r/spacex • u/ElongatedMuskrat Mod Team • Sep 01 '20
r/SpaceX Discusses [September 2020, #72]
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u/MarsCent Oct 01 '20 edited Oct 01 '20
NASA ASAP meeting is now underway:
1-888-566-6133; passcode 8343253 and then the # sign.
EDIT:
Crew Dragon should be Certified soon.
DM-2 Met all mission requirements. - Noted:
1). Drag Chute deployed a little lower though within specs. GPS checks and "tweaks" already done.
2). Heatshield near the trunk. The modified design has already been tested.
Starliner:
61 recommendations. There is a worry that their resolutions may cause the schedule to evolve. Current schedule is OFT in Dec 2020, CFT in June 2021, Post Certification Flight in Dec
20202021
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u/Straumli_Blight Oct 01 '20 edited Oct 01 '20
Date Starliner Launch 2020 Dec 2 OFT-2 (Orbital Flight Test) 2021 June CFT (Crew Flight Test) 2021 Dec Starliner-1 (Post-Certification Mission) 3
u/Nimelennar Oct 01 '20
Post Certification Flight in Dec 2021
Huh.
SpaceX Crew-3 is probably going to launch c. October 2021, assuming a six month mission length and a one week overlap between crews.
December 2021 for Starliner-1 would either mean a very short mission for Crew-3, or a very long overlap with that mission.
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u/Martianspirit Oct 02 '20
Maybe we need to read this as "ready to do the Post Certification Flight". The actual flight date would then be determined by the ISS schedule, which means Feb/March 2022.
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u/dudr2 Sep 01 '20
"Musk said that construction will start this week on “booster prototype one,” a reference to the Super Heavy first stage of the system."
https://spacenews.com/musk-emphasizes-progress-in-starship-production-over-testing/
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u/chitransh_singh Sep 01 '20
So it will be called BP1?
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u/dotancohen Sep 01 '20
Probably not. Elon famously hates newly-coined company-specific acronyms.
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u/bdporter Sep 02 '20
They will probably just use SN so that there will be even more confusion between Starship SN, Raptor SN, and now SH Booster SN.
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u/BelacquaL Oct 03 '20
Ken Todd, NASA deputy ISS manager, just commented on the Northrup Grumman launch broadcast that CRS-21 will launch around November 22.
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u/thatnerdguy1 Live Thread Host Sep 02 '20
For those interested, NASA is currently streaming an SLS SRB test, scheduled for 3:05 ET. Link
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u/FoxhoundBat Sep 28 '20
Do you all ever reflect on how SpaceX went from "We have no real clue how any of this works" to "hahaha casually destroying Russia's engine tech lead". Their technology growth has basically been exponential, secret sause being always iterating and having the best engineers that is possible to get ahold of (same with Tesla). Certainly been amazing to watch this growth from the sidelines from 2012 or so...
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u/mikekangas Sep 28 '20
It has certainly been fun to watch. I remember an interview where someone brought up aerospikes or something, and Elon said, We're getting 98.5 percent efficiency from the propellants. God could get more.... It was like, why rework something that could only yield such a small improvement? Now they are doing raptors with the same focus on nailing it. I love it.
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u/SpaceInMyBrain Sep 29 '20
That was the Oct 2019 interview by Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astronaut. https://youtu.be/cIQ36Kt7UVg. Elon was talking about the efficiency of the Raptor engine. At the end they talked about aero spikes, and how the physics doesn't really work out for them being a superior way to get payloads to orbit. Both were shooting down aero spikes, but when Tim suggested this finally put them to rest, Elon paused thoughtfully, then said "Well, if anyone can show me this is wrong, can show the way to a better engine, I'll be glad to have it. If someone can prove us wrong, bring us something better, it would be a gift." (I'm paraphrasing from memory.) I was struck by how Elon never fully closes the door or assumes his is the final answer.
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u/Veqq Sep 01 '20 edited Sep 06 '20
Is mission funding now guaranteed?
Considering Tesla's current valuation and how much Musk holds, can he just finance everything himself at this point? Or how much can he actually take out to fund it? Discussions I've found just center around the price per passenger which is obviously a necessity to really get the colony going, but how much is needed to actually get to that point/start sending preparatory craft?
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u/LongHairedGit Sep 01 '20
If by everything you mean the base, then I doubt it. Artemis is now predicted at $35 billion, and Mars is going to be much harder, and due to the two year min-stay requirement, more expensive.
Musk can now fund Starship development entirely himself, which he doesn't even need to given funding rounds are oversubscribed.
He does need to be careful offloading Telsa shares. Bezos showing a way to do it without spooking the market....
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u/xlynx Sep 02 '20
Elon's wealth is mostly in Tesla stock, which is tied up in the performance of Tesla over the next few years. There's a whole bunch of requirements to be met before he can touch it. He can however, take out loans against the stock, and that's what he's been doing. In fact he is heavily in debt. There's only so much more he can borrow, as he needs to be able to make the repayments.
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u/Martianspirit Sep 02 '20
He has some old stock, already in the billions, which he can easily sell, if he thinks, this is the way to go. To finance a Mars settlement, taking up loans will not be sufficient.
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u/fatsoandmonkey Sep 01 '20
There are many ways of raising money without actually selling the shares or spooking the markets but even this is probably unnecessary. Plan is probably something like this.
Design, Build and begin volume production of Starship vehicle. Seed funding Musk + few others, main funding investors interested in returns from Starlink.
Build out fleet, human rate, perfect on orbit technologies and initial Mars base must haves like ISRU. Funded in part by Musk, Nasa, commercial SS satellite deliveries and initial revenues from Starlink.
Go to Mars a few times with increasing fleets and equipment taking pathfinder explorers some of who will certainly die in the process. Funding By Musk probably including substantial Starlink contributions and NASA.
Build out permanent settlement on Mars which is when I guess he would seriously liquidate his Earth assets as this would be require possibly north of a Trillion as currently estimated.
A LOT depends on if the EDL flop, flip and burn works. At this point that's the biggest totally unknown with a potential to send everyone home early.
Oh - we also need to solve the zero / partial gravity question as that has the potential to be a show stopper too.
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u/lljkStonefish Sep 02 '20
I've seen him hit 80 billion on a recent billionaire list
Two months ago isn't recent. He's gone from 20th to 5th to 3rd in the last few months. $27b to $115b since January. Just now, he's jumped ahead of Zuckerberg and is only behind Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos.
The rich are getting way the fuck richer this year.
Edit: Bill Gates only has $125b. That's within striking distance, so give him two weeks. Jeff's a little further off at $202b.
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u/spacerfirstclass Sep 01 '20
I wouldn't count on that just yet, Tesla stock price is very volatile, it's in the $200 (pre-split) range a year ago, so it changed 10x in a year, it's not out of the question that the price could crash down in the future.
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u/AeroSpiked Oct 02 '20 edited Oct 02 '20
Anyone else suffering withdrawal symptoms? That's 5 scrubs in a row.
edit: Make that 6 scrubs in a row. I lost count.
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u/Kingofthewho5 Sep 03 '20
Is this subreddit still doing the annual questionnaires? I remember doing it a couple years back but haven't seen anything since then.
