How do you go from this

[Anonymous No.8689555]

[Anonymous No.8689556]

to this..

[Anonymous No.8689558]

..to this?

[Anonymous No.8689559]

the american people lost interest. congress approved a budget to match. every time

[Anonymous No.8689594]

>>8689559
nothing to do with budget or lack thereof
has to do with retarded design decisions by NASA, coulda just kept launching Saturn V's and "evolve" a partially/fully reusable version of it

[Anonymous No.8689598]

>>8689555
They're built to do different things. Also rockets never went away.

[Anonymous No.8689607]

>>8689556

SPEEHS PLANE

[Anonymous No.8690124]

>>8689558
That's not even NASA.

[Anonymous No.8690253]

>>8689558

This rocket is more impressive than the other two.

[Anonymous No.8690267]

>Size=better technology

Climb to the top of that Saturn V and jump faggot. Each one of those were built to do different things

[Anonymous No.8690269]

the space shuttle was an overdesigned expensive disaster and it shouldn't have existed

[Anonymous No.8690287]

>>8690124
It's only slightly less NASA than the other two. They're all products of NASA contracts. The SpaceX one is just a product of a different kind of contract.

[Anonymous No.8690296]

>>8690287
>moving goal posts

fuck off, kid

[Anonymous No.8690302]

>>8690296
>>moving goal posts
What sense does that even make?

[Anonymous No.8690369]

>>8689558
you forgot the last "...to this": Falcon 9 first stage landing back at the pad on a pillar of fire.

[Anonymous No.8690376]

>>8689556
Well obviously because that one blew up on re-entry :^)

[Anonymous No.8690406]

>>8690369
>landing back at the pad

[Anonymous No.8690411]

>>8690267
>>8690253
>made in 2017 means better technology
falcon has the least efficient engines of the bunch and has yet to do anything useful

[Anonymous No.8690413]

>>8690269

[Anonymous No.8690415]

>>8690406
The landing pad is located back at the launch facility. So yes, it lands "back at the pad".

[Anonymous No.8690420]

>>8690411
>efficient
LOL

[Anonymous No.8690423]

>>8690415
It's more than 7 miles away.

[Anonymous No.8690450]

>>8689555
>>8689556
>>8689558
>How do you go from this to this to this?

Different missions, with a desperate but flawed attempt to create interest (and funding) in the absence of a compelling mission in the middle, and a dash of privatization towards the end.

[Anonymous No.8690456]

>>8690411
>least efficient engines
Highest thrust-to-weight. Not everything's about specific impulse. More thrust means you can have a bigger tank with more propellant.

That's why the Falcon 9 maximum performance leapt up from 10.5 tonnes to LEO to 22.8 (enough for every payload ever carried by the shuttle) as they upgraded the engines to higher thrust, without making them larger or more costly. They've got another performance upgrade on the way, too, with Block 5.

>>8690423
From the launch pad. Still at the launch facility.

[Anonymous No.8690466]

>>8690456
>Highest thrust-to-weight.
shuttle easily has the highest twr of the three

>Still at the launch facility.
Wrong.
KSC =/= CCAFS

[Anonymous No.8690467]

>>8689594
>nothing to do with budget or lack thereof

You're kinda wrong there. Budget slashes towards the end of project Apollo killed off future missions using a Saturn 5 and Apollo CSM/LM. NASA knew that the last time they had an exciting new mission, they got funding and the go ahead to do shit. They made a bad decision that selling a "truck to space" that made space flight normal and uninteresting was the way to get the monies flowing again. When that failed, tightening budgets for STS forced design decisions that were-- to be kind -- unwise. And of course, while this is going on, the generation that built NASA as a nimble, decisive agency retired or died, and the bureaucratization of NASA, with turf wars and more efforts going into internal politics built up more and more. And eventually, STS retires and we have nothing ready to fly -- and in comes privatization of development.

>has to do with retarded design decisions by NASA,

Forced by budget constraints, though, beyond the bad decision that a reusable vehicle was an idea whose time had come.

>coulda just kept launching Saturn V's and "evolve" a partially/fully reusable version of it

Wasn't really a mission for that big a booster unless you are going far out with a crew. Which public apathy ruled out.

[Anonymous No.8690471]

>>8690253
Saturn V is a pretty fucking impressive rocket, especially given the tech they had to work with.

And, as a back-handed complement, the fact that something as Rube Goldberg as the STS system only failed twice is pretty remarkable.

Nothing against Falcon, but don't dis Saturn V

[Anonymous No.8690475]

>>8690269
Would be interesting to see what would have happened if it were designed, say, 20 years from now. NASA tried to do something that was not then possible with STS. It was a bad decision, but the effort to pull it off was impressive.

[Anonymous No.8690485]

Falcon 9 has failed 3 times in 1/4 the flights as the shuttle.

[Anonymous No.8690504]

>>8690485
Look, Musk is a borderline conman and all that, fair enough. But a vehicle in development is going to have developmental problems. Mercury/Atlas had a bunch of early failures, as thy got the damned thing to work -- the Mercury Atlas series of flights was very successful. If STS had undergone a similar regimen of flight testing for development, they might have been able to handle some of the (in retrospect) obvious problems that came back to kill some folks later.

[Anonymous No.8690520]

>>8690466
>>Highest thrust-to-weight.
>shuttle easily has the highest twr of the three
Now you're equivocating. The vehicle thrust-to-weight is different from the engine thrust-to-weight, and vehicle thrust-to-weight is not a useful figure of merit (all-liquid-fueled rockets generally have close to 1:1 twr because it gives better performance to put more fuel in, while solid boosters typically kick the twr up because it's good to burn them up quickly and drop their heavy casings at relatively low altitude).

Solid boosters don't have an "engine thrust to weight" because they don't have an engine, just a rocket motor, which is most of the mass of the booster.

>KSC =/= CCAFS
Nitpicking over an arbitrary line between the NASA area and the Air Force area.

[Anonymous No.8690562]

>>8690467
>Wasn't really a mission for that big a booster unless you are going far out with a crew.
The shuttle was not any smaller of a booster/rocket than the Saturn V
It's just that they wasted most of the payload on a silly orbiter

You can talk about budget forcing them into unwise designs, but we're still talking billions in annual funding, they could have done any sort of space vehicle.

But yea I understand NASA is not an autonomous agency and doesn't get to decide what it wants to do.

[Anonymous No.8690563]

>>8690467
>the bad decision that a reusable vehicle was an idea whose time had come.
No, that was absolutely the right idea. After Apollo had demonstrated that landing on the moon was possible, but far too damn expensive, it was time to develop reusability.

The wrong idea was that they could skip from the Wright Flyer (X-15) straight to a 747 (space shuttle) without bothering with steps in between. They needed to build a small, low-cost reusable and work their way up.

Early shuttle concepts had it as a vehicle with just enough room for two seated astronauts and one or two hundred pounds of cargo in the trunk, and this was exactly what they should have built first, and used to visit Skylab. This could have been scaled up in stages, based on experience. The first one didn't even have to integrate the upper stage propulsion, there would have been a substantial benefit just from an efficiently reusable spacecraft capable of controlled landing. The two components (a large suborbital spaceplane, and a small orbital one) could have been developed separately, paired with expendable components, and then combined if both worked well.

Other good concepts to pursue were the big, dumb booster, a rugged pressure-fed splashdown reusable, and a capsule-like propulsive-landing upper stage, with the engine and heat shield one and the same structure. Both were very scalable.

There was lots of stuff they could have worked on in reusability. They were just trying to accomplish too much in one big leap.

[Anonymous No.8690580]

>>8690563
Interesting post. Next up on my reading list is an allegedly-not-to-worshipful history of STS, will b interested to see if these concepts are addressed...

