/sfg/ spaceflight general

[Anonymous No.11422113]

Raptor edition
>Third Raptor test stand activated at SpaceX’s rocket development facility in McGregor, Texas. In the past year, the Raptor team has accumulated over 3,200 seconds of testing across 18 engines, including multiple full-power firings

old >>11417082

[Anonymous No.11422121]

>>11422113
FUCK yeah, about time we had a thread about the best (cheapest per unit thrust) rocket engine ever made

[Anonymous No.11422135]

Soon

[Anonymous No.11422139]

does anyone actually think Astra will make orbit firs try? Even the SS-520, which is a couple solids stacked on each other, failed initially

[Anonymous No.11422143]

>>11422139
Repeating numerals and it will detonate on the pad, throwing sections of ignited SRB everywhere.

[Anonymous No.11422147]

>>11422143
the astra "rocket" is liquid tho, keralox

[Anonymous No.11422148]

>>11422121
>cheapest per unit thrust
no, that would probably be some sort of unintentional steam explosion
Raptor's real claim to fame is thrust per unit area combined with thrust per dollar and sea level ISP all at the same time
>>11422143
Astra appears to be an electrically pumped liquid rocket

[Anonymous No.11422152]

>1 Raptor produces 2000 kN of thrust
>9 would produce 18,000 kN of thrust
>an SLS booster produces 16,000 kN
>the 9 engine booster design is already proven at Falcon 9 scale
>SpaceX could probably hammer out a cheap steel-tank 9 Raptor SLS booster replacement in a year and a half
>the resulting bastard child of a rocket would get more payload to LEO and beyond Earth orbit than current SLS and probably more than Pyrios SLS would have, while having the side boosters still capable of reuse.

eggsblaine why this is not a good idea

[Anonymous No.11422153]

>>11422148
ehh, the important bit of raptor is re-lighting, throttleability, and most importantly reliability/longevity. That's the secret sauce for why Starship's architecture will work out

[Anonymous No.11422155]

>>11422152
because of this:

H-H

[Anonymous No.11422157]

>>11422152
>finish SLS faster and cheaper
I don't think you understand

[Anonymous No.11422162]

>>11422155
Hulk Hogan?

[Anonymous No.11422167]

>>11422162
perhaps he means “heil hitler”

[Anonymous No.11422168]

Someday on Mars...

[Anonymous No.11422169]

>>11422167
Reasonable, he was an accomplished man

[Anonymous No.11422171]

>>11422153
Raptor is not very throttleable, last numbers we heard were bigger than 50%
the re-light and reliability/longevity claims have yet to bear fruit, but if they accomplish them they'll have the best engine ever by a long shot

[Anonymous No.11422177]

>>11422168
*snips your engine bell*

>>11422171
50% is great when you have six of them on a lander and can light them individually, and when you're usually landing with a full load

[Anonymous No.11422179]

>>11422177
>when you have six of them on a lander
thirty-seven at last count, anon

[Anonymous No.11422181]

>>11422179
Super Heavy, sure.

[Anonymous No.11422185]

>>11422171
>not very throttleable
>50%
That's huge for a rocket engine, dumbass
Most rockets can't throttle at all, and those that can almost never achieve less than 80%

[Anonymous No.11422187]

>>11422171
Throttlets, when will they learn?

[Anonymous No.11422188]

Hydrolox full flow staged combustion engine when?

[Anonymous No.11422190]

>>11422179
Superheavy will only land on the center cluster of Raptors, the outer ones will remain off, same way Falcon lands now more or less.

[Anonymous No.11422191]

>>11422188

[Anonymous No.11422192]

Interesting

[Anonymous No.11422193]

>>11422185
>>11422187
>throttles to 18% in your path

Nothing personal kiddo

[Anonymous No.11422195]

>>11422190
yes, I know
how many raptors is that?

[Anonymous No.11422197]

>>11422188
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_Powerhead_Demonstrator

[Anonymous No.11422198]

>>11422187
>combustion tap-off cycle
>hydrolox
>not even 1 meganewton of thrust
look at this duuuude

[Anonymous No.11422203]

>>11422198
Have fun with your suicide burns lol

[Anonymous No.11422209]

>>11422191
Can't make methane anywhere in the solar system except on Mars and on Titan. FFSC is the best for several reasons, and you're stuck with hydrolox, ergo FFSC hydrolox

[Anonymous No.11422213]

holy fuck SpaceX have you not heard of SCAFFOLDING

[Anonymous No.11422214]

>>11422203
>he doesn't know the difference between a suicide burn and a hover slam
lmao

[Anonymous No.11422215]

>>11422195
Central 7.

[Anonymous No.11422219]

>>11422213
Scaffolding takes too long to set up

[Anonymous No.11422222]

>>11422203
>He doesn't want to hover SLAM JAM.

[Anonymous No.11422225]

>>11422222
BASED

[Anonymous No.11422226]

>>11422152
Raptor is too expensive to develop and certifying it for flight will take a decade or even two.
It's best to go with proven technologies minimizing risk and cost so that we can have a real sustainable American space program.

[Anonymous No.11422228]

>>11422226
Honestly not sure if this post is ironic or not.

[Anonymous No.11422229]

>>11422209
>Can't make methane anywhere in the solar system except on Mars and on Titan

You can make it literally anywhere with rocks but you’d need smelters.

[Anonymous No.11422230]

>>11422209
Useless. Shipping kerosene will be cheaper.

[Anonymous No.11422234]

>>11422229
Most rocks have minimal to no carbon content

[Anonymous No.11422237]

>>11422213
Scaffolding sucks for that sort of height, it's all about those manlifts baby

[Anonymous No.11422239]

>>11422230
No.

[Anonymous No.11422242]

>>11422234
wrong

[Anonymous No.11422247]

>>11422239
>t. Aerojet fishing for federal money

[Anonymous No.11422251]

>>11422234
Ceres has a lot of surface carbon.

[Anonymous No.11422253]

>>11422242
What are you thinking of, limestone? Gypsum? You fucking retard? Those rocks are extremely rare in the entire solar system except on Earth where geologic processes have allowed calcium to be continually brought to the near-surface where it can react with water in the oceans and form deposits of those minerals. No other world has tectonic processes like ours does that could produce large amounts of carbon rich rock near or on the surface. Literally end your fucking life you useless piece of trash. Don't talk to me about carbon bearing minerals on other planets ever again.

[Anonymous No.11422257]

>>11422253
the creation of limestone and gypsum doesn't create carbon, that carbon already existed

[Anonymous No.11422258]

>>11422192
>10 Heavies a year
I'm guessing this is their maximum capacity? No way they would have that much demand, even if they win the Air Force contract.

[Anonymous No.11422262]

>>11422258
NRO has some fat birds to launch

[Anonymous No.11422266]

>>11422251
Ceres is not a planet

Anyway, the argument against methane for use in the solar system at large except for on Mars and Titan is due to the increased hassle of producing it anywhere that there isn't a carbon rich atmosphere or literal lakes of it just laying around. If you have to extract carbon from rocks, just stick to making hydrolox.

[Anonymous No.11422270]

>>11422266
>Ceres is not a planet

Meaningless semantic bullshit. It’s a giant spherical rock orbiting the sun.

[Anonymous No.11422272]

>>11422257
fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you
That carbon gets CONCENTRATED through the process of being locked up as carbonates
Until it's concentrated it's not practical to extract

[Anonymous No.11422273]

>>11422258
Yeah, these are just hypothetical figures representing the maximum possible cadence for each pad.

>>11422262
They do, but their all booked on Delta 4Hs until 2025.

[Anonymous No.11422281]

>>11422253
Where will you NOT find carbon readily available, actually? Mars has it. Ceres has it? Jovian moons are choke full of it. Saturn's too and as a bonus one has it processed already. Even mercury if you could get there should have it around the polar regions where the water ices lie. The Moon I guess? This begs the question if FFSC hydrolox engine is even needed for the Moon.

[Anonymous No.11422284]

>>11422270
>a plucked chicken is not a man

Meaningless semantic bullshit. It's a featherless biped with warm blood.

[Anonymous No.11422289]

>>11422281
>This begs the question if FFSC hydrolox engine is even needed for the Moon.

Why not a dual-expander cycle hydrolox engine?

[Anonymous No.11422291]

>>11422284
>The difference between Homo sapiens and a chicken is comparable to the difference between rocks who are only not classified as planets because they share their orbit with asteroids

Cringe.
Earth isn’t a planet because it has Trojans.

[Anonymous No.11422307]

>>11422291
Earth is a planet BECAUSE it has trojans. Earth's gravity cucked those tiny bitch rocks into defined regions of space, and kicked out everything else. Ceres on the other hand is just the fattest pajeet in a new delhi open meat market.

[Anonymous No.11422313]

>>11422291
Homo sapiens more closely resembles a chicken than Earth resembles Ceres

[Anonymous No.11422321]

Speaking of Ceres, could a fully loaded Starship reach it if it were taking off from Mars? Would it be able to land? How much payload could it take? Would it even be able to last for a long mission like that (longer than Earth to Mars and back because of the distance from the Sun)?

