RCgothic
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Posts posted by RCgothic
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Editing in the caption: More booster7 x7 Static fire pics.
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SpaceX drone vantage:
Edit: Ninja'd! Got to be quick to get ahead of @tater!
That's what I get for adding a caption.
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That'll be more dry mass.
Could be for the booster outer ring, integrated blast shield/aerocover?
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Interesting observation:
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24 minutes ago, SunlitZelkova said:
True indeed.
The mainstream criteria is just whether it has fired. So even if it is just a static fire, SH will join “the club” once it does that.
Superheavy has already fired. Not on all engines and not at full thrust, but it's still a static fire of a flight vehicle.
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O.o
There goes their perfect flight record.
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I believe it's similar to the launch umbilical tower, but there's no equivalent to Saturn's Mobile Service Structure or Shuttle's Rotating Service Structure which allowed those vehicles to be serviced on the pad.
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I believe I included all the applicable caveats.
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Reflected energy goes with the 4th power of distance to the reflector.
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23 hours ago, intelliCom said:
Well, anyone with little knowledge on the subject would think that it really is 'peak NASA' with all of this marketing fluff about it being the "most powerful rocket ever built".
I'm pretty sure it having the greatest thrust out of any rocket isn't out of the question; but its payload to LEO is somehow less than Starship and Saturn V. Curious...
SLS isn't the most powerful rocket ever built - Superheavy is.
It isn't the most powerful rocket ever stacked - Starship Superheavy is.
It isn't the most powerful rocket ever fired - Superheavy is.
It won't be the most powerful rocket ever fired at full thrust - N1 is.
It won't be the most powerful rocket ever launched - N1 is.
It may, briefly, be the most powerful rocket ever to reach orbit.
But only if you don't define power by payload to orbit - in which case Saturn V is.
Sure, SLS is one of the most thrusty rockets ever built. But it's quite inefficient with that thrust. Most of the propellant is low-ISP SRBs with heavy casings, and the core stage is an enormously heavy sustainer architecture. Thrust doesn't directly feature in the rocket equation. Only ISP and mass ratio are of primary importance.
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Now a large grass fire and what appears to be a literal dumpster fire inside the test area.
>.<
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I wonder how many this time.
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1 hour ago, SunlitZelkova said:
Does the continual extension of the destack date for the SRBs pose a credible risk to the flight?
Even if the original destack date was merely cautionary instead of the true design limit, surely at some point the boosters are going to become a major hazard.
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Ultimately it's about conservation of momentum whilst minimising turbulent flow.
When an aerofoil has a positive angle of attack, air molecules collisions with the underside are increased (as is pressure), accelerating the flow downwards.
On the upperside the surface falls away from the air molecules, and collisions (and pressure) are reduced. The random motion of gas molecules causes the gas to move into the vacated area, and again the flow is accelerated downwards.
Whether you view the lift as arising from the difference in pressure between the two surfaces or equal to the impulse imparted to the gas, it's just conservation of momentum. The gas is forced down (and a little bit forward - drag), the plane is pushed up (and back).
The different shapes of aerofoils are all about keeping the flow attached to the aerofoil predictably and avoiding turbulence, which moves the air molecules more than necessary and so robs additional forward momentum from the aerofoil (drag), but also disorganises the flow such that the average deflection of air is less (lift reduces).
How much the flow is diverted by an aerofoil is a function of angle of attack and speed, so if you vary your speed but want the same lift you also have to vary the angle of attack. But if the angle of attack is too large, the flow will detach and the wing will stall.
Subsonic aerofoils like smooth transitions, because the gas can follow the curve of the surface.
Supersonic aerofoils can't keep the flow attached to the upper surface, so they're always going to get drag and turbulence because of that. Instead they design around minimising transitions. Supersonic aerofoils don't like transitions, because the upstream flow can't see them coming and so each transition generates a shockwave, and shockwaves sap energy. A curve is effectively a series of infitinte transitions, so that's bad. Supersonic aerofoils are therefore sharp and flat with a minimum of transitions.
Also, in an atmosphere everything is an aerofoil. A brick is an aerofoil. This is where body lift comes from. It's not as efficient as a well designed aerofoil though, and tends to come with a lot of drag.
The only objects that don't produce at least some lift are balls and cylinders perpendicular to the flow because they can't vary their angle of attack. But even these can induce lift if spinning and moving in an airflow. Friction accelerates the boundary flow in one direction and decelerates it in another, which changes the exit angle of the airflow just like an aerofoil. This is called the magnus effect, and it's how sports balls are made to curve through the air among other effects.
I think you've basically got all of this down already, sounds like your understanding is pretty good.
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Yeah, an RP-1 rocket is just more powerful than a Hydrogen rocket of the same size. Constrained by the size of the VAB, the most powerful rocket NASA could build would be RP-1.
It's also much lighter on the pad prior to fuelling than anything with SRBs, so less constraint on the crawler.
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The clean pad decision is looking like a bad one, given 39B will have no other users for the foreseeable.
No on-pad servicing options a related bad call.
No trickle-chargers for FTS and and secondary payloads is a complete WTAF decision.
And ICPS does seem to be severely handicapping for launch windows, which makes all the above even worse. Good article link @tater
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It's a typo, $1.4B not $14B.
But yeah, in addition to the seats is roughly 6t cargo up and 3t cargo down. Direct comparison with Soyuz doesn't include that.
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Even if Artemis I launches this year, it's only as a test vehicle. The next launch is likely late 2024 or early 2025.
The falcon family is on track to launch 60+ times this year, likely more next year, likely more the next. If Artemis I launches this window I wouldn't bet against 100-200 falcon flights before the next one.
There's a good chance Starship will fly 20 times by the next SLS launch, and a good chance Vulcan will have 10 flights by then.
Credible lunar programmes can be built around these vehicles.
Why should the programme be limited by SLS/Orion's meagre cadence?
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It's also alarming the tail mast leak is still present. Come on, there's been 2 months to fix that.
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How am I not surprised that something that should have been WDR tested but wasn't tripped up the first launch attempt.
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Note that transferring fluid out to a rotating ring will decelerate the ring due to conservation of angular momentum.
That's what I get for adding a caption.
SpaceX Discussion Thread
in Science & Spaceflight
Posted · Edited by RCgothic
They're not wasting any time getting B8 out: