/sfg/ – spacex containment thread general

[Spaceflight General No.10984446]

lunar gateway edition

previous: >>10980443
next: >>10985643

[Anonymous No.10984456]

Fuck gateway
Fuck oldspace
Fuck shelby

[Anonymous No.10984462]

My first PC was a Gateway Astro

[Anonymous No.10984471]

Soon gentlemen
starship will fly and the corrupt fagboys will all get BTFO for all time
then its off to draw a massive cock on mars

[Anonymous No.10984485]

>>10984272
>Bottom line of hrg: No one thinks we'll really be on Moon by 2024, but want to keep that goal to convey sense of urgency, provide focus.
Honestly, I can respect NASA for wanting to do that. Having a close deadline to keep the pace up is a good idea. However, I think NASA is doing this not solely because it's a good idea, but rather because they just realized that their structure can't meet a deadline that they should be meeting easily, so they just say that they know that they can't meet the deadline but keep it there to use it "provide focus" (because it sounds nicer than, "we're so fucked up on the inside that we can't even run a single McDonald's without risking bankruptcy for the rest of the chain")

[Anonymous No.10984572]

>>10984456
the janny fears the frog

[Anonymous No.10984579]

>>10984485
I have a feeling dearmoon (and a possible unmanned starship landing) will be the kick that starts the avalanche to clean house at NASA.

[Anonymous No.10984596]

>>10984572
Kek they always nuke my frogs and give me a ban even if my post is on topic

[Anonymous No.10984600]

>>10984485
At this point I wish someone asked them the question whether it would be a better idea to move all money from NASA to SpaceX with no strings attached. At the rate Starship is going, 2022 for first Mars mission is rather realistic, moon fly-by in 2021 wouldn't be surprising. It'll all depend on how fast SpaceX can push out Raptors at this point.
All the money being dumped on the SLS and NASA in general would be far more productive science-wise just going to Raptor factories and Starship/Super Heavy assembly shacks.

I also looked at Blue Origin and the New Glenn, it's literally a fat F9 with the capability sitting between the F9 and FH. Is its only goal mimicking what SpaceX has already been doing for years? With the earliest flight of the NG set to 2021, Starship will kill any purpose the rocket had before its maiden flight.

[Anonymous No.10984607]

>>10984579
Doubt it considering how deeply rooted current management is in NASA. What would more likely happen is that they would lessen the artificial delays on SLS and related projects and continue on with it while maybe giving Starship come resupply missions. From what I've seen, the "old guard" of American spaceflight thinks that SpaceX is stepping into territory that it shouldn't and they would try their best to keep SpaceX from being a big deal in "flagship" missions.

[Anonymous No.10984643]

>>10984600
>At this point I wish someone asked them the question whether it would be a better idea to move all money from NASA to SpaceX with no strings attached
No matter how good SpaceX is, that is a terrible idea. Handing out money (government money especially) with no restrictions on how it should be used is just begging for corruption. A better idea would be to have money given to SpaceX only to develop Starship (or maybe just specific aspects that NASA wants to have developed like in-orbit refueling).

But I agree with your notion that money on SLS seems like a waste. And it will be a waste if it never gets a use flight before Starship proves itself.

>I also looked at Blue Origin and the New Glenn...
Smaller rockets have the advantage of requiring less ground equipment to maintain and potentially faster reuse. Not every payload is going to need Starship's 100t to LEO capability, and there will be cases where a Starship isn't available fast enough. Plus SpaceX seems to care less about offering customizing options for their customers and more about offering the cheapest "one product fits all". Which is a viable strategy, but not every customer will like that. Blue Origin could easily hoover up customers that don't quite like what SpaceX is selling.

Also, having Blue around is better for spaceflight than not. Spaceflight (at least American sf) after Apollo got screw over massively because it was all pinned to the Shuttle being the best launch vehicle ever. The Shuttle failed in that regard and thus spaceflight was locked into a terrible launcher that restricted it. Betting everything on Starship may result in the same mistake happening again. But having an alternative launcher that is fundamentally different from Starship means that even if it fails, spaceflight can still continue.

[Anonymous No.10984661]

>SuperHeavy with a direct fusion starship upper stage

[Anonymous No.10984666]

>>10984600
>>10984607
>>10984643
They should just offer incentive based contracts, like take these four negresses to the moon and we pay you 5bn dollars.

[Anonymous No.10984683]

>>10984661
>Superheavy with the entire SLS core and EUS on top

[Anonymous No.10984698]

>>10984643
I meant the no strings attached more as a jab at NASA that even such a stupid move would arguably be better than the current situation. Obviously it'd have to be given with a purpose in mind, like constructing Starship factories in Alabama.

>Not every payload is going to need Starship's 100t to LEO capability, and there will be cases where a Starship isn't available fast enough.
All depending on how reusable Starship will be. If the SH can land and launch within a couple hours up to a week with next to no maintenance, it's all about how expensive the fuel is. Even if you don't need the 100t to LEO, if it's still cheaper than the NG, and the Starship is available, it'd be better to pick Starship. And customization isn't as much of an issue as long as you can fit the payload in the fairing, unless I'm missing something. What customization is necessary for the special snowflake payloads that make Starship unavailable?

>Also, having Blue around is better for spaceflight than not.
True, it's just they'd be far better off making a Starship competitor, rather than a F9 competitor. At this point I'd argue tech has advanced far enough that the problem with spaceflight stagnation is becoming less of an issue. Of course, we could get another of these periods, but it wouldn't last for 50 years. Other countries at this point are becoming capable of mimicking the US too much for the US to slow down, otherwise countries like China or Russia may surpass them. SpaceX has shown the world too much of what's possible for everyone to just ignore it.

[Anonymous No.10984747]

>>10984698
>All depending on how reusable Starship will be. If the SH can land and launch within a couple hours up to a week with next to no maintenance, it's all about how expensive the fuel is.
True. And details on how well Starship does in regards of it's reusability are unknown right now. We'll just have to wait and see. Although, I still argue that there would be frequent cases of Starship not being available to someone. Especially early on where I have a feeling that the turn-around time for BFR is going to be slower than expected as SpaceX works out the details.

>What customization is necessary for the special snowflake payloads that make Starship unavailable?
It's just more of a comment on SpaceX's general philosophy rather than something about Starship, but payload bay size would definitely be a limiting factor since it's a fixed size.

>True, it's just they'd be far better off making a Starship competitor, rather than a F9 competitor.
Considering that Blue hasn't even sent something into orbit yet, making a Falcon competitor would still be viable at least early on. New Armstrong, from the few details about it that are available, will definitely be a Starship competitor.

[Anonymous No.10984761]

>>10984600
Milestone based dev contract would be nice. Or atleast, NASA needs to consider the possibility of a mars mission when Starship is flying to the moon, privately.

[Anonymous No.10984762]

If you think the crewed starship stage will be built with the same speed and jank as these prototypes, you’re wrong. 2025 for SpaceX landings on the moon is a maybe

[Anonymous No.10984766]

>>10984762
Starship won't go to the moon unless incentivized. They have plans for Mars instead.

[Anonymous No.10984780]

>>10984762
The prototypes just need to nail down the propulsion system. Everything north of the forward LOX bulkhead is capsule design.

[Anonymous No.10984802]

Any know where the "6 years to develop a spacesuit" line came from?

[Anonymous No.10984807]

>>10984762
Even the cargo version of Starship flying and being reusable would be revolutionary by itself. Crewed stage is just a matter of time.

[Anonymous No.10984827]

>>10984762
>2025 for SpaceX landings on the moon is a maybe
I kind of agree with this given the history of spaceflight. Lunar flybys are one thing (even with crew), but landings are another thing entirely.

[Anonymous No.10984833]

>>10984802
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnFj67C0G6I

Forgot where in time, but they mention it couple of times. The NASA guy says 6 year is the estimate where anymore money thrown wont speed it up.

[Anonymous No.10984854]

>>10984600
New Glenn's tricks are as follows:
>Cheaper Fuel
NG can run off of LOX and straight-from-the-pipeline LNG
>Durability
Bezos has specifically said NG is meant to fly in the same conditions that are acceptable at Orlando International Airport. That means rain and minor thunderstorms, which tend to be dealbreakers for existing rockets.
>Quick turnaround
Still to be demonstrated, but their work on New Shepard has been pretty solid
>Wide fairing
NG is a 7m rocket, versus SpaceX's 5m. The ability to accommodate a proportionally larger fairing means they can launch certain payloads that most other launch providers can't.

[Anonymous No.10984858]

What's the source on that China-Russia megaconstellation cooperation?

[Anonymous No.10984859]

>>10984607
If that's the case, then it's going to be the Space Force that ends up forcing NASA's hand. There is a real push to establish military installations in orbit and on the moon, and keeping NASA operating as-is is going to be a hard sell if the US Military starts space operations at a similar or greater scale and much lower cost.

[Anonymous No.10984862]

>>10984643
>Not every payload is going to need Starship's 100t to LEO capability
If Starship is the cheapest option you could use it to launch a stick of butter into space, because launch costs do not change based on the mass they carry. New Glenn will throw away an entire stage, it will be AT LEAST as expensive as Falcon 9, assuming incredible penny pinching and low production costs from BO. Starship is expected to be CHEAPER than Falcon 9 from day 1 of accepting launch contracts.

Also, in what universe could payload integration and launch happen faster for a partially expendable rocket with a hydrolox upper stage than for a fully reusable all methalox rocket that's already flown dozens of times? The niche for NG where Starship is still too slow to flex to any schedule demand is only about two years, after which Starship will be the cheapest option, the most capable option, AND the most rapidly deploy-able option.

[Anonymous No.10984864]

>>10984747
They want to build dozens or even hundreds of Starships. There will be no shortage of launch capability.

[Anonymous No.10984868]

>>10984762
While the jank prototypes are being built they're documenting the process and they're drawing up a Starship factory right now. I wouldn't be surprised if they order the tooling long before they buy an empty warehouse to convert, or even buy raw land to build their own factory on from scratch. Future Starships and Boosters will look as smooth and pretty as Falcon 9 hardware, but bigger, and shinier, and much faster to build. Possibly cheaper to build than Falcon 9 as well, apart form the engines, because stainless steel is that much easier to work with and inspect compared to Al-Li alloy.