[Anonymous No.11422324]

>>11422266
where are you going to get the oxygen for your rocket on Titan?
>>11422272
usefully concentrating and sorting space rocks is going to be a hell of a job
>>11422289
isn't that an open cycle dual-expander?
gotta close that cycle bruh

[Anonymous No.11422332]

>>11422313
Not quantifiable.

[Anonymous No.11422335]

>>11422324
>where are you going to get the oxygen for your rocket on Titan?
Hydrolysis, just like everywhere else. That's the thing, every methalox ISRU architecture will depend on the side production of hydrogen and oxygen anyway, which is why it makes sense that the deep space economies of the solar system will eventually start using hydrolox propulsion by default.
>usefully concentrating and sorting space rocks is going to be a hell of a job
Yeah, for some things (like phosphorous for fertilizer) it'll be necessary and worth it, but for fuel production where you need thousands of tons annually even for relatively small scale transportation efforts you don't want to be hampered by having to extract components of your propellant from rocks that only bear 1 part per thousand or so.
>gotta close that cycle bruh
Agreed

[Anonymous No.11422356]

>>11422113
>over 3,200 seconds of testing
LOL, longer than the elusive BE-4 already.
Raptor has even been used in flight.
BO BTFO

[Anonymous No.11422358]

>>11422335
where are you going to get the energy to create that oxygen?

[Anonymous No.11422359]

>>11422332
Yeah it's quantifiable, I just did it

[Anonymous No.11422369]

>>11422358
On Titan? Nuclear power, obviously. In fact we'd want to use nuclear power anywhere out past Jupiter.

[Anonymous No.11422372]

>>11422148
>no, that would probably be some sort of unintentional steam explosion
Steam explosion you say?

[Anonymous No.11422373]

>>11422359
Elaborate. I think Earth is more like Ceres than humans are like chickens.

[Anonymous No.11422376]

>>11422369
why bother with chemical engines?

[Anonymous No.11422385]

>>11422356
Body Odor is proof that mo money is mo problems, SpaceX developed a smaller, more efficient methalox engine with a more advanced combustion cycle and nearly equal thrust which can be cheaply mass produced for less money than BO spent solving the power head problems that prevented them from firing their engine above 60% thrust.

[Anonymous No.11422387]

>>11422226
>AMERICAN space program for AMERICAN JERBS!
Ftfy anon

[Anonymous No.11422390]

>>11422237
I don't see why they can't build it in a silo with platforms

[Anonymous No.11422398]

Is Starships nosecone going on lads? The cranes rigged up.

[Anonymous No.11422405]

>>11422398

[Anonymous No.11422408]

>>11422376
Because you can park your nuclear power source on the ground and have it working constantly while you use the much more versatile liquid chemical propellants it produces for a variety of purposes. Sure a nuclear thermal rocket looks good on paper, but it comes with some significant drawbacks, such as the fact that after landing your astronauts have to wait for a few days for the fission products to decay before they can leave the crew cabin and stand next to the vehicle. For Titan specifically, achieving orbit is so easy it's stupid, because as long as you supply both fuel and oxygen you can use air breathing ramjets to achieve low Titan orbit velocities. You don't even need scramjets. A vehicle launching from Titan could lift off using turbojet power, accelerate sideways and up using ramjets, shut down and coast to apoapsis in a passive coast phase, then circularize using a small chemical rocket burn. Very large payload masses are achievable. Also, since Titan orbital velocity is so low, you can very easily build a fully reusable non-eroding thermal protection system, so your vehicles can make effectively unlimited trips to orbit and back, so long as they have a fuel depot on the surface to stock up at.Low gravity plus thick atmosphere makes space travel happen on easy mode.

[Anonymous No.11422409]

>>11422405
they're just going to stack it up so that it looks good for the camera and get practice on it for SN2

[Anonymous No.11422410]

Is NTR the educated man's fetish?

[Anonymous No.11422414]

>>11422405
>inb4 they're just moving it 30 feet and setting it back down
ELOOOOON

[Anonymous No.11422427]

>>11422373
Humans and chickens share over 90% of the same DNA. We're made of exactly the same complex amino acids and fats and carbohydrates and nucleotides and so forth. Both have circulatory systems for distributing water, oxygen, sugar, protein, fat, and hormones, as well as removing CO2 and waste, among other things. Both can see, hear, smell, taste, and touch. Both can feel pain and suffer immensely from our modern draconian hellworld society. Both have similar basic pattern recognition capabilities. The list goes on.

Earth and Ceres both orbit the Sun. Earth and Ceres are both round. Their compositions differ, their internal structures differ immensely, their past histories are completely different, etc etc.

A human is more like a chicken than Earth is like Ceres.

[Anonymous No.11422428]

>>11422324
>isn't that an open cycle dual-expander?
From what I've read no. Only the BE-3U is an open expander cycle.

[Anonymous No.11422429]

>>11422356
Blue has been full-duration test firing BE-4 since August 2019 and are delivering their first engines to ULA in May, I think their doing fine.

>>11422385
>SpaceX developed a smaller, more efficient methalox engine with a more advanced combustion cycle and nearly equal thrust

The difference in efficiency between FFSC and ORSC is incredibly minuscule to the point that it’s not even worth comparing. The real advantage of FFSC is that it’s gentler on the plumbing, leading to better conditions for reusability. Blue’s aiming to create these conditions by instead keeping their chamber pressure at a benign level, to reduce wear and tear. Also, when was 1.8 mega-newtons “nearly equal” to 2.4?

[Anonymous No.11422434]

>>11422427
we don’t orbit the sun, we orbit the Jupiter-Sun barycenter. Which, is even outside of the diameter of the Sun!

[Anonymous No.11422436]

Going vertical.

[Anonymous No.11422438]

Anyone got any inside info on what oldspacefags really think about SS/SH? Are they internally laughing, seething, fascinated, envious etc? The only slightly comparable situation I can think of is working at Nokia after Apple released the iPhone. Nobody is quite certain what will happen, but there's a nagging anxiety that this thing is hurtling down the tracks to run you over.

[Anonymous No.11422443]

>>11422410
Normies don't know what nuclear thermal rockets are and when they find out they're spooked.

As they learn a bit more about space travel they start to fetishize NTRs and think that if it weren't for politics killing them we'd be all over the solar system by now.

Then they learn more about the more specific challenges of NTR engines, and how expensive they would be, and how inflexible they would really be to try to implement, and they realize that chasing ever higher Isp at the cost of everything else including mission practicality is the true reason why manned space exploration has floundered ever since Apollo.

[Anonymous No.11422446]

>>11422436

[Anonymous No.11422447]

>>11422436
>Rocket Support Cart
Is that full of duct tape in case it falls over and has an owie?

[Anonymous No.11422450]

>>11422408
Why would you bother to land the nuclear powered deep space vehicle? Just carry landers on the main spacecraft.

[Anonymous No.11422453]

>>11422438
>The only slightly comparable situation I can think of is working at Nokia after Apple released the iPhone
I can't imagine it's anything like this. Everyone who works in oldspace is probably legitimately enthusiastic about space exploration and hopeful of the potential that SpaceX has. I simply cannot imagine anyone being jaded enough that they can't see beyond their own job to appreciate what the Starship promises to do for the industry and mankind as a whole.

[Anonymous No.11422454]

>>11422428
hmmmmm
I don't think it makes sense to use a closed cycle on your lower stage engines and an open cycle on your upper stage engines
I'm also not convinced it's appropriate to use hydrogen for the upper stage of a reusable booster

[Anonymous No.11422460]

>>11422429
>The real advantage of FFSC is that it’s gentler on the plumbing, leading to better conditions for reusability.
It means that for the same hardware working environment you get higher chamber pressure and efficiency.

[Anonymous No.11422461]

>>11422438
>The only slightly comparable situation I can think of is working at Nokia after Apple released the iPhone
Tesla vs ICE cars

[Anonymous No.11422462]

>>11422429
>The difference in efficiency between FFSC and ORSC is incredibly minuscule to the point that it’s not even worth comparing

Difference in thrust is significant, especially when you take into account engine size.

This means that Raptor powered first stage will have roughly double the *thrust per area* of BE-4 powered one.

Do not underestimate the importance of thrust.

[Anonymous No.11422467]

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/26/science/china-moon-far-side.html

~40 meters of regolith and the moon supposedly always facing the same side towards us according to the Chinese? That's gonna be rough shit to land heavy stuff on without putting down some proper concrete foundation.

[Anonymous No.11422468]

>>11422454
>I'm also not convinced it's appropriate to use hydrogen for the upper stage of a reusable booster

Why not? it’s the best upper-stage fuel by far, Blue switched to it from Methalox for New Glenn partially because they wanted better performance to GTO and TLI.

[Anonymous No.11422470]

>>11422434
Just shut the fuck up dude, no one cares

>>11422450
If you aren't landing your vehicle you're gonna have a hell of a time refueling it, and like I said, you need a nuclear power source to produce propellant on the surface that far from the Sun anyway. Also, by nuclear power I'm talking about reactors, NTRs aren't really worth the effort.