[Anonymous No.8690584]

>>8689558
>>8689556
>>8689555
haha benis :DDD

[Anonymous No.8690642]

>>8690584
:------DDDDDDDD

[Anonymous No.8690643]

>>8690485
>Falcon 9 has failed 3 times in 1/4 the flights as the shuttle.
The first "failure" was just an irregularity. The vehicle was built for engine-out capability (which in this case occurred because of a bad batch of alloy) and fully capable of completing the mission. The secondary payload was only dumped because NASA exercised a contract option that allowed them to.

The second failure was a bad strut. It is by no means conventional practice to test individual struts before installation. Other aerospace manufacturers also install them untested. This could have happened to anyone. In response, SpaceX both changed their supplier and began testing struts individually.

The third failure was a failure in pre-launch testing involving a new tanking procedure, not a launch failure. The payload was on top of the rocket at the option of the customer, which is why it was lost. This was an unusually spectacular and costly testing failure, but the purpose of pre-flight testing is to prevent actual launch failures, as this one did. This stemmed from doing two things nobody else has done before: immersing the helium tanks in the liquid oxygen tank, and using subcooled propellant for increased density.

These aren't the kind of failures that indicate a troubled vehicle which will end up having low reliability. Two identified bad suppliers who should have been reliable, and the third was a surprise in testing new technology.

When Ariane 5 was as old as Falcon 9 is now, it had failed 4 times out of only 14 launch attempts (less than half as many as Falcon 9). Since then it has gone 76 launches without a failure.

[Anonymous No.8690648]

>>8690643
We are reaching levels of denial that I never thought possible.

[Anonymous No.8690672]

>>8690562
>The shuttle was not any smaller of a booster/rocket than the Saturn V
Somewhat smaller.

The Space Shuttle was about 2000 tonnes on the pad could put 135.5 tonnes into LEO, including the fuelled orbiter and external tank.

Saturn V was about 3000 tonnes on the pad and could put 153.5 tonnes into LEO, including the empty 3rd stage.

However, part of the reason the shuttle came so close to putting the same amount in orbit was the near-SSTO parallel staging arrangement, which takes more unnecessary weight all the way to orbit. Stripped of all reusability and crew features, the shuttle would still probably be limited to about a 70 tonne payload, compared to the Saturn V's 140 tonne capacity.

[Anonymous No.8690685]

>>8690672
That Saturn V number goes up every time I see it

What happened to the 118 tons that was cited the last 40 years?

[Anonymous No.8690741]

>>8690648
Triggered by a realistic assessment?

SpaceX is a new company, so it's not that surprising if they'd get caught out by a couple of bad suppliers before they established the appropriate level of trust in their supply chain, and one or two other failures on a new vehicle is practically guaranteed.

It only seems like their failures are coming close together because they're moving so fast.

There's nobody who started building rockets and just had them all work.

[Anonymous No.8690749]

>>8690741
Everybody except SpaceX is the problem.

[Anonymous No.8690767]

>>8690741
struts don't "just" fail at 1/3 design load

aluminum is more similar to steel than to composites in that brittle fracture is very unlikely without thousands of loadings and unloadings building up internal stress

spacex missed what should have been an obviously faulty piece or they installed it wrong (NASA believes they installed it wrong, and I tend to agree)

[Anonymous No.8690776]

>>8690643
>The third failure was a failure in pre-launch testing involving a new tanking procedure, not a launch failure.
"launch" includes everything from the point the customer hands the satellite to the launch provider up until it separates from the upper stage

the only case in which it wouldn't be considered a launch failure is if the customer didn't lose the payload

[Anonymous No.8690823]

>>8690749
What you don't seem to get is that there isn't a problem. It's completely normal to have a few failures early in a rocket's life. This isn't a bad sign or anything, it's expected.

Do you have any idea how many rockets ULA's parent companies and Arianespace have blown up over the years? Are you aware that Atlas V had an irregularity worse than Falcon 9's first one just last March, on its 62nd launch? It has been grounded twice for investigations. By luck alone, Atlas V's two failures didn't cause a loss of payload, because they were on missions that could tolerate the reduced performance.

If it seems like SpaceX is having failures unusually frequently, that's because they're ramping up toward an extremely high flight rate.

The space shuttle was a special case, because it was an always-manned vehicle with no launch escape system, and also an extremely expensive reusable vehicle. Its managers bragged unrealistically that it had a one-in-ten-thousand probability of failure. They were not in a practical, moral, or rhetorical position to defend the program when it turned out to merely have a low-ish failure rate.

[Anonymous No.8690832]

>>8690823
>What you don't seem to get is that there isn't a problem.
Pic related isn't a problem?
>It's completely normal to have a few failures early in a rocket's life.
31 flights is not "early" in a rocket's life you retard
>Do you have any idea how many rockets ULA's parent companies and Arianespace have blown up over the years?
Far less per launch than SpaceX.
>Are you aware that Atlas V had an irregularity worse than Falcon 9's first one just last March
Not worse, as no payload was lost.
>It has been grounded twice for investigations.
SpaceX was grounded for launch failures twice in the last two years.
>By luck alone
What? Luck doesn't exist.
>If it seems like SpaceX is having failures unusually frequently, that's because they're ramping up toward an extremely high flight rate.
They've been "ramping up" since late 2014
this is a tired old meme that nobody believes anymore
>The space shuttle was a special case
>everything that proves me wrong is a special case

[Anonymous No.8690833]

>>8690832
forgot pic

[Anonymous No.8690835]

>>8690749
SpaceX was 100% the problem in their most recent failure.

[Anonymous No.8690837]

>>8690767
>struts don't "just" fail at 1/3 design load
That's right, they have to be seriously defective, and for these high-quality aerospace struts, the industry standard practice is to simply trust the supplier after initial verification of their manufacturing and quality control processes.

>spacex missed what should have been an obviously faulty piece
You're an obviously faulty piece. Anyone who has worked with high-strength metal components knows that strength-compromising flaws aren't always visible. The supplier wouldn't have passed along visibly faulty parts. These aren't cheap parts that come straight off a machine and drop into boxes, they at least looked at each one before shipping it.

>NASA believes they installed it wrong
Bullshit. What's your source? SpaceX went through their inventory and found that if they tested enough of them under load, a few of them failed at far under the rated load.

>>8690776
>"launch" includes everything from the point the customer hands the satellite to the launch provider up until it separates from the upper stage
No it doesn't, you dimwit. Ground-handling damage is a separate issue from launch failure. It's covered by different insurance and has different implications.

Furthermore, as I pointed out, it was at the customer's option that the payload be on top of the rocket for preflight tests that had a catastrophic failure potential. They chose that to save money.

[Anonymous No.8690841]

>>8690835
I'm partial to forgiving them for that one, since the circumstances of the failure were relatively exotic and reasonably unforeseen before the vehicle exploded - so long as that kind of failure never happens again.

[Anonymous No.8690863]

>>8690841
They were running dangerous fuel tests with a customer on board.
Not acceptable.

[Anonymous No.8690880]

>>8690863
Customer's decision.

[Anonymous No.8690888]

>>8690880
They didn't ask the customer if they were ok with trying to fuel the whole rocket in 10 minutes so their meme landing would be more likely.
>but they were ok with being on board for the static fire
A pad accident in 2016 is unprecedented. The last one in the US was half a century ago.

[Anonymous No.8690890]

>>8690888
So was the vehicle configuration. The fact that it hadn't happened in half a century didn't give good reason to expect a major vehicle failure from a procedure modification that the systems were in spec for.

[Anonymous No.8690894]

>>8690890
>in spec
No.
They literally didn't even check the thermo effects before running the test. Complete incompetence.

[Anonymous No.8690896]

This is why nobody takes you spacex shitters seriously.

[Anonymous No.8690899]

>>8690896
Great ad-hominem, bro. I am not a poster who claims SpaceX is infallible, but I'm not going to start chomping at the bit to condemn them in line with the anti-circlejerk.