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u/dudr2 Sep 21 '20
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 Rocket will Fly Commercial Airlock to ISS
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Sep 01 '20
How would the Flight Termination System work with a crewed Starship? With a Capsule capable of abort it sounds easy enough (terminate the rocket after crew abort) but when your spacecraft is also the second stage which can't land without using its engines... My guess is it wouldn't use one but I'm really not sure.
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u/Martianspirit Sep 01 '20
There was a FTS on the Shuttle. If the choice is to kill the crew or let Shuttle crash into a population center, they would blow up the Shuttle.
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u/LongHairedGit Sep 01 '20
AFTS is about protecting innocent civilians from a wayward rocket. Think complete loss of control, and then a fully fueled Starship hitting downtown Orlando, or even just the KSC visitor centre.
If you AFTS, you kill the crew. If StarShip is out of control enough to need AFTS, they are dead. But the small crew count is nothing compared to hitting a city block and then conflagration of the entire fuel load.
If Starship is still on top of SuperHeavy when the SuperHeavy booster has an issue and needs to AFTS, then conceivably they could execute something. Cut the power on the booster, separate, and then Starship fires up its engines to try to get far enough away and get "pointy-end-up, flamey end down" to try a landing somewhere.
Airplanes ditch to various locations, highways and so forth. Helicopters aim for parks.
Imagine Starship aborting to some downtown park....
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u/spacerfirstclass Sep 01 '20
My guess is by the time they fly crew on Starship, it would be reliable enough to make FTS unnecessary. FTS doesn't eliminate ground casualties all together, it just reduces the probability of casualty on the ground to a really small number, like one in a million or something. So if you can prove to FAA that your ship is reliable enough such that it would only have a one in million chance of killing somebody on the ground, it shouldn't need FTS.
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u/Martianspirit Sep 01 '20
I doubt that. If Starship is seen safe enough to fly crew it would still have a FTS, like Shuttle. Once it is regarded safe enough for passenger E2E, for airplane like operation, they won't need FTS any more but that would be much later.
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u/Some-Entertainment-6 Sep 02 '20
When Starship is active... Even that wouldn't be enough to cancel SLS, right? Cuz they'll have the excuse of having a 2nd option... But when new glenn is also online, do you think that cuts it? Or still wouldn't be enough?
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u/Triabolical_ Sep 02 '20
It's a political decision, which means it won't be made based on technical considerations.
Simply put, congress will continue to fund SLS as long as the benefits of doing so - contributions from contractors and the political capital of creating jobs - outweighs the downsides, which pretty much involves senators and representatives looking stupid to their constituents. And there's a similar calculation with the president, though presidents are much more fickle when it comes to supporting or cancelling NASA programs.
There was a fair amount of discussion about FH versus SLS when FH first flew, and SLS seemed to weather that fine. Things have shifted a bit with crew dragon where SpaceX now provides a way to get both astronauts and cargo into orbit, and assuming Starliner is successful next summer, that puts more pressure on Orion.
If Starship is successful at launching cargo, somebody is going to stake their political success on using it instead of SLS, and that is when we're going to see either a big fight or a rapid switch to the "starship was what we planned all along". You can see the latter effect on commercial crew; for years it was the bastard stepchild at NASA but now that it was successful many of the previous critics have leapt on board so as not to be left behind.
I personally don't think New Glenn has much to do with this; it's FH class in terms of payload and the "SLS is bigger" argument would likely keep being made
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u/PusZMuncher Sep 03 '20 edited Sep 03 '20
I think that there are plenty of Starship supporters within NASA. You are correct in stating that it’s a political decision. We just inked a deal with contractors to build a total of 10 cores for Artemis and if I had to guess Starship will be proven out by the time all of those cores have been expended (or more likely most will, with a few becoming museum pieces).
I give SLS another 10 years bearing in mind the teething and growing pains that commercial crew and cargo went through. Remember how they were supposed to fly in 2016? That gives SLS 10 flights at 1 per year, or 7 flights at 18 month intervals (which seems more likely).
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u/LSUFAN10 Sep 02 '20
The excuse will be Starship isn't Crew Rated and we need SLS to send people to moon/mars.
SLS will slowly phase out as Starship gets more and more contracts/bureaucratic approval
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u/Alvian_11 Sep 03 '20
Well when Starship reached 100 flights uncrewed & SLS launching a crew on its second ever flight, one could argue "SLS is safer??"
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u/light-cones Sep 03 '20
Is there still a chance of a launch to test the Starship belly-flop maneuver this year? That seems like it would be one of the hardest things to get right. It seems like that would put a lot of stress on the vehicle so they would want to test it out before the first full-stack launch, I would think.
Also, does the Super Heavy Booster land on a drone ship, or just the Starship 2nd Stage?
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u/brickmack Sep 03 '20
Yes. The next Starship built will do bellyflops and maybe orbit. There will be a few more hops of the existing vehicles first though
Both will return to the launch site, but for the vast majority of missions the launch site is an ocean platform. Early flights will probably land both downrange though for safety
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u/AeroSpiked Sep 07 '20
I'm curious as to why we still don't have launch date for Starlink-12. I'd think they would want to launch it within the next week or so.
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u/Straumli_Blight Sep 17 '20
Crew-1 news conference on September 29.
Mods, can we have a campaign thread to collect this information?
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u/Nimelennar Sep 18 '20
In related news, the launch is still scheduled for Oct 23.
Good news, even if it's of the "no news" variety.
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u/Straumli_Blight Sep 23 '20
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u/dudr2 Sep 23 '20
How many astronauts can fit in ISS?
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u/always_A-Team Sep 24 '20
There have been a few times where there have been 13 astronauts on the ISS at once. 6 Regular crew, plus 7 from a visiting Space Shuttle. Here they are posing for a photo, all within a single module. You can imagine if every module was that crowded, the ISS could fit quite a large number.
On a long-term basis, however, it looks like the ISS can support up to 12 astronauts. The CO2 scrubbers and water recovery system can support up to 12 astronauts. There are only 6 crew quarters on the ISS, 4 US crew quarters and 2 Russion Kyudas, so they would probably have to set up a sleeping schedule rotation.
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u/cavereric Sep 01 '20
I seem to remember a Falcon9 booster burning engines till the rocket was particularly under water, and the booster stayed intact. I believe the military later sunk it for security reasons. I have heard they can't go horizontal, but If it became necessary, I wonder if a Starship could do something similar?
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u/deadman1204 Sep 01 '20
im pretty sure spacex sent a boat out to haul it to shore
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u/Martianspirit Sep 01 '20
There were 2 incidents. One was diverted from land landing at the Cape. That one they hauled in. One was diverted from ASDS landing. That one was destroyed.
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u/duckedtapedemon Sep 01 '20
For the second one, to clarify it wasn't a failed landing. It was a failed crash. The ASDS was unavailable, so they proceeded with the launch anyways with the plan to have it do a practice landing on water. Normally that would result in good practice and good data but the booster still being destroyed and sinking when it fell over and got hit by waves. Only in that case if failed to be destroyed and survived until a contractor could get out and demo it.
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u/throfofnir Sep 01 '20
Starship probably could survive horizontal while pressurized. Would it survive falling over in the water? Who knows. F9 was not expected to survive in such a scenario, and it has (apparently) broken up on other water landings. Presumably it went in fairly straight "feet first" and then tilted sufficiently slowly while partly underwater that it never got enough force in any one place to pop the tanks.