[Anonymous No.10984871]

>>10984854
>NG can run off of LOX and straight-from-the-pipeline LNG
Is that even confirmed though? Besides, it's not like fractional distillation of pure methane from LNG is even expensive, there's just no point for most applications.

[Anonymous No.10984874]

>>10984854
>NG is a 7m rocket, versus SpaceX's 5m.
Starship 9 meter faring/cargo bay will be available by 2022, maybe earlier. How long will New Glenn hold onto its advantage?

[Anonymous No.10984875]

>>10984871
https://www.blueorigin.com/new-glenn/
>With seven reusable and throttleable BE-4 LOX/LNG engines, the first stage generates 17,100 kN (3.85 million lbf) thrust at sea level.
>First stage powered by seven BE-4 LNG/LOX engines, upper stage powered by two BE-3U LH2/LOX engines

[Anonymous No.10984877]

>>10984874
At minimum, they will have internal demand via Bezos' internet constellation (probably an Amazon-branded project that ties in with AWS)

[Anonymous No.10984935]

>Space Development Agency (SDA) director says the agency’s first development program will be the data transport layer
>serves as a backbone for all US milsats
>First demo in FY 2021; field testing in FY22 and IOC in FY24
>200 to 400 sats, each with a 5-year lifetime
>The latest SDA roadmap focuses on sats in the 1000km orbital plane, rather than on the 400km range — following industry feedback on its July RFI
yeah we'll see how that goes

[Anonymous No.10984954]

>>10984858
It's in Russian but here you go
https://www.rbc.ru/technology_and_media/17/09/2019/5d80eea69a794755e1c48c87?utm_source=tw_rbc

[Anonymous No.10984973]

>>10984643
>A better idea would be to have money given to SpaceX only to develop Starship (or maybe just specific aspects that NASA wants to have developed like in-orbit refueling).
That's great, except that NASA has no choice. Congress earmarks a large chunk of their budget for SLS. It's taken this much longer to get Commercial Crew going because they kept short-changing that part of NASA's budget. The problem isn't NASA, it's D.C.

[Anonymous No.10984983]

>38 engines can be used 25 times each
so each flight consumes about 1.5 raptors long-term - and that's not thinking about starship durability or costs

estronaut said 2m but I'm betting raptors are 5-10m right now

[Anonymous No.10984986]

>>10984983
Says who
Raptors are meant to fire hundreds
of times

[Anonymous No.10984996]

>>10984983
BE-4 is not raptor tho and is not really comparable other than it uses methane.

[Anonymous No.10985003]

>>10984986
It'll be sweet if they really can fire hundreds of times before getting btfo. If you think about it, a rocket engine is a hell of a lot less complex than a turbofan and look at their rated lifespans.

[Anonymous No.10985019]

>>10984471
they've been getting BTFO since day 1
I remember hearing over and over again that they'll never land a rocket

[Anonymous No.10985032]

>>10985019
It's kinda funny how everyone (NASA, ULA, Russia, Japan etc.) pretend as if SpaceX doesn't exist and keep developing new expendable rockets that are already obsolete and technologically mogged into oblivion before even flying. The denial is strong.

[Anonymous No.10985047]

>SLS will never fly
>Orion will never fly

NASA will be Defunded by 2024

[Anonymous No.10985086]

>>10985047
Here's hoping

[Anonymous No.10985095]

>Superheavy ring stack
WHEN
H
E
N

[Anonymous No.10985097]

>>10985095
Elon said he was going to address those rings at the presentation and they are focussing on getting the orbital prototype ready for then so probably ten days a least.

[Anonymous No.10985130]

[Anonymous No.10985301]

>>10983573
I‘ve said it before and I‘ll say it again. Nasa has been getting more inefficient on an exponential scale and we‘re about to hit critical mass.
Inefficiency singularity soon, brothers.

[Anonymous No.10985311]

>>10985301
I mean we are pretty much at that point already.

[Anonymous No.10985326]

>>10985301
the best thing I have seen from nasa recently is their official t-shirt they sell at primarks

[Anonymous No.10985367]

>>10985326
That's like wearing a t-shirt that says fuck spaceflight

[Anonymous No.10985375]

>>10985367
pretty much

they should sell a poster with a shuttle reporting the writing "Oh no! We've lost a tile"

I would buy that

[Anonymous No.10985489]

>>10984600
They shouldn't be given NASA's funding, welfare makes everything it touches more shit. What could (and should) be done however is to offer enormous contracts, tax incentives, and partnerships to any space company that can develop programs to perform major work in space. 10 billion dollar contracts to send a human on a Mars flyby, another five if you can drop some kind of short term space station or station components in orbit, another five if you can safely land and safely return even a single person. A few billion to whichever company can design a cheap and modular expandable habitat system which can be used to construct large space stations quickly and efficiently, funds to be delivered slowly and only after the completion of significant project milestones. NASA can be refocused to do things like build probes, telescopes, and other pieces of specialist equipment at a faster pace and also greatly expand the number of people trained to be astronauts, and to build and maintain larger and more numerous launch facilities from which private rockets can be flown and landed. It's also highly desirable to have this environment be competitive, so no single company should receive all contracts even if they're ahead of others in certain developments.

[Anonymous No.10985490]

>>10984698
>What customization is necessary for the special snowflake payloads that make Starship unavailable?

The customisation of ESA returning some of your money to you in a brown envelope or agreeing not to ruin your career

[Anonymous No.10985509]

>>10985032
Not absolutely everyone. Chink company has a Grasshopper type thing flying and ESA are shitting it and doing lameo studies on various types of reusability. Latter is kind of laughable though since SpaceX are just flat-out BUILDING reusability right now. How many studies does ESA need to know they are going to get BTFO by SpaceX again and reusability is inevitable?

[Anonymous No.10985520]

>>10985509
If there weren't studies then bureaucrats couldn't get their rocks off, and people who publish redundant studies would be out of a job. You don't want to create unemployment right Anon? You love America and the SLS (peace be upon it) right? BUY MORE SHUTTLE PARTS RIGHT NOW!

[Anonymous No.10985534]

>>10984875
Calling methane LNG for familiarity's sake isn't the same thing as Jeff Who coming out and saying 'to simplify propellant sourcing we use a normal natural gas hydrocarbon mixture as our propellant'.
They clearly can't use liquefied natural gas from the tap, because that stuff has tholins in it, which are sulfur compounds, and they are NOT sending sulfur compounds through a staged combustion engine.
I don't even really understand how LNG would be a cheaper propellant than pure liquid methane anyway, since literally all you'd have to do to get pure methane would be to cryogenically cool the natural gas mixture as you would, and then move the methane over to a separate condenser, leaving the liquefied ethane and everything else heavier than methane on the floor of the first chamber, since they all liquefy at least 72 degrees warmer than methane does.

[Anonymous No.10985538]

>>10984973
The problem is both.
Congress is an abusive father, NASA is a neglectful mother. No wonder the kids are so fucked.

[Anonymous No.10985541]

>>10984983
>38 engines can be used 25 times each
25 times each with no inspection. Like airliner jet engines. They'd undergo 25 flights and then rotate out of service for maintenance, then rotate back in.

[Anonymous No.10985547]

>>10985003
This. Temperature gradients and oxidizing environments can be/are more extreme in a rocket engine, but the rocket engine has the advantage of extremely powerful cooling systems (since they pump so much cryogenic fuel around per second) as well as far less variable intake conditions (water and dust in air, air density at sea level vs 30,000 feet, air speeds from 0 to nearly trans-sonic, etc).

[Anonymous No.10985550]

>>10985520
kek

[Anonymous No.10985551]

>>10985047
>tfw this image of Gateway shows it being much bigger than it is currently planned, with modules that would have clearly have been launched on old-space SLS
>tfw yesterday they said they aren't going to launch ANY hardware with SLS for Gateway unless they can get more money
>tfw an accurate image of Starship at Gateway would now have nothing except the Gateway propulsion module, the Orion docking port, and Starship itself
look at this doood

[Anonymous No.10985554]

>>10985095
SH should be fast to build (literally stack prefab rangs, install bulkheads, install engine mount structure, do plumbing, add legs and grid fins, install engines, done) and they have no need for it until they are ready to try to launch Starship prototypes to orbit, so they aren't rushing to do SH if it means slowing down Starship itself even a bit.

[Anonymous No.10985556]

>>10985555

[Anonymous No.10985559]

>>10985551
Oh no no no no, look at the top of his launch vehicle.

[Anonymous No.10985575]

Elongate

[Anonymous No.10985576]

>>10985547
On top of that you can use alloys like Hastelloy-N or Inconel which were intended specifically to survive extreme thermal shocking and ultra-corrosive environments like direct contact with molten fluoride salts at temperatures of 4-700+ degrees Celsius without any cryocooling at all. Burning propellants are hotter, but the rocket's structure itself is protected by active cooling.

[Anonymous No.10985601]

>>10985547
But what about the turbine components and preburner?

[Anonymous No.10985648]

"2 crashes" Boeing now wants to the gateway to be cancelled and instead wants NASA to direct more funding to SLS. Boeing isn't a contractor for the gateway.

[Anonymous No.10985652]

>China successfully launched five Zhuhai-1 satellites into the orbit on a Long March-11 carrier rocket at 2:42 pm on Thursday from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in NW China’s Gansu

[Anonymous No.10985658]

>>10985652
i'm getting conflicting info as to what satellites were on the launch, but at least one seems to be a zhuhai imaging sat

>That's 18 orbital launches for China this year, inc. 2 launch failures (& 1 unconfirmed sat loss). 8 launches for the CZ-11 since 2015 maiden flight, including 1 sea launch.

media
https://twitter.com/LaunchStuff/status/1174576355360550912

[Anonymous No.10985670]

>>10982939
>China agree on joint Moon exploration with cooperation on the Luna 26 & Chang'e-7 missions, no details were provided
It seems as if Chang'e-7 will begin creating a Chinese robotic base on the Lunar south pole? After that will begin the Chinese manned based.

[Anonymous No.10985681]

>>10985670
I guess Luna 26 and Chang'e-7 will be the first parts of the Chinese robotic base. Both are planned to launch in the 2023-2024. The orbit module in the pic might be Luna 26, and Queqiao might be the relay module. Not sure which one Chang'e-7 would be.