[Anonymous No.8690907]

>>8690899
>amos-6 was the customer's fault!
>crs-7 was the supplier's fault!
>commercial crew delays are NASA's fault!
>FH isn't a priority that's why it's been delayed for 6 years!
>these failures are just growing pains!
>spacex was the first to land rockets!
>cancel NASA and give all the money to spacex!
>killing people is ok when Elon does it
>the russians sabotaged the rocket with a laser weapon!
>ULA shot the rocket with a sniper rifle from their rooftop!
>they will fly ITS before 2022!
Every day you retards lose more an more credibility.

[Anonymous No.8690920]

>>8690832
>31 flights is not "early" in a rocket's life you retard
It is in a rocket that's supposed to fly multiple times per a month, and when those flights are divided between three versions with major differences.

Falcon 9 1.0 was a prototype, proof of concept rocket. It used an engine designed to meet the production rate needs of Falcon 1 (which would have needed only one tenth as many Merlin engines) and only flew five times over three years. It had one failure, from a bad supplier.

Falcon 9 1.1 was the first production block. There were major changes from the 1.0, including a new engine, a tank stretch, and the option to experiment with propulsive landing. It first flew in September 2013, less than three and a half years ago. It flew twice in 2013, six times in 2014, and had its failure on its seventh flight of 2015, only halfway through the year. One failure, bad supplier.

Falcon 9 FT was the second major revision. It also featured major changes, including an uprated version of the Merlin 1D, the unprecedented technology of propellant densification, and landing-related upgrades. It first flew in December 2015, barely over a year ago, landed successfully, and immediately kept up the pace of one launch per month. One failure in preflight testing, from a surprising issue related to pioneering a new technology.

Next up is Block 5, intended to be the last major revision, featuring mature reusability and a routinely-available Heavy configuration.

>They've been "ramping up" since late 2014
Wow, late 2014, two years ago, and sixteen successful launches since then. So long. Very not ramping up. I don't think you understand the timescale rocket programs operate on, or what a typical launch rate is. Launching once a month is an extremely high rate.

In Ariane 5's first 7 years, it only flew 14 times, with one major revision, and had 4 failures. Atlas V only flew 19 times in its first 7 years, with no major revisions, and had 1 failure.

[Anonymous No.8690932]

>>8690920
see >>8690907
More endless excuse making from the spacex groupies.

[Anonymous No.8690941]

>>8690907
Literally the only thing I said was AMOS-6 is forgivable in my eyes.

[Anonymous No.8690942]

>>8690888
>They didn't ask the customer if they were ok with trying to fuel the whole rocket in 10 minutes
Yes they did. They discussed it in detail with the customer.

This is a $60+ million rocket launch of a comparably costly satellite, not a $50 tow to a junkyard of a rusty old car. There are people on both sides discussing everything that's going to happen in detail before they do it, because there's a lot to lose and plenty of money floating around to pay teams of people on each side to give their full attention to decisions like this.

[Anonymous No.8690943]

>>8690942
>Yes they did. They discussed it in detail with the customer.
No, they didn't.

[Anonymous No.8690945]

>>8690943
Go be a chimp somewhere else. You don't know what you're talking about.

[Anonymous No.8690953]

>>8690945
See >>8690907

[Anonymous No.8690982]

>>8690907
>amos-6 was the customer's fault!
The customer certainly shared responsibility in the loss of payload.

>crs-7 was the supplier's fault!
Absolutely true. ULA, Arianespace, and MSFC are just as vulnerable to this kind of fuck-up from their suppliers.

>commercial crew delays are NASA's fault!
Absolutely true. They are not doing their side of the work in a timely manner.

>FH isn't a priority that's why it's been delayed for 6 years!
Yup. FH is a configuration of F9, like Delta IV Heavy is the heavy configuration of Delta IV.

>these failures are just growing pains!
Absolutely true.

>spacex was the first to land rockets!
The first to propulsively land boosters used for orbital spaceflight, yes. This is a major advancement and is almost certainly going to result in the first beneficial reusability of an orbital launch vehicle.

>cancel NASA and give all the money to spacex!
MSFC is indeed garbage which should be abolished.

>killing people is ok when Elon does it
Reasonable risks in pursuit of noble goals should be accepted. For instance, the Apollo 1 deaths weren't a valid reason to end the Apollo Program, but the shuttle was a pork program, and Challenger was just shameful.

>the russians sabotaged the rocket with a laser weapon!
>ULA shot the rocket with a sniper rifle from their rooftop!
Peanut gallery comments.

>they will fly ITS before 2022!
Entirely possible, of course not guaranteed.

You're like a monkey throwing shit at people when they talk, not understanding anything they say.

[Anonymous No.8690989]

>>8690982

Where I differ from this Anon is that AMOS-6 should never have resulted in the loss of the customer payload, whether the customer agreed to it or not. SpaceX's right to experimentation ends the instant it could put the payload at risk. If they test the vehicle before launch, they need to make sure it will not impact the customer's schedule. If they test in flight, they don't have a right to do something risky and new with the vehicle until staging. I can forgive them for learning this the hard way, but that doesn't make it acceptable.

[Anonymous No.8690999]

>>8690982
>[ULA] are just as vulnerable to this kind of fuck-up from their suppliers.
Tory Bruno specifically stated that ULA tests such components; part of the reason for their large overhead (and uniquely low accident rate.)

[Anonymous No.8691006]

>>8690982
Apollo 1 was objectively a worse fuckup than Challenger.

[Anonymous No.8691041]

>>8690989
>AMOS-6 should never have resulted in the loss of the customer payload, whether the customer agreed to it or not.
Welcome to the realities of the commercial world, where the gambles you take don't always pay off.

>SpaceX's right to experimentation ends the instant it could put the payload at risk.
It's not a matter of rights, it's a matter of contracts. SpaceX doesn't have a right to experimentation, they have to negotiate launch contracts that allow them to experiment.

SpaceX has only been able to make the rapid progress they have because of changing things on almost every flight. If they had to fly their experiments without a payload, they wouldn't be able to afford it. If customers don't like the balance of risk and cost SpaceX is offering, they can go to Arianespace or ULA, or talk to the Russians, Chinese, or Indians. They can also accept prices never coming down for them in the future, because they're demonstrating that the market is price insensitive and risk intolerant.

>>8690999
>Tory Bruno specifically stated that ULA tests such components
Source? These are struts. They're like bolts. It's not normal to test them. Testing them also imposes a risk of damage and weakening.

>uniquely low accident rate
Atlas V only missed losing a payload last year by sheer luck: the failure of the first stage reduced performance, but it happened to not be enough for the payload to be lost. Ariane 5 has more consecutively-successful launches than Atlas V has had launches at all.

[Anonymous No.8691056]

>>8689555
They're working on it just hold your horses.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJjGUd5VG84

[Anonymous No.8691090]

>>8691006
>Apollo 1 was objectively a worse fuckup than Challenger.
Apollo 1 killed 3 military-background astronauts who had heroically signed up to participate in what was billed as "the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked". It happened when NASA and orbital spaceflight itself were both under ten years old, to people preparing to take part in what would have been only the 27th manned spaceflight ever. It was groundbreaking work in service of real exploration under significant time pressure.

The Challenger disaster killed 7, four of which were civilians, including two women, one of which was someone lacking all qualifications chosen specifically as an "ordinary person" to emphasize how routine and safe space flight had become thanks to the space shuttle. It happened when NASA and orbital spaceflight were nearly thirty years old, after men had walked on the moon and spent months in orbit aboard various space stations, and after hundreds of orbital launches. It was in service of a deeply dishonest pork program which served primarily as an obstacle to any real advancement in spaceflight.

We could debate all day which was the more egregious engineering/management/operational failure in the context of the time, but Challenger sacrificed more than twice as many lives, of people dramatically less informed of the risk, for an inestimably poorer cause.

[Anonymous No.8691152]

>>8691041
>These are struts. They're like bolts.

[Anonymous No.8691161]

>>8690413

[Anonymous No.8691166]

>>8691161

[Anonymous No.8691169]

>>8691166

[Anonymous No.8691170]

>>8691169

[Anonymous No.8691172]

>>8691170

[Anonymous No.8691174]

>>8690411
It's not about efficiency, it's about reusability. No one seriously expects Falcon accomplish useful things. It's merely a milestone that needs to be reached on the way to real innovation.

[Anonymous No.8691177]

>>8691172

[Anonymous No.8691179]

>>8691174
The only two space entities today that have "reused" anything are NASA and Blue origin.

[Anonymous No.8691182]

>>8691174
>No one seriously expects Falcon accomplish useful things
Launching satellites at a lower price is useful. Even without re-usability this tech is cheaper, with it it's wildly cheaper.

Look, I understand being skeptical. Musk is kind of a cunt and is infamous for cutting corners and missing milestones, but this kind of technology is a good thing. Reusable rockets are a fucking game-changer. By the time we're old men, people will proibably regard going into space as not THAT big of a deal, akin to buying a nice car.

Even if Elon fails,other people will step in and try this again,whether it's Bezos or some other billionaire or a state. Because it's massively useful. The sheer cost of putting things into orbit strangles our access to space,if you could cut that in half,or even more, you'd do a lot of good.

[Anonymous No.8691184]

>>8691182
$60 mil vs $125 mil per launch doesn't matter when insurance costs $100 mil and the satellite costs $600 mil

[Anonymous No.8691409]

>>8690643
>This stemmed from doing two things nobody else has done before: immersing the helium tanks in the liquid oxygen tank, and using subcooled propellant for increased density.
Not just that, but also having using a COPV tank
If it wasn't for the carbon exploding with the LOX + ignition source nothing would have happened.
A titanium tank would have been fine

[Anonymous No.8691541]

>>8691409
>A titanium tank would have been fine
An oxygen impermeable fiberglass wrapped COPV would have been fine too.

[Anonymous No.8691580]

>>8691182
>By the time we're old men, people will proibably regard going into space as not THAT big of a deal, akin to buying a nice car.

Some of us are already old men, and heard this song a time or two before.

Not saying I don't hope it's really true this time. But I'm from Earth, the "Show Me Planet."

[Anonymous No.8691669]

>>8691184
I assure you that 50 million dollars always matters
Even if you are spending 500+ million total on the launch

[Anonymous No.8691822]

>>8691409
Sure, that was an important part of the problem, but I don't think COPVs were new.

>>8691184
>$60 mil vs $125 mil per launch doesn't matter when insurance costs $100 mil and the satellite costs $600 mil
It matters when you start developing technology and producing duplicates. For instance, you can take that savings and throw up a second $5 mil satellite that's just a cobbled-together testbed for some things you'd like to consider using on your next gen vehicle. Or you can buy some space on a DragonLab flight that's cheap because the launches are.

Another thing is that when SpaceX gets up to speed, they're going to be able to launch on short notice. You'll be able to order a launch one month, and see your payload in orbit the next month, because they've got a bunch of reusable boosters sitting around ready to go, and they can produce enough upper stages to fly twice a week. The current (and pre-SpaceX) situation is a years-long waiting list.

If the satellite + insurance + launch now costs $825 million, then it'll pay off fast to buy some cheap, quick-turnaround development launches to iterate cost-reduction strategies.

[Anonymous No.8691897]

>>8689555
>>8689556
>>8690269

I've mentioned this in every STS bitching thread. It (1969-1979) was simply a different era, everyone back then (NASA, defense contractors, Congress, regular people) had unrealistic expectations for the future of flight. Everyone seriously thought that by 1990 supersonic flight would be the norm and by 2000 hypersonic (ie LEO) flight would be commercially viable. They expected ramjet tech to evolve a lot faster than it did.

In that situation, the Shuttle made a lot of sense. It could have eventually had it's engines replaced with newer ones, allowing for smaller internal fuel tanks. It even had a huge cargo bay which could be used for something like a ramjet engine allowing for the boosters could be eliminated. Future shuttles would have integrated advancements in tech and be SSTOs. The original Orbiter itself would have been phased out by the early 90s.

It didn't happen due to Congress's decision to deregulate the airlines in 1978, switching the industry from monopolastic to perfectly competitive. As a result, airlines no longer had lots of spare money to throw at manufacturers for R&D. This has more or less stalled aerospace tech, which since 1980 has been based completely on implementing fly-by-wire control systems but not much else. This accounts for Boeing's newest aircraft, the 787, which is made out of composites that increase fuel efficiency but not speed.

In hindsight it looks stupid but this is a situation where you need to actually look back at contemporary sources (again 1969-79) and the decision to build the shuttle makes a lot of sense. It was only by the late 80s, when TWA and Pan-Am started having financial problems, did people realize that it wasn't such an amazing idea. Which is how we got Orion/Ares V, which would have been flying by last year if not for 9/11 causing the government to reorganize the military/intelligence superstructure (at great cost) in the early 00s.

[Anonymous No.8691900]

>>8690450

The Shuttle was meant to eventually create a private space industry, it was supposed to be the "DC9 for space". That didn't pan out.

[Anonymous No.8691908]

>>8689558
it is called miniaturization

[Anonymous No.8691915]

>>8691182

>Reusable rockets are a fucking game-changer.

They are, but regular people won't see the gains.

>By the time we're old men, people will proibably regard going into space as not THAT big of a deal, akin to buying a nice car.

Not with rockets, reusable ones especially are too complicated a setup to allow for mass market access. A 100-200 seat SSTO is needed for that, something about the size of the STS (which is one of the reasons why NASA built it) but capable of landing on a regular 12,000 foot airport runway. But even then people will bitch about noise (remember that SSTOs are noise machines as they have to be going mach 35 to escape gravity) meaning that the nascent spaceflight industry would have to deal with hardcore NIMBYism unless they want to be constrained to MIA, ATL and JFK.

[Anonymous No.8691979]

>>8691900
Fantasies and rhetoric totally divorced from reality isn't really what it was "meant" to do

[Anonymous No.8692017]

>>8691979

See my points here >>8691897, back in 1975 it wasn't unreasonable to assume that supersonic flight would be normal by 1990 as would hypersonic flight be by 2000.

[Anonymous No.8692035]

>>8692017
You think an engineer in 1975 would say something like that?

[Anonymous No.8692036]

>>8691897
>It even had a huge cargo bay which could be used for something like a ramjet engine allowing for the boosters could be eliminated.
>It didn't happen due to Congress's decision to deregulate the airlines
You have no idea what you're talking about. You're just imagining things and typing them out. There was never any plan for "something like a ramjet engine", a ramjet absolutely could not eliminate the boosters, nor could it be installed in the cargo bay, and none of this had anything to do with airline deregulation.

The problem with the shuttle was not that they tried to build a spaceplane RLV, but the way they did it. Instead of building a minimum viable product to shuttle astronauts to and from the space station, they went straight for a heavy lift vehicle with exotic capabilities despite their complete lack of experience, they compromised the design process by handing out contracts to politically-connected groups instead of choosing who would do the best work. Worst of all, they continued even after it became obvious that it wouldn't work right or provide any benefits over expendable vehicles. The real insanity, of course, was continuing to fly it for three decades, with no hope of it ever getting better.

Supersonic flight didn't become the commercial norm because it was more costly and the noise was unacceptable over land. An intercontinental flight is an expensive thing, largely because of fuel consumption. Hardly anyone wants to pay twice as much just to get there in half the time.