[Anonymous No.11422473]

>>11422467
Why do you think that? Apollo landed on regolith and they were totally fine. This latest 'the engine will dig a hole' story is nothing but FUD

[Anonymous No.11422477]

>>11422473
exhaust velocity bro

[Anonymous No.11422480]

>>11422473
The Eagle wasn't exactly a heavy-weight, was it? It wasn't exactly a fucking Starship.

[Anonymous No.11422483]

>>11422429
when was 2.45 MN smaller than 2.4 MN?
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1179107539352313856
of course, we don't have evidence for the 2.45 MN Raptor for Super Heavy existing yet
>>11422443
if something like a methane NTR could get all the kinks worked out it would be perfect on Titan
>>11422468
I'm not convinced.

[Anonymous No.11422493]

>>11422473
>Apollo landed on regolith and they were totally fine.


The LEM was tiny, very lightweight, it’s leg ends had a large surface area and the descent engine produced a relatively tiny amount of thrust (45kN). Literally perfect for landing on a powdered surface.

[Anonymous No.11422504]

>>11422493
What if they laid down like a giant "landing mat" to help disperse the weight?

[Anonymous No.11422509]

>>11422446
Does Kodiak beat Mahia in looks?

[Anonymous No.11422515]

>>11422483
>when was 2.45 MN smaller than 2.4 MN?

The 300 bar Raptor is a myth, it runs at between 240-250 bar usually. They did that one 268 bar test to try and one up the RD-180 which usually runs at 256 bar (but has certainly been tested higher on a stand) but realised it was too rough on the engine for operational use.

[Anonymous No.11422518]

>>11422493
a Starship hoverslam on the lunar surface is better than a protracted hover like the LEM

[Anonymous No.11422522]

>>11422504
Which way does a rocket point when it blasts off again?

[Anonymous No.11422525]

>>11422515
Elon has said (his engineers told him) that SpaceX could get it up to 300 bar if they discarded the ability to throttle
He appeared to like the idea.

[Anonymous No.11422531]

>>11422522
What are you talking about retard?

[Anonymous No.11422533]

Y’all zoomers need to STFU with all this liquid engine talk and get yourselves a real 2nd stage!

[Anonymous No.11422534]

>>11422480
>kill vertical velocity X meters off the ground and plop down on leg suspension
>kill vertical velocity X meters off the ground and plop down on leg suspension with RCS help
>kill vertical velocity X meters off the ground and land using beefed up in number RCS
>kill vertical velocity X meters off ground then kick out pad building equipment out of the airlock and burn back to orbit
>Hover for a moment near the ground to see if things look bad and abort depending on what you see
>wait 50 years for someone else to do it then give up and die

[Anonymous No.11422535]

>>11422470
So you want to take a reactor to the gas giant orbits with a chemical engine?

[Anonymous No.11422536]

>>11422531
>landing mat
>thinking that's going to help fix 40 meters of fucking dust in a tenth of our gravity
We're going to need to land light shit and do actual on site construction for some years before we think about landing anything heavy I believe.

[Anonymous No.11422538]

>>11422504
easier to send up some small rovers to try to lay down a pad in lunarcrete than trying to frisbee a big disk of something onto the surface

[Anonymous No.11422540]

>regolith

Couldn't the first starship easily carry a lander for a robotic construction vehicle that will create a hardened pad?

[Anonymous No.11422551]

We're going to be getting those apocalyptic moon landing memes until they finally land it there without giving a fuck, aren't we?

[Anonymous No.11422552]

>>11422540
sure, you just need to build the lander and the construction vehicle and devise the method by which the construction pad is made and out of what.

[Anonymous No.11422554]

>>11422536
it'll be fine

[Anonymous No.11422557]

>>11422551
yes

[Anonymous No.11422562]

>>11422552
>>11422536
couldn't a laser fuse regolith if you had some hardcore power source and bulldozed it flat first?

[Anonymous No.11422565]

>>11422551
That's an unfortunate fact of space flight. There are so many unknowns ahead that it's tempting to hold things off and panic about them. The only way to stop it is to push ahead despite the fears.

[Anonymous No.11422566]

>>11422533
Beautiful.

[Anonymous No.11422577]

>>11422536
I agree with this fellow American patriot but I can't help but dislike how you didn't mention that we need to use American made NASA certified public-private partnership(tm) built American Moon Landers utilizing proven legacy hardware for safe and sustainable cost effective missions beyond the Earth maintaining American Leadership In Space and bolstering public-private partnership further improving the American economy and promoting STEM education and the American scientific research.

[Anonymous No.11422578]

>>11422213
That is hydraulic scaffolding, moron.

[Anonymous No.11422593]

>>11422536
>Just wait 50 more years until a few tiny piece of shit rovers, one dirty solar panel charging station and a roll of duct-tape build a subpar multi-billion dollar "landing pad" the size of a kiddie pool.
No, fuck you, the way Starships are built you can afford to bury a couple, especially if the first one is automated.

[Anonymous No.11422600]

>>11422593
>inb4 kicked off orbital debris from the moon destroying gps sats and even crashing through the celestial dome causing us to lose our very air to the vacuum of space

[Anonymous No.11422601]

>>11422593
>Just wait 50 more years
Not what I wrote. I'd put people there yesterday and start building shit if I had my way, because that's what we need. If you think anything will ever get done with the "lol just shoot rockets at it and see what happens" mentality, you're either a fucking downie or baiting like a motherfucker. That's not how politics works and politics runs space whether you like it or not.

[Anonymous No.11422603]

>>11422593
based and David Farragut-pilled.

[Anonymous No.11422607]

>>11422601
Are you running for a record in self-contradiction? Go back to your desk Bridenstine

[Anonymous No.11422611]

>>11422601
>That's not how politics works and politics runs space whether you like it or not.
Abolish politics from space.

[Anonymous No.11422618]

>>11422607
>record in self-contradiction?
Maybe you should stop reading so much in between lines and jumping to conclusions, retard?

>>11422611
Good fucking luck.

[Anonymous No.11422623]

the thing I am most excited for is seeing the people with meme specialties like xenobiology immediately get replaced and their authority supplanted by actually smart people the moment tangible material turns it into a real branch of science beyond pure speculation.

[Anonymous No.11422627]

STACC
>>11422601
meh
looking forwards to SpaceX just shooting a rocket at it and seeing what happens
in the end that's what all of the fancy calculawhatsits come down to in the end anyway

[Anonymous No.11422632]

>>11422601
>Not what I wrote
Yet you would be fucking LUCKY if it happened that fast based on the simply laughable pace at which the current orthodoxy has advanced space progress. At the time of the moon landing it was hoped that 50 years hence we would have had multiple large habitats in orbit, permanent moon bases, and the beginnings of a colonization effort on Mars, reality? 50 years hence we haven't even fucking BEEN to the moon again, there's still exactly one large habitat in space and it's a kitbashed piece of shit which took a decade to figure out that you do in fact need resistance exercise to retain bone mass, WOW! You slow-and-steady motherfuckers are even worse for space than the gibs complainers who wish space exploration were just abolished so they could have more welfare, at least they're honest about how they simply want to fucking destroy the field.

You're the only fucking downie here, day of the rock drop soon.

[Anonymous No.11422641]

>>11422632
Play less KSP.

[Anonymous No.11422648]

>>11422627
M'lady

[Anonymous No.11422656]

>>11422226
anything else would be un-american and communist desu

[Anonymous No.11422659]

>>11422641
>I have absolutely zero rejoinder so I'll make a random unrelated quip.
So, by your schedule how many more decades till we land an actual significant payload on the moon smartass? And no, the hypothetical tin can landers which may or may not ever fly on SLS do not count as a significant payload, that's been done since 51 years ago. Go on, you're so incredibly fucking smart, what's your plan?

[Anonymous No.11422660]

>>11422618
You keep assuming people are misrepresenting you but you actually just lack a coherent viewpoint.

[Anonymous No.11422662]

>>11422659
So tell us your brilliant plan for digging out your substantial payload covered by 30m of dust after it's taken 50 years to settle?
If you can fucking find it, that is.

[Anonymous No.11422679]

>>11422461
Kek on yeah

[Anonymous No.11422706]

>>11422477
So? The lunar descent module engine had an Isp of 310, which means it had an exhaust velocity of over 3 km/s, which means every problem people are screaming about with Starship's exhaust velocity being too high should apply exactly the same.

[Anonymous No.11422715]

>>11422662
First vehicle is a tester, completely empty of payload, maybe even cut down significantly in height compared to the standard to save mass. It will hover a few hundred meters off the surface at first and slowly drop altitude to determine if dust is actually a problem, or if dustfags are completely full of shit. If there is no significant disturbance it lands normally and dustfags are eternally BTFO, their shrieking won't cease until after a full sized colony is established. If there is significant disturbance or at least indicators that it may become worse and worse the further the vehicle descends then one of two things may be done. It can return to LLO, or it could be equipped (during initial construction) with a set of nose-mounted vernier thrusters, sufficient to fly it around in .17g, most decelerating will be done using the primary drive and then the verniers will take over for the last few hundred meters, preventing the primary drive from excavating any craters. Any big rockets which are meant to land on Earth will have shocks more than sufficient to allow drive cutoff relatively high up, bursts from RCS packs can keep the craft both pointed in the right direction and help cushion it's landing at the last second.