[Anonymous No.10985689]

>>10985670
Any estimation on the date on that, and how much confidence there is in that date being met?

[Anonymous No.10985705]

>>10985689
I see dates of 2023-2024 but I don't know if that's right since Chang'e-5 and 6 aren't close to launching. The Long March 5 failure threw a wrench into China's space plans.

[Anonymous No.10985724]

So I'm compiling a list of general arguments against reusability, and here's what I have so far...
>it hurts jobs
>flight conditions are simply too harsh for reuse to be feasible
>refurbishing is always going to be more expensive than just making a new expendable one
>it allows for a high launch rate which then uses up payloads faster than sustainable rates
>such complicated machinery can't be made reusable
>expendable will always out perform reusable

Am I missing anything?

[Anonymous No.10985732]

>>10984596
it's the frogposter genocide

[Anonymous No.10985734]

>>10985724
>>it allows for a high launch rate which then uses up payloads faster than sustainable rates
>"Stop, you're launching too fast!"
Is this a real argument someone has made?

[Anonymous No.10985751]

>>10985734
Yes, I've heard it a couple of times. The general argument goes...
>reusable rockets allow for faster launch rate
>but they also need that high rate to keep costs down
>this is fine at first as reusable rockets allow for quick launching of lots of payloads
>but the rate at which more payloads are being made is still very slow
>eventually the backlog of payloads will run out
>reusable rockets are now forced to launch at a much slower rate
>this drives up costs to beyond what expendable rockets would have
>it would've been cheaper in the long run to have expendable rockets that launch at rates that match the payload generation rate (i.e. sustainable)

[Anonymous No.10985754]

>>10984854
Starship Tricks, in direct comparison to the above:
>cheapish fuel
high purity methane is cheap, but not quite as cheap as straight-from-the-pipeline LNG
>durability
Elon has specifically said that the plan is for Starships to be able to fly through a hurricane, no fucks given
I don't think they'll meet that goal, due to ceramic tiles and hail not mixing well
>quick turnaound
>wide fairing
9m vs 7m, not that big a deal compared to the jump up from 5m

[Anonymous No.10985766]

>>10985575
don't put the window in, keep the full jank
also I think they added more flap surface

[Anonymous No.10985772]

>>10985751
if you can get the costs low enough, you can drive more satellite demand and keep your launch cadence up
if nobody else steps up, you launch Starlink

[Anonymous No.10985777]

this is what NASA thinks the near future of space stations is.

[Anonymous No.10985789]

>>10985777
>series of tubes

[Anonymous No.10985826]

>>10985777
they're actually on the right track. massive cylinders and megastructures are beyond anything we'll be able to construct for centuries. instead, we're going to see increasingly complicated stations based on in-orbit assembly

[Anonymous No.10985833]

>>10985826
>centuries
Why do brainlets like you use that length despite not comprehending what it is

[Anonymous No.10985834]

>>10985751
So then just cut costs by throwing BFR away after each launch.

Errr

[Anonymous No.10985847]

>>10985833
you can measure any length of time in centuries. 1 day is microcenturies long.

[Anonymous No.10985849]

>>10985834
A problem that I see with that is that a reusable rocket being used expendably will be much more likely to be more expensive than an expendable rocket due to the extra design-work in the reusable rocket to make it reusable, even if as much of the reusability is stripped out.

[Anonymous No.10985853]

>>10985833
>noun
>1. a period of one hundred years

Just keep keep waiting on those o'neill cylinders. it'll never happen in your lifetime, get your head out of the clouds

[Anonymous No.10985860]

>>10985658
What‘s with all that soot?

[Anonymous No.10985873]

>>10984471
Corrupt fagboys will just get another equally corrupt and productive project.

[Anonymous No.10985874]

>>10985754
>Elon has specifically said that the plan is for Starships to be able to fly through a hurricane, no fucks given
It‘s so long. How will it not break apart from wind shear.

[Anonymous No.10985876]

>>10985874
it's very wide, and very strong
I don't really believe him either, I'm going to go check to make sure I didn't dream that

[Anonymous No.10985877]

>>10984762
>test junkship 10 times + few moon returns
>put dragon in it
>???

Congratulations you now have the safest moon capable manned space launch system ever made on this planet.

[Anonymous No.10985883]

>>10985874
hurf burf here's the quote https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1015648140341403648

[Anonymous No.10985889]

>>10985509
If have bureaucrats then there aren't many things you can make other than paperwork.

[Anonymous No.10985898]

i want to believe but i dont want to be SHUTTLED. i really do hope starship does everything they say it can. It doesnt have the same political issues the shuttle design commitee had, which is reassuring....

[Anonymous No.10985903]

>>10985860
Dissidents used as shielding for the pad.

[Anonymous No.10985905]

>>10985777
That looks like a Borg-cube ISS version of our fractal spacecraft memes where you step and repeat a bunch of parts. Also:
>no apparent support for partial-g habitation
put it in the trash where it belongs

[Anonymous No.10985908]

>>10985898
If it works its a miracle in more ways than one. It's majorly privately funded which is essentially unheard of in the field and for projects of that magnitude.

[Anonymous No.10985911]

>>10985905
We'll study spin-gravity partial g in the 22nd century.

[Anonymous No.10985912]

>>10985898
If Starship works as well as Shuttle did we still have a dangerous but functional and expensive Mars colony ship. Which is a lot less than the "change da world" Starship promises, but it's better than SLS.

[Anonymous No.10985915]

>>10985860
China still uses coal, I guess that's what they make their SRBs with

[Anonymous No.10985917]

>>10985911
we could literally study it today with existing hardware if NASA cared, the first spin gravity experiment in space was Gemini 8

[Anonymous No.10985920]

>>10985912
What exactly has to go so terribly wrong as to make it shuttle tier bad?

[Anonymous No.10985929]

>>10985920
>Heatshield unreliable / fragile / not reusable
>Raptor ends up being a money sink to refurbish
>Large scale orbital refueling isn't feasible for some reason
Those are the big ones I can think of. Anything else can probably be iterated out of, but a design flaw in Raptor preventing economical reuse would be really bad.

[Anonymous No.10985932]

>>10985915
would a hybrid motor using coal and HTP be any good?

[Anonymous No.10985938]

>>10985898
Starship's foundation depends on Starlink's satellite constellation. If Starlink could be had for manageable cost, I'm signing up for it.

[Anonymous No.10985944]

>>10985777
Build a torus from cylinders.

[Anonymous No.10985948]

>>10985929
Aside from the last one which seems highly improbable the others are easy to solve;

>sacrifice half the payload for large (1km/s+) reentry retroburn
>sacrifice performance to increase longevity by altering chamber pressure or fuel mix
>alternatively sacrifice payload to overbuild everything, a battleship stage

Unlike the shuttle for example that suffered severely because of slight engine underperformance there's a lot of trading you can do with the starship before it cant take off...


Financial reasons could be the sole source of trouble as government funding seems less and less likely.

[Anonymous No.10985955]

>>10984666
This. Google Lunar X price showed how it should be done. Fixed prices leave no space for corruption.

[Anonymous No.10985975]

>>10985777
It's like some kind of space legos.
Toys for big boys.

[Anonymous No.10985993]

>>10985853
With nothing but current techniques it shouldn't be fundamentally difficult at all to construct a baby O'neill cylinder using a collapsed/expandable framework, an expandable envelope, and separate insulation. You can get perfectly acceptable living conditions at .45 G's from a 100m wide rotohab spinning at 2rpm. You start with a collapsed internal skeleton which can use either pressurized gas or some other simple mechanism to unfold itself, sections of it could be something like 15-20m tall and a few meters wide with it's struts folded in the same scissor configuration as a radiator or solar panel often is. Several sections of those are launched, attached end-to-end to create a frame perhaps 300m long. Then empty envelope sections are sent up, these are bags which basically just slide onto the ends of the spokes of the frame with runners or something and are then bolted in place, vacuum tight zippers can be used to seal one bag to the next bag. Then insulation is injected into the bags as is the method in which Bigelow or other expandable habs are "inflated". Once this is done you have a hollow cylinder which can be pressurized at your convenience, is lighter and more radiation and impact resistant than a metal counterpart, you add on a six way airlock hub, attach a powerplant, life support, airlock and some propulsive modules to spin it up to the needed 2 RPM. The cost of such an endeavor should be almost purely materialistic, as the technologies to make it a reality already exist at this moment.

[Anonymous No.10986038]

>>10985917
>US government
>actually caring about spaceflight
kek

[Anonymous No.10986063]

>>10985955
Didn't no one win that though?

[Anonymous No.10986069]

>>10986063
it was designed to be unwinnable

[Anonymous No.10986085]

>>10986063
Israel team who launched Bashreet got $1M. Still there are many others still being developed and under contract to launch in the next few years.

[Anonymous No.10986113]

OldSpace is at it yet again

https://spacenews.com/house-members-skeptical-about-nasas-approach-to-returning-humans-to-the-moon/

[Anonymous No.10986118]

>>10985905
>>10985944
>>no support for partial gravity
Look up NASA's nuclear thermal rocket concept then look at those gold cylinders and that golden rod in the lower right. Obviously it's a NTR factory. You don't want your nuclear rocket factory spinning cause that makes moving around parts difficult. Whoops the centrifuge is making the entire structure vibrate and we just rekt an expensive part. Or whoops we dropped the reactor it took out some habs with it as it 'fell' and we're halfway to Kessler syndrome.

[Anonymous No.10986120]

Fuck the gateway, fuck SLS, fuck boeing and nasa, 5.5 years for a new suit.

Can SpaceX do propellant transfer in orbit. Is it doable or incredibly out of reach?

[Anonymous No.10986122]

Some NASA contractors appear to be trying to kill the Lunar Gateway

https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/09/some-nasa-contractors-appear-to-be-trying-to-kill-the-lunar-gateway/

new Berger piece

[Anonymous No.10986125]

>>10986120
>propellant transfer in orbit
I'm extremely glad that they're doing cryo propellants that will boil and disperse when spilled instead of kerosene or hypergolics that will form a hypervelocity blob
I give it a 2/10 where 10 is Operation Neverending Clusterfuck

[Anonymous No.10986126]

>>10986118
>caring about NTR

[Anonymous No.10986129]

>>10986126
no, the other NTR

[Anonymous No.10986140]

>>10986113
>Members of a House committee expressed skepticism about NASA’s reliance on commercial launch vehicles to carry out human lunar landings by 2024 rather than an upgraded version of the Space Launch System.
WTF. I thought NASA went comercial with some payloads because SLS was taking too long? Also, didn't NASA already have a multipart lander planned even when the SLS was going to be the only rocket for their moon program? Those peices individually could fit on comercial rockets easily, so whats the issue of "overconstraining" landers?

