/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.7102212]

Don't see a thread. SpaceX launch in 4 minutes

http://www.spacex.com/webcast/

Godspeed Falcon 9!

[Anonymous No.7102221]

>inb4 memorial
It's gonna be Antares all over again.

[Anonymous No.7102239]

Like clockwork.

Flight not over yet, they still have to do another burn, but webcast is over.

[Anonymous No.7102241]

>>7102212
Sweet view of fuel tank interior and infrared external view. Thanks, Anon!

[Anonymous No.7102267]

With no landing attempt, I can't get interested.

At their non-reusable prices, SpaceX is cheap, but not really cheaper than the Russians, and their launch rate is low. Frankly, it could still all be flim-flam, with unsustainable below-cost pricing and an inability to ever clear their launch backlog.

I'm only interested when they're showing progress on their reusable vehicle program. If it doesn't succeed, they don't matter and are only sucking up subsidies and investments that could have gone to something real.

[Anonymous No.7102296]

Got to see launch from back yard.
Live in poinciana,fl.
ZERO tv coverage.

[Anonymous No.7102298]

>>7102267
Pretty much this, but I have faith in the next landing attempt. More importantly I have faith in the capabilities of the falcon heavy and dragon 2 for space infrastructure development. If money in the pockets of spacex contributes to the development of these vehicles, then I'm happy for every launch.

[Anonymous No.7102312]

>>7102212
live in floriduh,no news at all about a launch.
Had to see it live,still no news coverage.
Almost as if it never happened.

[Anonymous No.7102317]

>>7102312
>>7102296
A vehicle carried commercial cargo to its intended destination.

Why should this be news?

[Anonymous No.7102323]

>>7102267

Cool story bro.

-It's okay not to be interested. Interest in things is subjective.
-Their launch rate is improving.
-This is a backlog clearing launch.
-This is a launch where spaceflight is actually relevant to the world economy.
-SpaceX doesn't need to be reusable to cause dynamic advancement in the global space economy, although that will help. Ariane 6, seen as a response that SpaceX drove, isn't reusable at all. ULA's NGLV might not be reusable at all.
-America doesn't have access to Russian prices for domestic satellite payloads.
-Get real. If COTS/Commercial crew didn't exist, then patriotic and anti-Russian sentiment and SLS/Orion partisan interests would push for a SLS/Orion based ISS resupply option, which would not be cheaper than Russians. Com crew is a replacement for Ares 1/Orion for ISS access, remember?

What's the "real" alternative to you?

[Anonymous No.7102342]

>>7102323
I love you.

also.What is COTS/every other acronym you used.
I just like to space from my back yard.

[Anonymous No.7102385]

>>7102342

-ISS is the International Space Station. Russia's Soyuz spacecraft current supplies crew flights for it and some cargo with its Progress spacecraft
-COTS is NASA contracting out cargo resupply for the station to two providers, SpaceX and Orbital ATK. It funded the development of specialized cargo spacecraft, SpaceX's Dragon and Orbital's Cygnus spacecraft. They launch aboard the Falcon 9 rocket and Orbital's Antares rocket
-Commercial crew is a similar program to develop domestic crew resupply for ISS. It is funding the development of two spacecraft, Boeing's CST-100 and a crew iteration of SpaceX's Dragon. CST-100 is launched by Atlas 5
-Ariane 6 is a new next generation launch vehicle project from the Europeans to replace Ariane 5, which has done well on the satellite launch market and which SpaceX competes with.
-ULA is another American launch firm. They operate the Delta 4 and Atlas 5 vehicles. Both will be replaced with a new next generation launch vehicle, which details still have to be fully revealed
-SLS is a new NASA mega rocket for the exploration program based upon Shuttle industry components
-Orion is new capsule for the exploration program
-Ares 1 was a previous launch vehicle development that was part of Project Constellation, a plan to meet Bush's call for a return to the moon, a plan which was bloated and unrealistic. Interests behind the funding it would receive and the Space Shuttle industry forced in SLS when Obama tried to switch directions

[Anonymous No.7102413]

Looks like mission was a success. Pic related is satellite separation.

Musk also tweeted this:

Upgrades in the works to allow landing for geo missions: thrust +15%, deep cryo oxygen, upper stage tank vol +10%

[Anonymous No.7102424]

>>7102323
>-This is a backlog clearing launch.
It's a launch from the backlog, you mean. They'd have to really step it up to be clearing the backlog. They are years behind schedule at this point.

>What's the "real" alternative to you?
Believe it or not, there are many private launch efforts to dramatically lower launch costs based on reusability, mass-production, or both. Most just haven't got a billionaire, NASA bureaucrats, and congress critters onboard.

