/sci/ - Science & Math

>dead thread edition

>>11037006
>Ancient ISS edition
For a moment i tought it was mir.
will ISS go down the same path as mir, or will starship/blue origin give the option in the future to bring down parts for display in a museum?

>>11036719
hail Elon

but make the flame methane blue

>>11037039
Russkies have said they wanna take their parts (which afaik are all the new and fancy ones anyways) and use them to build a new station. Dunno if thats gonna be incooperation with esa or not though. There was also speculation about private companies buying parts to use as hotels but with affordable spaceflight still years away I doubt that will become reality until ISS gets shut down.
And really it would just be so much smarter to just build a new one instead of fixing up ISS with all the developments in space habitats like biggelow, so if anyone wants to have a hotel in space at some point theyll probably just build a new and improved one for probably similar costs.

Dunno if there will be anything left worthwhile for a museum anyways. The cool science equipment will be taken out and reused and the hull is probably too boring. Maybe someone will bother picking out chunks that wont have burned out during reentry but I doubt anyone would go through the trouble of carefully deorbiting and shielding single parts when the russians are just able to safely deorbit it anyways.

>>11037101
Kind of playing devil's advocate because I don't give a shit about the ISS, but it seems potentially valuable even as a husk. It could be a historical spaceflight museum in orbit, connected to a much more substantial and proper habitat. The exact people who would be the first adopters of space tourism would love to pay for the privilege to say they've been there, take pictures and videos, etc

How long until I can get into space by just being a pair of hand willing to do manual labor?

>>11037149
around the same time they need somebody to clean the toilets on the spacestation/moonbase.

>>11037156
>toilets on the spacestation/moonbase
Not on Gateway since the toilets were deleted to save mass.

>>11037168
where do they poop?

>>11037168
Will they just shit in a big tank like on Skylab?

>>11037175
In plastic bags Apollo style IIRC.

>>11037168
>>11037175
>>11037176
>>11037177
You do know Orion will have a small 3D printed toilet onboard, right? Where did this rumour come from? I haven’t seen any Starship renders with toilets...

>>11037195
Odd, I could've sworn that there was a news article about NASA deleting the toilet from Orion.

>>11037201
Tbf it’s been in flux, the Orion flight suits have in built toilets (Apollo-style) but the capsule will also have a small toilet compartment like the ISS.

>>11037128
>but it seems potentially valuable even as a husk. It could be a historical spaceflight museum in orbit
Not unless they come up with a way to deal with the problem of it needing regular orbit boosts. It's not like a building that just sits there and gets dusty if you ignore it.

>>11037287
could they not push it up to a much higher stable orbit where it's out of the way of most satelites?

>>11037302
You would need something with a lot of fuel. The stuff that comes up now can boost it for a few months, you need years of boost in advance if you're just going to mothball it, then if you want to enter it, you have to reach a higher orbit first.
When you mess with orbits, you really can't do just one thing.

>>11037317
And parking it in lagrange 4 or 5 is not a option?
I imagine the booster for that would be big.

some new renders

Florida Starship got an interesting delivery

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBKUXKLD2ao

SpaceX Starship Cocoa Facility 6 Oct 2019

>>11037393
from where are they going to launch?
Are they going to taxi it ofsite to somewhere safe?

At some point stacking dollar bills and climbing them to the Moon will be cheaper than SLS.

That said, I think we're actually going to see everything originally promised by the space race in the 60s and 70s, here's why:
>1970s
>Soviets vs USA
>Nixon elected
>Soviets crash out of the space race due to repeated N1 RUDs
>Nixon kills Apollo and Apollo Applications
>No human leaves LEO for half a century

>2020s
>SpaceX vs BlueOrigin vs NASA vs China
>two can crash out and still have a race
>three can crash out and still have a torchbearer
>BlueOrigin is run by the single richest human in history who considers it a passion project
>Elon is approaching "bigger than Jesus" status both with fans and detractors
>NASA has a brilliant plan to spend their way to the Moon
>China exists
>Mars is on the table in the first decade, no von Braun tier nuclear cyclers required
Who else /optimistic/ here

>>11037391
Looks like either aero or legs

>>11037407
We're living in great times. Imagine if Elon's Starship pays off, I don't even care about the Mars/Moon shit. Heck, if he can deliver even 50% of what he promises, that's a new revolution in space. HUGE cost reduction + HUGE payloads + fully reusable. Who the fuck wouldn't take advantage of this? Elon can probably send 20-30 Starship for the cost of a single SLS launch.

>>11037415
>Elon can probably send 20-30 Starship for the cost of a single SLS launch.
That's a really low bar though. A gold plated Starship will probably be cheaper than SLS .

>>11037407
But only nuclear rockets are enough to make my Falcon Ship the Big Falcon Ship. Generally though I am optimistic significant work can finally be done. I want Bezos to be more ambitious and accelerate his project though, so far all that's being made public about BO makes it seem conservative to the point that by the time it's ready other private endeavors like SpaceX will make it's vehicles obsolete before they even launch. Honestly if I were Bezos and I were interested in artificial habitats like O'niell cylinders and Bernal Spheres I'd lend my considerable financial and political power to a couple competing launch companies and focus most of my own space money on developing habitat construction methods to be launched on those other rockets.

>>11037415
Starship is not about space. Starship is about LOGISTICS. Even if it's never human rated, point to point cargo flights will fucking shake the market like the jetliner. FedEx will own a fleet of hundreds of Starships. And THEN it becomes about space, because I just said the words "FedEx will own a fleet of starships" as a realistic mid-term prediction. Which means they can offer shipping to more destinations, like Mars and the Moon.

>>11037440
FedExpace™

>>11037442
>Federal Express
>FedEx
>Space Express
>SpaceX

>>11037415
>Imagine if Elon's Starship pays off
Even if starship never pays off the falcon 9 has already proven that things can be done cheaper and prove of this is that ESA is alrealdy looking in to making its own version of the falcon 9.

>>11037175
In the garden

>>11037450
Remember that Zubrin thinks you can do a budget moon mission today with a bunch of Falcon Heavy launches, and SpaceX just landed a contract for another private moon lander (the second they'll have launched)

Moon is now kickstarter tier

>>11037450
This. Even in expendable mode Falcon 9 is the cheapest on the market.

>>11037442
copyright that, might mean a nice payout

>>11037454
>Moon is now kickstarter tier

This so much.

>>11037456
>laughs in Ariane 5 dual-berth and Proton

>>11037465
copyright squatting is generally not seen favorably by courts and fedex would probably sue you out of spite

also this would be a trademark not a copyright

>>11037006
found this in my folder

>>11037454
>>11037475
And what happened to that lander, as well as the one after it proves that the Moon is definitely not “Kickstarter tier”. I usually cringe at the overuse of the phrase “space is hard”, but the inhabitants of this general really need it beaten into their heads, so they stop making inane hyperbolic statements like this.

>>11037516
Space is hard, but it'll always be hard if no one tries. Let them attempt to make the moon kickstarter-teir and possibly fail rather than make them sit around on Earth writting IRL fanfiction about how cool it is to land on the moon.

>>11037454
Of course you could, if you could build a big enough fairing you could YEET all of it into LEO for parking orbit in a single expendable mode shot. This of course assumes that you'd want to send three dudes, realistically you could just send one or two dudes, what with the amount of automation available these days thanks to light and powerful computers. The LEM, CM, and SM combined are in the ballpark of 45,000kg fully fueled and crewed. The next shot or even potentially two shots would have to be to deliver a TLI booster stage. The S-IVb weighted 113,000kg which is tricky because it's just about double what Heavy can put into orbit in a single expendable shot. That component might have to be sent up in two segments or unfueled or something.

Is there another invention as revolutionary as grid fins?

>>11037440
>Your Tesla will arrive at your doorstep within an hour of ordering
>order now and we‘ll pay for all the broken windows we‘ll shatter in the neighborhood!!!

>>11037516
Kickstart another 4 landers and maybe they‘ll make/buy a descent engine that doesn‘t explode.

>>11037784
You do know that Beresheet took $100 million to build and Vikraam $140 million? I don’t know many Kickstarters raising that much...

>>11037792
Most Funded Kickstarter Projects of All-Time (2019 Update)
Pebble Time Smartwatch – $20 Million (February 2015) ...
Coolest Cooler – $13.3 Million (July 2014) ...
Pebble 2 Smartwatch – $12.8 Million (May 2016) ...
Kingdom Death Monster 1.5 – $12.4 Million (November 2016) ...
Travel Tripod by Peak Design – $12.1 million (July 2019)

>>11037792
>Government projects.
So more like $10-14 million for people actually doing it efficiently?

>>11037815
Beresheet was 100% privately funded and Indian wages mean everything they do is cheaper than any US private company could achieve, even with reusability. Why do you think so many cubesat operators go through all the trouble to launch on Indian rockets?