Whether regolith excavation is actually a problem or not is irrelevant, there are scores of possible solutions which don't require decades more fucking bullshitting around with valueless pork programs or pathetic hyper cautious small scale super-expensive projects.

[Anonymous No.11422722]

Just epoxied my ramshackle nitrous thruster. Hopefully it holds up during pressure testing this weekend. Hopefully the thing works eventually too. I'm incredibly worried that it'll just sputter some flames for a fraction of a second before dying and spews out the rest of the nitrous.

[Anonymous No.11422723]

>>11422632
>gibs complainers who wish space exploration were just abolished so they could have more welfare
If they succeeded I would happily bang £50 a month, possibly more into a crowdfunded space exploration effort. Anyone else feel like this? I'd honestly contribute to the development of Starship now even getting nothing in return. Fuck these moaning tyrants that want to hold us back at all costs

[Anonymous No.11422731]

>>11422715
have you considered that hovering is an antagonizing factor?
my plan is as follows:
outfit a Starship with a bunch of cameras and sensors
stream real-telemetry to either earth or orbit
yeet

[Anonymous No.11422734]

>>11422723
The only reason I'm not already donating to Copenhagen Sub is because I'm a fucking poorfag and I'm saving to get a place of my own, once I start to save up disposable income I'm going to identify the startups which seem most promising and chip a little into each.

[Anonymous No.11422741]

the new one is VASTLY improved lol
https://twitter.com/BocaChicaGal/status/1233138610628702217

[Anonymous No.11422746]

>>11422535
It can be done, just rely on ISRU working when you send out your first spacecraft (just like we plan to do to get ISRU set up on Mars). Leave from Mars orbit with full propellant tanks, transfer directly to Jupiter, capture into a highly elliptical orbit, rendezvous with a small irregular icy moon in high Jupiter orbit. Use ISRU to refuel. From that small moon transfer down to Callisto, land, and set up ISRU there as well. To leave to go back to Mars/Earth, first transfer up to that little fuel depot moon, refill there, and burn directly back to Mars/Earth. On arrival, aerobrake the capture.

Going to Saturn is actually easier. Again, direct transfer from Mars up to Saturn, but use Titan's atmosphere as a brake pad to capture into the system. Either capture directly into Titan orbit, or capture into a Saturn orbit and do a once-around to encounter Titan again. Deorbit via aerobraking, and on the surface do ISRU to refill on propellant. When you want to leave to go back to Earth/Mars, use air breathing jet engines to accelerate all the way up to Titan escape velocity, and use rockets afterward to complete the transfer burn back to the inner solar system, and then aerobrake to capture there.

[Anonymous No.11422749]

>>11422741
It's still got that Elon's Junkyard & Spaceship Parts thing going on.

[Anonymous No.11422756]

>>11422632
based

[Anonymous No.11422759]

>>11422741
What they really need is a laser cutter with variable size and some huge fucking steel plates, they could cut those tapering rings as one single piece, wrap them around a frame shaped like the finished part and then weld it together with only a single seam.

[Anonymous No.11422760]

>>11422741

[Anonymous No.11422762]

>>11422746
is anyone actually seriously working on ISRU tech? The only thing I ever see are like 5-people teams of recent grads at some startup and all they have are CGI models. It's going to suck when we finally get rockets going and the ISRU technology is lagging behind.

[Anonymous No.11422763]

the planisher & switch to SpaceX's 300 alloy should make SN~2+ all look wonderful.

[Anonymous No.11422767]

>>11422763
Planisher definitely. What aesthetic moves are they making with the in-house steel? Bigger rolls?

[Anonymous No.11422773]

[Anonymous No.11422776]

>>11422767
varying thickness, better cryo performance. I assume it'll look *different* at least

[Anonymous No.11422778]

>>11422773
Needs this instead of the USAF roundel.

[Anonymous No.11422782]

>>11422773
imagine spending hundreds of millions on vertical integration because your special snowflake payloads fall apart if you sneeze on them wrong

[Anonymous No.11422784]

>>11422762
ISRU tech is literally every industry on Earth, dude
To more specifically answer your question, two guys working on a Mars mission architecture in the 90's developed a 99% efficient chemical reactor that took water and CO2 and made oxygen and methane, which was the size of a briefcase, and done on a shoestring budget. One of those guys was Robby Z, who you may have heard of. Neither of those guys were chemists.
I personally think that ISRU won't be hard. If we accept that we can use basically the same equipment we use on Earth if we just modify a few things and put other things in pressurized boxes, then ISRU becomes almost trivial.

[Anonymous No.11422785]

>>11422762
What form? Most are based on well understood processes (electrolysis, sabatier) and in the hypothetical case of Titan you can literally just succ up the lakes/atmosphere.

[Anonymous No.11422786]

>>11422782
What do you mean? SpaceX is already vertically integrated.

[Anonymous No.11422791]

>>11422734
Yeah I gave them some money a while back but it seemed like they were making claims they couldn't back up

[Anonymous No.11422796]

Borgar mad:
https://twitter.com/SciGuySpace/status/1233107454860374016
>Wow. And not in a good way.

[Anonymous No.11422797]

>>11422773
That fairing doesn't look right, unless they're finally making a bigger one?

[Anonymous No.11422799]

>>11422786
He means vertical payload integration. And I'll tell you why it's a USSF requirement in one word:
Keyhole.

[Anonymous No.11422800]

>>11422796
>mad
y?

[Anonymous No.11422801]

>>11422797
Yes. At least for that specific payload/mission

[Anonymous No.11422802]

>>11422797
Bigger fairing will be needed for the USSF contracts. Current one is too smol.

[Anonymous No.11422803]

>>11422799
any good books on spooopy spy sats? Not necessarily technical, just how they are used in warfare.

[Anonymous No.11422807]

>>11422784
the problem is the process of mining -> transporting -> processing -> storing has to be entirely automated and developed for lower gravity. No industry on Earth has anywhere close to this kind of capability because human resources are always cheaper. Think of that retarded rover that can't even hammer a spike into the ground, yet somehow they're supposed to set up an entire supply depot and build a structure before humans even get there?

[Anonymous No.11422811]

>>11422782
Imagine not having to spend large amounts of money upgrading your existing infrastructure for vertically integrated payloads...

>>11422786
He means SpaceX integrates payloads onto the vehicle horizontally, whilst the DoD has some payloads that can only be integrated vertically because some of their components (e.g. lenses) are too sensitive/fragile to support their own weight.

[Anonymous No.11422814]

>>11422786
Vertical integration in business means they build all their own stuff.
Vertical integration in a payload sense means instead of installing the payload while the rocket is tipped on its side, they need to install the payload while the rocket is standing up straight.

[Anonymous No.11422818]

>>11422796
What did he mean by this?

[Anonymous No.11422822]

>>11422807
no, the ISRU will be set up once humans arrive

[Anonymous No.11422824]

>>11422803
Not my area of expertise, unfortunately.
We can surmise, however, that current US spysats are ridiculously good. Remember that Trump leak? The image was so clear people originally thought it'd been taken by a drone.

[Anonymous No.11422826]

ERIC WHAT NEWS DO YOU HAVE
WHAT DID YOU MEAN BY THIS

[Anonymous No.11422827]

>>11422824
>our spystats are so good, we can measure the size of your penis from orbit

[Anonymous No.11422828]

>>11422801
>>11422802
Cool. Yet another drawback of Falcon 9/Heavy being eliminated. How will competitors cope?

[Anonymous No.11422831]

>>11422824
I'd speculate it's why they need vertical int, extremely tight tolerances, very powerful but equally delicate optics.

[Anonymous No.11422832]

>>11422827
Anon, the resolution isn't *that* high

[Anonymous No.11422837]

>>11422822
I'm mostly talking about Mars where IIRC the plan is to have autonomous robots set everything up several years before humans get there.
>Our aspirational goal is to send our first cargo mission to Mars in 2022. The objectives for the first mission will be to confirm water resources, identify hazards, and put in place initial power, mining, and life support infrastructure.
So far everyone seems to hand wave away this complex orchestration of specialty vehicles and 3D printers and whatever else they need as if it's trivial or already complete, but I have yet to see any evidence to support that with every concept I see still in the design phase.

[Anonymous No.11422838]

>>11422831
From what I've gathered, you're right on the money. These optics require some very tight tolerances.

[Anonymous No.11422842]

>>11422807
>has to be entirely automated
Nah
>developed for lower gravity
Add weights to normal machines, pretty much done.