It's the same sort of reason we don't drive 300 mph on the highway. Cars could do it, but it's not practical or economical.

[Anonymous No.8692115]

>>8692036
>Hardly anyone wants to pay twice as much just to get there in half the time.
lol
People would GLADLY pay twice as much to get there in half the time
They pay twice as much for nicer accomodations in the plane

The problem with the concorde was that it was like 10 times as much, and could only fly super sonic over water

[Anonymous No.8692158]

>>8692115
>People would GLADLY pay twice as much to get there in half the time
A FEW people. Most won't.

>They pay twice as much for nicer accomodations in the plane
...so you think these same people would accept being crammed in like cattle to have a shorter (but still long) flight, or that they'd pay four times as much? Most people opt for cheap seats.

>and could only fly super sonic over water
That's what we're talking about: intercontinental flights only, because supersonic flight over land is too much of a nuisance to be tolerated.

>The problem with the concorde was that it was like 10 times as much
That's what happens when hardly anyone is willing to pay twice as much. You do all the development work of something like the Concorde, and then you only build 20 planes and have to amortize your development over the flights of those few planes, while 747s get built by the hundred and spawn imitators.

[Anonymous No.8692197]

>>8692115
>>8692158
Incidentally, the Concorde consumed approximately triple the fuel per passenger-mile as the 747, and travelled at a peak of about two and a half times the speed.

It was rising oil prices more than anything else that killed it.

[Anonymous No.8692210]

http://boomsupersonic.com/
soon

[Anonymous No.8692230]

>>8690253
>>8690411

Swap out Saturn 5 for Falcon 9 and you would have a better moon program.

Swap out the Space Shuttle for Falcon 9 and you would have a better space station and space launch program.

Swap out the SLS for Falcon 9 and you would have a better exploration program.

Keep Falcon 9 where it is and you have the best communications satellite launcher.

[Anonymous No.8692346]

>>8692230
>Swap out Saturn 5 for Falcon 9 and you would have a better moon program.
Even assuming you mean Falcon Heavy, and the expendable version at that, it would complicate the program considerably since you'd be working with only one third of the payload to TLI.

You'd have to do something like launch a lander/ascender and a tug in two separate launches, then send the crew in the return capsule to meet the tug.

It's a workable idea, but I'm not sure it's a "better moon program" than using a rocket sufficient to launch a complete mission in one go. The ITS is much more suitable for this kind of thing. The big trouble with Falcon Heavy for beyond-LEO manned missions is that the reusability brings the payload down to the uninteresting range, and without it, it's not that cheap and can't support all that high a launch rate.

The cost of adding a Saturn V launch to the program was the equivalent of around 750 million dollars, and at peak activity, they launched four in one year. You'd expect expendable Falcon Heavy launches to go for at least $120 million, and probably more, so you're only talking about cutting the $/kg cost about in half, while you have to deal with cutting the payload in thirds. You're also counting on SpaceX to do 12 expendable Falcon Heavy launches per year, which I think they just can't do.

[Anonymous No.8692866]

>>8692346

[Anonymous No.8693130]

>>8692346
>>8692866

It's an interesting concept, but it'd be difficult to convince anyone to commit to a round of 14 launches at a cadence of ~2 launches per month and a cost of $868 million not including the modules themselves or the cost of monitoring the spacecraft as they're waiting for final assembly in orbit. Especially if we'd only get one Apollo-style Moon landing mission with a surface stay of a few days out of it.

I think if you add Falcon Heavy to the mix, use it to launch fewer bigger fuel tankers, and launch the fuel first, along with keeping as high a launch cadence as possible, it'd be a lot more feasible. For an extra $28 million you get double the payload to LEO, plus you only need 5 Falcon Heavy fuel launches instead of 10 Falcon 9's, resulting in a cost of $450 million as opposed to $620 million for the same number of Falcon 9 launches. Hell, you could pair up and stack the other modules together on two Heavy's and cut costs by another $68 million. Using Falcon Heavy only, and adding one final Falcon 9 launch with a Dragon for crew transfer to the Moon vehicle assembly, the total launch costs drop to $692 million, a reduction of $176 million.

Seven Falcon Heavy launches, providing Heavy can launch with the same assumed cadence of Falcon 9, would take 3.5 months to complete. That time reduction alone would improve this idea's chances of being deemed feasible, and along with the cost drop it's kinda a no-brainer that Heavy is far more suited for a Moon-mission architecture than Falcon 9.

All that being said, I don't think this idea is going to happen with Falcon 9 or Falcon Heavy. It's just too complicated and SpaceX themselves aren't going to push much for it if at all, since their focus is on Mars. It'd take a big political shift to suddenly decide to invest the (probably) few billion it'd take to design and build all the modules needed and actually undertake a mission like this.

[Anonymous No.8693137]

>>8690685
Probably did not include third stage?

[Anonymous No.8693141]

>>8690907
>SpaceX was the first to land rockets

What is the Lunar Module?

[Anonymous No.8693144]

>>8690943
>>8690945
SO many assertions, so few sources.

[Anonymous No.8693170]

>>8693141

A small, light, manned spacecraft landing in 0.15% Earth gravity with no atmosphere to deal with and zero consideration towards reusability. It could also land pretty much anywhere flat enough to not cause a tip over of the module.

The Falcon 9 first stage is the biggest and most expensive part of the launch vehicle, is landing using the same engine(s) it used to launch, performs supersonic retro-propulsion burns as it comes in to land, and has to hit a very small target despite coming in from hundreds of kilometers away, dealing with atmospheric turbulence and so forth.

Blue Origin was the first company to land a stage from a suborbital launch system, just days before SpaceX became the first to land a stage from an orbital launch system. Shuttle only really landed with the engines of the second stage, since the solid boosters were the ones providing most of the takeoff thrust and were simply ditched into the ocean with parachutes and sometimes refurbished afterwards.

[Anonymous No.8693212]

>>8692866
That's 14 launches instead of 1, plus orbital propellant transfer operations.

They're not saying this is better, they're pointing out that it's technically possible without developing a heavy-lift rocket.

I used to be enthusiastic about this kind of plan, until SpaceX said they were making ITS instead of doing a reusable upper stage for Falcon 9. Full reuse would make crazy flight rates possible. They could potentially launch multiple times per day. But with an expendable upper stage, it's a whole other ballgame. Even if it's considerably smaller, they're still throwing out a huge, very expensive piece of hardware every time they fly.

I'm disappointed. They might have had a reusable upper stage by next year, if they had been focused on it. Most of the work they need for it is done on Dragon. The complete ITS is at least five years off, and there are many ways such a big project could be delayed or fail entirely.

[Anonymous No.8693214]

>>8693170
>0.15% Earth gravity
0.15 or 15% Earth gravity maybe, not 0.15%.

[Anonymous No.8693230]

>>8693214
sorry I'm american

[Anonymous No.8693496]

>>8690411
>yet to do anything useful

Except kickstart the birth of the spaceport era.

Your great great great grandkids will be thankful when they can take the 6 o'clock shuttle to Mars.

[Anonymous No.8693718]

Just a reminder that as SpaceX is taking over yet another launch pad, Russia has abandoned yet another Soviet-era rocket.

The final launch of the Soyuz-U was last night, carrying a Progress cargo capsule to the ISS. This was the 786th launch of this Soyuz variant, the most launched and most successful (97.6% success rate, despite it's previous failure in December) rocket of all time.

Proton is probably next to go, assuming they can get the modern Angara A5 replacement up to a frequent launch cadence.

[Anonymous No.8693786]

>>8693718
Well sure its better to just have one rocket design and one production line for it

We gotta end those sanctions fast too

[Anonymous No.8693800]

>>8693170
OK, but still -- the claim that nobody ever landed a rocket before is nonsense. Acknowledging that does not detract from whatever SpaceX accomplishes.