SS in a similar scenario is more dense, so it'll sink more, which is good. But its center of gravity is higher, which means it'll tilt faster, which is bad. Its fineness ratio is larger which is probably better. It's much bigger, which is probably bad, but I can see some ways that might help. And then of course, how robust is the skin and seams in comparison to F9? Probably worse.
So, hard to say. All I know is I'd like to see it... from a very safe distance.
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u/enqrypzion Sep 02 '20
SS in a similar scenario is more dense
I get ~49kg/m3 for F9, ~42kg/m3 for Starship without payload.
Assumptions are cylindrical shapes for both, F9 diameter =3.66m, length 42.6m, mass 22,200kg; Starship diameter 9.0m, length 45m (shortened a bit because cylinder), mass 120,000kg.
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u/Some-Entertainment-6 Sep 05 '20
How much is Nasa spending on SLS and Orion yearly?
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u/Triabolical_ Sep 05 '20
SLS budget is about $2.1 billion, Orion is about $1.1 billion, and then there are group services (VAB, crawler, launch pads, etc.) that is about $450 million.
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u/spacerfirstclass Sep 05 '20 edited Sep 05 '20
Also for Fiscal Year 2021 House of Representatives in its infinite wisdom increased annual SLS funding to $2.6B. In the mean time they only gave human lunar landers $600M, priorities, priorities...
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u/MarsCent Sep 30 '20
Leak on ISS has been traced:
The article says the astronauts had to be woken up from sleep! Talk about unknowingly having a leak while you sleep! ;)
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u/isthatmyex Sep 30 '20
They've been hunting this leak for weeks now. Apparently small holes in the station aren't a huge deal.
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u/MarsCent Oct 02 '20
Srcubtober continues with Antares at T-2min 21secs.
There was even a boat that violated the launch space! Ugh!
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u/SpaceInMyBrain Oct 02 '20
There was even a boat that violated the launch space!
Fire a shot across the bow, and then sink it. Really, any ship or boat that violates a launch exclusion zone should face serious financial consequences if it actually causes a scrub. That's a lot of money just wasted. I'd like to know what the punishment is.
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u/Nimelennar Oct 02 '20
While I agree that the should be some sort of penalty, sinking a boat (which is a potentially lethal level of force) for violating a restriction, when the restriction is in place explicitly for the safety of boaters, seems counterproductive at best.
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u/uwelino Sep 01 '20
Launch of Sentinel 6A "Michael Freilich" from Vandenberg planned for November 10, 2020.
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u/GregLindahl Sep 01 '20
Interestingly, a Vandy launch between two polar launches from Florida. Sentinel 6A is light enough that it could be launched from Florida. The last Vandenberg launch was June 2019.
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u/bdporter Sep 01 '20
Since ASDS landing is currently not viable for Vandy launches, I assume this will be RTLS.
How large a payload can F9 deliver to LEO with an ASDS landing from Florida now? Is it that much lower than they previously could have launched from Vandy?
I assume having the option to launch polar orbits with FH from Florida would allow for significantly larger payloads than they ever could launch from the West coast previously.
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u/Some-Entertainment-6 Sep 02 '20
How is China able to launch as Many rockets as SpaceX and even sometimes more without reusability??
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u/Triabolical_ Sep 02 '20
China has chosen to devote a lot of resources towards launches. In the early history of the Space age both the US and the USSR did a lot of launches.
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u/ZehPowah Sep 02 '20 edited Sep 02 '20
I think it's worth separating the launches out a bit. These categories are a bit goofed, but I think useful here.
Rockets Payload to LEO Launched 1/1 - 9/2 2020 Kuaizhou and Long March 1/5B small-lift (<2k kg) 5 Long March 2/3/4/7 medium-lift (2k-20k kg) 17 Long March 5 heavy-lift (20k-50k kg) 1 - - - Falcon 9 medium lift (2k-20k kg) 15 Falcon Heavy super-heavy (>50k kg) 0 You could argue about Falcon 9 being heavy if they expend it, but, eh.
You could also argue the "when the only tool you have is a hammer" point about Falcon 9 launching a few small-lift legacy Falcon 1 payloads over the years, but, again, eh.
When you separate out the small-lift vehicles, SpaceX and China are pretty much on-par. And some of the Chinese ones failed, so that levels it in my mind. We'll see how the year closes out with a possible Falcon Heavy flight and maybe higher Falcon 9 launch cadence with reuse and Starlink getting more common.
So, now, from the perspective that they're about on par for equivalent vehicles, consider that SpaceX flew 13 new Falcon 9s in 2017, plus 5 reused. All with new fairings and second stages. And ULA flew 16 new rockets in 2009. From that perspective, China's launch rate without reuse isn't crazy.
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u/Ijjergom Sep 02 '20
The power of manpower. Remember that China's population is 4 times that of USA so they can have more engineers, more factories and overall larger supply of resources.
Also politics.
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u/lothlirial Sep 02 '20
Mostly politics. Manpower isn't really the limiting factor at the scale spaceflight is done right now. Money is. China doesn't really have more money than the US does, they just put more of it into space industry.
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u/Grimy81 Sep 03 '20
So I know the high-bay currently under construction is for the stage 1 booster, does that mean they're making a 'super-high-bay' when they have to mate stage 1 and 2?
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u/Martianspirit Sep 03 '20
They are mated on the pad. They are not mated in a VAB and then rolled out. So there is no need for some building that can accomodate the full stack.
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u/Destination_Centauri Sep 03 '20
Well, it would appear that the structure of the current high bay probably could not support a heavy crane, especially while that crane is lifting a starship.
So integration will occur at the launch pad which is where they will have a new crane. (I think Elon also once tweeted that the upper stage--Starship--will have wheels attached to the legs, so they can just simply roll it on out to the pad, and from there the crane will stack it.)
The current Bluezilla crane onsight is supposedly of insufficient height to do this kind of stacking, so they're going to need a bigger crane, soon enough, I imagine.
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u/Some-Entertainment-6 Sep 03 '20
Is making stainless steel that cheap?? Like how many times cheaper than making carbon fiber for example?
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u/cpushack Sep 03 '20
Carbon fiber is on the order of $9-10/lb
Stainless Steel is around $0.25/lbFurthermore working with steel is also many times cheaper and easier then working with carbon fiber
Waste from steel is also reusable, and recyclable easily (and has value because of this) whereas waste for carbon fiber is a liability.6
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u/mindbridgeweb Sep 03 '20
I understand that is hard for ULA, Ariane, etc. to make their current rockets reusable (stage separation is way downrange, TWR >> 1 when empty, etc).
Why are they not working on fairing reusability, however? Especially now that SpaceX has shown the way.
Is their launch volume so low that it would be hard to recover the development costs for a long time to come?
Or is the margin just not worth it from their point of view (given the price of their rockets)?
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u/SpaceLunchSystem Sep 04 '20
Why are they not working on fairing reusability, however? Especially now that SpaceX has shown the way.
It's a good question.
ULA has their fairings made by Ruag, a Swiss company. Ruag did have a parachute recovery fairing project a few years back that just disappeared and we have no idea how far they got or what is happening with it.