Mining on Mars will be done using a remote control skid steer with 360 degree cameras piloted by a guy in his underwear in a habitat 100 meters away. The process will look like this: strip off loose overburden, break up permafrost layer underneath, load chunks of permafrost into large bin, close lid on bin, apply heat and collect water vapor, dump dry tailings in a pile. Meanwhile, CO2 capture is happening using air compressors. No other resources except for power are required, that's the entire ISRU feedstock production process.

[Anonymous No.11422848]

>>11422837
no, read it again
the humans set up the IRSU once they get there

[Anonymous No.11422849]

>>11422467
It's not 40 meters, it's 40 feet.
Which is 12 meters.

[Anonymous No.11422850]

>>11422837
That's because you are imagining robots setting up everything. The unmanned ships wait with the cargo. The manned ships set it up when they arrive.

[Anonymous No.11422853]

>>11422849
>"about 130 feet of what scientists call regolith."
39.624 meters give or take.

[Anonymous No.11422855]

>>11422837
>Mars where IIRC the plan is to have autonomous robots set everything
No, the plan is to send a bunch of equipment to verify that Mars landing works, but that equipment just sits there until the next launch window, at which point people arrive to use that equipment and the additional stuff they brought with them to set up ISRU.

[Anonymous No.11422864]

>>11422855
>>11422850
>>11422848
then what's the deal with this shit:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIrH01N9AsE

[Anonymous No.11422870]

>>11422842
Hopelessly slow and inefficient way to melt anything.
Dig a well, plug the hole on top and pump it full of air. Bonus points if you add a heater inside and the pipes to suck it up.

[Anonymous No.11422874]

>>11422864
Your quote is from SpaceX, this presentation is from literally who.

[Anonymous No.11422877]

>>11422864
Unrelated I guess.

[Anonymous No.11422878]

>>11422842
Reminder that we can’t even set up a proper drill on Mars

[Anonymous No.11422881]

>>11422864
That's some JPL bullshit

[Anonymous No.11422882]

>>11422796
>And then no fucking clarification hours later
Why do people use twitter like that. People like that should be fucking shot.

[Anonymous No.11422884]

>>11422878
Yeah, from Earth. That's kind of the entire point.

[Anonymous No.11422886]

>>11422882
Because Berger is a slimy fuck, hadn’t you realised it yet?

[Anonymous No.11422889]

>>11422886
I don't really read Arse Technica.

[Anonymous No.11422890]

>>11422878
Reminder that the issue can be solved if someone was there by just manually pushing the probe into the ground.

[Anonymous No.11422892]

>>11422889
Good, you shouldn’t.

[Anonymous No.11422894]

>>11422882
He mad about orange rocket.

[Anonymous No.11422899]

>>11422890
they may as well just give them shovels and have them do everything by hand, then

[Anonymous No.11422909]

Northrop Grumman successfully tested their Castor 300 SRB today with a 140 second static-fire, it will be the 2nd stage of their OmegA rocket.

[Anonymous No.11422912]

>>11422909
Congratulations to NG. When will they release the footage?

[Anonymous No.11422913]

>>11422870
It's easily scalable and highly efficient in terms of yield, what's your problem?

[Anonymous No.11422919]

>>11422912
Probably soon and if they don’t, some media folk were invited there who filmed the test themselves. Either way your gonna get some footage.

[Anonymous No.11422924]

>>11422899
Literally this, though
Having a mechanic or two on site solves everything

[Anonymous No.11422926]

>>11422909
>solid rocket test
Wow, I . . . don't care.

[Anonymous No.11422928]

>>11422899
Great! Let's get started!

[Anonymous No.11422939]

>>11422926
Sad!

[Anonymous No.11422943]

>>11422913
Tying heavy equipment and people into endless manual ice mining job with the associated risk when there are better simpler alternatives to get it.

[Anonymous No.11422947]

>>11422899
One day like that and 50 years of mars science will be gone. Do you actually want this?

[Anonymous No.11422949]

>>11422924
>>11422928
>first man on mars is a mexican blue collar landscaper

[Anonymous No.11422951]

>>11422943
Your method would be neither simple nor better, and it would be extremely wasteful as much of the heat you needed to use to extract the water would be absorbed deep underground where the water released wouldn't migrate to the surface fast enough to be captured.

[Anonymous No.11422952]

>>11422947
>50 years of mars science will be gone
More like 50 years of mars science would be done in a weekend.

[Anonymous No.11422955]

>>11422947
The things we'd learn by sending two guys with shovels for a week would eclipse all rover and lander science contributions, easily.

[Anonymous No.11422956]

>>11422947
you mean the 50 years they would spend designing an autonomous vehicle to do precisely the same thing? I guess

[Anonymous No.11422960]

>>11422824
>jpg artifacts
>camera flash reflection
>tilted aspect
So this was a printout, and someone took a cellphone pic, and then took that resulting image and resized it, possible adding stenographic data. Neat. So who's the spy?

[Anonymous No.11422964]

>>11422960
Stan from HR.

[Anonymous No.11422967]

>>11422960
President Trump

[Anonymous No.11422972]

>>11422848
>in resource situ utilization

[Anonymous No.11422976]

>>11422453
>I simply cannot imagine anyone being jaded enough that they can't see beyond their own job to appreciate what the Starship promises to do for the industry and mankind as a whole.
Just stick around this general for a while and you'll run into one.

[Anonymous No.11422981]

>>11422372
From the thumbnail, he looks like Thor.

[Anonymous No.11422982]

>>11422967
this I can believe

[Anonymous No.11422983]

>>11422951
Why yes absorbing the heat is precisely the idea. That's how the water ice turns into liquid and is then pumped out for use.

[Anonymous No.11423009]

>>11422983
Dummy, the mechanism for getting the water out of permafrost is to use the near vacuum conditions to your advantage. You put the permafrost soil into a big vessel, and apply some heat. The soil warms, and the water vaporizes. This vapor is removed, so liquid water can't start forming. Keep going until 99% of the water is removed. Dump dry soil. Almost all of the heat you apply goes directly into producing water that you capture.
Compare that to applying heat directly to the ground. First off, your system has more leaks, so more water vapor you produce is going to escape. Second, a lot of the water vapor generated is going to just sit underground, and not rise up to where it can be extracted. Third, at some point the heat being conducted down isn't enough to vaporise the ice, it just warms it slightly, meaning a huge amount of heat you are applying doesn't net you any water.

Basically your system sucks and you're dumb. :/

[Anonymous No.11423015]

>>11423009
just drill a rodwell and then melt a pressure vessel out of the glacier my dude

[Anonymous No.11423026]

>>11423009
Anon, what I'm referring to is essentially called "Rodriguez well" and is proven and used method to acquire large amounts of water from glaciers.
Yours is... well. Keep it.

[Anonymous No.11423031]

>>11423015
I'm talking about permafrost because it's much more common than glaciers on Mars. If you wanna talk best case scenario then yeah, do a rodwell. Better to plan for less than ideal scenarios.

[Anonymous No.11423035]

>>11423009
Are you pretending to be retarded?

[Anonymous No.11423043]

>>11423031
SX is looking into locations with large glaciers though.

[Anonymous No.11423049]

How are they gonna do the Mars solar power grid? Is everything ISRU gonna just be powered directly or will there be big battery banks?

[Anonymous No.11423056]

>>11422976
>I simply cannot imagine anyone being jaded enough that they can't see beyond their own job to appreciate what the Space Shuttle promises to do for the industry and mankind as a whole.
How dare people be cynical of big unrealistic promises.

[Anonymous No.11423057]

>>11423049
there has to be battery banks—dust storms already stop rovers from working for weeks at a time

[Anonymous No.11423059]

>>11423056
the space shuttle was a step in the right direction, they just got lazy

[Anonymous No.11423062]

>>11423059
>space shuttle was a step in the right direction
WROOOOONNNNGGG

[Anonymous No.11423068]

>>11423049
If the prototypes are anything to go by the Starships will have significant battery reserves on their own just for the actuators (which obviously only need to be used on ascent/descent so should be possible to repurpose), ~400kwh per ship. Given that this is Elon I'd be surprised if there isn't more dedicated battery storage on top of that but I doubt that alone will be enough to deal with dust storms, idk.

[Anonymous No.11423069]

>>11423056
There are many differences between the Shuttle program and the Starship program, and I don't mean the obvious technical differences. The Shuttle development project was troubled the moment it started due to nasty budget cuts without much demonstration of the key technologies needed to make the thing work. Starship is well funded and is building upon the the technologies demonstrated by the Falcon 9. Also, NASA never perused to upgrade the Shuttle to fix it's glaring faults, even when the technology was well developed. Meanwhile, SpaceX is more than happy to make drastic changes to the design if they have to. While it's questionable if the upcoming versions of Starship can meet the lofty goals in payload capacity and price, it's off to a much MUCH better start than the Shuttle.

There's a difference between being pessimistic and being a debbie downer.

[Anonymous No.11423101]

>>11423049
I’m assuming they’re going to run this 24/7, so they need batteries for the night too

[Anonymous No.11423106]

>>11422909
Congrats for not disintegrating like the nozzle of the first stage.