>They appear to suggest that profit motive, i.e., the desire of some individuals for personal gain, may be driving NASA decision making at much greater risk to our astronauts
Kinda funny to suggest that commerical launcers may be too greedy when the SLS is a totem to greed.

[Anonymous No.10986141]

>>10986120
>Can SpaceX do propellant transfer in orbit. Is it doable or incredibly out of reach?
They could, but it would require lot of research/testing. They maybe some hickups/accidents along the way. Hopefully they will not be hindered too much and simply learn/plow through. Learning requires failures.

[Anonymous No.10986152]

>>10986120
Boeing agrees with you that we should fuck the gateway, because they aren't a contractor and want more monies for SLS. According to ULA, the TRL is pretty high. I'd say we're one tech demo mission away. You should keep an eye on ULA and NASA's proposed CRYOTE mission would demonstrate the all the tech necessary to make propellant depots a reality. They might even launch it as soon as 2012 because it's a cheap and low risk mission!

[Anonymous No.10986160]

>>10986122
To be fair, IIRC Gateway was a compromise mission during the Obama administration when it absolutely didn't want a lunar mission. So the Gateway was made to be near the moon but far enough away to not technically be a moon mission. With that silly restriction out, it makes sense to want to kill Gateway and replace it with something better and less compromised.

[Anonymous No.10986163]

>>10986141
What's the worst possible thing that could happen, let's break it down.
A spill? a liquid oxygen spill that floats onto some sensitive electronics and cold-shocks them so they break
that's the worst thing that I can imagine unless there's an ignition source somehow, or it forms solid oxygen somehow

[Anonymous No.10986182]

>>10986163
Worst thing possible is they refuel in orbit, it explodes and creates ton of debris, possibly endangering other satellites. And this might call for stricter regulations for SpaceX to follow with super expensive insurance requirement.

Did you see the Starhopper liability damage cost? I believe it was $100 million that was for their 200 meter hop.

[Anonymous No.10986184]

>>10986182
>it explodes and creates tons of debris
so do the initial refueling tests at a 150 km orbit?

[Anonymous No.10986187]

>>10986182
Don't forget the $20M insurance fee from the USAF for everytime SpaceX lands a Falcon 9.

[Anonymous No.10986192]

>>10986184
Yes, but 150km orbit is a falling orbit where kessler syndrome can't happen. But if SpaceX does 500 km orbit or 1000 km orbit refuel or any higher orbit, there's more longer lasting risk.

[Anonymous No.10986197]

>>10986192
so just don't do them there until you've figured it out
what could even cause a catastrophic structural failure during refueling?

[Anonymous No.10986203]

>>10986197
>so just don't do them there until you've figured it out
There's no way to rule out 100% of the possible failure routes and no way for SpaceX to control for them all. So at some point they will have to sacrifice a working prototype vs being stuck in design stage forever

>what could even cause a catastrophic structural failure during refueling?
SpaceX will account for known failure points and give themselves some room for margins. But they can't account for unknown failure points. While in orbit refueling is doable and not a "new" technology per se, its not a commonly tested or understood mechanic due to rarity of the operation. So there will absolutely be kinks that need to be ironed out but that can only be done once its in orbit and being refueled.

[Anonymous No.10986205]

>>10986192
Why would you need to refuel at a higher orbit than LEO anyhow... unless you're trying to do d*p*ts, which, memes aside, really is a silly idea, putting up fuel that you don't even know when you'll need it, never mind the costs of keeping it cryogenic, or hydrogen embrittlement.
Just launch the extra fuel right before or atfer the main mission launch.

[Anonymous No.10986212]

>>10986203
LOx and liquid methane are just liquids, and the behavior of liquids in microgravity is fairly well characterized.
Even, worst case, a LOx fire in the join between the ships will only cause a spill. Now shut up and quit spreading FUD, I'm trying to speculate on if we'll get to see an explosion and why.

[Anonymous No.10986219]

>>10986205
LEO is anywhere from few hundreds to few thousands of KM orbit and these are all kessler syndrome range.

>>10986212
If words/arguments trigger you, then you have issues.

[Anonymous No.10986231]

>>10986219
You're making mountains out of molehills about issues and proclaiming the result will be apocolyptic
The definition of spreading FUD
Given that we've had a wanker do that continuously and intentionally for several years now, it is no longer funny or cute

[Anonymous No.10986234]

>>10986187
Pretty sure this has yet to be confirmed.

[Anonymous No.10986237]

>>10986205
You for sure wouldn't, even if a Starship was shredded somehow and turned into a bunch of 3x3 meter panels, that would double the surface area of the whole assembly and increase the rate of decay. What's the decay rates for different altitudes?

[Anonymous No.10986244]

>>10985777
>By 2044 all space stations will be mixed AND ITS BEAUTIFUL!

[Anonymous No.10986246]

>>10986205
>Why would you need to refuel at a higher orbit than LEO anyhow

To increase payload? Some Starship flights will likely use high elliptical orbit refueling.

[Anonymous No.10986260]

>>10986187
wtf, first I heard about it it was $13 million, are we already all the way up to $20m?

[Anonymous No.10986266]

>>10986122
Boeing wants to kill the Gateway because it takes gibs away from them. Between this and their ICBM failures and 737 failures, Boeing has serious management issues.

[Anonymous No.10986268]

>>10986231
You are too skittish about any sort of risk assessment, that's a flaw. Risk assessment happens to every major project. Lets take a step back.

What's the chance of orbital refuel succeeding? 99.999%? 95%? 90%? 70%? 50%? Lets give a healthy estimate and say 90%. Then what's the chance of a catastrophic failure out of that failure? 50%? 25%? 10%? 5% 1%? Even if we assume that's 0.01%, we still have to assess that risk.

The question was "what's the worst thing that could happen?"

[Anonymous No.10986270]

>>10986260
SpaceX can afford that $30 million per launch, can't they? It's only a scant $40 million after all. What's $50 million anyway?

[Anonymous No.10986279]

>>10986260
Was it 13M? I couldn't remember the exact amount.

[Anonymous No.10986281]

>>10986260
$13 million, that's not too bad, it's just a little fee of $20 million, fucking hell why are you evil corporations so greedy why won't you just pay your $30 million dollar fee, the government needs your money to keep domesticating the population with welfare, pay up your $50 million!

[Anonymous No.10986285]

>>10986266

Boeing also has issues with the 777X development with the latest one being a cargo door blown of in a DC-10'esque fashion in one of their ground based pressure tests. Boeing aint looking so good these days.

[Anonymous No.10986292]

>>10986285
Boeing really seems to have gotten fucking sloppy lately, from the planes to the rockets, sloppy and lazy. Everything they don't get late they fuck up, and they get away with it because the fucking government still pays out the nose for their incompetence.

[Anonymous No.10986340]

A Conversation with Rocket Lab’s Chief Engineer of Space Systems, Grant Bonin

https://spaceq.ca/a-conversation-with-rocket-labs-chief-engineer-of-space-systems-grant-bonin/

[Anonymous No.10986343]

>>10986292
Remember that Boeing is incentivized to be late. NASA was paying Boeing milestone reward money despite them not meeting said milestones. NASA only stopped doing that when they got caught and felt the deserved backlash from it.

[Anonymous No.10986375]

>>10986126
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejUcnpwNDLs

[Anonymous No.10986388]

>>10986375
Reminder, NTR is the sophisticated man's taste.

[Anonymous No.10986402]

>>10986388
actually, the important bit is the T, nobody cares where the heat comes from
my favorite meme is tripropellant where the whole idea is just to heat up hydrogen and shoot it out the back

[Anonymous No.10986425]

Wernher von Braun presents: "Footprints on the Moon"
>This documentary presents this historical mission, with a different perception. A full length color feature in breathtaking detail as you've never seen it before! NOW...for the first time, you can share the greatest adventure of mankind from liftoff to splashdown...with added scenes never shown before!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3KbhgDLiSU

[Anonymous No.10986535]

>>10986425
I'm glad you didn't have to live to see what became of human spaceflight, Wernher.

[Anonymous No.10986542]

>>10984446
Earth is flat

[Anonymous No.10986544]

>>10986542
Earth is fat

[Anonymous No.10986556]

>>10986544
Big fat planetary tats

[Anonymous No.10986566]

>>10986544
earth is a fat cow

[Anonymous No.10986594]

>>10985652
There have only been two orbital launches this month, both Chinese.

[Anonymous No.10986599]

>>10985860
the CZ-11 is an adapted ICBM, which is pneumatically ejected from a tube before the motors even ignite. The sooty exhaust is from the ejection charge. In the videos, you can even see that the top part of the black cloud is traveling up like a smoke ring!

[Anonymous No.10986612]

>>10986388

[Anonymous No.10986613]

>https://watchrockets.com/
>https://nextrocket.space/

These two resources should be added for the next thread.

[Anonymous No.10986617]

>>10986612

[Anonymous No.10986627]

>>10986612
>>10986617
I think I missed something.
NTR = Nuclear Thermal Rocket.

[Anonymous No.10986634]

>>10986627
NTR is gook for cuck

[Anonymous No.10986638]

>>10986634
Eesh. Fuck that noise.

This is the only good NTR.