I think that is the most annpoying thing about Muskish fanbois, it is not enough for them to be happy about what is being accomplished, it has to be the greatest stuff ever accomplished, and of course all other accomplishments either didn't happen or were crap.

Don't be that guy.

>Shuttle only really landed with the engines of the second stage

Shuttle was a glider after reentry, it had no landing engines -- they were in the original concepts but got Proxmired.

[Anonymous No.8693839]

>>8693786
and those production lines must be Russian. That is the main reason for Russian rocket retirement these last couple of years: Dnepr, Zenit, Rockot, Soyuz-U all had components made in the Ukraine.

The remaining rockets Soyuz-2/FG, Proton-M, and Angara are all Russian-only. I also learned to day of a proposed Russian Zenit replacement called Sunkar (Russian for "falcon" ironically!) to use same diameters as Proton tankage to reuse that tooling.

[Anonymous No.8693843]

elon musk is just a sly marketing guy

[Anonymous No.8693851]

>>8692866
Fuck the moon, go to Mars.

[Anonymous No.8693856]

>>8693718
>Russia has abandoned yet another Soviet-era rocket.
That's a bit silly. Soyuz-U is being replaced by Soyuz-FG and Soyuz-2. They're all very closely related.

>Proton is probably next to go
Now that'll be a real cancellation. Soyuz is loved for its reliability. Proton is tolerated for its economy and capabilities, despite its unreliability and the appalling hazards of its hypergolic propellant.

[Anonymous No.8693857]

>>8692230
>this is what muskfags actually believe

[Anonymous No.8693864]

>>8690456
>the Falcon 9 maximum performance leapt up from 10.5 tonnes to LEO to 22.8
these numbers are unproven and probably false
the heaviest thing f9 has lifted is dragon and that's like 10 something
you can't even fit 20 tons into the payload fairing (which is why FH as a concept is retarded)

[Anonymous No.8693868]

>>8693718
786 launches is pretty fucking impressive

[Anonymous No.8693874]

>>8693856
Proton is no less reliable than Falcon 9

[Anonymous No.8693877]

>>8693851
Mars is a once-in-two-years launch opportunity. The moon is a go-when-you're-ready option, and has peaks of eternal light to get 24/7 solar power on.

Mars is interesting as a place to live independently from Earth. The moon is interesting as an industrial site which would provide benefits to Earth. Both are about equally interesting to study from a scientific point of view.

>>8693800
>the claim that nobody ever landed a rocket before is nonsense
It's a strawman, you chimp. There are no hardcore SpaceX supporters who go around saying, "nobody ever landed a rocket before". That's the kind of thing people say when they don't know what's going on or why it's important.

[Anonymous No.8693932]

>>8693874
Is Proton still being developed like Falcon 9 is?

[Anonymous No.8693941]

>>8693864
>these numbers are unproven and probably false
Look at other rockets. They almost never fly with payloads approaching their maxed-out LEO numbers.

The point of a maximum LEO payload is to give a simple figure of merit by which rocket performance can be roughly judged (just with idealized max LEO and GTO figures you can estimate what it can do to realistic destinations with head math). Usually even LEO payloads aren't going to the ideal orbit for the vehicle. For instance, many are going to polar orbits.

>the heaviest thing f9 has lifted is dragon and that's like 10 something
Dragon is one of the less demanding loads F9 launches. That's why they can use flyback recovery instead of downrange landing. The main market for high-performance launch is GTO.

There's not a lot of demand for big LEO launches, and expendable-mode launches are a special service that costs extra. They've done a launch of over 5 tonnes to GTO, which corresponds to a LEO payload approaching 15 tonnes, and still had propellant left for a landing attempt.

>you can't even fit 20 tons into the payload fairing
How dense are you? It's a 5.2 meter diameter, 13-meter long fairing. It's huge. You could stick a bus in it. Grossly oversized for most of the market. There's plenty of room to fit 50+ tonnes in there. Or you can design a 5 tonne payload that won't fit on any vehicle on the market.

Anyway, SpaceX has said they'll add a larger fairing if someone wants it enough to pay for it. Payloads can also be designed to not need a separate fairing, as in the example of Dragon. This might be done with, for instance, a propellant tanker.

[Anonymous No.8693961]

>>8693874
>Proton is no less reliable than Falcon 9
Proton's failure rate as a mature, decades-old rocket is worse than Falcon 9's infant mortality when they're still developing the tech for their final model.

Reminder: Falcon 9 has had only one true launch failure, and that was a supplier issue (which they addressed by both changing suppliers for the affected part and increasing their scrutiny of supplied parts). They had one flight with an irregularity where the hardware was still capable of completing the mission (NASA exercised a contract option to dump the secondary payload). They had one failure in pre-flight testing (during which the customer chose to have the payload on top of the rocket) related to pioneering a combination of new technologies.

[Anonymous No.8693983]

Where's the thread for NASA's announcement?

[Anonymous No.8694002]

>>8693961
31 flight's is not an "infant" rocket. That being said Proton's failures are caused by shitty russian QC while spacex failures are caused by shitty QC and also changing the design with every flight.

[Anonymous No.8694014]

>>8693961
see >>8690907
>it's NASA's fault!
>it's the supplier's fault!
>it's the customer's fault!
SpaceX can do no wrong. Ya hear me?

[Anonymous No.8694064]

>>8693983
Dunno, but wiki was quick in updating.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRAPPIST-1

[Anonymous No.8694080]

>>8693877
>The moon is a go-when-you're-ready option,

Not totally, if you want to land in daylight, which you do.

>and has peaks of eternal light to get 24/7 solar power on.

What?

[Anonymous No.8694090]

>>8693932
>More launches than the entire Saturn V series.
>Still being developed.

[Anonymous No.8694093]

>>8693941
>Look at other rockets. They almost never fly with payloads approaching their maxed-out LEO numbers.
Ariane 5 does with nearly every flight, as does the majority of Soyuz launches.

>Usually even LEO payloads aren't going to the ideal orbit for the vehicle.
Falcon 9 actually overperforms for leo because it has a comparatively inefficient upper stage

>They've done a launch of over 5 tonnes to GTO, which corresponds to a LEO payload approaching 15 tonnes, and still had propellant left for a landing attempt.
they've only done 1 >5000kg launch (partially because they blew up the other one on the pad) and the landing was not even close to successful

>How dense are you? It's a 5.2 meter diameter, 13-meter long fairing. It's huge. You could stick a bus in it.
more spacex faggot lies

>Grossly oversized for most of the market.
That's objectively and factually incorrect. Every other medium and heavy launcher has a larger fairing option than f9.
They can never do dual launches with FH unless the sats are satlets.

[Anonymous No.8694094]

>>8694002
>31 flight's is not an "infant" rocket.
The Falcon 9 that blew up on the pad in 2016 was not the same Falcon 9 that flew in 2010. It had over twice the payload capacity, used different engines, and was capable of flyback recovery. Falcon 9 FT was under a year old. That's an infant mortality failure.

People are making a fuss about the Soyuz-U retirement, but 1973 Soyuz-U is less different from its 2004 Soyuz-2 replacement than 2015 Falcon 9 FT is from 2013 Falcon 9 1.1.

>changing the design with every flight.
That's right, because it's still under development. They're flying payloads with a remarkable success rate considering how aggressively they're advancing the technology. Two years ago, nobody had ever landed a booster for an orbital rocket on a solid surface or used densified propellant.

2017: >spacex failures are caused by shitty QC and also changing the design
2002: >arianespace failures are caused by shitty QC and also changing the design
Reminder: when Ariane 5 was as old as Falcon 9 is, they'd had four launch failures out of only fourteen launch attempts. Their success rate was barely over 70%. Since then, they've had over 70 consecutive successful launches.

