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Blue Origin Thread (merged)


Aethon

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Just now, Tullius said:

And a heat shield capable of reentry from the Moon, and all of the rest. Okay, they may skip the larger service module with extra propulsion, if they just go for a free return.

This sounds a bit like the Russian Zond Moon program: Get "some" spacecraft with "some" astronauts on "some" trip to the Moon so that we can say we have beaten NASA.

Yes, it would definitely be more like Zond than Apollo 8. There is no way they could enter and leave lunar orbit.

Still, Zond was a bit of a hit and miss. They are going to need a couple of test flights before they can send actual people.

Just now, Nothalogh said:

Maybe that's what made those things possible.

Definitely. Many things are much more complex than they were then because the world is a much more complex place.

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21 minutes ago, Nibb31 said:

Different day and age. STS-1 was still the Cold War, it couldn't fly unmanned, and the Orbiter had gone through years of development test flights. And it wasn't flying a 6-day mission around the freaking Moon on its first flight either.

The key point there is that the Orbiter couldn't autoland. So they basically had no choice but to send it up with pilots.

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45 minutes ago, Nibb31 said:

Falcon Heavy hasn't flown yet. I doubt anyone would be crazy or confident enough to put humans on the maiden flight of a new rocket and a new spacecraft. 

SpaceX hadn't decided on the payload for the first FH flight.

Maybe it'll be an unmanned Dragon around the moon?

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23 minutes ago, _Augustus_ said:

SpaceX hadn't decided on the payload for the first FH flight.

Maybe it'll be an unmanned Dragon around the moon?

If it's little more than a boilerplate, that seems plausible with minimal extra expense for them. I think I remember reading somewhere that the D2 heat shield is meant for multiple reuses without refurbishment. If true, that right there could make it lunar-ready.  

Also remember, this big expensive deal wasn't made yesterday. It's probably been cooking behind the scenes for a while now. Yes, SpaceX has a lot to do before it happens, but they wouldn't've made such a big announcement if they didn't have confidence that their system will actually work. I'm guessing the big influx of cash from that deposit will probably go along way towards furthering that.

  

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A few comments.

One, this could partially be to skew transition factions towards commercial crew vs SLS/Orion.

Two, it doesn't have to be "rated" for anything if the crew isn't NASA.

Three, while I think it's as likely to be on schedule as his 2 pm announcement today (lol), it's maybe analogous to Saturn 1B (AS-201) to Apollo 8 in terms of time frame---or less. 1966-1968 for that span. F9 is already a thing. FH is just 3 F9s after all. Dragon 2 has not flown, but should soon. While I doubt they hit the target time wise, it's certainly in the realm of possibility. EM-1 won't fly til 2019, and unless this spooks NASA into risking crew on that, EM-2 no sooner than already scheduled (2021-2023 (likely closer to '23)). Crewed EM-1 would certainly slip at least a year past 2019, anyway, so this is likely to beat NASA even if it slips 2-3 years.

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48 minutes ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

Also remember, this big expensive deal wasn't made yesterday. It's probably been cooking behind the scenes for a while now. Yes, SpaceX has a lot to do before it happens, but they wouldn't've made such a big announcement if they didn't have confidence that their system will actually work.

The same way they were confident that Falcon Heavy would fly in 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017?  The history of SpaceX is a tale of big pronouncements accompanied by a steady and ever increasing slip to the right.

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On 2/24/2017 at 5:44 AM, KSK said:

Not really. It happens all the time for moving cargo around on Earth. Container ships and palletized freight for example. In both cases you have a standard transporter system and adapt the cargo to fit it. Cheaper and easier than having bespoke transporters for myriad different cargo types.

Or am I missing something?

It feels like necroposting but it's only been a few days. Anyway, I thought I'd add the anecdote that the auto industry absolutely designs around existing packaging.

An extreme example is large off highway mining trucks. The weight of the trucks is limited by the tires and the tires are limited by the size (and weight) that can be shipped on the interstate system. 