[Anonymous No.10986644]

>>10986141
ULA considers a tech demo mission for propellant depots to be low risk enough that it could fly as a secondary payload:
https://www.ulalaunch.com/docs/default-source/extended-duration/cryogenic-orbital-testbed-(cryote)-2009.pdf
>>10986163
>>liquid oxygen spill
cold shock is the least of your issues, with LOX, LOX can turn anything organic into a high explosive. That being said, big fucking LOX tanks seem to be a mature technology and you'd have to fuck up really hard to compromise the tank and turn what little organic material you do have onboard into a bomb. Fuck the apollo upper stage had something like 87 metric tons of LOX in it. Second, to demonstrate the tech, you don't need huge amounts of propellant.
>>10986182
The risks of this happening is probably similar to launching anything with a cryogenic upper stage. And again, ULA thinks they could fly a tech demonstrator for propellant transfer as an auxiliary payload, meaning they think there's not much risk to the primary payload
>>10986184
or do it small like the CRYOTE proposal
>>10986192
>>there's more longer lasting risk.
then before even attempting refueling a whole goddamn rocket why don't they test just moving propellant around between two small tanks?
>>10986197
>>what could even cause a catastrophic structural failure during refueling?
You might end up sucking up a blob of fluid and shooting it out, then some gas, then another blob of fluid, then some gas, and so forth and so on. Because the flow rate is inhomogenous and your rocket was actually designed by a preschooler who's really good at KSP, this leads to the rocket shaking out of control and throwing debris everywhere.
But hey, propellant sloshing already caused a problem when we attempted to restart the engines on a centaur in 1965:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas-Centaur#Fourth_flight
But this problem was solved on a later centaur flight in 1975:
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19760006067.pdf

[Anonymous No.10986651]

>>10986638
>falling for the hydrogen meme
>>10986644
heterogeneous flow due to improper ullage is an issue, yeah, but you'd think SpaceX were better at space than preschoolers who are really good at KSP

[Anonymous No.10986666]

>>10986651
There's nothing that's actually forcing you to use hydrogen. It's an excellent choice for a nuclear rocket, though. It has a high interaction cross section with the reactor core, and the light weight means you get high exhaust velocities and very high specific impulse.

[Anonymous No.10986685]

>>10986666
yeah but your T/W is going to suck

[Anonymous No.10986691]

>>10986685
Tankage mass is a much less significant portion against the weight of a nuclear reactor.

[Anonymous No.10986725]

>>10985520
There's still a few light years of mileage left in this one

[Anonymous No.10986742]

>>10985534
I worked on a Kazakhstan oilfield project a while back where they were planning to build an LNG plant whole, put the entire thing on a barge, ship it to purpose built port near the field, then roll AN ENTIRE LNG PLANT on a purpose built 10 mile gravel road with some kind of crawler tech. I suppose my point is that to concur with you, the methane production side of things is surely a minor concern.

[Anonymous No.10986745]

>>10986644
>why don't spacex test to reduce risk
Dumbass. No matter how many tests you do, it won't eliminate 100% of the risk. The best course for spacex and what they've been doing ever since is to mitigate for rough 90-95% of the risks and then sending/learning from real thing. This is why they're building starhopper/mk1/mk2 in the first place. They could sit around and theorize their shit for few years before doing anything like SLS is doing, but they don't have the luxury.

[Anonymous No.10986753]

>>10985575
Holy mother love. There is no question about it - I am going to do whatever it takes to be there in person to see the first time that shiny big silver bastard flies.

[Anonymous No.10986755]

>>10986753
goodbye to your eardrums

[Anonymous No.10986756]

STILL 9 FUCKING DAYS UNTIL THE PRESENTATION

REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

[Anonymous No.10986767]

>>10985724
> ESA: 'we aren't building a Tata!', aka the 'it's not about the destination, it's about the journey' philosophy on space launch

[Anonymous No.10986770]

>>10986756
we riot if it gets delayed again

[Anonymous No.10986778]

Jim Bridenstine on Twitter:
>Big News: NASA technicians have joined all five structures for the @NASA_SLS rocket core stage that will help send #Artemis I to the Moon. Next, technicians will add the four RS-25 engines to create the largest rocket stage NASA has built since Apollo.

https://twitter.com/JimBridenstine/status/1174808785166188545

[Anonymous No.10986783]

>>10986767
WTF is a Tata?

[Anonymous No.10986785]

>>10986770
This is now a Brexit thread

[Anonymous No.10986789]

>>10986755
Yeah not right next it to it obvs

[Anonymous No.10986807]

>>10986778
the engines are all that's left before it's done now

[Anonymous No.10986809]

>>10986783
Cheap Indian car without any creature comforts for $3000

[Anonymous No.10986820]

>>10985849
Well it was sort of a joke and I'm guessing you are playing devil's advocate but anyway the economics still don't make sense to me because it's not like we have cheap disposable rockets. On the contrary, they are horribly expensive, so any extra waste from superfluous reusability would surely be a minor concern when the whole structure of the industry at present is completely wrong. With BFR worst case scenario they end up with the most powerful and efficient engine in existence powering the heaviest lift rocket in existence, built with a low-cost fab technique that can even be done outdoors.

[Anonymous No.10986822]

>>10986783
>>10986809
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqV2YD8BnAo

[Anonymous No.10986824]

>>10986268
>>10986219
that's definitive FUD. Cryogenic upper stages have similar risks to propellant transfer and old space has flown dozens of those. And hey, maybe instead of just straight up refueling two starships, why not do a smaller demo mission first to derisk things? Oh and the interesting thing is that propellant transfer actually turns out to be more difficult when you have smaller tanks:
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19840017685.pdf
>>10986651
>>improper ullage is an issue,
Ok I need to calm down here because I might have just turned into a ULA shill, but ULA seems to have demonstrated a means of dealing with this. They took a centaur and just spun it and it turns out that works. Pic related from here, which is ULA shilling propellant depots:
https://sciences.ucf.edu/class/wp-content/uploads/sites/58/2017/02/Propellant-Depots-IEEE-2011.pdf
>> preschoolers
the issue here is that preschoolers don't understand what resonance is and the system resonance frequency ends up being too goddamn low. But yeah, I'd expect any half competent aerospace company to avoid this.
>>10986745
>>is to mitigate for rough 90-95% of the risks and then sending/learning from real thing.
which you do by doing smaller tests first. Dumbass.
>> theorize their shit for few years
the theory isn't good
the theory says that unless you've got a computer that can simulate stuff down to individual atoms that you really need to test a small scale system and that propellant transfer to a smaller tank is harder than it is with bigger tanks. So because ULA demonstrated spinning rockets are an ok means of getting fluid where you want in microgravity, now the big issues are on the receiver side. An empty prop tank ain't gonna be cold, so you need to figure out how to cool it. This could get weird if we just inject fluid straight into a warm tank, because then you've got the leidenfrost effect in microgravity.

[Anonymous No.10986831]

>>10986783
Asked about how the Ariane 5 compares to lower-cost alternatives on the market today, such as SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket, Stefano Bianchi, Head of ESA Launchers Development Department, responded with a question of his own. “Are you buying a Mercedes because it is cheap?”

Ranzo, sitting nearby, chimed in and referenced the India-based maker of the world’s least expensive car. As he put it, “We don’t sell a Tata.”'

https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/07/as-the-spacex-steamroller-surges-european-rocket-industry-vows-to-resist/2/

[Anonymous No.10986833]

>>10986824
>An empty prop tank ain't gonna be cold, so you need to figure out how to cool it. This could get weird if we just inject fluid straight into a warm tank, because then you've got the leidenfrost effect in microgravity.
Recirculative cooling. Pump fuel into the tank, let it vaporize and capture the heat energy, pull it back out and run it through a cryocooling system, condensing it again to be dumped back into either the receiver ship's tanks or the sender ships tanks.
Once the tank has been chilled enough, bulk transferring can begin.

[Anonymous No.10986834]

>>10986638
No, hydrogen is the cuck propellant, and vertical stack reactors waste space. You can build reactors who's nuclear pile is a set of spiraling fins which have much greater surface area for offloading heat which will allow your pile to be much smaller and generate significantly higher propellant temperatures and mass flow rates as a result of that. Then switch over to methane so your components don't get fucked up by hydrogen embrittlement and you have a nuclear rocket actually worth firing, and one which could easily generate a high enough TWR to lift off in a 1G+1 Bar environment.

[Anonymous No.10986839]

>>10986778
So large it's literally warping the space around it

[Anonymous No.10986844]

>>10986831
>*Upper stage fails to ignite"

[Anonymous No.10986850]

>>10985601
The preburner is not as hot as the hottest parts of a jet engine. Same goes for the rocket engine turbine.

[Anonymous No.10986857]

>>10986844
Kek

[Anonymous No.10986858]

>>10986824
>>10986820
Because of this weird shit, we need to actually do some experiments in microgravity to figure out how fast heat is actually transferred and figure out what effects are relevant during said process. This turns out to be a bigger problem when you've got a smaller tank, because the ratio of the thermal mass of the tank to the propellant is higher:
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19840017685.pdf
>>10986833
That's sort of what ULA wants to do for the CRYOTE mission, but it might also be that we can just spray some fluid in like pic related and cool things down real fast.

[Anonymous No.10986865]

>>10985847
A large number of microcenturies, since in 100 years there are only ~36,500 days, and a microcentury is 1/1000000th of a century.

[Anonymous No.10986876]

>>10986807
Just three months per engine install and then the SLS (pbui) core stage will be ready for another eight months of structural analysis and then a partial disassembly and penultimate cleaning (should take no more than three months), prior to the final assembly and final cleaning (four months, tops), then transport to the launch site for just a few more months of checkouts and then we'll only be a month away from first launch!

Provided there are no delays, of course.

[Anonymous No.10986879]

>>10986292
Even as a bong (we were ahead of the US in several areas of aerospace post-WW2 before the US usurped us through fair means and foul) there's something sad about seeing a rock solid pillar of global engineering stumbling like this. I can't help but feel it's related to the passing of a generation that had different values, and perhaps also indicative of America's very slowly fading power. Maybe I'm talking shit though idk.

[Anonymous No.10986884]

>>10985932
No
Not just because it uses coal, but because it's a hybrid. It's a really shit design. Worst of all worlds.

[Anonymous No.10986885]

>>10986858
your ullage settling thrust should cause your propellant blob to contact the walls, so you're not going to get a big blob floating in the middle of your tanks suddenly contacting the hot wall all at once near the end of fueling causing a pressure spike

[Anonymous No.10986891]

>>10985955
Lunar X prize had the right idea but the wrong execution. There should have been $100 million on the line MINIMUM, otherwise there'd be zero chance to make any profit. With the actual $1 million prize the competition was a guaranteed money sink. That type of competition attracts dreamers, not people interested in making a sustainable product.