The pattern of SpaceX's failures is not consistent with any kind of systemic problem. Rather, it's consistent with superior competence applied simultaneously to multiple tasks of exceptional difficulty.

[Anonymous No.8694113]

>>8689558
The falcon heavy will be amazing, it will be able to put half the payload of a Saturn V for 1/10 of the cost to orbit. And it is going to be freaking amazing to watch 3 rockets land almost synchronically.

[Anonymous No.8694119]

>>8689556
>those Elmer's glued-on tiles already separating

[Anonymous No.8694124]

>>8694080
>>and has peaks of eternal light to get 24/7 solar power on.
>What?

The rims of craters in the polar regions experience constant light. Likewise, the bottoms of said craters are in permanent shade.

[Anonymous No.8694127]

>>8694094
>The Falcon 9 that blew up on the pad in 2016 was not the same Falcon 9 that flew in 2010. It had over twice the payload capacity, used different engines, and was capable of flyback recovery. Falcon 9 FT was under a year old. That's an infant mortality failure.
Atlas V flies new configurations all the time and its never had a failure.
The amos6 explosion was caused by pure incompetence of the spacex team.

>remarkable success rate
90% is not remarkable at all
A remarkable success rate would be atlas v with 100% in 69 launches or the space shuttle with 98% in 135 launches.

>Ariane V
Ariane V has had 1 more partial failure than spacex (and the same number of launch failures) but three times the number of flights.

Call me back after Falcon 9 flies 60 more times in a row without one failure (there's a 0.17% chance of that happening)

[Anonymous No.8694146]

>>8694113
Falcon heavy (in reusable configuration) has only 26% of the Saturn V capability (and even less for beyond leo missions because of the terrible upper stage engine), so those prices are bunk.

[Anonymous No.8694149]

>>8694127
>Atlas V
>russian engine
>making America proud

top kek

[Anonymous No.8694165]

>>8694093
>>How dense are you? It's a 5.2 meter diameter, 13-meter long fairing. It's huge. You could stick a bus in it.
>zomg, I can totally find a bus that just barely won't fit by one row of seats! there are smaller busses but this totally justifies me calling this a lie and namecalling!
There's something deeply wrong with you.

>>Grossly oversized for most of the market.
>That's objectively and factually incorrect. Every other medium and heavy launcher has a larger fairing option than f9.
>They can never do dual launches with FH unless the sats are satlets.
Exactly, it's not designed for dual launches, and no other launcher has a fairing twice as large.

Dual launches are an inconvenient way of achieving cost savings. F9/FH has a better way: booster reusability. The lighter the load, the more gently the booster(s) can be recovered. FH is meant primarily for launching comsats to GTO which Falcon 9 could carry in expendable mode, but using flyback recovery for all three boosters, without even needing the drone ship for downrange landing. The additional ability to launch huge payloads in expendable mode as a special service is a bonus.

[Anonymous No.8694175]

Who cares about falcon 9? It's a meme rocket.

Only New Glenn will be capable of real and demanding missions comparable to SLS on a reasonable time scale.

>>8694149
Russian engines have been objectively better for decades (hopefully this will change this year with Blue Origin rolling out the BE-4)

[Anonymous No.8694186]

>>8694175
>blue origin

fucking lol'd

[Anonymous No.8694193]

>>8694165
>posts something objectively wrong
>get's BTFO
>"hurr There's something deeply wrong with you."
lmao

>Exactly, it's not designed for dual launches
Ariane 6 will cost $120 mil a launch (the same as falcon heavy) but will be capable of dual launch. FH is literally wasting 3/4 of its payload capability.

>but using flyback recovery for all three boosters, without even needing the drone ship for downrange landing.
The droneship will be used for every core landing because it will be moving nearly 1000m/s faster at separation than the boosters every time.

[Anonymous No.8694207]

>>8694186
>fully reusable system
>landed before f9
>5 launches, totaling 4 reuses and 5 successful landings
>will put humans in space before f9
Muskfags are literally on suicide watch.

[Anonymous No.8694211]

>>8690643
either they're cutting corners or they're suffering an improbable amount of bad luck

[Anonymous No.8694255]

>>8692036

>There was never any plan for "something like a ramjet engine", a ramjet absolutely could not eliminate the boosters, nor could it be installed in the cargo bay,

Check NASA's original scoping reports from the early 70s, they even suggested that it could use nuclear propulsion. Yes it's bullshit but this was the idea, which obviously did not pan out into reality.

>and none of this had anything to do with airline deregulation.
>>Supersonic flight didn't become the commercial norm because it was more costly and the noise was unacceptable over land.

If the airlines weren't deregulated there would have been demand for supersonic airliners in the 80s and 90s, which would have made hypersonic (and potentially orbital) ones economical after. Hence why Air France (at the time a state subsidized airline) was the last Concorde user. Pan-Am, TWA and American all would have readily bought into Boeing's SST in such a case.

>It's the same sort of reason we don't drive 300 mph on the highway. Cars could do it, but it's not practical or economical.

Automobiles are a consumer-led perfectly competitive market and 300 mph speeds would require special infrastructure. Supersonic planes would be operated by an enterprise-led monopolistic market (before deregulation), which is why they were ever considered in the first place.

[Anonymous No.8694259]

>>8693130
>>8692866
when you add in a 25% failure rate, the plan seems much less feasible

[Anonymous No.8694275]

>>8693212
reusable is a meme, disposable is the theme of our times, all you need is a factory to pump out rockets like cars or big macs

[Anonymous No.8694290]

>>8694124
>The rims of craters in the polar regions experience constant light.
protip: high orbit experiences constant light but takes less delta-v to reach than the moon

[Anonymous No.8694296]

>>8694290
also various sun sync orbits

[Anonymous No.8694304]

>>8694127
>Atlas V flies new configurations all the time and its never had a failure.
Atlas V has done nothing new of consequence. It's reliable for the same reason Soyuz is reliable: its technology is very old and the people operating this latest incarnation weren't interested in pushing hard for either performance or economy.

It's just an Americanized half-Zenit with a Centaur on top and strap-on boosters. There's nothing major on it younger than the 1970s.

>>it's still under development. They're flying payloads with a remarkable success rate considering how aggressively they're advancing the technology.
>>remarkable success rate
>90% is not remarkable at all
What kind of garbage trims a quote so it sounds like it's saying something else, just to drag the conversation around in circles?

>A remarkable success rate would be atlas v with 100% in 69 launches
Atlas V has had two serious launch irregularities, one of which was definitely a failure, and the other only missed entirely losing the payload by a hair and threatened the safety of the ISS by leaving the upper stage without enough propellant to do a full deorbit burn.

When Atlas V was as old as Falcon 9, it had only done 16 launches and had one failure, giving it a 94% success rate. And the components Atlas V is based on had many in-flight failures before their mature versions were used on Atlas V. If you make apples-to-apples comparisons, SpaceX is doing excellent work which should be expected to lead to very high overall reliability figures when Falcon 9 is as old as Atlas V.

[Anonymous No.8694311]

>>8694207
>seahawks dead center
why

[Anonymous No.8694313]

>>8694304
>And the components Atlas V is based on had many in-flight failures before their mature versions were used on Atlas V.
>implying using heritage compinents is a bad thing in high reliability design

spaceX should be held responsible for bad engineering

[Anonymous No.8694316]

>>8689555

Now that I think about it

Would a disk-shaped "rocket" be a viable build? Or would there be too much resistance due to being wide?

[Anonymous No.8694325]

>>8694304
>Atlas V has done nothing new of consequence.
Atlas V has launched every NASA exploration mission post-Cassini (especially flagship missions like osiris rex or MSL which NASA would never trust spacex with)

>Atlas V has had two serious launch irregularities, one of which was definitely a failure
None of the customers have ever classified an atlas V mission as a failure.
>and the other only missed entirely losing the payload by a hair and threatened the safety of the ISS by leaving the upper stage without enough propellant to do a full deorbit burn
By that logic the first falcon9 flight was a failure because it ended with an uncontrollable roll induced on the boilerplate dragon. Also, stages are purposely abandoned at lower orbits so the are not a threat to an ISS. More lies from the retarded spacex faggots.