SpaceX has preached the NewSpace gospel while actually flying rather straightforward and unimpressive old-school expendable rockets, mostly by hiring people away from the established rocket companies and doing knockoffs of old technology. And all the fanboys go, "Wow, they're actually doing it!" But are they? What have they actually done, that hasn't been done before? (and no, adding adjectives like "privately-owned" don't make a meaningful first)

Now, supposedly, they're very close to having a reusable first stage. Which if it worked, and it was cheap, and all that, would be huge. But they are doing three launches in a row where they're deliberately throwing away these supposedly reusable launch vehicles. Recovering the reusable vehicles isn't being treated as a priority. And their progressive, envelope-expanding flight test program has stalled out and stopped at a low-altitude hover.

Is this theatre? Is this business-as-usual in NewSpace clothing? Is all this talk about reusable launch vehicles, massive launch volumes, and Mars colonization just clever PR? In many ways, this seems to make the most sense.

SpaceX is opening a Seattle branch which focuses on the development of their own comsats. So maybe here's the real vision: total vertical integration of the satellite communication business, with juicy government subsidies in the form of sweetheart NASA contracts, and rabid sci-fi fanboys working double shifts without overtime because they believe in the dream.

HIGH $CORE: ELN MSK

[Anonymous No.7102898]

Google (with Fidelity) invested a billion or so into SpaceX and took over the robot company Boston Dynamics. Will we see AI dogs on Mars rather than toy vehicles? SpaceX also signed an agreement with the Air Force and will possibly gain access to the 'classified' market.

Business as usual, still chemical rockets, still no 'electric highways to the stars'.

[Anonymous No.7103089]

>>7102212
since this was just a boring satellite launch with no landing attempt, I made the thread in Transportation.

>>>/n/784060

[Anonymous No.7103107]

>>7102424
>What have they actually done, that hasn't been done before?
Optimize for cost.

No other rocket manufacturer has actually tried this. All other rocket dev programs have spent oodles for max performance instead of streamlined manufacturing. The only cheap launchers (Soyuz, Proton) are that way only because they are old designs that have long ago amortized their huge dev costs.

Of course, along the way SpaceX has done some exciting new things as well, like even trying to land a first stage, on their own barge in the ocean no less. And creating reentry capsules, with v2 able to land under its own power.

Also, don't knock the ability to line up the financial and political ducks to make this shit happen in real life. It takes more than rocket science to make rockets.

[Anonymous No.7103186]

I am going to delete this image from my harddrive. Dumping it in this random thread

[Anonymous No.7103299]

>>7103107
>>What have they actually done, that hasn't been done before?
>Optimize for cost.
>No other rocket manufacturer has actually tried this
Bullshit. Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. A thousand times bullshit.

>Of course, along the way SpaceX has done some exciting new things as well, like even trying to land a first stage, on their own barge in the ocean no less. And creating reentry capsules, with v2 able to land under its own power.
>trying to land a first stage, on their own barge
>failing to land a first stage, on their own barge
>v2 able to land under its own power.
>v2 animated as being able to land under its own power, while their actual intention is to land it with parachutes.

"On a barge" is one of those adjectives like "privately-owned" that I warned against, that doesn't make a meaningful first.

And remember the space shuttle. Reuse isn't meaningful until it's proven to save money. A lot of industry insiders are calling SpaceX's reuse plans flim-flam.

[Anonymous No.7103612]

>>7103299

>thinks yelling "bullshit" is a refutation

This is why I post on 8/sci/.

[Anonymous No.7103617]

>>7103299
A lot of industry insiders condemned SpaceX as an inevitable failure that would never manage to launch payloads into space, too. The industry insiders will be moving the goalposts to condemn SpaceX until the day they die.

[Anonymous No.7103619]

>>7103617
Industry insiders in spacelaunch means direct competition. Of course they claim spacex is shit and a failure.

[Anonymous No.7103633]

>>7103619
I think they're more upset about SpaceX implicitly stating that the established space access industry is wrong and bad. Space is hard, and machines that can leave the Earth are an under-appreciated miracle. An upstart coming along and saying they'll do what you do, and they'll do it better and for less is more of an immediate threat to ego than the bottom line.

[Anonymous No.7103671]

>>7103612
I wasn't going to waste my time trying to refute something so obviously wrong, ignorant, and stupid. Sometimes, when people have said something very stupid, they only need a slap in the face to wake them up. The exception is when they actually are stupid people, then they need to be walked through why what they've said is stupid.

Optimizing for cost is absolutely basic, ground-floor engineering. So EVERY launch system is optimized for cost, to some degree.

If the claim is that SpaceX has optimized for cost to the exclusion of everything else, and this is what makes them unique, this is also obviously wrong, ignorant, and stupid.