>>11037803
also all of those were to get an item, not to toss a heap of metal into space

>>11037792
>>11037803
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/funding-goals

>>11037835
Yes, I knew this was going to be posted eventually. I find it funny that India managed to send a spacecraft to Mars for only $73 million, whilst it took Chris Roberts over 3 times that to not finish a game.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Orbiter_Mission

>>11037844
Lies can be expensive, look at SLS...

>>11037851
SLS isn’t really a lie, just a long delayed truth that made some people very rich and will likely occur in 2021.

>>11037866
Sounds like Star Citizen to the T

>>11037407
The forces of darkness are rising in the West though. I just pray they don't manage to seize power completely. At least given the state of things here in the UK there's no rocket programme for them to cancel kek. Thank God there's still a few countries left with nuts

>>11037874

At this point in time, space programs around the world are reaching critical mass and only a massive, all encompassing 3rd world war would force a reversal in progress in space. Pic related, India is set to send people into space in 2021.

>>11037874
>The UK
oof

>>11037510
>>11037517
aesthetic

>>11037792
how do these cost so much, do they really just buy shit thats been tested into the ground but is over marked by 2000%? And yet they still fucking fail? Id rather have 3 in house made and designed landers for 30~50m so that way when it fucks up it wasn't that expensive

space junk

>>11037322
Enormous.

I just bought some prego that doesn't expire until march 2020. Truly the future is imminent.

>>11037317
There is (or at least was) a proof-of-concept plasma drive that was being considered to assist boosting the station using its onboard power systems. Assuming you boost the fuel supply, it might be possible to add a decent amount of altitude to ISS' orbit.

>>11037403
they're hauling it up to Pad 39A, there's a bunch of work being done to build a pad for it there.

Do you think these could be used to start building big ass battleships in orbit?

>>11038125
Just mount a cannon to the side of Starship and you've got one already.

>>11038125
Check the upmass of Starship, check the weight of a SPY-1K array, power supply, and Mk41 VLS. Armor as desired.

>>11038130
HOLY BASED

MY BOY

LOOK HOW THEY MASSACRED MY BOY

>>11038143
I'm glad that shit meme is dead.

>>11038125
The fact that you're in orbit makes you a weapon. Relatively low energy slug throwers are all you need to devastate enemy spacecraft in different orbits. You may want smaller, high energy weapons to prevent enemies doing hohmann transfers to get in close to you.

>>11038130
a really shitty one
Specialization is the way to go for this sort of thing

>>11038143
I wanted an SSTO and all I got was this lousy toy.

>>11038070
Yeah, I know, VASIMR, but it was originally supposed to go up like 5 years ago, and it needed battery banks to charge up for at least 15 minutes before it could do a decent length burn. The real problem with ion drives seems to be getting enough constant energy to get a good burn.
>>11037894
P O O
O N
L U N A

>>11038181
The reason I brought it up is after ISS stops receiving new crews, all of the available power it can generate and store could be dedicated to boosting its orbit.

>>11038252
You don't seem to understand, there literally is not enough power in the solar panels to run VASIMR, it had to build up a charge for like 15 minutes. Crew or not makes no significant difference.

I wish retards would shut the fuck up about the VASIMIR meme until solar film can be easily deployed in huge stable arrays or we develop a magic fusion box that weighs nothing.

>>11038160
>mount railgun to payload-Starship
>smite all who oppose you

>>11038439
I see enough ghetto abomination ships in space engineers
we don't need to bring them into reality too

>>11037006

>tfw you realize that the following historical pattern holds:

Three pairs of Gemini command pilots and co-pilots later flew Apollo missions in the respective commander/CMP offices (each time accompanied by a rookie LMP; again respectively, their Gemini mission numbers were incremented to become their Apollo mission numbers, and these three pairs were the only three pairs to fly again from Gemini going to Apollo, viz:

Borman and Lovell, Gemini 7 Apollo 8 (with Anders),

Stafford and Cernan, Gemini 9(a) Apollo 10 (with Young, actually this time Cernan was LMP so that bit's wrong)

Conrad and Gordon, Gemini 11 Apollo 12 (with Bean).

This makes me want to look more closely at crew rotation/backups etc to better understand how things shook out with the various deaths and illnesses.

>>11038443
looking forward to it
how many space hulks are out there right now? a few of the Saturn TLI stages are in loose terran/solar orbit and of course there's Snoopy

LOL!

>>11038456

>>11037662
SpaceX didn't invent gridfins, if that's what you're implying. They were invented in the 1950's.

>>11038479
nobody said anything about SpaceX here
contain thine obsession

>>11038488

>>11038488
He/you posted a pic of a SpaceX gridfin.

>>11038143
OH LAWD HE COMMIN

>>11038503
>Please post a picture of another operational gridfin

>>11037415
"fully resuable" would be 100% of what he promises, not 50%. Falcon 9 booster turn-around is around 2 months, minimum. I'm sure that will improve, but starship is supposed to be much more complex, and they have to actually make sure it can fly once before thinking about reusing it.

>>11037866
Artemis 1 is late 2020.

>>11038734
>2 months minimum

This is not established as how long it actually takes because the launch cadence is not high enough. We will see what happens when they start smashing out these starlink launches.

>>11038703

>>11037894
Hope so anon. Along with Brexit we've got these suspiciously well funded climate memesters that are allowed to create chaos with virtual impunity. Like I say, thank god we haven't got a space programme to cancel

>>11037895
Kek Serbians are based but it's not that bad yet

>>11038742
I said that it will probably improve and maybe get down to a matter of weeks if the volume increases enough.

You also need to consider that F9 is now a ten year old rocket, has dozens of flights, proven and pretty much reliable. And yet the cost difference for new vs. refurbished/reused is still not that great. By contrast starship is still gestating. Also they want to re-use both stages of the vehicle. Full reusability of a spacecraft/launch vehicle has never been done before, ever. There is a multitude of things that need to be worked out and done before "full reusability" is anything more than a talking point.

People here are talking about Mars bases by 2026 and shit because they see Starship as basically a UFO. it's going take at least until around that time for Starship to reach the level that falcon 9 is currently at.

>>11037835
Jesus Christ. That is like 5 Falcon 9 launches right there.

>>11038757
>And yet the cost difference for new vs. refurbished/reused is still not that great

Please enlighten us with the internal SpaceX documents you obtained this information from.

>>11038761
All the numbers i've seen for heavy and 9 indicate that reused booster(s) launched still cost more than half of a new vehicle. Obviously that is good, but my point is that comparing a paper vehicle to commercial airliners in terms of cost per flight is more than a while away from being a substantial comment.

>>11038744
Nice feet

>>11038744
nice, why does the MOAB have those? aren't they particularly useful in supersonic flight?

>>11038757
Shuttle reused the upper stage
Falcon 9 has reused the lower stage
SpaceX think they can combine these technologies and improve upon them significantly

>>11038771
Yeah...i know. Key words there are "think they can". Basically everything they are planning to do has never been done before. Shuttle dropped everything except the shuttle itself and Falcon only brings boosters back. Starship is way bigger, has way more engines and they are proposing to reuse both stages from the same launch. It is indeed rocket science

>>11038764
>All the numbers i've seen

Post your source or fuck off

>>11038784
https://spacenews.com/spacex-targeting-24-hour-turnaround-in-2019-full-reusability-still-in-the-works/
>Musk said SpaceX lowered prices from “about $60 million to about $50 million for a reflown booster,” and expects “to see a steady reduction in prices” going forward.
also interesting to note no plans currently for this 24 hour re-use in 2019. Perhaps a hint to take his promises with a grain of salt.

>>11038764
>>11038798

It all depends strongly on launch rate. Even a perfect reusable vehicle is not going to be much cheaper than an expendable one if it launches once a month or less. You still have to pay basically the same army of engineers.

The whole promise behind Starship is based on full and RAPID reusability, with launch rate to match it.

>>11038798
Sale price is not internal cost retard. It could cost them almost nothing to reuse a booster or they could be loss leading to get more launches. It's baseless speculation.

>>11038798
You'd need more information to infer much from launch prices. They could be offering lower first-launch price because they already take reusability into account. Second stage is still expendable which puts a hard cap on how much you can reduce the price. They could be charging higher margins on reflown boosters, because the market allows for it.

>>11038840
Name a better indicator of the actual cost other than the price history then. Let's pretend that reflown boosters are actually dirt cheap to launch for a moment. Why is Spacex betting on Starlink in order to be able to fund the starship and not taking advantage of that huge opportunity? Maybe reflown boosters, while cheaper, still number in the tens of millions to launch. Maybe. Who knows right, it's all baseless speculation.

do you not agree that daily starship flights will only be within reach towards the end of the decade or is falcon 9 actually A340 tier, they just don't have enough customers so for starship to be able to follow suit they ust need to build a dozen methane tanks and steel cans? Can SpaceX do wrong?

>>11038953
Booster reuse could cost $0 and they'd still have to build the expendable 2nd stage.

>>11038953
>Name a better indicator of the actual cost other than the price history then

Because an iPhone definitely costs 1200 dollars to make and is the best indicator of its production cost. Why the fuck would you only charge 10m to launch a rocket when you still sell launches at 50m and need to fund your development programme?

Fuck off with this baseless FUDposting.

>>11038953
>do you not agree that daily starship flights will only be within reach towards the end of the decade or is falcon 9 actually A340 tier, they just don't have enough customers so for starship to be able to follow suit they ust need to build a dozen methane tanks and steel cans? Can SpaceX do wrong?

What the fuck is this schizo shit. Learn to structure your sentences better if you are trying to short Tesla stock.

>>11037516
space is easy

>>11038981
I think one of the points he’s trying to communicate is that there’s currently not enough customer demand for Starship, so SpaceX are just building hardware and hoping they (customers) will come. Which is a valid point considering New Glenn, Vulcan and Ariane 6 have all signed numerous commercial customers so far, whilst Starship has signed a insane Japanese man.

>>11039031
Reminder that BE-4 engines have still never flown or powered anything.

>>11039082
Yes and this hasn’t discouraged any customers, so your point is?

BE-4 has been tested to 100% thrust and is currently undergoing flight-duration test fires. It’s first flight will be powering Vulcan’s inaugural launch.

>>11039031
Starship's primary importance will be in creating an entirely new launch market, considering that once in full production it should drop prices through the floor.

Hell, you can see it in the way they project its use. Multiple flight refueling runs, E2E, they're literally just trying to think up as many ways to give it busy work as possible. Cornering the entire current launch market - which is already payload limited - would be pretty insignificant for Starship.

>>11039017
I hate how NASA and the space industry in general keep saying this. Are they trying to say I'm stupid or something >:(?

>>11038458

>>11039124
This is the most surreal photo I have ever seen. It genuinely looks like most of those people must have been photoshopped in.

>>11039124

>>11039141
faster

>>11039156
Kek saved

>>11039156
Now somebody shoop some Starships into his hands.

>>11039197
Hmm, yes, those gifs are all older than SS, we do need a Starship version.

Falcon 9 base price now $52 million, down from $62 million.

https://twitter.com/13ericralph31/status/1181007634276569088

>>11039285
based SpaceX cutting down space access cost by 18% from out of nowhere

>>11039285
GET DOWN TO CRAZY ELONS' DISCOUNT SPACE LAUNCH WAREHOUSE. GET YOUR PAYLOAD TO LEO FOR $62 MILLION, THAT'S RIGHT $62 MILLION. BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE! CALL NOW AND GET YOUR LAUNCH FOR $52 MILLION!! THAT'S AN 18% SAVING!! WHY? BECAUSE WE'RE NUTS!! WE'RE OUT OF OUR GOD DAMN MINDS!! SO GET YOUR ASS DOWN TO CRAZY ELON'S THIS WEEKEND BEFORE WE COME TO OUR SENSES!!

>>11039300
I would guess that it indicates Falcon is actually a lot cheaper to fly, they've been holding at the current price because it generates profit and to drop the price so much indicates they feel like they either no longer need the money or are confident they will be able to easily make it up in another arena. Either is a good sign, in the ideal scenario eventually falcon profits will only need be sufficient to refurbish falcons, build enough to meet demand, and replace any which fail.

>>11039310

>>11039310
They should put that sign up at the entrance to the Texas site. "Crazy Elon's Ragin' Rocket Emporium!"

>>11039319
kek

>>11039316
>indicates they feel like they either no longer need the money
lol. More likely some egghead did a shitload of market research and found that dropping the price by 18% would yield higher profits long term due to growing the launch market.

>>11039335
I assume that will be the "other arena" I mentioned, sell for cheaper, sell a lot more. If Falcons aren't consuming too much of SpaceX overall funds then if I were them I'd definitely eat a temporary drop in profit in exchange for significantly expanding the scale of the business. I guess what it probably indicates is that they expect their launch bookings/overall profit intake/investment to grow more than 18% in the near future.

Is Elon the smartest man on earth?

Please discuss.

>>11039335
I hope so, that would blow the "reuse isn't viable because it's not sustainable at current payload rates" argument out of the water.

>>11039335
I'm sure there was also some thought given to how it would yield higher ass pain to their competitors.

>>11039346
No, he's not. But I like his enthusiasm for spaceflight.

>>11039346
he's a massive memer who wants to go to space, and has the money and connections to pull it off

>>11039346
Kinda hard to quantify, based on his public speaking autism I'd assume he got a good bit of horsepower up there, he is a self made decabillionaire twice over, and based on studies of IQ correlation with success that aught to put him in at least the 140's. Of course there are also a lot of other people in the world who's net worth is enormously higher. I would say that he's one of the people in the world I would most aspire to be like, he is extremely wealthy and that wealth is not simply piling up somewhere unused, he's making the money he created for himself work to accomplish what he wants in the world, he doesn't have to stress out about personal needs like living space, food, or health, he can self-actualize because he no longer has any serious mundane constraints. At the same time he isn't completely tied up with other powerful people, he is for the most part dictating how his space project will progress, constrained only by meeting his goals and what physics and technology will allow him to create. It must be a euphoric kind of freedom to have the money and power to throw yourself headfirst into a passion project with reasonable assurances you'll actually have the ability to accomplish what you want.

>>11039373
by "self-actualize" do you mean "abuse his employees and shitpost on twitter"

>>11039379
Sure, if you accept that self-actualization means the magnification or "perfection" of one's inherent qualities, then if a person is prone to being a bit of an asshole boss and shitposting on twitter then the process of self-actualization will intensify those qualities. By the end of the process Elon might end up being a real bastard of a boss who's twitter shitposts rival the average australian shitpost for potency who goes on TV and gets absolutely shitface stoned and talks about consciousness and ayyliens.

>>11039387
I wish I got payed to shitpost on twitter

>>11039346
I think his primary talent is as an engineer which we don't really have a good gauge of as outsiders.

But the most significant thing about Elon is that he's a master of first principles thinking and seeing where the physics and trends are leading, following them without any regard for conventional wisdom. I don't know that I'd call that genius, but it's a lot more important than IQ desu

>>11039389
I'm sure there are people who'd hire you, if you don't mind shitposting for their cause. That kinda defeats the purpose though, shitposting is enjoyable because it's chaotic, organized ideological shitposting is just propaganda with a meme paint job.

>>11039396
You are a true self-actualized shitposter

>>11039392
I'd say genius is defined by hyper-competence in at least one or more fields, and while Elon has had massive success I don't think that's the correct characterization of him. He's got a lot of ambition for the field and a good solid level of competence, however he's splashed down in a field of deliberate governmental incompetence and corporate laziness. By comparison to his competitors he's hyper-competent in the same way my ability to make crude tools would be impressive compared to that of a chimp.

>>11039392
listening to him talk he always sounds more like a rather well informed idea man
he has really good engineers feeding him information (which is basically a dream position, nothing but juicy and crunchy science results to consume) and he's got a good head on his shoulders

>>11039402
>Elon is un-ironically living the idea man dream.
God dammit lads it isn't fair.

>>11039409
I am incredibly jealous

>>11037385
>deliberately topping the Saturn V just to send a puny capsule into orbit
straight up shameless

>>11039346
Best thing about "smart" cars is you can customize it to an insane degree with just software patch.

>>11039431
well, it's a long duration capsule AND a nearly fully fueled ICPS/EUS which should be capable of pushing it on to almost TLI
the RL-10 engines baselined for ICPS and EUS are much more efficient than the J-2 engines used for the Saturn IV TLI stages on account of being expander cycle instead of open gas-generator
I don't think the service module is big enough to actually copy Apollo however

>>11039431
It's not really much of a shock, like everything NASA has done since Saturn, SLS really is just a small but highly inefficient improvement to an existing technology. Sure, the RS-25 is more efficient than the F-1 by a significant degree, but it's much more expensive, it's propellant is harder to work with, it generates much weaker thrust. Sure, SLS's core stage is simpler, a single core booster rather than a multi-stage affair with several different engines operating, but it has to be larger due to it's propellant choice and due to the RS-25's anemic thrust it needs extra boosters which have a reputation for hazardous performance and at least one case of being the direct cause of a catastrophic failure ending in deaths. Sure the capsule is bigger but only marginally so, with an expensive expendable SM built by an entirely different country for several hundred million dollars a pop. Everything Saturn did, SLS will do marginally more of but with a slew of disadvantages and at significantly greater cost.

>>11039446
nah, SLS is worse than Saturn in every way
Saturn IB is better than Atlas V and Delta 4 too

>>11039443
The difference isn't as good as it seems at first glance, because while the RL-10 has about 44s higher Isp or just about 10% better efficiency, it has only a tiny bit more than 1/10th the vacuum thrust of the J2, and since the J2 is a good bit less than 10x as heavy as the RL-10, it aught to have a significantly better TWR too. Honestly if I had to build a new 100-150 ton lifter, and I had to chose between using RL-10's or J2's, I'd chose to modernize the J2 using new manufacturing techniques and if possible a change to it's fuel cycle to pump up it's Isp, rather than design something new like the RL-10 which is going to exchange basically all of the J2's good traits for a 10% improvement in Isp.

>>11039465
I'd just use a vacuum Raptor

>>11039402
I always seen him as being a pretty sharp engineer himself, even if it's not what he does mostly at SpaceX. He always seems extremely sharp on understanding basically anything he ever gets asked about. From interviews with people who work with him, they seem to think as much. Part of his success comes from having a deep and strong understanding of all the nitty gritty engineering going on in his projects. He's smart enough to know if what his lead engineers are telling him to do makes sense for the company's goals, and he doesn't have much tolerance for engineers who don't bring their A game everyday.

Of course anyone can say he's just an "idea man" and I could never truly prove he isn't, but it just seems unlikely from what I've seen.

>>11039473
"idea man" isn't derogatory here, but engineer is a higher tier of understanding than the executive idea man position he holds
it's a very necessary position but he really only knows what he reads or his engineers tell him, because the greater understanding of specific things that "engineer" entails can blind you to the forest for looking at the trees

>>11039452
That’s where your incredibly wrong kiddo: SLS actually has a more powerful first stage than the Saturn V, due to the mighty shuttle boosters. Also, Saturn 1B was more expensive and was able to launch equal or less mass than both the Atlas 5 and Delta 4 can now. It costed $107 million to launch an S1B in 1967, add inflation and the cost to launch one today would be $700+ million. An S1B could launch 21 tons to LEO, whilst an Atlas 5 can launch 20,520kg for $150 million and a Delta 4 can launch 28 tons for $350 million.

>>11039487
>more powerful first stage
>wastes it all on a shit booster/sustainer design that puts less mass on TLI despite having more efficient upper stage
I hate solids, and I hate booster/sustainer design
we moved away from it with Saturn and yet everybody jumped right the fuck back in as soon as they could

What would such a rocket be capable of?

>>11039500
what's the radius of the SLS core stage?

>>11039496
The problem isn’t actually the sustainer design, it’s the lack of a decent upper-stage. The current existing second stage is an upgraded Delta 4 one powered by only a single RL-10, if SLS had something meatier (e.g. EUS) it could be more powerful than Saturn.

>>11039501
8.4 meters

>>11039516
so the fineness launch system is more accurate, then
source: anon

>>11039496
The Falcon Heavy is a booster/sustainer design and it works fine.

>>11039500
>What would such a rocket be capable of?
Launching, one would hope. I don't think even a BFR booster would be able to help the top half do that.

>>11039519
it would be way better with crossfeed

>>11037006
Earth is flat

>>11039523
Earth is t h i c c

>>11039522
Crossfeed was cancelled because Elon needed more time to add fart-mode to his teslas.

>>11039535
He’s such a cringy autist, surrounded by a bunch of ‘yes men’ at Tesla.

>>11039535
Crossfeed was ditched because the extra performance boost it provides is pointless without customers who need the development dollars, especially on a product that was obsolete before it ever flew.

>>11039535
Crossfeed was cancelled because Elon tried to cancel Falcon Heavy and only Gwynne was able to stop him

>>11039523
>>11039530

>>11039517
I'm the source, credit me ffs

>>11039585

>>11039585
the source is anon, we are all anon, therefore, we are all the source

>>11039548
It was actually cancelled because crossfeed doesn't jive very well with core recovery, almost all of the benefit of crossfeed happens when you burn the core stage to completion to get it to maximum speed, but the fast the core stage goes the more propellant they need ot save for the entry burn, so the benefit pretty much evaporated.
TLDR: crossfeed only makes sense for expendable mode FH and since almost no launches would ever require it, it was canned. Starship will be better with only one core anyway.

>>11039585
>anonymous poster
>“pls credit me!”
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=r5kmCgVhADY

>>11039588
>>11039590
is jooooke ;)

>>11039594
I don't think either of us are wrong.

>>11039594
side core droneship recovery center core expended with crossfeed is the best you can hope for with falcon heavy, I think

>>11039596
This video is better: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_3ks7-OjGc

>>11039465
>>11039469
Actually, turns out somebody already had that idea a long time before me, the J-2X is pretty much exactly what I described. It's down to less than 20s of Isp different between the J-2X and RL-10. The Chad-2X dominates the Virgin-10 as far as I'm concerned.

>>11039652
imho hydromeme is an uncomfortable middle ground between nuclear rockets and other chemical rockets, it's got brilliant efficiency for a chemical rocket but it's shit in every other way

>>11039652
The J-2S was better.

>>11039661
Oh I absolutely agree, it generates low TWR, not good for a first stage because it forces you to fight against Earth's gravity for longer, wasting that on-paper efficiency. The tankage and plumbing have to be more robust and are shorter lived due to hydromeme embrittlement, that means higher dry mass weight which translates into again more wasteful fighting this time against your own vehicle's mass. That's before you even consider cryocooling, if you want to restart your engine you have to keep your propellant chilled which means yet more onboard weight either as an active cryocooling system or as tank insulation. Metha/LOX is great because your tanks are closer to Kero/LOX tanks in size, need little to zero insulation, have maximum Isp closer to Hydromeme than Keromeme, so you get benefit from small tanks and low dry mass and benefits from higher Isp's, you can pull TWRs closer to Kero/LOX engines too so Metha/LOX rockets can act as adequate sea level boosters with high TWRs to minimize time spent fighting Earth gravity and atmospheric drag. Kerosine and purified Methane are also easier to manufacture than purified hydrogen, both in terms of storage and power consumption. On top of that Metha/LOX burns at temperatures much closer to Hydro/LOX, meaning less thermal strain on the engine by a couple hundred degrees and builds up nearly no deposits, so it's better for long term engine life and multiple restarts than Kero/LOX.

>>11039672
The 2X is a third iteration improving on the 2S, developed in the event that engineers couldn't help but add further improvements onto the 2S.

How long until we see fully additively manufactured powerheads lads? Pic related is a single homogeneous lump of metal, with the cryocooling jacket and coolant line, combustion chamber, expansion bell, and injector plate all laid down at once without any bolts or fasteners, seals, or other parts. In such a rocket the only moving parts would be actuating elements and the turbomachinery.

How well do you think would the /sci/ space program do? How long til /sci/ and /diy/ open mars colonies?

>>11039732
Once direct metal sintering takes less that a month to print an engine

>>11039738
Probably about as well as /b/'s that time they launched a frog on a balloon.

>>11039738
At least a dozen "idea guys", engi*eers are used as slave labor and worked to unconsciousness, they subsist on a diet of low quality tendies and adderall. Project is under budget because there is no budget. Two teams of idea guys send their engi*eer slaves to go to war with one another over whether tanks should be aluminum or COPVs, the propellant team also go to war as to whether Metha/LOX or Hydro/LOX is a better propellant, the dispute is ended when the Metha/LOX team beats the Hydro/LOX team to death with hydrogen embrittled pieces of plumbing. The entire project is shut down by the FBI when some nuclear rocketeer scavenges up enough radioactive material to build a DIY nuclear thermal rocket and tries to test it, experiencing a RUD and irradiating himself and the entire site.

>>11039739
>>sintering
GROSS. Melting is better.

>>11039739
I think there are some pretty speedy printers these days, obviously still slower than something like cold spinning or hot spinning, but you can see from the internal structure that the 3D manufactured engine is much more complex in structure while having a part count of only 1 without welds or bolts. Something like this spee3d system but with a much more accurate nozzle, with something like this you could "print" in NARloy-z, electroplate in nickle and be done. You can see the size of part the guy demonstrates being turned out in about 10 minutes, if you give it a full 12 hours I can imagine it turning out some pretty large components. If you put the supersonic deposition nozzle on an armature and gave the thing a rotating large base it could create much larger objects too without any fundamental differences in design, limiting your printing size only to how far you could build an arm to hold that nozzle steady while it runs. Call it one system turning out one complete powerhead every 24 hours, with another 24 hours for electroplating and finishing work like attachment of other finished components. All you'd need is a few of these things with heads of varying accuracy, you could have one gross head to turn out large components rapidly and a few fine heads of different shapes to do more precision work.

>>11039836
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfOhC-qntLg
Woops, here's a video demonstrating the printer I was mentioning, you can clearly see that it's designs are still rough but the nozzle size is quite broad, you can actually see where it's depositing material in thick, broad layers. If you had a finer nozzle I'm confident such a machine could achieve much higher fidelity.

Ashes to ashes, funk to funky
We know Major Musk's a junkie

>>11039952
Strung out on Heaven's high,
Launch costs at an all time low

What's the cost difference on growing weed versus fermenting alcohol in space? Everyone knows you don't have a colony until you have a tavern.

>>11039975
fermenting alcohol is very easy if you have an atmosphere similar to the air of Earth. Growing weed is a little more complex as it requires lamps 24/7, in addition to an earth-like atmosphere. Both are possible to do right now. You could do it in the ISS now

>>11039975
Well a colony will presumably already have the hydroponics setup for growing food anyway, so bringing some pot seeds would be easy enough. As for fermentation, maybe if you bring yeast and grow some potatoes once you get there?

>>11039979
Does weed require an earth-like atmosphere? Wouldn't it do fine in a pure CO2 atmosphere of sufficient pressure? That would allow you to simply feed your greenhouses with compressed Mars air, and they would output both oxygen and dank weed.

>>11040012
I think plants need more gasses than just CO2 (probably?)

>>11040012
I wonder how differently it would grow in the lower gravity? Weed already tends to grow leggy/tall and ramping up the CO2 while making it easier to climb might result in literal pot-trees.
>ywn make your millions exporting Martian dank

>>11040012
Plants breathe oxygen, so that wouldn't work.

>>11040039
of course not, they need electrolytes too

>>11040017
>literal pot trees
I'm sold brb mars

600 million people watched the Moon landing live in 1969.
How do you think the Mars landing will impact the world? Will 7 billion people watch it live? Will presidents around the world give a speec along with God Emperor Musk?

>>11040112

>>11040120
>six astronauts
So everyone gets to bring their entire house?

>>11040012
Pretty sure they require not to be in a hard vaccuum.

>>11040163
6 is a little extreme, but does anyone actually expect the 100 number to resolve out? I'm thinking it will be more like a few concurrent expeditions of ~30 each

>>11040112
>>11040120
What would NASA even do if SpaceX beat them to Mars.

>>11040185
If they're smart, they'll work with SpaceX to provide equipment and personnel in trade for the ability to call it a "joint mission"

>>11040163
For a 3 day trip, I'd rather be in a small appartment than a car in terms of living space.

>>11040112
It won't be nearly that big of a deal.
In 69 there was quite a number of people alive who've lived to see technology develop from very primitive or no flight to humans landing on the fucking Moon. Today, most people were BORN AFTER humans landed on the Moon and rockets in general have existed throughout the life of large majority of people alive today.

>>11040195
I think you do not comprehend how big of a historical landmark stepping on Mars is

>>11040190
>If they're smart
More importantly, "if Congress lets them".
>>11040191
>3 day trip
>Mars
wut

>>11040185
Give ULA more money to get there faster.

>>11040195
>there are people who have seen the moon landings and died after seeing NASA become a shadow of its former self

>>11040198
>>3 day trip
>>Mars
>wut
Sorry. For some reason I thought we were talking about a moon trip.

>>11040197
The question isn't how much I get it or care. The question is how much will most people care. Many people will indeed care, but the symbolic importance of the milestone just can not compare. We went from from first powered flight to landing on the fucking Moon in less then 70 years. Then another 60 years to even just return to Moon and then go to Mars. It simply does not compare.

>>11040190
NASA's helping SpaceX finding a landing site for starship on Mars. They even took pictures with the MRO to help. NASA actually has to help private companies in some cases if they ask for help.

>>11040197
Anon has a point. The ignorance and apathy of normies, and general ability of humanity to take things for granted, runs deep. Among those even cognizant of what is going on, the attitude is often not excitement but an immediately attempt to discredit the attempt because of some contrived bullshit - "but muh problems on earth" "muh contamination" "why not X planet/moon instead" etc

>>11040197
Normies simply won't care. They'll see a FB post about it, maybe like it or share it, and forget about it a minute later because it doesn't effect their day to day life.

>>11040234
>>11040239
This. Apollo only had a 50% approval rating at best.

>>11040239
This has been true of every major technological change in history

>>11040253
Yeah, but most people end up caring when it turns into a new product for them to buy, or some medical advancement. Unless orbital production really makes a big difference in what we can do, space advances will literally never effect people on earth.

>>11039031
>New Glenn, Vulcan and Ariane 6 have all signed numerous commercial customers so far, whilst Starship has signed a insane Japanese man.
Not so fast:
https://spacenews.com/spacex-targets-2021-commercial-starship-launch/
>Jonathan Hofeller, SpaceX’s vice president of commercial sales, said the company is in talks with prospective customers for the first commercial launch of that system roughly two years from now.
>“We are in discussions with three different customers as we speak right now to be that first mission,” Hofeller said at the APSAT conference here. “Those are all telecom companies.”

>>11038703

>>11039346
He's the smart I like. Doesn't follow outdated jew bullshit like NASA and actually gets shit done. While memeing.

Which production building do you prefer?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rY_xecfMyc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rc5D2Jb7qXQ

>>11040239
I wouldn't look at it like that. The milestone simply isn't as significant. Humans landing on a foreign sphere for the first time happens only once and that happened in the year of our lord 1969.
It's like being excited about the second coming of Jesus. I mean, yeah, it's pretty cool, but we kinda already had something similar before.

>>11040272
>after utilizing its own massive constellation for funding, SpaceX will turn around and use Starship to enable its competitors' constellations because that's the only outside market capable of making use of its high launch periodicity
It's a weird world in space.

Things that won't fly:
Starship Launch Shepard

>>11040280
There's more than enough demand for bandwidth to go around

>>11040277
>FMA:B
>Kakegurui
Why does elon have such shit taste in anime?

>>11040259
e a r t h 2 e a r th

>>11040280
This is how the internet today works.

>>11040279
There will never be another first colonization, or first human steps outside the Earth sphere of influence, either. I think you're right that it will not generate the same public excitement, but not on its actual significance.

Arguably, Apollo's been as significant for the death of development in spaceflight in its wake as much as its achievements, while a Mars mission could reinvigorate it.

>>11040259
This is an important chance. If we make sure a certain group of elites never go to Mars, life can flourish as it was once intended to.

>>11040289
Nah, you're too fatalistic here. We can potentially send generation ships to Ross 128, Proxima Centuri, etc. James Webb will tell us which if any nearby stars host habitable planets. It doesn't take a lot to be better than Mars. And that's without giant mirror memes over Ganymede and Titan.

Anyone remember that video of a CGI lunar mission simulation with Let it Rock by Kevin Rudolf playing in the background? I want the launch of Starship to have that playing.

>>11040298
The point is not that nothing will ever be better, I don't know how you got that impression. If anything, the post I was responding to was making that argument by suggesting that after having stepped onto another heavenly body for the first time doing it again will never have as much significance.

>>11040120
It would undoubtedly break streaming records.

>>11040293

>>11040336
>Elon found dead May 27th 2018

>>11040328
Not the anon you were replying to but I get what you're saying, the Moon was *the* first step and every other first won't be able to match the meaning. I'd disagree partially though, we still haven't set foot on another planet yet, so that first will be momentous I think. Every other world after that, not as much.

>>11040345
I don't know why I keep coming across as saying the opposite of what I'm intending to, kek. My point was essentially the same as yours. Leaving the Earth sphere of influence to step onto another planet for the first time will be (at least) as significant as stepping foot on the Moon and the founding of the first colony outside Earth even moreso.

>>11040293
mars colony communist from the start. No state. If an elite pig shows up they're dead

>>11040364
>Own the most powerful rocket in the world
>Pander to youtubers on twitter
Why does he do this?

>>11040380
Lulz

>>11040355
I strongly disagree. Human perception of space shifted enormously in the span of something like 10-20 years leading up to moon landing. It was something huge, new, and exciting. Now we'll be realizing the dreams and ideas that entered public consciousness over halve a century ago and since then became normalized. Less exciting. Less new. We could land on a planet orbiting different star in a decade and it wouldn't be as big as the Moon landing. I don't care how technically significant or more difficult landing on Mars is on paper. Because Moon landing symbolizes start of the space age.
That's not to say that it won't be exciting. Just not as big.

>>11040361
tankies are for burning

>>11040380
Pewdiepie's main demographic is kids and preteens, and a whole lot of them
guess who Musk's primary recruitment block will be in a decade or two

>>11040419
>We could land on a planet orbiting different star in a decade and it wouldn't be as big as the Moon landing.
Well, that's completely absurd. I don't know what to tell you, you have no sense of perspective.

>>11040434
Playing the long-game I see.

>>11040380
Musk always shitposted on the internet, rich people are still people

>>11040361
Okay, you can create your anarcho-communalist colony. And then we'll mop up the survivors when an inevitable despot arises and puts half the population out the airlocks.

>>11040364
That's my boy, Ēlon Müsk!

>>11040516
In the words of Michael Lee Aday, two out of three ain't bad.

>>11038734

Starship complexity doesn't factor; it's more like turnaround reusability is among the designed in feature set with more effort expended to realizing implementation.

>>11038798

What SpaceX pursues with its finite capital and resources is elective based upon their own business trajectory planning, which can freely change. They turn down the burner on Falcon 9 while the plans for Starship can remain on course because Starship has its own importance to realize for them.

>>11039031

SpaceX's assumable manifest is transferrable to Starship as it will supplant Falcon in its launch roles while being more affordable. SpaceX's currently signed customers as a category are future Starship customers.

>casting women in the Apollo sequel
What is Pixar thinking. Will there be a musical number

>>11040561
>Musical number
>Whitey on the Moon (Rihanna Redux)

>>11040230

NASA is a large multifaceted organization. Some minor roles it by default will inherently perform as the space agency of record for American space activities is not the same as the substantive involvement that it is capable of as a more self actualized version of that same space agency.