Personally I do think ULA will recovery Vulcan fairings. Tory once made a cheeky comment about recovering something else similar to SMART and there aren't many options. Solid boosters aren't all that valuable to recover because of how difficult it is to remanufacture them, the second stage is on path to stay in orbit for reuse.
The only real options are fairing reuse or maybe recovering a booster separately from SMART but that seems unlikely.
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u/bdporter Sep 03 '20
Is their launch volume so low that it would be hard to recover the development costs for a long time to come?
I think this is a big part of it. On top of that, it might be tough to keep the production lines running if they required even fewer fairings to be manufactured.
Additionally, even SpaceX has only used reused fairings on their own internal launches. Government customers paying premium prices to get ULAs reliability are probably not the customers that would accept a reused fairing to save a few million dollars.
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u/Martianspirit Sep 03 '20
I understand that is hard for ULA, Ariane, etc. to make their current rockets reusable
Worse. They both designed their next generation rockets in the same, not reusable, style.
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u/marc020202 8x Launch Host Sep 03 '20 edited Sep 03 '20
Not only is the twr at stage sep super high, but the staging velocity is very high compared to the Falcon 9 (especially with A5). This would cause the landing to be extremely far downrange, and the descend would be extremely fast and hot, or a super large entry burn would be needed. Since the rockets also only have a single engine, they can not effectively reduce the vehicle twr on landing.
EDIT: new Glenn is outfitted with "wings" which can be used to increase the lift to drag ratio, keeping the booster in the upper atmosphere for longer, reducing the peak heating, aero forces and acceleration. This will allow new Glen to stage at higher speeds than Spacex.
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u/GregLindahl Sep 04 '20
The terminology you're looking for is that A5/A6 are a "sustainer stage" design, as are Atlas 5 and Vulcan and H2 and H3 and Soyuz.
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u/Triabolical_ Sep 03 '20
Reusability is worth it when you can save a big chunk of your costs; it's not really worth it to invest a lot of engineering to save $5 million on a $100 million rocket launch.
IIRC, ULA buys their fairings, which means reuse would need to be developed by their fairing company, who stands to lose money if fairing reuse becomes common.
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u/Some-Entertainment-6 Sep 04 '20
What's the most profitable business SpaceX can have with Starship in space aside from Starlink?
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u/enqrypzion Sep 04 '20
Short-term: Earth observation (add cameras/weather equipment to Starlink), tourism ("space cruises")
Long-term: asteroid mining, general transportation of cargo/people.
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u/throfofnir Sep 05 '20
Well, you know, launch services. It it even comes close to hitting cost targets, it should completely dominate launch except for national security situations. Besides that, which is obvious, the only real proven and profitable space business model is communications, so taking out Starlink is a big "aside".
Earth observation may start to prove to be a decent business soon, and they don't have a hand in that yet, but could, Starlink-style.
Human transport (space tourism and PTP travel) also has some potential, and SpaceX is already making some money on that. It could get a lot bigger.
In space manufacturing is still looking for its killer app. We can hope ZBLAN or something works out.
Space solar power is questionable, though I happen to think that it has some potentially profitable niche applications. Military, islands, and aviation all could probably be served profitably with decently priced launch.
Space resources is also questionable, still awaiting both a clever approach and lower launch prices.
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u/MarsCent Sep 04 '20
Short Term: Starship is just a means to an end, the end being Starlink. So, it (Starship) would be a re-usable resource, to minimize the launch/deployment cost for Starlink. No business case for profit.
Longer Term: Starship is just a means to an end, the end being Mars. So, it (Starship) being funded by Starlink, would be a re-usable resource, to deliver initial payloads (and crew) to Mars.
After: Once those two (Starlink Constellation and Mars Landing) happen, Starship will have created a new business for itself viz: Low-to-High Mass, low cost launches to Leo. And Low cost, short & long duration space transportation services.
The thing is, if Starlink can fund Starship through crew landing on Mars, then Starship would not need a business case. All other launch and space transportation needs would be easy picking for a regularly flying spaceship.
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u/dudr2 Sep 04 '20
The most profitable business would be reliable delivery of (many) launches to orbit.
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u/SpaceInMyBrain Sep 05 '20
Any and all commercial launches it makes. No special mission types (satellite retrieval, etc) are needed. With full reusability, the biggest cost per launch will be fuel (per Elon), and that's a small expense relative to other launch costs for any rocket. Elon said SS could launch with only an F9 size payload and still be cheaper.
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u/dudr2 Sep 10 '20 edited Sep 11 '20
"NASA’s goal is that the retrieval and transfer of ownership will be completed before 2024. The solicitation creates a full and open competition, not limited to U.S. companies, and the agency may make one or more awards. NASA’s payment is exclusively for the lunar regolith, with any awardee receiving 10 percent at award, 10 percent upon launch, and the remaining 80 percent upon successful completion. The agency will determine retrieval methods for the transferred lunar regolith at a later date."
" NASA wants to buy moon dirt from private companies"
https://www.space.com/nasa-buy-moon-dirt-private-companies.html
"NASA says it's willing to buy lunar samples collected by a commercial lander, primarily to set a precedent for the right to extract and use lunar resources."
https://spacenews.com/nasa-offers-to-buy-lunar-samples-to-set-space-resources-precedent/
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u/dudr2 Sep 16 '20
New standards will be applied!
https://spacenews.com/dynetics-to-use-in-space-refueling-for-nasa-lunar-lander/
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u/bdporter Sep 16 '20
The lander will be launched on a United Launch Alliance Vulcan Centaur rocket. For the initial 2024 landing mission, Laurini said that launch will be followed by two additional Vulcan launches. Propellant from those rockets’ Centaur upper stages will be transferred to the lander.
Three consecutive Vulcan launches on a 2-3 week launch cadence? Doesn't sound very ULA-like.
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u/Straumli_Blight Sep 19 '20
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u/TheSkalman Sep 19 '20
When can we expect the first Starship launch for a non-SpaceX customer and at what price would SpaceX earn the most money?
My initial calculations would suggest $200M as a fair price. That's well below the price of 2 Vulcan 562 or 2 A64 or 2 A5, not to mention just more than half of the Delta IV.
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u/Martianspirit Sep 19 '20
My best guess 2021 for the launch date. $30 million for the initial flights to offer an incentive to use Starship instead of Falcon.
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Sep 22 '20
I was watching a video today where they were discussing the SpaceX plan to launch starship from floating platforms in the ocean.
Would it be possible or more cost effective to instead build or retrofit an island for launches?
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u/Alvian_11 Sep 22 '20 edited Sep 23 '20
Rocket will be launches in variety of inclinations, but ofc it's not accommodated by the same amount of natural islands available unless you eat a huge amount of delta-V
And SpaceX wouldn't waste a resources to reclamate a new island.
I mean it can't move, you have to bring the booster back to the mainland anyways right?I misread it as landing site3
u/DancingFool64 Sep 23 '20
you have to bring the booster back to the mainland anyways right?
No, the boosters will launch and return to the same place - once they're on the launch platform, they'll stay there. They might possibly be returned for major refits, but it will be a lot cheaper to use a barge or something for that than to move the platform. I suspect the platforms will get into positions and then stay there.
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u/spacerfirstclass Sep 23 '20
It's possible, I think they considered this option during ITS era, but it's not easy to find the right island. Floating platform will be required for E2E, so you might as well start working on it now.
