870]

>>10528855
>This UGLY son of a stainless steel mill is flying super short hops, and basically you are fucking SLS.
>>10528857
We just need to convince him that Israel needs a couple hundred tons in orbit ASAP.

[Anonymous No.10528873]

>>10528839
Close, but the real thing will have three legs instead of 4, carry 100 tons of payload, be fully reusable, and will launch on top of Super Heavy while taking advantage of on-orbit refueling to reach the Moon's surface with enough delta V to come back to Earth and land.

[Anonymous No.10528877]

>>10528864
Oh look they figured out to put the straps at the top and not the bottom lmao.

[Anonymous No.10528884]

>>10528877
It's been like that since they built it weeks ago, where have you been

[Anonymous No.10528912]

>>10528884
Didn't pay attention to the strapping, sorry senpai.

[Anonymous No.10528919]

>>10528912
>Doesn't like rocket BDSM
Fucking vanillafags.

[Anonymous No.10528923]

>>10528919
Kek

[Anonymous No.10528924]

>>10528919
>"B-but Elon-kun, it's my first time. P-please be g-gentle..."

[Anonymous No.10528934]

>https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/2/18277344/space-situational-awareness-air-force-tracking-sso-a-spaceflight-cubesats
the air force and satellite operators are having trouble locating and identifying satellites launched into space. i wonder if this will impact companies looking to put up megaconstellations like starlink and oneweb.

[Anonymous No.10528937]

>>10528934
they're not having trouble tracking and locating them, they know where they all are, they're having trouble sorting out which one is which, because they're all orbiting as a big pack

[Anonymous No.10528957]

if a bunch of people want to launch similar cubesats that are only slightly different from each other, then why doesnt someone launch a large satellite that hosts a bunch of cubesats? that way the large sat can provide collision avoidance, easy identification and tracking, better power for the cubesats, etc. pic related.

i mean, obviously this wont work for everyone, but it seems like a viable solution for some.

[Anonymous No.10528967]

>>10528957
I don't know if this is true or not but communications cubes at least may need to be a bit separated from one-another to avoid polluting each-other's signals. A modular Satbus that can hold multiple pieces of complementary equipment for several different purposes does seem like the kind of thing that I'm sure several different people or companies must have though of by now.

[Anonymous No.10528977]

>>10528967
yeah someone has probably thought of it before. the upcoming reprogrammable satellites might be a solution that came from thinking about this problem.

[Anonymous No.10529017]

>>10528957
if a bunch of sats can be made to work together well, as well as be right next to each other, why not just make a larger sat and not bother with cube memes

[Anonymous No.10529033]

>>10529017
i was thinking that the cubesats operate mostly or somewhat independently. they just hang out together on a larger satellite bus which provides some useful services that cubesats dont often have access to (e.g. propulsion). for instance, cubesat A is able to put more processing power or sensors on it while using the large satellite bus for propulsion, power, and communications. if cubesat A didn't have the large satellite bus, then it would have to get rid of the extra power and sensors, making it less useful.

[Anonymous No.10529036]

>>10529017
>why not just make a larger sat and not bother with cube memes
oh and making a larger sat costs more. its cheap and easy to throw your cubesat onto a rideshare rocket launch. its alot more expensive and time consuming to get a larger satellite into space.

[Anonymous No.10529051]

new >>10529049

[Anonymous No.10529293]

>>10528560
I'm confused because the system you described seems to heavily rely on gravity to clarify the water. Now you could use a centrifuge of some sort, but then it's starting to look like a power hungry thing, which is not great.

[Anonymous No.10529452]

>>10529051
Your thread is bad, never make an OP again