>>11040419

Starship will make Apollo look like piddly squat in retrospect.

>>11040183
Yeah, there's enough habitation space for each of the 100 crew to have basically a tiny apartment worth of space, maybe 6-7m^3 to themselves, that's enormous luxury for a short trip like a moon shot, the entire Apollo crew had to share that among 3 people, but for mars I'd expect maybe a half crew tops, 50 people. Even if they modify the Marship with a nuclear rocket (which I think may become necessary due to the incredible length of the trip otherwise) it's still a 3 month long trip cooped up with 49 other people, similar to what submariners have to put up with and they're usually vetted for particular mental fortitude in claustrophobic environments, and they get to actually leave and fuck their wives and breath unrecycled air at the end of their tour. Mars colonists will have to settle for going from one tightly enclosed space to another when they arrive, and the only people they'll be able to fuck are each-other, and they'll be prevented from knocking one-another up too, possibly with subcutaneous long-duration contraceptives or something like that. The first martians will have to have both balls and wills of steel to not go completely fucking batshit nuts.

I honestly think it would be a better idea to pool up resources, built a shit-ton of ships, and send several enormous fleets of 10+ ships at a time to Mars to prepare it for colonization. The first wave will be bulk construction materials and assembly robots, these ships will land at the colony site and offload their huge supply crates. The second wave will be many cargo ships with expando-habs and some vital stuff like reactors and solar arrays, they'll establish a large permanent orbital station with a crew of at between 10-25, this fleet will have one crewed ship to oversee station construction, and then from the station they'll send a signal to deploy the construction robots who's work they'll either be doing by remote with no time lag from orbit, or oversee. cont...

>>11040654
The final fleet of ten ships will carry the lions share of colonists and the final stuff to make the colony functional, it's power supply, auxiliary solar arrays, soil components for hydroponics along with soil bacteria cultures, other biomaterial, a shit ton of extra food and water, etc, possibly a deconstructed large rotohab with a diameter of about 300m which could spin at 2-3RPM to generate near-Earth like conditions.

>>11040654
>it's still a 3 month long trip
Not born in the XV century? it's the colonization of America again! Feel the Colonizer Experience™

>>11040708
>Feel the Colonizer Experience™
Unless there's some fresh islander pussy on Mars I sorta feel it'll be lacking that authentic feel.

>>11040712
>fresh ayylamo pussy
FTFY

>>11040669
Just imagine what it would feel like to be looking at that in person

>>11040712
don't worry Elon-san is creating catgirls

>>11040721
If seeing Earth from orbit can cause a significant change in one's perception, then seeing Mars would be a life changing experience to the point where the person coming back from a Martian trip isn't quite the same as the one who left.

>>11040120
It's a beautiful dream anon.

>50% approval for Apollo

Nationwide census regarding opinion on spaceflight followed by mass culling when?

>>11040776
Anyone who answers in the negative regarding spaceflight should be barred from leaving the atmosphere. They and their line stay forever.

>>11040776
>50% MAX approval for Apollo
FTFY

The only way to fix it is to aggressively fight the stereotype that spaceflight is just a wasteful display (which Apollo did start), and teach people about the tangible benefits of spaceflight (not meme stuff like asteroid mining and colonization).

>>11040783
Orbital Solar Power in particular is a giant, juicy piece of bait for Green politics.

>>11040790
Green politicians don't give a fuck about being green. It's just a thin veneer for the communist/globohomo agenda. I can't even remember the last time a green politician in my country was doing something for the environment and not just talking about diversity and lgbtbbq.

>>11040790
While beamed solar power in space is a neat idea and can actually be implemented with today's technology, it's alot like NTRs unfortunately. A legitimately useful and usable piece of technology that can be made safe, but public fears will always ground it. A single "they're putting lazors in space that can vaporize your crops, your homes, and your families!" campaign will utterly shutdown any attempt at it.

>>11040809
The issue is you can't store it and the planet rotates so different stations receive at different times. Solar stations only work on the sunny side, you still need other sources for nighttime

>>11040818
>capable of beaming infinite solar panel to Africa for basically free
>niggers broke the ground station

>>11040829
https://www.reuters.com/article/kenya-electricity/thieves-fry-kenyas-power-grid-to-cook-fast-food-idUSL6N0U81JB20141227
More likely than you think.

>>11040829
>>11040833
Could beamed solar power be used to scour the continent clean of humans?

>>11040736
That's a trivial statement, a person leaving for Mars won't be the same as the person who returns if they take even one shit throughout the mission.

>>11040842
yeah

>>11040845

>>11040845
Perfect.

>>11040799
Yes, but it is extremely difficult for them to argue against. Bezos' public angle I think targets this aspect of politics: he proposes eventually moving all heavy industry off Earth, and "rezoning the planet" to residential/recreational, a National Park world. It takes a lot of work to argue against that kind of promise.

>>11040818
Sun Synchronous Orbits for generation, with re-broadcasting/mirror arrays at other, lower orbits to ensure continuous base load power.

>>11040842
>Humans
>Implying

>>11040833
>drain toxic pcb soaked transformer oil and sell it to cook food
>It looks like cooking oil, but lasts much longer, users say.
It's much worser than i thought wtf

>>11040937
I would've just said the fauna, but I like lions and giraffes.

>launches
>property values within a hundred miles of the launchpad plummet

>>11040952
I love watching third-worlders hurt themselves with first-world stuff they don't understand.

>>11040994
Not if it's flying from modified oil platforms.

>>11041063
Sealand spaceprogram when?

>>11041072
There is the hypothesis that SpaceX is working on the concept if they intend to follow through with international surface-to-surface travel. It's the only way to limit the noise from sonic booms a reasonable amount.

>>11041079
It's also the only way to solve ITAR compliance. It would be very, very illegal to land a Starship in China

>>11041072
>>11041079
>SpaceX develops ways to modify offshore platforms into Starship landing pads
>Sealand offers it's platform for this service
>Sealand now has a better space program than the UK

>>11041085
That assumes an awful lot about China's stability, too. They may not be a market people want to visit for some time.

>>11040833
>>11040952
>>11041001

>>11041096
China was just one example, pick any non-NATO state

The merits of a space colony versus a planet colony has been debated (kinda) here alot, but are there academic or professional articles about this? My Google-Fu has failed me.

>>11041117
>doubting the hypergravity /fit/station memes

>>11041106
Australia/NZ will be guaranteed desirable locations for landing/launch sites.

>>11041117
In the short term, you could go for a few hundred more years looking at nothing but terrestrial planets and moons. However, their carrying capacity (even when fully terraformed) only add maybe about 10-20 billion to the total possible population.
Building stations is a more efficient use of materials, because you're not just using the outer crust of a body. The asteroids and comets in the Solar System can host 1-10 trillion humans in population, so no matter the short-term choice, the long-term choice invariably will favor space colonies.

>>11041120
based and spinpilled

>>11041135
Interesting. At what timeframe does space colonies "out-pace" planet colonies if planets are for short term and space is for long term? Or is that based on population growth?

>>11041145
It's based both on population growth and infrastructure. However, building space colonies is almost certainly faster than terraforming in terms of rendering a set amount of square km habitable to humans, probably by a couple orders of magnitude.

>>11041117
No need for 'professional' study, it's easy even for anonymous retards to work it out.

'Moving out' from a species' home planet goes in three stages.

Stage one, the objects closest to the home planet that are easiest to live on and launch from are explored and colonized (in our solar system that means Moon and Mars, Venus is a siren's trap obviously).

Stage two, all of the major objects of the star system are explored and colonized, through the use of better propulsion systems and higher mass budgets afforded by launch from the lower gravity colonized worlds (eg Mars colonization lets us access Phobos and Deimos fairly easily and they represent quadrillions of tons of metal oxides to mine and refine, for building giant habitats and ships in space)

Stage three, all of the objects of the solar system worth grabbing are grabbed, and eventually used as building material for one thing or another. Entire small planets and moons are being deconstructed at this point because they are more useful as orbital mega-structure habitat and ship mass. Note that at stage three interstellar colonization is trivial to accomplish, it becomes possible to send trillion-ton flotillas of ships and resource bubbles to every star within a hundred light-years of the home system.

Stage four, the cancer has spread fully, the patient dies, and the construction of the Dyson swarm around the home star is complete. All objects including the previous home planet and even the biggest gas giants have been deconstructed to serve as basalt fibers and titanium struts and even simply as thin gravel and soil coverings for the interiors of quadrillions of giant O'Neill cylinder habitats. A good chunk of the home galaxy has been colonized at this point and a good chunk of that chunk of stars are also surrounded by completed Dyson swarms. Colony fleets are leaving the galaxy for other galaxies at a few percent of light speed, having pushed off of one another in opposite directions via laser.