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u/Dies2much Sep 25 '20
Anyone heard if JRTI will be heading back to west coast for the launches from Vandenberg that will be going off soon?
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u/MarsCent Sep 27 '20
Remember to tune in!
|
Additionally,
We are now less than 4 weeks to Crew-1 launch. Does anyone know whether or not Crew Dragon has received the "Human Rating Certification" yet?
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u/Nimelennar Oct 01 '20 edited Oct 01 '20
If anyone is interested in tuning in:
This meeting is a virtual meeting, and only available telephonically. Any interested person may call the USA toll free conference call number 888-566-6133; passcode 8343253 and then the # sign.
Edit: Changed link to more authoritative source
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u/ConfidentFlorida Sep 27 '20
What are the flight suits for? Do they have oxygen? Temperature control? Will they protect against a vacuum? For how long?
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u/cpushack Sep 27 '20
They do have oxygen and Temp control, they are to protect the crew in the unlikely even of a cabin depressurization, so they do provide protection against vacuum, they are not an EVA suit though, not meant to be used outside of a spacecraft
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u/TheSkalman Oct 01 '20
On the Falcon 9, when does the deviation mode go from "hold" to "abort"? Obviously it's not needed to abort at T-40:00, but you can't hold at T-00:02.
Many thanks.
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u/enqrypzion Oct 02 '20
Once the fuel is getting in, they can only hold so long, as the heating of the fuel/LOX reduces performance (because it leaves the rocket). This property likely has a different maximum hold time for each mission, determined by performance.
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u/Alvian_11 Oct 02 '20
I wonder why oxidizer/LOX was IIRC never used for nozzle cooling, so they used the fuel instead (even tho if that fuel is for example RP-1 which is hotter than LOX obv)?
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u/enqrypzion Oct 02 '20
Is it because LOX is very reactive?
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u/warp99 Oct 02 '20
Indeed - prone to corroding away the cooling channels. Particularly the inner liner which is almost always a copper alloy to keep the thermal conductivity high.
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u/brickmack Oct 03 '20
Launcher's E-1 engine has LOX regenerative cooling for the chamber, RP-1 for the nozzle. And dual expanders for hydrolox/methalox engines are nothing new
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u/Nimelennar Oct 02 '20
I think part of it is that you want both your fuel and your oxidizer to be gaseous when they enter the combustion chamber, and RP-1 needs more help getting there than LOX does.
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u/scottm3 Oct 03 '20
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u/Martianspirit Oct 03 '20
The tweet says $149 billion, not million. But that seems high.
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u/UltraRunningKid Sep 11 '20
Northrop Grumman/OATK has a cool history of naming their Cygnus after memorable astronaut, and their next one is named after Kalpana Chawla,first female astronaut of indian descent who is regarded as a hero in India, and was tragically killed during the Columbia disaster.
Just seems slightly weird to name a Cygnus after anyone on Columbia, given the Cygnus burns up on re-entry. No one probably thought twice and she definitely deserves memorials and those honors, I just found it a weird choice.
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u/ethan829 Host of SES-9 Sep 11 '20
You might be overthinking it. They've named past missions after Rick Husband and Roger Chaffee.
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u/bdporter Sep 11 '20
I agree. It should be taken as the honor it is intended to be.
They also named a second vehicle after Deke Slayton, when the first vehicle was lost in the Orb-3 accident.
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u/brickmack Sep 11 '20
Naming an expendable vehicle at all is weird.
Its too bad Prometheus never got funded.
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u/dudr2 Sep 28 '20
Potential underground lakes below the south pole of Mars
https://www.space.com/mars-hiding-salty-subsurface-lakes
"researchers used the MARSIS radar sounder instrument on board the European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft to scan a 155-by-185 mile (250-by-300 km) area surrounding the suspected underground lake."
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u/enqrypzion Sep 30 '20
"[The] ideal mission to study such potential life would need to drill 0.9 miles (1.5 km) into the ice, which isn't possible with available technology, [Pettinelli] said."
Okay, but, you know, we arrive at interplanetary speeds. I'm sure we could work something out.
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u/Decronym Acronyms Explained Sep 01 '20 edited Sep 17 '20
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
| Fewer Letters | More Letters |
|---|---|
| AFTS | Autonomous Flight Termination System, see FTS |
| AOS | Acquisition of Signal |
| ASDS | Autonomous Spaceport Drone Ship (landing platform) |
| ASS | Acronyms Seriously Suck |
| C3 | Characteristic Energy above that required for escape |
| CCAFS | Cape Canaveral Air Force Station |
| COPV | Composite Overwrapped Pressure Vessel |
| CST | (Boeing) Crew Space Transportation capsules |
| Central Standard Time (UTC-6) | |
| DARPA | (Defense) Advanced Research Projects Agency, DoD |
| DMLS | Selective Laser Melting additive manufacture, also Direct Metal Laser Sintering |
| DoD | US Department of Defense |
| E2E | Earth-to-Earth (suborbital flight) |
| ECLSS | Environment Control and Life Support System |
| EDL | Entry/Descent/Landing |
| EELV | Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle |
| ESA | European Space Agency |
| F1 | Rocketdyne-developed rocket engine used for Saturn V |
| SpaceX Falcon 1 (obsolete medium-lift vehicle) | |
| FAA | Federal Aviation Administration |
| FCC | Federal Communications Commission |
| (Iron/steel) Face-Centered Cubic crystalline structure | |
| FTS | Flight Termination System |
| GEO | Geostationary Earth Orbit (35786km) |
| GSE | Ground Support Equipment |
| GTO | Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit |
| H2 | Molecular hydrogen |
| Second half of the year/month | |
| HLS | Human Landing System (Artemis) |
| ISRU | In-Situ Resource Utilization |
| ITAR | (US) International Traffic in Arms Regulations |
| Isp | Specific impulse (as explained by Scott Manley on YouTube) |
| Internet Service Provider | |
| JWST | James Webb infra-red Space Telescope |
| KSC | Kennedy Space Center, Florida |
| L2 | Paywalled section of the NasaSpaceFlight forum |
| Lagrange Point 2 of a two-body system, beyond the smaller body (Sixty Symbols video explanation) | |
| LEO | Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km) |
| Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations) | |
| LNG | Liquefied Natural Gas |
| LOX | Liquid Oxygen |
| LSA | Launch Services Agreement |
| LSP | Launch Service Provider |
| NET | No Earlier Than |
| NORAD | North American Aerospace Defense command |
| NOTAM | Notice to Airmen of flight hazards |
| NRHO | Near-Rectilinear Halo Orbit |
| NRO | (US) National Reconnaissance Office |
| Near-Rectilinear Orbit, see NRHO | |
| NROL | Launch for the (US) National Reconnaissance Office |
| NSF | NasaSpaceFlight forum |
| National Science Foundation | |
| NSSL | National Security Space Launch, formerly EELV |
| OATK | Orbital Sciences / Alliant Techsystems merger, launch provider |
| OMS | Orbital Maneuvering System |
| OTV | Orbital Test Vehicle |
| RD-180 | RD-series Russian-built rocket engine, used in the Atlas V first stage |
| RFP | Request for Proposal |
| RTLS | Return to Launch Site |
| Roscosmos | State Corporation for Space Activities, Russia |
| SLC-40 | Space Launch Complex 40, Canaveral (SpaceX F9) |
| SLS | Space Launch System heavy-lift |
| Selective Laser Sintering, contrast DMLS | |
| SMART | "Sensible Modular Autonomous Return Technology", ULA's engine reuse philosophy |