[Anonymous No.10986892]

>>10986884
alumi-LOx has been proposed as a home-grown hybrid engine for use on the moon
long term, you're just flat out going to run out of water to try to make propellant out of if you want to lift billions of tons of junk off the moon

[Anonymous No.10986901]

>>10986120
There is literally nothing difficult about in-space propellant transfer and there never has been. It's just a matter of how exactly you want to move your fluids around; SpaceX is choosing a method that lets them transfer fluids at very high rates but uses a small amount of propellant in the process to provide a bit of acceleration to keep fluids settled where they should be. This method would be impossible for anyone at NASA to consider because it "wastes payload" but in reality it's just the simplest and easiest method and SpaceX doesn't care if they only get 99.9% of their ~100 ton propellant payload into the vehicle at a time.

[Anonymous No.10986906]

>>10986666
Woah nice quads there lad

[Anonymous No.10986911]

>>10986901
>This method would be impossible for anyone at NASA to consider because it "wastes payload"
>"If we drop the paint on this external tank then we can add 272 kg of payload to our 23t of total payload possible! I mean, its not like the foam coming off without that paint reinforcing the outside of the foam would be important for anything..."

[Anonymous No.10986914]

>>10986260
Gonna need a source on that

[Anonymous No.10986923]

>>10986246
All high-elliptical-orbit refuelings happen using a tanker that starts off being refueled in a very low orbit first, which then boosts alongside a refueled Starship, then once they're both on the same trajectory they link up and transfer propellant. The low part of this highly elliptical orbit can be adjusted to be well inside the atmosphere if they want to minimize debris risk, so that if one of the vehicles were destroyed somehow it'd eventually just deorbit.

[Anonymous No.10986934]

>>10986599
What's the weapon that goes from torpedo to rocket to missile to plane in about 3 seconds? Submarine launched cruise missile I think.
We need more silo launches, they are fun. Just reading that Bigelow's Genesis 1 went up on a Dnepr.

[Anonymous No.10986943]

>>10986644
>LOX
Why are you talking about oxygen as if it can exist as a liquid in the vacuum of space? if anything leaks out of the tanks it instantly flashes to vapor and the particles at the lower end of the bell curve of thermal energy freeze instantly to plug the hole. If the liquid behind the plug is warm enough the solid plug can melt and repeat the process, producing a sputtering effect.
We actually see this all the time on the SpaceX live stream launches where they show the 2nd stage, because one of the oxygen bleed lines always builds up a nice frosty solid oxygen snowflake.

[Anonymous No.10986953]

>>10986126
Nuketorare?

[Anonymous No.10986959]

>>10986691
Not for any NTR design that isn't NERVA, and even then the tanks NERVA was meant to be mounted to weighed significantly more than the engine. NERVA was very much a product of 50's engineering and technology, we can do MUCH higher power to weight ratio reactors nowadays. The TIMBERWIND project for example was expecting to produce engines that would get >25 TWR using hydrogen propellant at sea level, compared to NERVA's ~4 TWR in vacuum with a big ass vacuum nozzle. Give a TIMBERWIND engine methane propellant instead and you'd be hitting the high 50's for thrust to weight ratio, useful enough to allow for direct NTR propelled launch vehicles without the need for chemical boosters, plus the thing would still be spitting out methane at around 550 Isp at sea level and >600 Isp in vacuum, way above hydrolox for less dry mass overall.

To suck methane's dick a little more I'd like to add that when comparing NTR stages, the advantage of methane's higher density means that you could in fact achieve delta V of around 10 km/s using methane with only a slightly better mass ratio required than using hydrogen, which (the mass ratio improvement) you get automatically since methane is 5x denser than hydrogen, effectively meaning 1/5th the tank mass and ZERO insulation mass required.

[Anonymous No.10986970]

>>10986691
Dude, mass flow rate is more important than tank mass when considering TWR. A nuclear engine that can ingest 1 cubic meter of propellant per second that uses hydrogen at a rate of 70 kg per second and ~1000 Isp. That same engine (at least in terms of hardware size and mass) can move about 350 kg of methane per second, 5x as much mass, at ~610 Isp, GREATER than 1/5th the Isp (actually it's even greater than one half). This means you get a reduced specific impulse using methane but a FAR greater level of thrust. You also reduce the dry mass of the vehicle given the same wet mass, because of how much more dense methane is, but that difference is relatively minor compared to the raw thrust increase.
Another lower Isp higher thrust propellant is water; H2O propellant can go through this engine at a mass rate almost three times that of methane, and over 14x that of hydrogen, and gets an Isp of around 325 in vacuum, about on par with a good hypergolic staged combustion engine. This is why I personally think the best use case for NTR is actually to propel hoppers and SSTOs based on and around the icy moons of the outer solar system, where low gravity and low delta V requirements are common but it still takes many months to generate chemical fuels, yet water ice is literally the most abundant thing around.

[Anonymous No.10986975]

>>10986778
If someone were to storm the building and shoot this thing with a shotgun they'd go down in history forever as the anon who killed the SLS program

[Anonymous No.10986977]

>>10986970
mass flow rate is ultimately limited by the safety factors on the nuclear reactor power, which may or may not be relevant in this discussion

[Anonymous No.10986978]

>>10986844
got em

[Anonymous No.10986984]

>>10986970
Thrust is secondary in Beyond-Earth-Orbit applications to specific impulse, barring radical shortfalls in thrust, like those of ion engines.

[Anonymous No.10986990]

>>10986975
>virgin ula snipers versus chad shotgun anon

[Anonymous No.10986993]

>>10986892
We've all heard of alumilox propellant before but in terms of solid aluminum it's completely impractical. You need to grind the aluminum into an ultra-fine powder before it has enough surface area to burn in pure oxygen. Besides, all the same issues of hybrid rockets would still come into play, such as uneven fuel burning and extremely bad mixing of the propellants. If we're ever doing aluminum-oxygen rockets, we're doing it via liquid aluminum being sprayed into an engine and burning with liquid oxygen. It's gonna get quite shitty specific impulse but should be good enough for getting into Lunar orbit and back. Yes, handling molten aluminum on a rocket will be a pain, it's less of a pain to do that though than to powderize aluminum metal and somehow use that shit in a hybrid rocket.
Luckily Starship doesn't need to refuel on the Moon in its mission profile, though we can increase payload if we want to by bringing the methane we need but getting the oxygen needed to return loaded up from production on the Moon. Earth-based orbital refueling a la Starship should be more than enough to let us economically set up a stage 1 space elevator on the Moon, at which point we can use that to lift more and more cables and eventually get a truly large (thick) space elevator set up that'd let us lift thousands of tons into orbit in a single climber. From there, idk, liquid oxygen cold gas thrusters for course corrections after being slingshot away towards Earth or Mars?

[Anonymous No.10986997]

>>10986911
Imagine having a launch vehicle so shitty that not painting a single tank increases your vehicle's payload mass by over 1%

[Anonymous No.10986998]

>>10986993
we may find a better way of handling alumilox by the time we're seriously considering it for lifting shit off the moon

[Anonymous No.10987008]

>>10986984
Isp is secondary in beyond-Earth-orbit applications to aerocapture capability, because the latter lets you scrub off tens of kilometers of relative velocity without having to propulsively scrub a single meter per second of delta V.

Anyway, TWr certainly matters for any application for NTR that is actually useful, such as landing on and hopping back into orbit around icy moons. In fact that's the most useful aspect of NTR by far, the fact that the energy to run the engine comes from nuclear fuel built into the engine means you are using inert propellant, which therefore means you can get your propellant via ISRU very very easily because you don' have to actually do anything to it other than melt and filter it.

[Anonymous No.10987018]

>>10986901
>>provide a bit of acceleration to keep fluids settled where they should be.
fuck, guess I'm shilling for ULA again. ULA says that all their cryogenic upper stages have done this for years and that they can get 99.5% of fluid out of the tanks. Oh and you can just fucking spin the tanks too and ULA demonstrated that this works. In short ULA considers transfer and storing LOX and fucking hydrogen for months to be pretty high TRL as of 2011, and basically only like two demo missions are needed before we can use the tech.
https://sciences.ucf.edu/class/wp-content/uploads/sites/58/2017/02/Propellant-Depots-IEEE-2011.pdf
So yeah, even according to ULA it isn't too difficult.

Aaaaaand oh shit NASA did a test on the ISS for testing some of the stuff needed for propellant transfer in 2017:
https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/explorer/Investigation.html?#id=1135

[Anonymous No.10987025]

>>10986998
I mean, you have two options, solid aluminum or liquid aluminum. Solid is not pretty, for a variety of reasons, but the big two are that it's extremely difficult to ignite, and number two is that you're pretty much forced to use a hybrid design, which is inherently shit in every way. Liquid aluminum is a lot more attractive because you can spray it to form micro-droplets with high surface area on demand, it starts off quite hot so it takes less energy to light off, and it's almost trivial to engineer (because you don't engineer it at all, you just melt it and keep it hot while it's loaded in the rocket). However, handling molten aluminum in everything is obviously gonna be tricky, if it cools off enough to harden anywhere you're pretty much fucked. Also, an inherent flaw with aluminum-oxygen rockets is that the product of combustion condenses at 3000 degrees, meaning it can't expand and do much work before it cools off enough to turn into dust, which does NOT expand in a nozzle. This dust is also extremely abrasive, and would in effect be artificial moon dust, formed ina very similar way (meteorite strikes vaporize small amounts of aluminum oxide, which re-condenses into jagged 3 dimensional crystals of extremely small size). Basically your engine is gonna eat its nozzle very quickly.

[Anonymous No.10987029]

>>10987018
That's not really shilling for ULA, if anything it's damning that even ULA of all people think propellant transfer is very much on the table even for hydrogen, the shit.

[Anonymous No.10987039]

>>10986975
they'd also get thrown in the slammer and sued for hundreds of millions of dollars

[Anonymous No.10987041]

>>10987018
SHUT THE FUCK UP RIGHT NOW. ULA HAS NEVER EVEN CONSIDERED ORBITAL REFUELING. NEVER SPEAK OF THIS AGAIN!

[Anonymous No.10987069]

>>10987039
worth it
you'd be sleeping in your cell with the knowledge that you were a hero in the truest sense of the word

[Anonymous No.10987079]

>>10986975
They can't stop us all...