>>11041160
Note that space habitats are much faster than terraforming but also much slower than hollowing out living space underground on an uninhabitable object. It almost never makes sense to terraform except as an art project more or less, but it sometimes makes more sense to do ground colonization than orbital habitats, and that time frame extends from right now until whatever time we have a large and industrious colony or colonies present on the Moon or Mars or both.

>>11041169
>terraforming as an art project
Venus is an excellent candidate for this

>>11041160
I always figured that it would be more expensive and would take longer to make/extend a space station than make more tunnels or buildings on a planet.

>>11041169
Definitely. It's why people figure that regardless of things going in favor of Space Colonies, there will be extensive early work and even habitation on the Moon and Mars. Whether people live there for their whole lives or just for a few years at a time is a different question, but a lot of people will do so.

>>11041136

>>11041174
The benefit of Space Colonies is their environments are more easily tuned, especially gravity and weather. Even if we could terraform Mars with a snap of our fingers we couldn't control the weather there, and there would still be concerns about traveling between Mars and Earth even if the difference in gravity caused absolutely no issues during pregnancy and or development into adulthood.
Space Colonies sidestep the issue entirely. That, and because their geometry is fundamentally different from planets or moons, you can pack more living space into a tighter volume than is possible for a moon or a planet. Travel times across and between populations of a billion or more would be only a couple hours, assuming they wanted to live near each other.

some autist saw the fineness launch system and is now shitposting on NSF with it
what a retard

>>11041199
At least he's not Shelby posting.

Thread theme:
https://youtu.be/goh2x_G0ct4

>>11041213
Jamal, if I give you a pound of space platinum, will you shut it?

>>11041087

nothing greater than to fight space communists as a Starship doorgunner for the proud nation Sealand

>>11041442
>tfw dropping space communists on sub-orbital flights to burn up on re-entry

here's your Orion capsule bro

>>11041472
thank you google very cool

>>11041494
https://twitter.com/markkirasich/status/1176242744882343937

>>11040112
Depend on how many social media influencers can budget afford

First spacesex when

>>11041087
BBbbbut look how many wind turbines we have! Sniff

>>11041079
One thing that occurred to me - how hard would it be to slow down Starship using big fans on the ground? That way you wouldn't need the hot noisy blowy retropropulsion

>>11041643
terminal velocity for Starship is 200 mph, if you had a large enough updraft of that size that might work

>>11041646
You would need a shitload of Turbofans running full bore to try and cushion it, and even if you did somehow pull that off, how are you going to flip and land it properly without trashing your multi-hundred million dollar array of turbofan engines?

>>11041659
even if you did, the big issue is sonic booms as the vehicle reenters, which has nothing to do with the retropropulsive landing in the last few hundred meters of flight

>>11041664
Yeah obvs the sonic boom would still be a prob, I was thinking more as a safety backup, or a way to save on fuel/increase payload/orbit etc.

>>11041659
You'd need some configuration by which an updraft would naturally cause it to assume a stable orientation, then lower it to a cushioned landing. And the airflow could quite easily be ducted to protect the fans

>>11041117

Pros
No gravity wells - less cost for travel and smaller asteroid impact rate
Gravity control, anything between 0g~1g, or more, for recreation and industry
Climate control
Atmosphere control
Daylight cycle control
Can be built anywhere
Constant solar energy
More efficient use of mass, both for generating gravity and pressure

Cons
Large upfront cost
No developed industry yet
Minimum size
No natural magnetosphere
No natural resources

Blue Origin’s infrastructure-heavy approach is a nice alternative to SpaceX’s minimalist cheap skate approach. It reminds me of the Apollo program.

>>11041782

>>11041791

>>11041797

>>11041782
>infrastructure-heavy approach

If they can ever get something to Orbit

If starship isn't operational because why would you buy a ride on NG when SS is available

>>11041782
The difference isn't the amount of infrastructure they're building (SpaceX is/will be building up a similar amount, both at Boca and florida) but stainless allowing them to build prototypes in a field. They aren't going to be building production vehicles that way.

>>11041813
Idk, why don’t you ask OneWeb, Eutelsat, Telesat, SKY Perfect JSAT, Maxar and mu Space why they picked New Glenn instead.

>>11041833
>The difference isn't the amount of infrastructure they're building

It’s pretty hard to say that currently, when BO are building a massive concrete pad larger than LC-39A from the ground up and SpaceX are building a relatively small steel launch mount tacked onto the side of 39A. This might change in the future, but that’s yet to be seen.

>>11041840
They just dont like taking risks I guess

>>11041840
>instead
Exclusivity in the launch industry is actively avoided. Most of those are customers of SpaceX as well and only OneWeb (notable exception) has a multi-flight BO contract. I'm not the other aggressive dude either so don't take this as dismissing BO, just sayin'.

>>11041852
Infrastructure means more than launch pads, SpaceX has big development underway at Boca and near 39A. As for the launch mount, pretty sure we can confidently say that is only for the prototype as we already know SH will need that beefy diverter system.

>>11041870
the SpaceX plan has discarded the enormous concrete pad for simply an actively cooled steel diverter and milkstool, right?

>>11041875
Yes, BO has yet to realise you don't need a gorillion tonnes of concrete and steel if you simply keep the rocket a ways off the pad and cool and divert the flame. Shits not even rocket science just common sense.

>>11041875
Afaik the pad they showed for the presentation - which was for Boca, admittedly, but physics is the same in florida - constitutes our most up to date information on their plans, and it's more substantial than what they have at 39A right now. I'm definitely prepared to be wrong on that, though.

>>11041840
Because Tesla Man Bad!

That or BO is offering some dirt cheap at or under cost to start the business rolling. As long as Bezos is pouring cash into BO, giving away launches at the start to show off hardware is an understandable business move.

>>11041966
Buy one rocket, get one free!

Just to let you guys know that the Starlink launch originally set for October 17th has been delayed to an unknown date, there probably won’t be a SpaceX launch until November.

>>11042037
hmmmm

Berger on twitter:
Source says "full panic has ensued" as NASA realizes commercial crew may not be ready in first half of 2020; and Gerstenmeier is no longer around to help the companies along, or negotiate with Russians for more Soyuz seats. Focus on Artemis may put ISS program in real danger.

>>11042094
If true, then that's what you get for focusing on funding engineer welfare programs rather than actual spaceflight. It's like that one classmate who spent most of his time messing around off-campus and now has to drop everything to finish a project the last couple of days before it's due.

>>11042108
What are you talking about schitzo?

>>11041972

>>11042109
Seemed pretty straightforward to me anon.

>>11042109
I assume it's because NASA has the STEM for women and minorities bullshit, and they just realized that the saying "get woke get broke" is true.

>>11042146
>I assume it's because NASA has the STEM for women and minorities bullshit
I was referring to SLS (pbui).

>>11042094
NASA is borderline incoherent. At every step of the way they've chosen to extend testing and bureaucracy, not curtail it. Which, you know, that's about what you'd expect out of NASA, right? Except at the same time they are absolutely losing their shit that it won't be on time. What did you expect? You dictated most of the schedule yourselves.

>>11042149
>they've chosen to extend testing and bureaucracy, not curtail it

Are you implying this is a bad thing after the capsule explosion and parachute failures...

>>11042151
I'm not saying it's a bad thing, I'm saying wanting both at once doesn't make any sense. Either you take your time for safety, or the schedule slips.

Besides, the issues that both Boeing and SpaceX have had probably could have been found and thus redesigned around earlier if NASA hadn't been dragging its feet for so long.

>>11042151
>parachute failures
Wasn't the chute failure just one odd failure out of multiple tests and that every other test was successful?

>>11042161
>Either you take your time for safety, or the schedule slips.
Oop, I phrased that wrong. More like "if you take your time, then the schedule slips." Well, hopefully that was obvious.

SLSChads roll out

>>11042166
You are among God's chosen spacefans, anon. You have the brilliant foresight to recognize that the Space Launch System (pbui) is the most POWERFUL and SAFE way for AMERICANS to reach the moon and beyond.

>>11042170
May my children live to see the day when it finally flies.

>>11042162
There were subsequent anomalies (minor failures) in multiple tests leading up to a single “complete failure” of the parachute system in one test, which ended up with the mass simulator being destroyed when it hit the desert floor, as was mentioned in a congressional hearing. This is why the ASAP committee kept mentioning parachute anomalies in their meetings.

>>11042176
May the SLS stay grounded forever, so that our children and our children's children will still have jobs when the Godless AI have taken over everything else.

>>11042166
It’ll be a good week for SLS fans as the engines will start getting attached on Thursday.

What if Venus had a nitrogen atmosphere (no o2 though) instead of co2 sludge? How would our world be different?

This lil nigga got 23 eyes ... bruh

>>11042200
Curiosity 2: Thermoelectric Boogaloo

>>11042193
Nitrogen at lol Venus pressures, or "what if Venus had a sensible atmosphere"?

Because if Venus had a sensible atmosphere I think there would be oxygen, because there would probably be life. It would be a desert world (she's lost most of her water, like Mars) and the slow rotation would require sandcrawlers for human habitation. Volcanos everywhere still. Probably better than Mars in a lot of ways, only the day length is the real nut kicker.