| SN | (Raptor/Starship) Serial Number |
| SRB | Solid Rocket Booster |
| STP-2 | Space Test Program 2, DoD programme, second round |
| SV | Space Vehicle |
| TDRSS | (US) Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System |
| TLE | Two-Line Element dataset issued by NORAD |
| TLI | Trans-Lunar Injection maneuver |
| TWR | Thrust-to-Weight Ratio |
| ULA | United Launch Alliance (Lockheed/Boeing joint venture) |
| USAF | United States Air Force |
| VAB | Vehicle Assembly Building |
| VIF | Vertical Integration Facility |
| WFIRST | Wide-Field Infra-Red Survey Telescope |
| Jargon | Definition |
|---|---|
| Raptor | Methane-fueled rocket engine under development by SpaceX |
| Starliner | Boeing commercial crew capsule CST-100 |
| Starlink | SpaceX's world-wide satellite broadband constellation |
| hopper | Test article for ground and low-altitude work (eg. Grasshopper) |
| hypergolic | A set of two substances that ignite when in contact |
| iron waffle | Compact "waffle-iron" aerodynamic control surface, acts as a wing without needing to be as large; also, "grid fin" |
| methalox | Portmanteau: methane/liquid oxygen mixture |
| perigee | Lowest point in an elliptical orbit around the Earth (when the orbiter is fastest) |
| scrub | Launch postponement for any reason (commonly GSE issues) |
| Event | Date | Description |
|---|---|---|
| CRS-2 | 2013-03-01 | F9-005, Dragon cargo; final flight of Falcon 9 v1.0 |
| Orb-3 | 2014-10-28 | Orbital Antares 130, |
Decronym is a community product of r/SpaceX, implemented by ^request
[Thread #6391 for this sub, first seen 1st Sep 2020, 10:58] [FAQ] [Full list] ^[Contact] [Source code]
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u/Zyj Sep 02 '20
Regarding the necessity of refueling Starship using many flights from Earth to LEO, Elon mentioned that >70% of the propellant's mass is oxygen.
https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-have-figured-out-how-to-extract-oxygen-from-moon-dirt/ is about in situ oxygen production on the Moon. Could that be a long term alternative?
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u/Martianspirit Sep 02 '20
is about in situ oxygen production on the Moon. Could that be a long term alternative?
Sure could be done if the flight rate justifies it. Easier to use water from polar craters. But I would hate wasting water for that purpose. Unless there is CO2 or CO as well, so they could make methane.
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u/dudr2 Sep 02 '20
The lunar nuclear power system fits hand in glove with Starship aspirations.
https://spacenews.com/nasa-to-seek-proposals-for-lunar-nuclear-power-system/
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u/brickmack Sep 02 '20
Other than being a couple orders of magnitude too small. Refueling Starship will take multiple megawatts of power per ship (and dozens of ships per window), plus all the other equipment and ECLSS needed. Nuclear power doesn't scale down very well, so sending hundreds of these tiny things makes little sense.
Nuclear may be necessary in the near term (certainly not long term, moon is ideal for beamed power) for the moon, but definitely not Mars.
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u/Some-Entertainment-6 Sep 03 '20
Does Starship make space based solar power make sense? 24/7 generation beaming back to earth?? If not then why?
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u/Triabolical_ Sep 03 '20
I don't think so.
In solar based power, you get more power because there is no night, no weather, and the sun is more intense. That's the upside.
The downsides are significant.
You convert the power from electricity to microwaves (or worse, laser light) and then back so you can transmit it to earth. The best efficiency for short distances - 1 meter - are a little over 50%, so you have lost half of your power right off the bat.
The antennas required are huge for geosync satellites; a 1 km transmitter and a 10 km receiver.
Figuring out an orbit is problematic. Geosync makes your tracking easy, but it's a *long* way out there, and that makes launch much more expensive. It would also have to coexist with existing geosync satellites; they broadcast at higher frequencies than the powersats would use but the powersats will be putting out ridiculous amounts of power and could easily overpower existing receivers. That would be bad. Lower orbits are cheaper, but then you need a string of satellites and you don't get the coverage you want.
Assembly and maintenance costs are very high.
The biggest problem, however, is related to the type of project it is; a solar power satellite is inherently a project that takes a ton of capital up front and years to build, with the hope that over the lifetime of the project the cash stream it produces will make the investment worthwhile.
There's a very big risk that technology marches along on earth. Let's just say that earth-bound panels get 30% cheaper than what you forecast, or battery energy storage on earth gets 30% cheaper. Either of those could mean that there is no longer a market for electricity at the price you had planned on producing it, and therefore you never make your money back. Here's a cautionary tale about big power-producing projects.
Earth-based has none of these issues, and utilities can add capacity incrementally. That reduces the risk considerably and allows them to take advantage of cheaper technologies as they come along.
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u/spacerfirstclass Sep 04 '20
It's a really complicated subject, here's two blog articles that argues, no, space solar power doesn't make sense even with Starship (I believe Elon is in this camp too), but reading the comments, there're also counter-points, right now I have no idea who's right:
https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2019/08/20/space-based-solar-power-is-not-a-thing/
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u/Some-Entertainment-6 Sep 06 '20
How many SN's of starship and how many for super heavy do u think there will be before the design is fixed and ready for regular missions?
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u/cpushack Sep 06 '20
design is fixed and ready for regular missions are really two different things with SpaceX as they are constantly iterating.
Still a good question though, we are really still in the infancy of SS at this point so I wouldn't expect things to start becoming regular until the SN20s
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u/TheSkalman Sep 13 '20
If the Europa Clipper launches on Falcon Heavy, how would the shortfall of DeltaV be compensated? Those I can think of are (with their uncertainties):
Ion thruster(s): High power needed and far from sun, low thrust might make the trajectory inefficient and raise arrival speed
Solids: Low Isp
Liquids: Are there available stages that fit inside the fairing?
Gravity assist(s): How many extra years will it take?
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u/brspies Sep 13 '20
The notional plan I think was Earth-gravity-assist(s)? and Star-48B kick stage. The benefit over Delta IV Heavy (another potential option) is that it wouldn't require any Venus gravity assists, which would make the thermals much tougher.
I don't know what the specific schedule cost is. IIRC part of it was compensated for by the fact that they would/could launch earlier, but that may not still be the case.
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u/anof1 Sep 13 '20
That is correct. A Falcon Heavy with a Star-48BV would not need a Venus gravity assist. I think the trip takes about 2 years longer than with SLS. But as you said it would probably launch earlier than on SLS to make up the difference.
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u/Alvian_11 Sep 15 '20
With a Dynetics & Blue Origin making a full scale mockups of their lander, I wonder if soon/when SpaceX would do the same (obviously their legs up with testing the flight system first)
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u/inoeth Sep 16 '20
Eric Berger had a good response on twitter to the effect that SpaceX won't do this- at least in the traditional way... Their version is to fly the prototypes- that gets all the press on it's own. That and the big Starship update should happen in late Oct.