[Anonymous No.10987093]

>>10982927
>>10983573
Why aren't people talking more about the self confessed ABSOLUTE NIGHTMARE FUEL existence of NASA right now..

[Anonymous No.10987100]

>>10987093
it was already known

[Anonymous No.10987122]

>>10987093
Because it's too depressing for me to even shitpost about it.

[Anonymous No.10987128]

>>10987093
So they pretty much confirmed that all musk has to do is keep to his timetable for starship and NASA will be forced to work with him for a joint moon landing to save face.

Hell, he could potentially launch a few heavies with modified red dragon's dug out of the trash bin to get them human flight certified and he would be unstoppable..

[Anonymous No.10987138]

>>10987128
SpaceX has a couple viable or semi-viable options for lunar missions. The most viable is using Falcon Heavy to yeet the ICPS and Orion, which should be able to get astronauts to the NRHO memegate. The least viable is to put SLS on top of Superheavy.

[Anonymous No.10987152]

>>10987069
Nah, this is what would happen:
>After the attack on Michoud Assembly Facility last week that destroyed a piece of space equipment worth hundreds of millions of dollars, Congress has voted to increase funding to the program.
>Public approval of NASA has risen to historic highs as the nation wonders what would drive someone to commit such a despicable act.
>"With this additional funding, we will show that the spirit of science and innovation lives on in America" said Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama. "We won't allow the progress of many to be thwarted by the reckless actions of one person."

[Anonymous No.10987160]

>>10987138
Don't forget to bolt SLS's SRB's to Superheavy.

[Anonymous No.10987164]

>>10987152
And in light of this incident, even THINKING the word depots is now considered TERRORISM

[Anonymous No.10987165]

>>10987160
no

[Anonymous No.10987167]

>>10987160
Pretty sure Superheavy wont need the SRBs even with SLS on top of it.

[Anonymous No.10987171]

>>10987165
>>10987167
How else are the SRB engineers going to eat? Do you Anons WANT to contribute to American unemployment?

[Anonymous No.10987186]

>>10987171
Retrain them so they're doing something useful for a change. if they wont change, give em a nice yearly pension or stipend or what have you and chuck em out. Their time is over.

[Anonymous No.10987202]

>>10987171
by replacing the fucking minuteman stockpile desu, two birds with one shelby, slap a hypergolic storable upper to the shuttle SRB and call it a day

[Anonymous No.10987209]

>>10987093
You can't even exaggerate how bad it is.

[Anonymous No.10987214]

pre-fueled, snap-together Lego stages for orbital refueling

[Anonymous No.10987219]

>>10987171
>Do you Anons WANT to contribute to American unemployment?
Unironically, yes. Burn it all down.

[Anonymous No.10987257]

>>10987171
Have them build something useful instead.
Make their employment more meaningful!

[Anonymous No.10987259]

>>10982927
that's GAO's job, they're supposed to roast people. GAO doesn't actually control NASA's budget, congress does that. GAO makes recommendations to NASA and congress and some time they listen. GAO testimony here btw:
https://www.congress.gov/116/meeting/house/109938/witnesses/HHRG-116-SY16-Wstate-ChaplainC-20190918.pdf
NASA really has been avoiding cost estimates for the Artemis mission though. Of course no one at NASA wants to say that they can't actually meet the dead line without MUCH more funding or not using SLS because then they'd be liable to lose their job.
>>10987209
it's been this way for a while now anon. NASA's goals have changed with every president. Although yeah, wow, it's pretty nuts that NASA's goals basically changed twice during a presidency. We went from asteroid redirect to deep space gateway to artemis all in the same presidency.

[Anonymous No.10987464]

>be aerospace engineering student
>school says that Boeing is their largest employer of AE graduates
>go to Handshake to see what Boeing is looking for in AE
>no results
why...

[Anonymous No.10987470]

>>10987464
you don't want to work for Boeing, my friend worked for them for a while and says they're completely fucking useless
you go to work for Boeing if you have no passion nor drive and just want to do dead end work for the rest of your life and retire as a middle class old man

[Anonymous No.10987478]

>>10987470
True, but apparently they're the largest employer of aerospace students at my school. So it's kinda disconcerting to see them show no interest in such students. I just want to work on rockets...

But I've heard other stories of how bad Boeing is. I've heard from someone who works at Boeing said that they once hired an electrical engineer to do CFD work instead of an aero. Very odd.

[Anonymous No.10987491]

>>10987478
They might be now, but will they be when you graduate and are actually ready to work? When it comes specifically to rockets I doubt they'll be the largest forever, especially with the "quality" of work they're putting out.

[Anonymous No.10987498]

>>10987478
You could go work at spacex, burn out in five years, then start your own company

[Anonymous No.10987502]

>>10987491
Since I'm graduating this year, I sure hope the industry doesn't get messed up by then.

>>10987498
I really don't want to work for SpaceX considering how harsh they treat their employees (especially after how they handled their down-scaling last year). I might try Blue Origin first, I've heard that they get way more internship applications than job applications so it's actually easier to get a job with them than an internship.

[Anonymous No.10987519]

>>10987502
I mean, even if you get downscaled, spacex on a resume is probably your ticket to work for anyone else

[Anonymous No.10987590]

>>10987502
SpaceX is literally the best place to work
Its a golden ticket for any job you want once you leave

[Anonymous No.10987600]

oooooh yes
here it comes, the LOx farm you need to make suborbital hops

[Anonymous No.10987603]

fug, forgot my image

[Anonymous No.10987613]

>>10987590
>FROZEN
>YOGURT

[Anonymous No.10987675]

>>10986831
People buy a Mercedes because it‘s comfortable to sit in.
So how about that Hermes?

[Anonymous No.10987683]

>>10987093
I didn‘t even see a single news article about it. Nobody fucking cares about 60? billion dollars getting wasted on SLS/Orion and Nasa‘s fall from grace in general. People just buy the T-shirts, because Nasa is science and science is awesome!

[Anonymous No.10987730]

>>10985777

[Anonymous No.10987830]

>>10987603
LOngX

[Anonymous No.10987841]

>>10987730
ALL HAIL CLANG
DESTROYER OF WORLDS

[Anonymous No.10987871]

>>10987025
It might make more sense to do electromagnetic launches (on magnetic sleds, imagine a maglev train as our first stage here), then use powerful plasma or ion engines that vaporize solid aluminum and yeet it out the back to achieve orbit.

[Anonymous No.10987874]

>>10987464
>wanting to be corporate drone

[Anonymous No.10987935]

>>10987675
Don't catch your drift me old mucker.
I'm very much in the 'ESA are acting like butthurt euro-twats' camp

[Anonymous No.10987940]

>>10987683
People are scared to criticise these days in case they be attacked themselves for being negative. Worse, I think people are even scared to make judgements in the first place.

[Anonymous No.10987945]

>>10987590
Didn't 1/3rd of all engineers in the US apply to work there last year or something?
At some point they'll need spatial scientists for Mars, perhaps my day will come

[Anonymous No.10988159]

>>10987841
HE COMES

[Anonymous No.10988177]

>>10987502
>especially after how they handled their down-scaling last year
What happened?

[Anonymous No.10988182]

>>10986778
So this is the result of over 5 years of work?

[Anonymous No.10988205]

>>10988182
Am I missing something, or is this seriously just a fuel tank?

[Anonymous No.10988217]

>>10988205
Is that facility new? Maybe they spent a bunch of time and money making just the building, I don't know.

[Anonymous No.10988227]

>>10988205
Nope, just an empty propellant tank, although since they're saying it just needs construction I assume all of the necessary plumbing, electronics, etc are mostly done it just needs to have the engines attached and it could be fueled and fired.
>>10988217
Nope, Michoud has been operating since 1940, originally producing C-76 planes and Sherman tanks, then Patton tanks, and was finally switched over to NASA oversight in 1961, so it's been operating under NASA for 58 years. They've built all 136 shuttle tanks. However they did take a hit from a tornado in 2017 which damaged some equipment, blew out some windows and injured 5 people, and did result in at least one meaningful delay in the SLS project.

[Anonymous No.10988228]

>>10988182
>>10988205
>>10988217
Welcome to government corruption and embezzelment

[Anonymous No.10988231]

>>10988217
it's because this post
>>10986876
isn't too far from the truth

[Anonymous No.10988247]

>>10988228
>5 years to make a big container
Maybe when they're finalizing construction Elon will land a Starship nearby and offer to lend a hand with finishing it up before 2040.

[Anonymous No.10988254]

>>10986831

Fuck these people

[Anonymous No.10988256]

>Intelsat sues OneWeb for fraud, theft
>USAF reactivating a retired NOAA sat
>HTV launch rescheduled to Sept 24
>Chinese launch on Sept 25
its an interesting morning

[Anonymous No.10988261]

>>10988247
They don't WANT to finish it
The longer it stays in limbo, the money taxpayer dollars they can steal

[Anonymous No.10988266]

>>10988177
SpaceX needed to let go a not insignificant number of employees due to shifting from development oriented tasks to production tasks. This is normal as development needs more people than production, but how SpaceX handled it was pretty poor. Instead of telling their employees ahead of time which ones are going to be let go, SpaceX just told all of their employees that one morning they'll contact the employees who were let go to not bother coming to work thay day. It was done because SpaceX is supposedly run like a Silicon valley company where they tend to do these things to put fear in their employees to encurage them to work harder.

[Anonymous No.10988306]

>>10988256
>Intelsat sues OneWeb for fraud, theft
https://spacenews.com/intelsat-sues-oneweb-softbank/
seems like Intelsat was getting kinda fucked there, even though there's still no satellites yet to resell access to

[Anonymous No.10988312]

>>10988261
This.>>10986343
They were paid for being late. Its clear that NASA management doesn't really care about spaceflight.

[Anonymous No.10988321]

>>10988266
>run like a Silicon valley company
When I worked for Cisco back in the 2Ks, they handled layoffs by giving you plenty of notice (3 months, IIRC), with good severance, or you could (try to) apply for another job in the company before then. Of course that was for a salaried software engineer, not hourly factory work building routers.
Still, "call to see if you still have your job tomorrow" is pretty shitty for a company that's not having big financial problems. I doubt even Walmart does that.