>>11042220
You could bolt hundreds of fission jet engines to the equator to slowly impart a spin around the planet

>>11042186
How long will it take to mount the engines?

>>11042229
10-15 years

>>11041782
It's because Blue Origin wants to take it slow. Bezos has all the time in the world to get BO up and running because he effectively has infinite money to throw at it. SpaceX, on the other hand, has had success with their rapid development strategy but is probably going to pay for it when Elon's poorly thought out Starship gets people killed in a few years.

>>11042228
You'd want water anyways so just bombard the planet with off-axis comets to both impart spin and give water. If you're impatient maybe crash Ceres into Venus.

>>11042231
>10 years to assemble a propellant tank
>10 to add engines
>3 to transport to Florida
>5 to attach SRBs
>4 to stack Delta IV upper stage on top
>10 to finish Orion and stack
>1 to erect rocket on pad
>3 to count down to launch
>100 microseconds to RUD
>

>>11042229
It takes 3 days to install each engine (including prep works and and checks) so if they installed each one back to back without any downtime, they could get them all installed in 12 days, but that’s unlikely IMO, so more like 15 days. Remember they don’t have that much time to spare, considering SLS is getting shipped to Stennis in December.

>>11042234
Truth missile. Oh life support? We will just use crew dragon systems, easy.

SpaceX youtube video title on Starship crew burnup on reentry

Here's How NOT To Land A Heckin' Spaceship (*Gone Explosive)

>>11042234
>Any day now... SpaceX will screw up.

>>11042251
why do they have to do them one at a time?

>>11042367
I mean they have multiple times, just not with humans involved, which is the key point here.

>>11042370
Because installing engines is hard and complicated, which is why every aerospace company does it this way.

>>11042372
Rockets blowing up isn't a very big screw up necessarily. They only lost one mission. Human missions will ofc have much higher standards of safety applied. Even then if someone is killed it's not the end of the world. Virgin Galactic already killed 2 guys. Planes crash all the time. So long is any deaths aren't attributes to gross incompetence of SpaceX's behalf, shit will be fine.

>>11038798
You are absolutely correct, but you're a fool if you think anyone here will give a shit. They'd rather shitpost about SLS and masturbate to their Starship fantasies than actually talk about the industry.

>>11042378
I feel as if Elon would rather snip his own nuts off than allow each engine to be installed one at a time unless there was absolutely no reasonable faster way to do it.

>>11042382
Did Elon ever even promise 24-hour reuse in 2019? I somewhat figured all serious advancement of Falcon 9 development is off the cards since Starship will be replacing it anyways once it's up and running.

>>11042388
Many times...

https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/19/spacex-targets-24-hour-first-stage-rocket-re-use-turnaround-by-2018/

https://www.space.com/40581-spacex-reusable-rocket-goal-elon-musk.html

https://spacenews.com/spacex-targeting-24-hour-turnaround-in-2019-full-reusability-still-in-the-works/

>>11042412
>targets
>goal
>targeting
The problem is when Elon says they're planning to get something done by X time, people assume he promised it and if he missed that date that he's a liar or something. It's really bizarre.

And now Eric Berger's trying to blame Artemis for CCrew delays, even though the two programs have zero interaction

https://twitter.com/SciGuySpace/status/1181572161917607948

Guess they need a scapegoat now that it's clear it won't fly astronauts in 2019.

Telescopes on earth are limited by gravity. You can only build a mirror so big before the glass in it starts sagging under it's own weight. You can use a fuck load of mirrors but then you gotta do some fucking crazy shit so they stay aligned properly under vibration and fucking wind loads. And some of the big mirrors take YEARS to make. Took about 7 years just to make one mirror for a telescope. Because the telescope has to be open to the elements and because the aperture's getting so goddamn big wind's an issue and we're having to do fucking aerodynamics to make things work. Oh and in some cases cycle out mirrors continuously to clean the fucking dust off them. The entire structure also had to be built to withstand earthquakes too! Then we have to have all this crap for dealing with atmospheric turbulence. Space telescopes the same size as the ones on Earth might be as cheap or cheaper because we don't have to fight gravity, wind, earthquakes, or atmospheric turbulence

>>11039732
is this the endgame for chemical rockets?

>>11042423
Artemis is definitely the problem here, it’s got nothing to do with the capsule explosions, parachute failures and crucial system redesigns that have all occurred this year.

>>11042424
Looking forward to Starship providing cheap access to space for giant space telescope projects.

>>11042428
Don't know, I guess if you could somehow grow a powerhead from a single crystal of alloy in the same way super high performance turbine blades are manufactured for modern fighters and passenger planes that might offer some structural improvements, but the grow mold for a rocket powerhead would be too complicated to remove easily once it's done. Also this is equally applicable to nuclear rockets and their powerheads.

>>11042412
You'll notice that Elon always talks about "targets" and "goals". Whenever the interview asks him if he's willing to "promise" that SpaceX will reach that goal by that time he always starts rubbing his nose, looks down into his chest and quietly mumbles "I dunno..". If the interviewer asks him again he just covers his face with his hands until the interviewer goes away. Excited to see the 20km starship launch.

>>11042448
Which I would honestly be fine with if his fanbase didn't treat them as unassailable gospel.
People used to shit-talk Anons that said FH cross-feed wasn't gonna happen, for example.

>>11042453
On the other side, many people think Elon is a conman everytime he missed one of his targets.

I think he's a pretty cool guy and I think SpaceX is a pretty cool guy.

Who said FH cross-feed wasn't gonna happen? Was there's something about it that made it unfeasible? I gathered they just didn't bother because they were already moving the starship and were only finishing FH because they had to.

>>11042457
Not impossible, but people were saying that:
1. It would be way more complex than Elon claimed
2. It wouldn't be worth it because there weren't any payloads that needed the extra performance (kinda like how a lot of the stuff that FH was originally meant for can fly on F9 since it's been upgraded so much)

>>11042448
>>11042453
The two most annoying things about Elon time are:

1.) It’s effect on commercial crew- if SpaceX don’t meet a deadline, NASA bureaucracy is automatically blamed, because SpaceX definitely works as fast as Musk’s extremely realistic estimates.

2.) The disconnect between Elon and the engineers he’s supposedly so close to, I mean you’ve got SpaceX people doing damage control on NSF L2, telling people to ignore Elon after he made his Starship to orbit in 6 months prediction. That seems unhealthy...

>>11042475
*Not that SpaceX don’t work very fast or NASA bureaucracy isn’t a problem. However, both are overplayed by SpaceX’s fan base. Crewed spaceflight is hard.

>>11042465
Why would it not be possible? Starship is planning for in-orbit cross fueling. Is that not possible either?

Yeah, I'm sure it would be harder than Elon claimed, but like he said FH was harder than he expected. But it did fly. I figure if they really wanted to do the cross fueling they could have.

>>11042482
Anon, I said it was NOT impossible. Double negative.
It was possible, but it wasn't worth it.

>>11042475
1) Surely the deadlines are set by NASA not Musk? Musk missing his own deadlines is one thing. Missing NASA's is another.

2) Well anytime in interviews that people question his aggressive timelines he always says "well it's an optimistic scenario. It's what we're aiming for. I'm an optimist". So his goals are best case scenarios, anyone else will say it will most likely happen later, including SpaceX staff. If I'm not mistaken Starship is ahead of schedule on some targets.

>>11042465
There's also...
3. Falcon is a very tall and thin rocket. Adding so much payload mass and size on top of it could be structurally unfeasible and potentially aerodynamically unstable.

>>11042489
Sorry, I'm retarded.

>>11042475
>if SpaceX don’t meet a deadline, NASA bureaucracy is automatically blamed, because SpaceX definitely works as fast as Musk’s extremely realistic estimates.
Exactly.
Also, nobody blames "NASA bureaucracy" when Boeing is delayed. Are we really supposed to believe that shit only applies to SpaceX?

>>11042497
I gather SpaceX have a well earned reputation for being fast and progressive in developing space hardware projects compared to old space. People tend to give them the benefit of the doubt. Not unreasonable imo, even if it's not always what's actually happening.

>>11042504
There's "benefit of the doubt" and then there's full-on conspiracy theories. The latter are becoming increasingly common.

>>11042497
It’s easier to imagine Boeing failing because their the most hated and arguably most incompetent aerospace company in America right now due to 737 MAX, SLS and KC-46. Very few people, minus congressional officials are cheering for them unlike SpaceX which is currently very popular with the public.

>>11042514
Sure. But wanting to give spacex the benefit of the doubt is not unreasonable in many cases. No one truly knows what's going on with these delays, so if you were to guess who's holding shit up is it the old space guys who build the billion dollar per launch human death trap shuttle? Or the start-up that built re-usable orbital class boosters that old space kept saying would be impossible?

Sure spacex could be 100% at fault here, but based on the info available you can hardly blame people for leaning on SpaceX as not being the one at fault.

>>11042517
>KC-46
I haven't heard much about that. What's wrong with it?