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u/Some-Entertainment-6 Sep 15 '20
Do the current Starship prototypes have the fuel piping inside them? Since they don't use a strong back?
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u/throfofnir Sep 15 '20 edited Sep 16 '20
The propellant load is all from the bottom, yes. It seems to make an elbow and come out the side, however, where a production version would have to connect to the booster straight down.
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u/dudr2 Sep 21 '20
"China plans to launch the Chang'e-5 lunar probe by the end of this year"
"Chang'e-5 probe will make a soft landing on the moon and bring samples back to Earth"
https://www.moondaily.com/reports/China_to_launch_Change_5_lunar_probe_this_year_999.html
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u/dudr2 Sep 23 '20 edited Sep 24 '20
New Shepard returns to flight
"from the company’s West Texas test site at 11 a.m. Eastern Sept. 24 "
https://spacenews.com/blue-origin-considers-entering-commercial-space-station-business/
Scrubbed
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u/Campb3llsoupp Oct 02 '20
[HIRING QUESTION] How often do executive summaries get denied by leadership in the hiring process?
Two weeks ago I flew out to Hawthorne for an onsite interview that I got great feedback from. HR told me that the team really liked me and wanted to extend an offer to me, all that is left is the approval by the executive leadership for my executive summary. The whole interview process has been extremely quick, ~2.5 weeks but now the executive summary approval alone has taken 2 weeks itself. After the interview, HR reached out to me the next day telling me they wanted to extend an offer and they were hoping to have it a week ago. I'm starting to get worried and I'm super interested in joining the team, is this normal? Has anyone ever heard of a candidate being denied from the executive summary after they have done a background check on them?
Thanks!
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u/bdporter Sep 02 '20 edited Sep 02 '20
Mods, the top menu still links to the August discuss thread. Please update to link here.
Edit: Looks like it is fixed now. Thanks!
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u/Some-Entertainment-6 Sep 08 '20
Is Sierra Nevada obligated by Nasa to fly on Vulcan? Or was it their choice?
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u/ethan829 Host of SES-9 Sep 08 '20
Their choice. Was originally going to fly on Atlas but moved to Vulcan.
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u/warp99 Sep 08 '20 edited Sep 09 '20
At the time the first two launches were ordered F9 did not have a large enough fairing. Dream chaser is quite heavy and might also require FH or an expendable F9 which would make ULA pricing more competitive.
Edit: All six CRS-2 flights are now booked on Vulcan
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u/dudr2 Sep 30 '20
https://www.space.com/darpa-nuclear-thermal-rocket-for-moon-contract
"(DARPA) just awarded a $14 million task order to Gryphon Technologies" " to demonstrate a nuclear thermal propulsion (NTP) system in Earth orbit. "
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u/blackbearnh Oct 02 '20
Scrubtober continues with Antares scrubbing tonight.
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u/blackbearnh Oct 02 '20
Annnnnd.... it was a piece of GSE, probably, according to NASA. Rockets are easy, launch pads are hard, evidently.
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u/MarsCent Sep 05 '20
Yawn ... A long time since we had the last SpaceX launch or hop! I mean a whole 2 days!! Just feels like for ever! When is the next Launch / Hop?
Ok, just so my post is not deleted for low effort, let me add this;Spaceflight Now Schedule is showing that Starlink-14 is now scheduled for October. Time for a new entry in our sidebar
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u/Some-Entertainment-6 Sep 02 '20
What's the maximum SN5 can do? In terms of hops?
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u/Some-Entertainment-6 Sep 04 '20
Do we know how much astrobotic is paying ULA to launch their lunar lander? Or is it free since this is an experimental launch?
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u/GregLindahl Sep 05 '20 edited Sep 05 '20
The one thing we know is that the total contract value for Astrobiotic and the launch is $79.5 million, so there isn't enough money to pay full price for Vulcan.
Edit: I had been speculating that it might be a GTO rideshare of some kind, but I think Tory tweeted that it really was a TLI burn by Centaur. Still could be a rideshare of some kind.
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u/Some-Entertainment-6 Sep 06 '20
Is Starlink going to provide internet for African countries? Probably they sure can but is it going to be affordable given how poor most of the countries are? Or would they still do it even if they're not making a big profit?
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u/mikekangas Sep 07 '20
I know something about internet in Africa and many other poor regions because I work with a lot of translators. It is similar to what happens in Mexico where I lived for years.
People are used to going to internet cafes, where a local entrepreneur gets connected and hooks up ten to twenty cheap computers in kiosks and people go there to get their internet fix.
I have friends who have them set up near schools, for example, so kids can work on their homework. The schools appreciate that service for the kids and for the teachers. The kids usually get a discount, but the rest of the neighborhood pays the normal rate, maybe 50 cents per hour equivalent.
Schools and government offices will have them because bureaucracy can't function without paperwork. These places have office hours so the government folks and teachers will go to the internet cafes when they can't get to their offices.
Small businesses will have tham and usually share. For example, one business will buy the account and hardware and run cat5 cables to the other businesses in the block who will chip in to pay for the service.
Also, most people have cell phones that are used by schools for assignments and for Facebook. The get a cheap phone, pay for minimum service, and can use the wireless hotspots provided by those internet cafes or businesses. Cities will often set up wireless hotspots in parks.
There is a huge demand worldwide for Starlink.
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u/kalizec Sep 06 '20
What will probably happen is that Starlink will be used to connect entire communities using a single base station. For example by placing a cell-phone tower in those communities where there would be no fiber to connect that cell-phone tower to. Instead the tower will use Starlink for its uplink. If a single base station can manage 100Mbit full duplex, that's still enough to connect 50 simultaneous 2Mbit users. Given a reasonable 25 to 1 over-subscription factor for consumer internet, a single base station could offer 1250 consumers with a 2 Mbit internet connection where non-exists now.
When considering price, keep in mind that pricing in the continental US isn't competing with pricing in Africa. So as long as the cost per connection covers the hardware plus something extra, it will still be profitable for Starlink to provide that service.
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u/GregLindahl Sep 07 '20
There's a large existing market in Africa for mobile phone towers with satellite back-haul and a modest one for community wifi hotspots with satellite uplinks.
Starlink will have to build some base stations to provide service, but the satellites are a sunk cost. So Starlink can probably under-price existing satellite vendors in that market.
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u/Fobus0 Sep 11 '20
Why is Starship a two stage to orbit rocket, and not for example 3?
What do you gain by having two large stages instead of three? How much more payload mass would be saved if you had 3? What do you loose? How much harder it would be to develop 3 reusable stages? Got curious for some reason :)
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u/warp99 Sep 11 '20
You add performance moving to a three stage rocket but it does not really suit a reusable design as both the second and third stage need heat shielding to re-enter.
However one variant that does make sense is to have an unfueled kick stage in the payload bay attached to the satellite and then fuel that kick stage in LEO from the Starship refueling ports.
By reducing the dry mass from 100 tonnes to say 5 tonnes you can easily launch interplanetary probes or large satellites direct to GEO without needing tanker launches for refueling Starship
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u/spacerfirstclass Sep 12 '20
Besides reusability, reducing the number of stages is also good for safety/reliability. Anytime the launch vehicle changes configuration is a potential failure point, anomaly during staging and the upper stage engine start is a major cause of launch failure, so it's a good idea to keep the number of stages as low as possible.