[Anonymous No.11423118]

>>11423106
kek

>>11423101
So they need twice as much solar capacity as will be needed to run the equipment, so that they build up enough power during the day to keep running the stuff overnight.

[Anonymous No.11423130]

>>11423118
yeah, they're going to need a shit ton of solar panels, but it's not like they're hard to procure

[Anonymous No.11423133]

...And the prize for the world’s most beautiful launch site goes to....

[Anonymous No.11423134]

>*bides his time*

[Anonymous No.11423136]

>>11423133

[Anonymous No.11423144]

>>11423134
based
although I don't know latin, but what the fuck is with translating Gradatim Ferociter as "Step by Step, Ferociously"? "Gradualy, Ferociously" sounds better IMO

[Anonymous No.11423145]

>>11423134
>I'm blue da ba dee da ba daa

[Anonymous No.11423147]

>>11423133
. . . Tanegashima Space Center!

[Anonymous No.11423153]

>>11423134
>becomes irrelevant

[Anonymous No.11423155]

>>11422878
that's not a drill. This is a drill!

[Anonymous No.11423157]

>>11422890
reminder that the only reason why they chose that design is because a drill weighed too much.

[Anonymous No.11423158]

>>11423155
Isight's thingy was literally not a drill, it was a self-toppling vibrator

[Anonymous No.11423162]

>>11423158
exactly, which is why it's not a drill.

[Anonymous No.11423164]

>>11423134
>gets a lot done quietly

If anybody wants to know about what Blue’s up to, just read this fact sheet they released a few weeks ago:

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=55307

[Anonymous No.11423165]

[Anonymous No.11423167]

>>11423157
what a shameful waste of time and money

[Anonymous No.11423168]

>>11423167
You consider learning experiences a waste of time?

[Anonymous No.11423174]

>>11423168
Is it really a learning experience that needed to happen on Mars and cost millions instead of happen on Earth with a wider range of potential soil conditions?

[Anonymous No.11423182]

>>11423167
a drill was too expensive, they couldn't afford it.

[Anonymous No.11423183]

>>11423168
tell me what they learned by hitting a rock and wasting millions of dollars in a failure scenario they were well aware could happen

[Anonymous No.11423187]

>>11423174
it worked on Earth

[Anonymous No.11423203]

>>11423182
So they saved some money, and in return got no thermal data to show for it. Nice.

>>11423187
Uh huh, they didn't account for its reduced weight on Mars. Amazing. I'm so glad we have such in depth testing programs.

[Anonymous No.11423208]

>>11423183
>tell me what they learned by hitting a rock and wasting millions of dollars

Actually, hitting a rock was just the first problem which was solved, it’s the Martian soil which is causing problems now. Also, the “mole” isn’t actually InSight’s primary mission anyway, the primary mission being to detect Marsquakes with an incredibly sensitive seismometer, which it’s done a great job of so far.

[Anonymous No.11423212]

>>11423208
>send mission to deploy seismometer
>also send hammer mole that will cause vibrations for months
bravo

[Anonymous No.11423213]

>>11423212
>Retard

[Anonymous No.11423229]

I warned you.
>>11422796

https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/02/nasa-planning-document-may-offer-clues-to-changes-in-artemis-program/

[Anonymous No.11423232]

>>11423229
it's dead in the water, then

[Anonymous No.11423243]

Lol, Eric Berger is shitting himself over some document that was circulated around NASA, which NASA already said isn’t representative of their future plans. It seems like when Doug Loverro was doing his review he explored multiple different architectures for Artemis to see what works best and the SLS-dominated version got leaked to MSFC (coincidently where the SLS program is managed). I’m sure there’s multiple different versions of this document, including a fully commercial version and the balanced+combined SLS and commercial architecture which will inevitably get picked.

[Anonymous No.11423245]

>>11423229
>more responsibility for Boeing
We're gonna have astronauts stranded around the Moon, aren't we
IF they even get that far

[Anonymous No.11423273]

>>11423229
>no human landing until 2024
FUCK off

[Anonymous No.11423278]

>>11423229
LOL..ABSOLUTELY DESTROYED

[Anonymous No.11423283]

>>11423278
based Jim
NASA literally says in the article that it's not the plan, only for Berger to stick his head in the sand and claim that it is anyways.

[Anonymous No.11423284]

>>11423229
>>11423278
Yep. This is probably a baseline, but not the actual work plan. Commercial partners will chip away from here.

[Anonymous No.11423285]

>>11423283
anon, you don't understand, he's mad about orange rocket

[Anonymous No.11423286]

>>11423278
>T-this i-issn't th-the pla-an, g-guy-ys . . .ah!
>Jim contorts as Boeings big cock goes boing in his guts

[Anonymous No.11423290]

>>11423243
This version of the Artemis plan shall hereby be christened as ‘Berger’s Worst Nighmare’

[Anonymous No.11423293]

>>11422226
based senator shelby

[Anonymous No.11423296]

>>11423290
>12 SLS
>$24 billion
>1 landing
Oh yeah, worth

[Anonymous No.11423299]

>>11423296
I'm pretty sure all the crew missions listed are landings

[Anonymous No.11423310]

>>11423290
>Using an overly expensive rocket
>For over 3 presidential terms
Not gonna make it.

[Anonymous No.11423311]

>>11423299
>$24 billion
>5 landings
Oh yeah, worth

[Anonymous No.11423338]

>>11423290
>Shelby when he heard about this

[Anonymous No.11423380]

>>11423278
The plan knows what it is at all times. It knows this because it knows what it isn't, by subtracting what it is, from what it isn't, or what it isn't, from what it is, whichever is greater, it obtains a architecture, or review.

[Anonymous No.11423387]

>>11423380
The plan committee uses reviews to generate cost-plus contracts to drive the plan from a design that it is to a design that it isn't, and arriving at a design that it wasn't, it now is. Consequently, the design that it is, is now the design that it wasn't, and it follows that the design that it was, is now the design that it isn't.

[Anonymous No.11423406]

>>11423387
This is the kind of flexibility that can only be achieved with an expendable planning infrastructure. If we were re-using plans, we would have to stick to the plan that isn't, but instead, we are forging ahead with the plan that is but will not be, and onto the plan that will never be and also isn't. God bless.

[Anonymous No.11423410]

>>11422226
based oldspaceposter

[Anonymous No.11423485]

>Robert Bigelow, 74 years old
>Richard Branson, 69 years old
>Jeff Bezos, 56 years old
>Elon Musk, 48 years old
why are they all such boomers? Where are the young guns who actually have drive?

[Anonymous No.11423503]

>>11423485
>Where are the young guns who actually have drive?
I'm poor and everyone keeps thinking I'm making a bomb.

[Anonymous No.11423541]

>>11422848
The Mars Direct plan is to send an unmanned ship first, then the ship lands and does ISRU until the next synod. The next mission doesn't have to launch until after the ISRU has been running for over a year, so they can know if the crew will have return fuel. Even if it's taking longer than expected, they can still know shit's not completely fucked. Then they set up the new ship to make ISRU for the next synod's mission.
It's that first mission that needs everything to be fully automated. After that they will have people to keep it going.

[Anonymous No.11423551]

>>11422168
imagine the martian junkyard pull-a-parts

[Anonymous No.11423556]

>>11423541
Why not just send people first who then stay there and do work in an hour that a machine takes days

You can send enough food for years, oxygen and water are no issue

[Anonymous No.11423557]

>>11422434
big if true

[Anonymous No.11423567]

>>11423551
>imagine a small rustic Martian home with an old heater
>it's a repurposed Raptor engine from a generation ago
>even after all this time, the engine still works hard to help humans on Mars
>the old couple there struggle to keep it running due to the parts no longer being made for it anymore
>a hip vintage spacecraft collector has some of the last parts for a Raptor to complete his 100% accurate Starship reconstruction
>he has a change of heart and helps restores the couple's heater just in time for winter
A Martian Christmas, coming soon to a VR theater near you.

[Anonymous No.11423582]

>>11423556
Same reason not to launch Shuttle on a cold day. If they get to Mars with ISRU completely non-functional and never tested in actual Mars conditions, it would be two years before another mission could arrive.

[Anonymous No.11423585]

>>11423582
If they arrive to mars and nothing they brought works then they deserve to die for such a colossal fuckup

No reason to waste 2 years because people want to be “safe” in all the wrong ways

Anyways, mars is a meme, Venus is where we should be going.

[Anonymous No.11423599]

Has anyone done the math on how many Starship refuels would be needed to avoid the expensive first mission ISRU setup? Just carry enough fuel with you to make the return if the equipment breaks, odds are to satisfy "perfect safety" that's what will be needed anyway since equipment can break, and if the Starships are cheap enough, it could be feasible to do it through brute force.

[Anonymous No.11423605]

>>11423582
A test ISRU unit that can be ran unmanned can be sent on a Starship as a secondary payload along with a massive Martian probe can work. Get a useful launch from a Starship, but still taking a safe step forward.

[Anonymous No.11423618]

>>11423585
>Venus
>It's just like Earth if you stay in your balloon and ignore the 300mph winds and sulfuric acid!
Absolutely pointless, and not feasible until well after Mars and the Moon already have significant infrastructure.