>When Atlas V was as old as Falcon 9, it had only done 16 launches and had one failure, giving it a 94% success rate.
Falcon 9 has had 17 launch attempts?

>And the components Atlas V is based on had many in-flight failures before their mature versions were used on Atlas V.
Ok, then why not include the falcon 1 failures, giving spacex an 83% success rate?

[Anonymous No.8694333]

>>8694316
>Would a disk-shaped "rocket" be a viable build?
Inside or outside an atmosphere?

[Anonymous No.8694336]

>>8694207
There only functional rocket is a grasshopper. There are where SpaceX was 10 years ago.

[Anonymous No.8694341]

>>8694336
Their*

[Anonymous No.8694344]

>>8694336
New Shepard goes 103x higher than the highest grasshopper flight.

[Anonymous No.8694379]

>>8694333

Outside wouldn't be an issue really, no air, etc.

Perhaps lifting off in a disk would be a bit hard, then again if we're going by how sci-fi does it, it first lifts up vertically via repulsors (do we even have similar tech?) until it gets high enough, then it starts shooting forward.

If I think of it like that the resistance should be the same, non?

[Anonymous No.8694481]

>>8694193
>Ariane 6 will cost $120 mil a launch (the same as falcon heavy) but will be capable of dual launch.
SpaceX is already signing contracts at $90 million/launch, and that's for up to 8 tonnes to GTO. Ariane 6's dual launch capacity is only 10 tonnes for both payloads combined. Falcon 9's standard-price GTO capacity is 5.5 tonnes, so Ariane 6's "dual-launch" is competing with Falcon 9, not Falcon Heavy.

Furthermore, Arianespace has no plan for dealing with SpaceX's mature reusability, which is what they'll be facing when Ariane 6 starts flying. So far, SpaceX has been pricing things based on expending hardware, but accepting reusable performance, because they have no guarantee of reusing anything. They weren't joking when they talked about eventually doing launches for under $15 million.

(increasingly nervous Arianespace executive insists that SpaceX will never actually do it)

>FH is literally wasting 3/4 of its payload capability.
Spending it, to good purpose.

>The droneship will be used for every core landing
They've stated their intention to land all three back on land. As with Falcon 9, they'll have the drone ship as an option for higher-performance launches.

>it will be moving nearly 1000m/s faster at separation than the boosters
Thanks to the boosters, they'll be able to separate with a lot of propellant remaining, giving it a lot of delta-V to reverse the horizontal component of velocity. They're sacrificing nearly two-thirds of expendable capacity for this maneuver, but it's well worth it because they'd be recovering over 90% of the manufacturing cost.

[Anonymous No.8694583]

>>8694313
>>And the components Atlas V is based on had many in-flight failures before their mature versions were used on Atlas V.
>>implying using heritage compinents is a bad thing in high reliability design
Except that wasn't the implication. The point is that Falcon 9 is a new vehicle full of new things, like Ariane 5 (near 30% failure rate at Falcon 9's age), unlike Atlas V.

It's answering claims that Falcon 9's failures are resulting from poor quality control, and other organizations are more competent, therefore we should expect SpaceX to keep having these problems forever. Tech that ends up highly reliable usually starts out with some problems.

>>8694325
>>Atlas V has had two serious launch irregularities, one of which was definitely a failure
>None of the customers have ever classified an atlas V mission as a failure.
If the failed launch was classified by the government customer as a failure, it would have been an embarassment for the government's hand-in-glove private-public partnership EELV program. This misclassification was political.

The AV-009 anomaly was a more serious failure than CRS-1. Atlas V's failure actually made reaching the target orbit impossible. The engine out on CRS-1 only activated a contract option.

>>Atlas V has done nothing new of consequence.
>Atlas V has launched every NASA exploration mission post-Cassini
Are you this much of a chimp that you confuse the launch vehicle technology with the payload technology?

>>When Atlas V was as old as Falcon 9, it had only done 16 launches and had one failure, giving it a 94% success rate.
>Falcon 9 has had 17 launch attempts?
When Atlas V was 7 years old, it had a 94% success rate. You think launching at half the rate is something to be proud of?

>Ok, then why not include the falcon 1 failures, giving spacex an 83% success rate?
Because we should be comparing apples to apples, not old vehicles and components to young ones.

[Anonymous No.8694603]

>>8694583
>>8693877
>>8690945
Oh look, it's the redditor with the vocabulary of a 12-year-old.

[Anonymous No.8694644]

>>8694603
Oh look, it's the chimp who starts name-calling and complains when he gets responded to in kind, to distract and stall when he starts realizing he can't win the argument with all the confused ideas in his little chimp brain.

>redditor
>12-year-old
>>8694325
>retarded spacex faggots
>>8693800
>the most annpoying thing about Muskish fanbois

I only call people "chimp" when they say something that's especially stupid on the surface (and particularly when I suspect they know just how wrong and stupid it is but are hoping to get away with it and "win the argument").

[Anonymous No.8694649]

>>8694644
>thinks that 17 = 31
>calls other people "wrong and stupid"

[Anonymous No.8694731]

>>8694649
Deliberately obtuse, or really this much of a chimp?

Do you think a rocket program that launches half as much in its first 7 years deserves to be rated better for it? You honestly think that's a good sign for its future?

SpaceX pushes hard to get useful work done with a new vehicle, because unlike Atlas V and ULA, it's succeeding in the commercial market rather than just wishing it could.

[Anonymous No.8694780]

>>8694344
If the government jews had given SpaceX permits to go higher, they would have gone higher

Not that travelling higher is anything helpful
Blue Origin just did it for shits & giggles, which goes to show why they will fail at building rockets

[Anonymous No.8694785]

>>8694379
are you talking about real life with chemical engines, where maybe 3% of the starting mass is payload?
Or are you talking magic tech where delta-v is irrelevant, and space ships are designed for aesthetic purposes only

[Anonymous No.8694836]

>>8694780
>Blue Origin just did it for shits & giggles
They were doing unmanned tests of their space tourism service, and some freefall experiments.

>they will fail at building rockets
They're doing fine. BE-3 is comparable in thrust to Merlin 1C, with a much higher specific impulse. If they had wanted to start out with a smallsat launcher like SpaceX did, they'd already have succeeded at putting stuff into orbit.

New Shepard is a much more impressive accomplishment than Falcon 1. New Glenn is going to make for some interesting competition for Falcon 9/Heavy.

[Anonymous No.8695333]

>spacex will launch every 2 wee-
https://twitter.com/NASASpaceflight/status/834534212120219651

[Anonymous No.8695422]

>>8689594
>nothing to do with budget
O RLY

[Anonymous No.8695446]

>>8695333
I'd be surprised if they pulled off more than twelve launches this year, and I say that as a SpaceX fan.

[Anonymous No.8695505]

>>8695333
>Mainly to do with range availability.

Regulatory jews fucking everyone over, like always
Zero reason why the bureaucracy should have this power

[Anonymous No.8695532]

>>8695505
>launch on government property
>hurr the man is keeping me down

[Anonymous No.8695863]

>>8695333
Eh... they're launching from the same pad 3 weeks later. They've got two active launchpads, and two more to set up.

The 2 weeks figure was meant to be a cadence, an average time between launches, not a schedule. They can make up for each 3 week gap with a 1 week gap.

For the last couple of years, they've been launching at a once-per-month cadence, aside from the time spent grounded for investigation/fixes, and they did two in one month from the same pad before. I believe they're ready to step up the pace again.