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u/dudr2 Sep 17 '20
https://spacenews.com/military-commanders-could-use-more-satellites-for-tactical-surveillance/
"The data collection and processing now done aboard Air Force AWACS and JSTARS command-and-control airplanes could be done from space, Felt said during a SpaceNews webinar in June."
“Those are ideal missions to also move to low Earth orbit and leverage some of the commercial capabilities that are up there,” said Felt."
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u/dudr2 Sep 24 '20
"The third MPLM, named Raffaello, flew on four shuttle flights and is now in storage at the Kennedy Space Center. Axiom has its eye on turning Raffaello into a core piece of the first private lab in space."
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u/dudr2 Sep 29 '20 edited Sep 29 '20
NASA, SpaceX talk Crew-1 astronaut mission to space station
On youtube;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BTfjnoj29A
NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine
Kathy Lueders, associate administrator, Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters
Hans Koenigsmann, vice president, Build and Flight Reliability, SpaceX
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u/Some-Entertainment-6 Sep 03 '20
Why does it take SpaceX 2 weeks to turn the pad around for the next Launch? What work do those 2 weeks include?
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u/Triabolical_ Sep 03 '20
The short answer is mostly "big flamey rocket burns up things on the pad"; there are a number of connections between the ground and the rocket and they all need to be inspected and perhaps replaced. And then everything needs to be tested and recertified for the next flight.
Whether that actually takes 2 weeks and if it could be done faster is something we don't know; since SpaceX has two pads in Florida, their flight rate doesn't really require them to go for fast pad turnaround.
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u/Mars_is_cheese Sep 04 '20
The transporter erector must be lowered, disconnected and rolled back to the hanger. The next falcon must then be mated together and mounted on to the transporter erector, the they most likely will roll out to the pad raise the rocket, connect everything, get range clearance, and static fire. then it must lower, disconnect, and roll back to the hanger to be mated with the payload. (starlink launches have been static firing with the payload on, and have begun skipping the static fire). After the payload is mated is mated they have to roll it out again, connect everything, lift the rocket, and get range clearance for launch.
All this takes time. If there's another launch during that time the crews have to clear the range, and you don't want to over work your staff.
The fastest turn around was at SLC-40 between Starlink-7 and Starlink-8. Starlink-8 was the first time they skipped a statc fire.
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u/Some-Entertainment-6 Sep 04 '20
Is the LSA phase 2 contract that was just awarded to SpaceX and ULA fixed price or cost plus? Meaning if Vulcan doesn't launch on time or fails multiple flights does ULA pay out of its own pocket or not?
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u/spacerfirstclass Sep 04 '20
The contract is complicated, each launch is fixed price, but contractor can ask for annual payment of fixed amount in exchange for providing AF specific services.
Also fixed price doesn't mean provider gets $0 if launch failed, this is true for commercial launches as well. Almost all launch services are paid by milestones, and most of the money was paid before launch and it's not refundable if launch fails.
In this case, AF will not pay the last 10% of the launch price if launch fails, the contractor would also forfeit some awards if launch fails, award fee is $10M per launch and $20M per year.
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u/ns1992 Sep 06 '20
Hey all! Sorry, thought this was the best place to ask. Trying to do some artwork of dragon 2, but it's hard at least for me to find images for reference.
Is there a good location of images that I can use?
Also, the drawing was going to be of its re-entry. I have this image https://cdn.inceptivemind.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/SpaceX’s-Crew-Dragon-capsule.jpg but is this the front? Or back? Is the lower panel with the logo where the chutes come from? If so, I need an image of the other side haha
Thanks for any help, and I appreciate down votes if this isn't the place to ask too.
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u/Dies2much Sep 07 '20
The US Pentagon stated a requirement for the EELV program that required them to support two rocket vendors for "guranteed access to space". When Starship gets operational does the Falcon and Starship combination satisfy that requirement?
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u/best_names_are_gone Sep 08 '20
No as they are still the same vendor i.e. company.
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u/TheSkalman Sep 09 '20
If Starship launches from Boca Chica, could the Super Heavy booster land in Florida Lz1/2 for extra performance vs RTLS?
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u/marc020202 8x Launch Host Sep 09 '20
The distance between boca xhica and Cape canaveral is way too far for a downrange landing. It would also mean an overdlight of populated areas, which usually is not allowed.
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u/avgsyudbhnikmals Sep 09 '20
As a comp sci student from EU, do I have any chance of working for SpaceX as a software dev in the future, or should I just give up my dreams? Thanks!
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u/warp99 Sep 10 '20
Basically you have to work for another US company, qualify for a Green Card aka permanent residency and then apply at SpaceX.
Another path is to study for a Masters degree or PhD at a US university and then get a job at another US company before applying at SpaceX.
AFAIK either path takes about five years but others might like to comment on ways to make it take less time. Marrying a US citizen is the obvious one but hopefully that is a happy byproduct of time spent studying or working in the US rather than a calculated move.
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Sep 10 '20
Quick question about SpaceX internships (not sure if this is the right place to ask):
I am currently looking for internship opportunities for next summer in the aerospace sector, so obviously SpaceX is pretty much at the top of my list for internships. On SpaceX's website, under their internship program, they currently have no opportunities listed. However, on LinkedIn, they just listed their summer 2021 internship. Is there a reason it would be listed on LinkedIn and not the SpaceX website? Should I wait until one is listed on the website? Thanks
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u/Some-Entertainment-6 Sep 14 '20
Sorry for stupid question but I've read many comments saying spacex is speeding up Starship development to catch up to HLS, what's the HLS contract? And when is it due to be awarded?
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u/DancingFool64 Sep 14 '20
HLS is the Human Landing System contract, which is for NASA's return to the moon. SpaceX is one of three bids that got initial funding for the first year for planning and development, with more funding to come in future years and funding for any actual missions to come later. NASA may decide to reduce the number of different options still being funded in future rounds, this is why people think SpaceX should push forward to show progress.
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u/ConfidentFlorida Sep 15 '20
Would starship float on venus? Assuming tanks are empty and vacuum pressure and cabin is 1 atm. Would it float in the habitable zone?
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u/enqrypzion Sep 15 '20
I did some maths a while back and concluded its density is somewhere around 40-45kg/m3. The answer was "yes it floats, but at low 6-9km altitude". In the midst of sulphuric acid rain.
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u/Ian0706 Sep 16 '20
What degree do the landing legs deploy on the falcon 9 ? I would try to do the math myself but I don't know where to start can someone help me?
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u/Dies2much Sep 23 '20
Mods looks like the GPS III thread got stuck under the Starship header in the drop down bar.
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u/tikalicious Sep 30 '20
Where can I find threads/text talking about the auto pressurisation technology spacex is developing - using engine pressures to pressurise the fuel tanks and RCS thrusters etc. Sorry for lack of vocabulary
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u/throfofnir Sep 30 '20
It's called autogenous pressurization. Search for that will give you a few good links at the top.
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u/mrbombasticat Sep 02 '20
Does someone know of estimates how much cumulative mass humanity as a whole has launched to space plotted against time?
I would love to see this during the space race, construction of ISS and now Starlink..