[Anonymous No.10988327]

>>10985993
nice blog post

[Anonymous No.10988344]

>>10988327
Learn how to read more than 200 characters at a time, zoomie.

[Anonymous No.10988366]

>>10985944
This, but with Bigelow modules set up with Skylab-style stacked circular floors, hanging radially from a rotating circular corridor like fruit from a branch (or pic related).

[Anonymous No.10988404]

>>10988205
The innocence of this comment made me laugh. Something about the emperor and his clothes.

[Anonymous No.10988411]

>>10988254
Quite so

[Anonymous No.10988416]

>>10988321
These days they'll do that if the hedge fund that owns them is only making enough profit to hire 50 booty shakers for their Xmas bash, rather than 500

[Anonymous No.10988417]

What happened with that near-collision thing I heard a while back, turned out to be a nothing burger?

[Anonymous No.10988422]

>>10988417
Chances were low from the start.

[Anonymous No.10988428]

>>10988416
that happened to Boeing a while back, they fired everybody competent to save money
the CEO at the time's previous experience was at 3M, where that's a totally legitimate strategy that works well for them, but it didn't work so well in aerospace

[Anonymous No.10988436]

>>10988344

[Anonymous No.10988487]

>>10988366
Endurance was a retarded spaceship design and you know it

[Anonymous No.10988510]

excuse me what the fuck
https://youtu.be/HCaKwnSES7k

[Anonymous No.10988522]

>>10988510
just another day in the life of jimmy nutron.

[Anonymous No.10988529]

>>10988522
my brain hurts, just tell me how close I'm allowed to get before I die of radiation or magnets or something

[Anonymous No.10988558]

>>10988529
>die of magnets

[Anonymous No.10988566]

>>10988487
First time I've seen it (I won't pay for cable or streaming), and here's what I think
>only one connection to the hub
lolwut, it'll be wobbly as hell without more spokes to keep oscillations down, zero-gee doesn't mean there are no forces to bend/twist modules apart
>ring modules connected via holes on their long sides
again, stability, the short end walls are sturdier, especially for the hub of >>10985944, put a small cube node there, you can add two more perpendicular modules too
Actually if I look closer it's not that bad, and maybe even good to have the ring at a lower-gee radius. It still needs lots more struts.

Also >>10988366 got me to thinking that you could arrange the outer modules as long floors, then make the spoke modules have the circular floors, also plenty of room for "dial your gravity" experiments and low-g recreation space.
So maybe ten Bigelow modules, eight 22.5º ring adapters, and a hub module. Comfy.

[Anonymous No.10988571]

>>10988558
fucking magnets
how do they work

[Anonymous No.10988575]

>>10988558
a real issue around a magnetar

[Anonymous No.10988578]

>>10986402
Could a solar sail double as a mirror to superheat propellant?

[Anonymous No.10988582]

So did India kek themselves?

[Anonymous No.10988585]

>>10986343
The fact that they weren't all arrested for that is the most damning part of all

[Anonymous No.10988588]

Did you know that some of the tech being developed for the SLS is directly enabling for propellant depots? How will Shelby recover?
>>10988529
If you're in the beam path, you might need to stay light years away.
>>10988558
at high enough magnetic fields, chemistry as we know it stops working. This means you'd die.

[Anonymous No.10988595]

>>10988578
Not really
The sizes you'd need for it to be anywhere near useful would make it pointless

[Anonymous No.10988602]

>>10988585
Its one if those things that are morally wrong but not illegal. What I found "funny" was that NASA only stopped after the OIG found out and told them out about it. I believe the GAO also saw that NASA management was doing blatantly bad practices but only stopped doing so when caught and told not to do that.

Remember that they don't even have a design for a lander despite only having 5 years left to get to the moon.

[Anonymous No.10988608]

>>10988578
It would need to be absolutely gargantuan, impractically large unless you're very close to the sun.

[Anonymous No.10988663]

https://twitter.com/i/status/1175108254831140868
PRESIDENT TRUMP:

"We're going to Mars. We're stopping at the moon. The moon is actually a launching pad, that's why we're stopping at the moon."

[Anonymous No.10988680]

>>10988663
I thought that the moon is a part of mars?

[Anonymous No.10988688]

>>10988663
Great, that can apply to pretty much any other big space project too, the moon is a great launching pad especially once you lay down some moon concrete so dust isn't an issue. It's a flying ball of shielding with low gravity, proximity to Earth sufficient for near instant communication and emergency resupply, and a small stockpile of valuable rare metals readily available on the surface.

[Anonymous No.10988706]

>>10988588

>How will Shelby recover?

By demanding that the SLS be made out of clusters of SRB's. No liquid fuel, no depots.

[Anonymous No.10988792]

>>10988706
fun historical fact: one alternate design for the Saturn V would use a fucking gigantic solid rocket motor, the Aerojet AJ-260, for the first stage instead of the F-1. Here's a test article for it

[Anonymous No.10988870]

>>10988663
>go to the moon
>mine the easily accessible titanium, aluminium, iron, rare earth elements, etc.
>make a space elevator with existing materials because the moon's 16% gravity makes it actually viable
>use both to build yuge shit in lunar orbit because you now no longer have to design it for a rocket fairing and vibration
>can now do what ever the fuck you please, wherever you please
why send starships as solo units when you can dock them to a big fuck off spin gravity barge that travels back and forth to wherever using a now non-dangerous nuclear engine

[Anonymous No.10988871]

>>10988792
I‘m glad von Braun wasn‘t a complete retard.

[Anonymous No.10988875]

>>10988871
don't be harsh anon
back then, we were first learning how to do this shit, we didn't have the vast volumes of data we do now
perhaps solids could have been the way to go, as it turns out, they aren't, and its because they tested this shit that we know that

[Anonymous No.10988884]

>>10988792
I would be very afraid of being near that thing when it's full of propellant. It would probably go off like a small nuke if dropped hard enough.

[Anonymous No.10988935]

>>10988663
It's obvious as hell that at one point someone told him that Moon missions were a stepping stone for Mars, but he took it literally

[Anonymous No.10988942]

>>10988884
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rmtzFNy1t3U

[Anonymous No.10989160]

https://cosmos.d3.ru/roskosmos-na-linii-1848491/?sorting=rating

>Rogozin:"Why do Americans reuse the first stage? Because they buy that engine for three times its price. They buy those engines from us. But it's cheap to make them"

Yikes
I always knew the trampoline man was a bit of a cunt but outright lying like this made me lose all the semblance of respect for him.

[Anonymous No.10989183]

oh...

[Anonymous No.10989185]

>>10989183

[Anonymous No.10989187]

>>10989160
>>10989183
I don't speak subhuman so could someone translate

[Anonymous No.10989203]

>>10989187
they used a photo of F9 for the presentation about a new Russian rocket

[Anonymous No.10989210]

>>10989203
>shitpostski shitpostski shitpostski vodka

[Anonymous No.10989211]

>>10989160
vodkaniggers have been universally lying cunts since 1918

[Anonymous No.10989232]

>>10988935

[Anonymous No.10989303]

>>10989160
But SpaceX make their own engines though...

[Anonymous No.10989343]

>>10988663
>>10988935
>>10988680
Have y'all considered that as soon as you realize Trump's "Moon is a part of Mars" was Trump trying to articulate "Moon is a part of the Mars plan", everything else he's said is pretty cohesive? He's just repeating NASA's party line as he reads it.

[Anonymous No.10989353]

>>10989343
No. Obviously the moon orbits mars.

[Anonymous No.10989384]

>>10989353
long term species goal: replace the moon with mars

[Anonymous No.10989390]

>>10989384
Didn't the Mechanicum try to turn Mars into a spaceship?

[Anonymous No.10989401]

>>10989390
probably but they've tried to do a lot of dumb shit

[Anonymous No.10989408]

>>10989401
Making Mars a binary system with Earth wouldn't be dumb if you had the massive energies to do such a thing.

[Anonymous No.10989553]

Look at what I found!
http://neverworld.net/truax/

[Anonymous No.10989601]

NASA Senate budget hearing scheduled for Thursday at 10 am. Just in case you didn't know, the chairman for the Senate appropriations committee is Senator Richard Shelby.
Whether or not you like the guy, I think there's good odds he slips in some extra NASA funds for Artemis. His district would benefit from it.

[Anonymous No.10989613]

https://twitter.com/torybruno/status/1174788727870083072?s=21

[Anonymous No.10989620]

>>10989601
nasa is dead to me
they should stick to research and leave rockets to more competent people

[Anonymous No.10989632]

>>10989601
SHELBY, YOU ROTTING SACK OF SPARE RS-25 PARTS, FUCK YOU, AHHHHHHHH!

[Anonymous No.10989654]

>>10989601
>>10989632
The entire federal election process should be replaced by a draft.

[Anonymous No.10989696]

>>10989601
Project's that should have been a stepping stone from Apollo combined with shuttle technology hijacked by contractors and are years behind schedule and billions over budget? Better give them more time and money!

[Anonymous No.10989698]

>>10989696
No, you've got it wrong. We need to keep them motivated. Just pay them whenever they're behind. Surely nothing wrong could happen!

[Anonymous No.10989737]

Superheavey
STACC
T
A
C
C

[Anonymous No.10989739]

I wonder what this is....

[Anonymous No.10989742]

>>10989553
>RP-1 CH4 LOX tri-prop
you what

[Anonymous No.10989746]

>>10989739
Fleg roots! We have fleg roots!

[Anonymous No.10989749]

>>10989742
Apparently the methane was used as a pressurant for the LOx and RP-1. Or at least it was one of the pressurizing gasses as nitrogen was used for this purpose too.

[Anonymous No.10989751]

>>10989737
UH, THICCER!

[Anonymous No.10989756]

>>10989746
roots?

[Anonymous No.10989765]

>>10989756
The root where the flegs attach to the hull of Starship, where all the actuators and piping go

[Anonymous No.10989768]

>>10989737
So begins the assembly of what will be the most powerful rocket stage yet built when it's completed. By far: 151% (going by the 69 MN value) of the thrust of the current record-holder: the N1's first stage.

[Anonymous No.10989777]

>>10989765
it also has huge aerodynamic purposes as well
I wonder which end goes up?

[Anonymous No.10989784]

blep
>>10989763