[Anonymous No.11423619]

>>11423599
it is not "unsafe" if the ISRU setup doesn't work in the SpaceX plan, because there will be food and supplies inbound during the next sinod, and the settlers weren't planning on coming home after only two years anyway

[Anonymous No.11423621]

>>11423541
SpaceX isn't doing the Mars Direct plan

[Anonymous No.11423624]

>>11423621
They will almost certainly want some kind of setup going before they get there beyond just dumping inert junk onto the surface that needs to be set up once humans get there and has never been tested

[Anonymous No.11423626]

>>11423624
>has never been tested
they'll test it on Earth
I want you to understand this: ISRU and return fuel in general is NOT safety critical

[Anonymous No.11423627]

>>11423626
>they'll test it on Earth

[Anonymous No.11423630]

>>11423627
In a big Mars environment simulator bottle, dummy

[Anonymous No.11423633]

>>11423624
>hurr let's sink years and billions of dollars into failing to make an autonomous system to do a series of tasks that would take a human five minutes that ultimately fails
Yeah, I mean the concerted efforts of the rest of the world can't even master dredging out a couple inches of dirt but sure why the fuck not just tank the whole operation because no amount of risk is ever acceptable no matter how unreasonable the countermeasure? Fucking ridiculous.

[Anonymous No.11423634]

>>11423627
Melting dirty underground ice is nothing special
Extracting oxygen or pumping CO2 into green houses is also easy

[Anonymous No.11423650]

why are our autonomous robots so shit? I feel like that's something we should have figured out decades ago, but never really caught on because it was too expensive. What's the deal? This feels like a major roadblock to colonization.

[Anonymous No.11423654]

>>11423650
It was a hardware and software problem. Recently the hardware part is being solved. Software soon.

[Anonymous No.11423656]

>>11423567
>A Martian Christmas, coming soon to a full dive theater near you.
ftfy

[Anonymous No.11423668]

>>11423650
Big budgets mean committee style designs constrained by size, shape, weight, etc
Long programs mean everything on them is a decade or more obsolete
No good way to produce power in a small package

>>11423618
No pressure difference is a huge deal, mild sulphuric acid is irrelevant, constant winds is free power along with the 4x as strong solar power.

[Anonymous No.11423672]

>>11423650
We can make nanometer precise robots

However making robots with that precision be capable of surviving getting out of the atmosphere pulling several g's, surviving the radiation of space, then surviving the soft(ish) impact of landing on another celestial body WHILE still maintaing that precision isn't that easy.

[Anonymous No.11423684]

>>11423668
>locked inside a cuckbubble forever
>only the atmosphere for IRSU, you're better off going to another planet than the surface
The only useful thing you can do on Venus is say you've gone to Venus and hopefully escape afterward.

[Anonymous No.11423689]

>>11423684
ISRU* that guy from before fucked my brain up apparently

[Anonymous No.11423692]

>>11423689
it's like a brain parasite
it won't leave me alone

[Anonymous No.11423709]

>>11423684
The only issue in regards to Venus surface access is keeping electronics working

Which is solved by keeping the electronics above the heat

[Anonymous No.11423721]

>>11423656
>Experiencing classic Wild Martian kinos in fill dive
Tasteful bliss.

[Anonymous No.11423737]

>>11422760
Jesus it looks so much better. Starship is going to be fucking beautiful

[Anonymous No.11423780]

>>11423737
Steel rockets are a meme, you can’t do it, just doesn’t work like that, it’s not Aerospace material!

[Anonymous No.11423782]

>>11422982
you should because it's true

[Anonymous No.11423783]

>>11423780
This. If you use non-aerospace materials on a rocket, then the gods of space flight will strike you down where you stand.

[Anonymous No.11423798]

>>11422356
Can Blue Origin get any more cucked? SpaceX developed a full flow, staged combustion engine with the highest combustion chamber pressure of any engine ever put into service. They started development later than Blue Origin, yet still managed to fly an engine before Bezos could even get a BE-4 to manage a full duration test. Also, Raptor is half the size of the BE-4 but produces a similar amount of thrust. I guess "slow and steady" really does win the race.

[Anonymous No.11423816]

>>11423798
also blue origin's BE-4 production is being hemorrhaged by ULA for Vulcan. They'll only have enough for like 10 NG flights per year

[Anonymous No.11423848]

>>11423780

[Anonymous No.11423859]

>>11422842
>Add weights to normal machines
A lot of industrial processes rely on specific value of gravity for them to properly work. 1/3rd of the normal gravity can and will fuck up mixing and separation of components which would require at least a serious review of the process, be it a chemical reactor, metal foundry or even something relatively simple like welding, where lowered gravity can affect the offgassing and leave you with brittle and porous weld.

[Anonymous No.11423891]

>>11422493
The LEM legs didn't stick into the regolith nearly as much as expected, which is why Buzzhad to take his giant leap down the ladder.

[Anonymous No.11423896]

>>11422562
You can just use a microwave.

[Anonymous No.11423934]

>>11422356
>thinking that the BE-4 has less than 3,200 seconds of testing

[Anonymous No.11423943]

>>11423780
Pictured: Use of steel in "oldspace" reusable aerospace equipment.

[Anonymous No.11423979]

SN2(?) rings look slightly different. Bet most of the changes are with the bulkheads and whatnot. Wonder why they don’t just stamp them?
There’s a great documentary on YouTube about the heavy presses in the US by the way. Worth a watch

[Anonymous No.11423980]

>MEV-1
So apparently this is a tug that docks into a combusion chamber of any existing satellite's thruster, and can be used for extending the satellite life or any orbital operations
Super interesting stuff, how do they ensure the correct grip angle inside the chamber? how do they center the thrust vector? how do they control the attitude with the inevitable CoG offset?
(sorry to post the actual boring unhip spaceflight thing in a rocket and colonization shitposting thread)

[Anonymous No.11423986]

>>11423485
they all shitpost here

[Anonymous No.11424008]

>>11423134

[Anonymous No.11424044]

>>11423387
>>11423406
based

[Anonymous No.11424046]

>Mr. Musk...
Quick hack job in GIMP.

[Anonymous No.11424070]

>send up bigelow module outfitted as fuel tank and some truss sections
>attach to ISS
>fuel with falcon tanker launches
>launch a lunar orbiter and dock to ISS for fuelling

This would be half the cost of SLS, why didn't it happen ten years ago?

[Anonymous No.11424084]

>>11423980
MEV is lewd
anyway, apparently the connection is fairly secure, and they know the mass and CoG of both spacecraft, socalculating the combined CoG and mass for the whole system isn't difficult with that info

[Anonymous No.11424088]

>>11424046
Here we go. The true reason BO is so slow and secretive exposed at last.

[Anonymous No.11424097]

>>11424084
well the new attitude thrusters are located on the MEV so the thrust is offset and the whole thing seems to be balancing like a hammer during an attitude change

that's probably how an USOS module delivery to the ISS would have looked with a classic Fregat-like tug attached at one end, instead of the Shuttle carrying it in the cargo bay

[Anonymous No.11424132]

>drumpf is down
>world peace and international friendship and love is restored
>international cooperation for space flight utilizing traditional proven hardware and strategies making sure jobs around the world are secured for decades to come
>ISS2 essentially but longer and with more partners

How likely is that?

[Anonymous No.11424138]

>>11423816
>They'll only have enough for like 10 NG flights per year

BE-4 is being designed for 25 flights without significant refurbishment (maybe they’ll achieve this, maybe not), the point is that New Glenn is supposed to use the same 7 engines for 10 flights and more. Therefore, if everything pans out Blue won’t be consuming very many engines.

[Anonymous No.11424162]

>>11424132
Bout tree fiddy
What I'm more interested in is what the permanent Mars colony will bring forth once it develops enough to become self-sustaining. It'd be for the big part disconnected from the whims of political oldfags from Earth, and hardships and lack of gibs would naturally keep away all the human trash and dindus. I think we might see the birth of a new America as the forefathers intended it to be.
Also, >>>/pol/

[Anonymous No.11424278]

>>11424132
>ORANGE MAN BAAAAD
>>11424162
No, he belongs on plebbit.

[Anonymous No.11424326]

You are all cavemen comparing rocks.

Non propellent based space entry master race, so you guys like sitting on pollution bombs and generally being complete reinvention of a bottle rocket

[Anonymous No.11424333]

>>11424326
have fun raving on a street corner about how your magic box can save the earth

[Anonymous No.11424432]

>>11422113
>>11422168
>>11422187
>>11422213
>>11422405
>>11422436
>>11422446
>>11422509
>>11422533
>>11422627
>>11422741
>>11422760
>>11422773
>>11422824
>>11422878
>>11422909
>>11423133
>>11423155
>>11423165
>>11423848
>>11423943
>>11423979
>>11423980
>>11424044
Based on-topic, real content posters. We need more images on the fucking image board. I hope there's more in the next thread.