Another example from traditional automotive is shipping of various components. Generally the shipping dunnage is returnable and when you make millions of cars and trucks a year, that has to be considered for new designs. It's worth noting that generally a business case is required for changing shipping dunnage or if dunnage can be reused on a new program, it is a benefit since it has usually already been paid off. If you plan to make a cost saving change, you have to show that you won't affect the dunnage, or at least account for the cost of changing it.

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1 minute ago, DerekL1963 said:

The same way they were confident that Falcon Heavy would fly in 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017?  The history of SpaceX is a tale of big pronouncements accompanied by a steady and ever increasing slip to the right.

One of the things that backburnered FH was the lack of a customer

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I think this is incredibly exciting.  Nobody has traveled beyond LEO since Apollo and for what may be the first moon mission since then to be crewed by paying customers gives me great hope for the future of private space flight and SpaceX's colonization efforts.

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2 hours ago, Nothalogh said:

Question, conventionally in order to fly NASA people, a rocket must be "man rated" according to NASA's standards, right?

Was the Soyuz/R-7 system ever man rated that way, or do we accept that it works because it does?

I'm sure that service history plays into man-rating a vehicle. The FAA certainly considers service history when deciding whether or not something is safe.

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15 minutes ago, Racescort666 said:

I'm sure that service history plays into man-rating a vehicle. The FAA certainly considers service history when deciding whether or not something is safe.

Correct, so what happens when SpaceX man rates it by flying with their own astronauts?

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54 minutes ago, DerekL1963 said:

The same way they were confident that Falcon Heavy would fly in 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017?  The history of SpaceX is a tale of big pronouncements accompanied by a steady and ever increasing slip to the right.

I didn't say anything about the time frame, just that the hardware is up to the task.  :D

I'll still put money on SpaceX sending people around the Moon long before SLS sends anything

The latent conspiracy theorist in me wonders if NASA gave their assistance specifically so that the SLS would be one step closer to being cancelled so they can focus on better things.  

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2 minutes ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

The latent conspiracy theorist in me wonders if NASA gave their assistance specifically so that the SLS would be one step closer to being cancelled so they can focus on better things.  

If SLS is cancelled then the money is just gone, at least from NASA's POV. You can count on that.

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1 minute ago, Kryten said:

If SLS is cancelled then the money is just gone, at least from NASA's POV. You can count on that.

And they don't need to expend resources pursuing it further, either. They're smart guys, they can likely see the writing on the wall that with a functional, reusable Falcon Heavy (and more so the New Glenn) would make SLS obsolete. I'm given to wonder how much support SLS actually has within NASA's ranks, and how much is just politics. 

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29 minutes ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

And they don't need to expend resources pursuing it further, either. They're smart guys, they can likely see the writing on the wall that with a functional, reusable Falcon Heavy (and more so the New Glenn) would make SLS obsolete. I'm given to wonder how much support SLS actually has within NASA's ranks, and how much is just politics. 

Marshall is all in for SLS, and KSC... not so much. There has always been politics within NASA (this is not "politics" politics, but one center vs another with different goals/projects).

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One thing is for sure, if this venture does get successfully pulled off... it should put an end to all the naysayers regarding stuff like the 'you can't survive the Van Allen Belts' crew, and the 'we've never been to the moon' crew, and the 'Earth is flat' crew. They'll all need new hobbies. :sticktongue:

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17 minutes ago, LordFerret said:

One thing is for sure, if this venture does get successfully pulled off... it should put an end to all the naysayers regarding stuff like the 'you can't survive the Van Allen Belts' crew, and the 'we've never been to the moon' crew, and the 'Earth is flat' crew. They'll all need new hobbies. :sticktongue:

You could take one of them along for the ride. Heck, you could land and rub their nose in the gritty, gunpowdery-smelling lunar regolith then beat them over the head with the bleached flag left by Apollo 11, and they still wouldn't believe. 

38 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

In a ship that still had never flied, on a rocket which first flight is still planned? Why not.

Respectfully, you and others seem to be ignoring that before any of this ever happens, the FH will have two or three flights under its belt and the D2 as well. Like someone said above, all the hardware does actually exist in some form, ala Apollo 8 when they started thinking about sending it round the moon. 

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