They spend a lot on testing and mission assurance, and very frequently and very expensively delay launches on the slightest suggestion that some component has a chance of failing. Furthermore, they have spent lavishly on reuse potential.

Their design priorities aren't weighted toward low cost any more than is typical on workhorse rockets designed for practical purposes.

[Anonymous No.7103676]

>>7103633
>Space is hard
It is literally a thousand times harder to get permission to launch stuff into orbit than it is to actually do it.

Don't kid yourself. Behind the scenes, SpaceX is all about the legal and political clout.

[Anonymous No.7103689]

>>7103676
>It is literally a thousand times harder to get permission to launch stuff into orbit than it is to actually do it.

[Anonymous No.7103726]

>>7103689
It's reality. Face it.

We've been launching stuff into orbit for nearly 60 years. People figured out how to launch stuff into orbit only 15 years after the first rocket reached space. Less than 15 years after that (nearly 50 years ago), man walked on the moon and ICBMs were in mass production as the main nuclear weapon delivery method, and ready to fire off on any day, in all but the worst weather, on short notice. And this was all before microprocessors and all of the cheap, highly-sophisticated sensors we have now were invented, which trivially solve most of the hard parts they struggled with.

With 3d printing and computer-controlled machining, computer fluid mechanics simulation, advanced composite materials, etc. what part of this is supposed to still be hard?

Since orbital launch capability is indistinguishable from ICBM capability, since spysats and comsats and navsats are key strategic infrastructure, nobody in power actually wants cheap or simple orbital launch technology to ever be demonstrated.

"Space is hard" is THEATRE. Long before you get to orbit, you get buried under red tape, unless you shake the right hands behind closed doors, and join the play.

[Anonymous No.7103731]

>>7103726
You're conflating the routine of a very small club of nation states and industries with ease.

[Anonymous No.7103987]

>>7103731
No, I'm pointing out some of the real reasons why it's not that hard, starting with the fact that this is a six-decade-old capability, and when they were developing it, one of the biggest problems was developing all of the wacky analog computer systems for guidance.

Think about this seriously. This is 2015. Quadcopters are common toys, you can buy jet engines for RC aircraft, and intercontinental flights through the stratosphere are costly but routine for ordinary middle-class people.

What special hardness can remain in orbital launch, so that it continues to be regarded as extraordinarily difficult?

It is only government obstruction which can explain this perception. People aren't allowed to experiment. People aren't allowed to conduct free commerce in the necessary specialized components.

[Anonymous No.7104013]

>>7103987
Dude, most countries in the world don't even have industries that can make a decent car. You can count the number of companies around the world that create the machines, and are doing business, in each of the market segments you just listed on the fingers of one hand.

[Anonymous No.7104030]

>>7103987
If you want specific examples about what's hard, look at what a turbopump has to do, and how much margin the engineers designing them have to work with.

[Anonymous No.7104059]

>>7104013
>Dude, most countries in the world don't even have industries that can make a decent car.
...that's nice?

We're not talking about how space is hard for "most countries". When a car randomly blows up as it's driving down the highway, auto enthusiasts don't sagely nod and say, "Highway travel is hard."

>>7104030
>turbopumps
1) They dealt with this shit six decades ago, before they had the simulation software and advanced material science to make it easy.
2) They deal with this shit for things like remote control aircraft today. It's really not that hard, and this is something you can test to your heart's content on the ground, without even burning a lot of fuel.
3) You don't even need a turbopump. Piston pumps and pressure-fed designs work fine.

[Anonymous No.7104082]

>>7104059
One day, if someone manages to send payloads to orbit without throwing a lot of very smart people and a lot of money at the problem, you can be the first to gloat.

[Anonymous No.7104091]

no launch retrieval system test NO DEAL

[Anonymous No.7104151]

>>7104082
You understand that this is an absolute inevitability due to technology advancing, right?

Rocket engines are already coming out of 3d printers.

The main rocket guy at SpaceX got hired because (in addition to his professional background), he was building rocket engines in his garage. He didn't need Elon Musk's money to overcome the technical obstacles to putting stuff in space, he needed it to overcome the regulatory obstacles.

These guys were crushed that it took four tries to get to orbit. Four tries! They didn't fuck around with suborbital flights, or start with the smallest possible rocket. They went directly to a design that was supposed to put half a ton of payload (big enough for a human passenger, if they really wanted to -- Sputnik was only 84 kg, so they were going well beyond the first efforts at spaceflight) in orbit, and were disappointed when they had to try four whole times before it worked.

And after going through that, they made a rocket ten times as big and every try worked.

This is not some epic struggle to get to orbital launch capability. This is a handful of dudes, of a sort which is really not that rare or special, getting together with someone with enough pull to enable them to be allowed to try.