[Anonymous No.11424452]

>>11424432
>combustion chamber green
that still makes me die inside every time I see it

[Anonymous No.11424491]

>>11424432
Here’s a picture, bet you guys can’t guess what it is...

[Anonymous No.11424501]

>>11424491
inside of the B330?

[Anonymous No.11424504]

>>11424333
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-rocket_spacelaunch
The future of spacelaunch tech is remotely powered propulsion systems.


Check out light craft..., using a laser and. A metal cone to combust plasma our of air, requires a small amount of inboard oxygen. There just isn't enough awareness about these types of under funded tech research.

Imagine a space hub shooting out 1000 Satarn 5 payloads a day, on a railway style system. Whoever invests in this effectively becomes as rich as all the railway Barron's of the past industrial Era.

[Anonymous No.11424506]

>>11424491
ISS module?

[Anonymous No.11424508]

>>11424504
oh, you're looking for somebody to build a megastructure
a totally different brand of crazy

[Anonymous No.11424511]

Daily reminder that rocket powered chemical launch vehicles are the cheapest, most versatile, and most effective technology for achieving orbit and space flight, and any other technology is a distraction at best.

[Anonymous No.11424522]

>>11424511
air breathing zeroeth stages are cool but you're right, chemical rockets are the best

[Anonymous No.11424532]

>>11424501
No, something that actually exists

>>11424506
It will be...

[Anonymous No.11424546]

>>11424532
Ah shit, here we go again

[Anonymous No.11424558]

>>11424491
Looks like the blyad iss module that's been in the making for 30 years or so.

[Anonymous No.11424580]

>>11424558
This anon is correct, pic-related is the long delayed (originally supposed to launch in 2007) Russian Nauka module for the ISS, undergoing final testing before being shipped off to Baikonur for launch in late 2020 or early 2021.

[Anonymous No.11424582]

>>11424491
Scientific Fun Slide

[Anonymous No.11424585]

>>11424580
wtf? Why are they still adding ISS modules if the US could just as well decide to deorbit it in a few years?

[Anonymous No.11424607]

>>11424585
Firstly, Nauka was supposed to launch ages ago. Secondly, the threat of the ISS being deorbited anytime soon is massively overinflated, there’s lots of political will to extend it’s lifespan into the 2030s. Third and finally, Russia plans to separate their modules before the deorbit occurs and form it’s own station out of them as a replacement.

[Anonymous No.11424609]

>>11424585
Because it's not just the property of the US.

[Anonymous No.11424624]

>>11424508
>>11424508
I've seen conservative estimates that laser propelled lightcrafts can reduce the cost of deliver per $20000\lb to $10m/lb
Im not here to convince you though, feel free to use rockets as long as you want, because fuck new technology right

Im not saying rockets aren't useful at the moment, I'm simply ask... Can we do better?

[Anonymous No.11424625]

>>11424624
$10\lb *

[Anonymous No.11424634]

https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20200001071.pdf

Here’s a fun presentation from NASA about the things Artemis astronauts could be getting up to on the lunar surface.

[Anonymous No.11424641]

>>11424634
excited for those lava tubes

[Anonymous No.11424693]

>>11424432
Here's a comfy one for you.

[Anonymous No.11424733]

We Minmus now.

[Anonymous No.11424746]

I've got a really tip top space related post but I'm going to save it for the next thread in order to obtain maximum (You)'s.

[Anonymous No.11424756]

>>11424733
I just had to explain to someone that this moon wasn't the cause of her mood swings lately.

[Anonymous No.11424770]

>>11424624
>$20000\lb to $10/lb
The only large launch vehicle that ever cost ~$20,000/kg was Shuttle. Modern Falcon 9/Heavy are already achieving ~$1000/kg. SpaceX thinks they can achieve tens of dollars per kg using Starship.
The answer is, yes, we can do orders of magnitude better, but we don't need to move away from chemical rockets to do so. In fact it'd be silly to put so much effort into developing a brand new orbital launch system technology when we could, with much less effort, build out a fleet of reusable chemical rockets and achieve an equal reduction in launch costs.

[Anonymous No.11424773]

>>11424746
Sheeeit
>>11424733
Unironically would be kino to name it Minmus

[Anonymous No.11424790]

>>11424733
>size of a car
Fucking nothing.

[Anonymous No.11424796]

If we ever develop metallic hydrogen rockets, could we use that technology to make metallic deuterium? Could metallic deuterium's density make it more convenient as a fusion fuel (in an inertial confinement setup)?

[Anonymous No.11424800]

>>11424790
It's the perfect size, small enough that we could push it around if we had a spacecraft up there.

[Anonymous No.11424801]

>https://www.af.mil/Live/
LIVE!!!

[Anonymous No.11424804]

Oh elon, you doof

[Anonymous No.11424815]

>>11424801
>posting the live feed within 5 minutes of the end of the broadcast
Why

[Anonymous No.11424816]

>>11424815
You can watch the full thing too.

[Anonymous No.11424817]

>>11424801
Musk part starts at 3:15:00

[Anonymous No.11424822]

>>11424558
>>11424580
Certain parts of the MLM are reused from the scrapped Almaz program, and were designed in late 60s and produced in early 80s. TKS's FGB became the base design for Mir and ISS modules. Zarya (aka FGB-1) which has been made in 1995 also contains certain parts from TKS spaceships that were in production when the program got cancelled.
>>11424585
You live in a fucking bubble anon.

[Anonymous No.11424827]

RIP

[Anonymous No.11424831]

>>11424796
No, because metallic hydrogen anything is science fiction, or rather closer to science fantasy

[Anonymous No.11424871]

>>11424822
It's just like the Leonardo, Rafaello, and Donatello, which are repurposed Shuttle MPLMs which in turn are repurposed Spacelab modules. Just like with FGBs, some Spacelab hardware built in early 80s is flying as a part of the ISS, and some is not flown (Donatello). So these parts have been to space multiple times long before ISS was built.

Cygnus is also the Spacelab legacy, and the Kibo's airlock. They don't share the hardware though, only the design.

[Anonymous No.11424886]

>>11424822
>>11424871
Nauka’s fuel tanks are actually past their expiration date, they have a rated lifespan of 15 years and have been lying around for 16 now without launching. The tanks had to be cleaned of metal shavings and the valves replaced.

[Anonymous No.11424893]

>>11424871
>named "Raffaello"
>is literally "totally tubular"

[Anonymous No.11424908]

>>11424893
Cowabunga

[Anonymous No.11424910]

>>11424886
Yeah, and the company that was making the tanks is no longer makes that model. Ironically, they only discovered the shavings with a new procedure and it was only blocked due to the new reliability standards which weren't in place in early 90s when they designed the Zarya. So chances are that Zarya has them too (its tanks also long exceeded their supposed lifespan as well), and it had no issues with firing its thrusters. So it's mostly oldspace bureaucracy hell than anything. I suppose MLM is actually more fit for immediate use than any of the currently flying ISS modules since it wasn't exposed to (fairly aggressive) space environment for a decade or two.

[Anonymous No.11424913]

>>11424532
oh, it's Russia's multipurpose thing that they've been trying to launch for 20 years

[Anonymous No.11424916]

>>11424908
>Cowabunga it is, my du-

[Anonymous No.11424920]

>>11424816
it's been taken down

[Anonymous No.11424928]

>>11424913
It’s actually launching this year or the next though.

[Anonymous No.11424930]

>>11423406
>>11423387
>>11423380
my sides have flung into orbit holy fuck man

[Anonymous No.11424931]

Elon said the fighter jet era has passed, heh

[Anonymous No.11424937]

>>11424928
I know, and it's actually moving this time, instead of sitting in a warehouse like the last twenty times it was going to be launching this year or the next

[Anonymous No.11424942]

here's your cybertruck bro, have fun on Mars

[Anonymous No.11424945]

>>11422372
Too soon, mate. Too soon.

[Anonymous No.11424966]

>>11424942
>you'll never get to drink beer with your buds while hauling ass in your CT in the low gravity of the Martian wilderness
Give me one reason not to kill myself

[Anonymous No.11424971]

>>11424966
>Give me one reason not to kill myself
Because, you made the 400th post!

[Anonymous No.11424975]

>>11424931
>Proceeds to build 500 F-35s, with over 3000 in the pipeline

Nothin personal autonomy nerds

[Anonymous No.11424976]

>>11424931
As in, time of autonomous drones has come. He still wants a human in charge because of the implication.

[Anonymous No.11424983]

>>11424931
Lol

[Anonymous No.11424991]

That scary red 404 on top right startled me for a second

new thread when

[Anonymous No.11425004]

>>11424931
>>11424976
>>11424975
Well, it isn't new, LM said precisely this more than a decade ago. That the F-35 is likely the last manned fighter, and the next one will be unmanned.

[Anonymous No.11425009]

>>11424975
When other countries learn to autonomous drone, they'll print out thousands without the human bottleneck.

[Anonymous No.11425012]

>>11423485
Zoomers have drive?
Since when?

[Anonymous No.11425016]

New thread: >>11425005

[Anonymous No.11425338]

>>11424975