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Blue Origin Thread (merged)


Aethon

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Yeah, I slept in through the launch and all that, but then I can get up and watch it at my leisure. The technical webcast is already up on youtube, and I agree with the rest, it looks great, especially the landing shots.

Here's one: At the point where S2 separates and S1 does its flip maneuver, just before S1 disappears from view behind the S2 engine bell it looks like you can see the S1 engines light up for the boostback burn and S1 appears to accelerate out of view. :cool:

Here's a question: At S2 separation, how much dV would the S1 have left if a) on its own; or b) it was still attached to S2?

 

Edited by StrandedonEarth
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1 hour ago, YNM said:

Can anyone identify what closure this is ? Is it the docking ?

The docking ?

It looks like a droplet of condensation.

1 hour ago, YNM said:

Also, now they have aluminum foil to close the "back" part of the engine ?

I think they always have.

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The white object is indeed the ejected nosecone.

The metal foil is for thermal and radiation protection of sensitive components. Turns out you can get a sunburn even at sea level on Earth... now try imagining what the sun does to stuff up above the atmosphere if it isn't protected :wink:

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26 minutes ago, DMagic said:

I assume it's the nose cone that covers the docking ring.

8 minutes ago, Streetwind said:

The white object is indeed the ejected nosecone.

Apparently it is. It was striking to see, thanks to the large size yet slow movement, and it doesn't reappear after passing behind the engine.

20 minutes ago, Nibb31 said:

I think they always have.

8 minutes ago, Streetwind said:

The metal foil is for thermal and radiation protection of sensitive components. Turns out you can get a sunburn even at sea level on Earth... now try imagining what the sun does to stuff up above the atmosphere if it isn't protected :wink:

Yeah, looked back on past missions and only now I notice that ! Probably because of the different angles.

20 minutes ago, Nibb31 said:

The docking ?

It looks like a droplet of condensation.

Most of the condensate would've been vaporizing by that time :wink:

You can see some of the smaller debris held from falling further by the ring-pipe thing (turbopump I assume ?).

 

Edited by YNM
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On 2/16/2017 at 1:04 PM, tater said:

The issue with SLS is, and has always been launch cadence. I just watched the House Committee meeting (with my old prof, Jack Schmitt as one of the guests), and they also talked about wanting a 2 launch per year cadence---the issue is they have no payloads, of course. I doubt they could bang out 2 Orions (with SM) by 2018 even with massive effort, and to do a manned flight, they'd presumably want an all-up, unmanned test. I suppose the Shuttle model is possible (all up, manned test), but it's clearly more risky than unmanned (though with a LES, it's considerably safer than Shuttle ever was, frankly).

Hey Tater, you actually took a class taught by Jack Schmitt?!?!  Could you please start a thread with some info about meeting him and maybe some cool stories you heard from the source?  It would be awesome!

 

I am really trying to meet at least one of those 12 heroes.

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On 17/02/2017 at 3:22 PM, tater said:

Yeah, if they could manage such a launch in that timeframe. Honestly, if they are not capable of a 2 per year full up Orion launch, they should simply shut down SLS anyway, IMO. They shouldn't need decades to get to that point, either. It was 6 years and 2 months from "...not because it is easy, but because it is hard..." to Apollo 8 around the Moon, starting from virtually nothing at all (it was a couple months after Glenn's flight). They have the tools, just build the thing. They can talk about longer term funding (as was discussed in the House meeting with Schmitt, Stafford, et al, yesterday), but what they need is shorter term, aggressive milestones. The trouble, like most NASA issues, is that NASA is not about spaceflight, it's about jobs in spaceflight. As a result, the incentives are all for stretching everything out for the longest possible timeframe. The same people are employed if it takes them 10 years to build one rocket, or 10 weeks.

First we had the Saturn V,  which was scrapped for the Space Shuttle which was going to provide "more affordable" access to space, except that overall it worked out more expensive.   So now we're going back to the single use rocket model, but rather than simply build more Saturns they're developing SLS to leverage modern, highly automated manufacturing techniques and also use up leftover Shuttle hardware.       In other words, it's going to be more affordable than the Saturn V which was cheaper than the Space Shuttle, awesome !

What's the bet that when you take the development and running costs of the entire SLS program and divide by the number of launches it eventually does, it manages to be even more expensive than the space shuttle?

............

I feel bad for saying it because at least they're trying to build something, and reality has fallen so far short of expectation since the 1950s you can rip any space program apart.

Still , maybe the US airforce should commision whatever replaces SLS?   One vehicle to handle military, commercial and space exploration.   It will be stealthy, able to launch everything from cubesats to mars missions and really really affordable honest /trollface 

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21 minutes ago, AeroGav said:

First we had the Saturn V,  which was scrapped for the Space Shuttle which was going to provide "more affordable" access to space, except that overall it worked out more expensive.   So now we're going back to the single use rocket model, but rather than simply build more Saturns they're developing SLS to leverage modern, highly automated manufacturing techniques and also use up leftover Shuttle hardware.       In other words, it's going to be more affordable than the Saturn V which was cheaper than the Space Shuttle, awesome !

What's the bet that when you take the development and running costs of the entire SLS program and divide by the number of launches it eventually does, it manages to be even more expensive than the space shuttle?

............

I feel bad for saying it because at least they're trying to build something, and reality has fallen so far short of expectation since the 1950s you can rip any space program apart.

Still , maybe the US airforce should commision whatever replaces SLS?   One vehicle to handle military, commercial and space exploration.   It will be stealthy, able to launch everything from cubesats to mars missions and really really affordable honest /trollface 

The Saturn V wasn't really scrapped. They just stopped building them, as they didn't see any reason to build them. They won the moon race. Heck, they shut down the production line in 1968.

We can't simply build more Saturns. We don't have the required tooling or expertise.

SLS isn't using leftover Shuttle hardware except for the RS-25s. That's about it. And that was actually a bad idea, because those engines have individual problems. Some can't throttle as much as others, some can't throttle back up after throttling down, and so on. Luckily they'll be gone pretty quick...

It may or may not be more affordable than the Saturn V, that depends on a variety of things.

They're trying to build something, sure. But they have no control over what they can build. This is one of the flaws with NASA. It can't control itself by law.

The USAF already tried to develop an SLS. That was the actual acronym...

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