Racescort666

Considering that almost any action in space is state funded, wouldn’t an act of “piracy” really just be an act of war?

Looks like ULA is moving another step closer to engine reuse when they accepted an inflatable heat shield test contract in-flight over Kerbin Earth: https://spaceflightnow.com/2019/05/13/nasa-ula-find-launch-opportunity-for-inflatable-heat-shield-demonstrator/ Seriously though, this sounds like the most Kerbal plan ever since they're planning on catching the thing mid-air with a helicopter. I love it. Figured I'd add their graphic for smart reuse because it's very similar.

Both of those numbers are from the payload adapter to the start of the ogive.

yeah... that was supposed to be a joke and I guess it wasn't that funny. I'll do better next time, I promise.

Atlas V's fairing is 12.2 m to the start of the ogive vs the Falcon 9's 6.7 m...

Many months back when we were speculating NG performance, I was strongly convinced that BO is sandbagging their performance numbers. Me being wrong isn't out of the question but it definitely looks like they have significant margin to make up 400 m/s.

Were there supposed to be pictures with this? Those descriptions make me want to see what they're describing.

At the risk of sounding like an arrogant American, this is something that's sometimes hard to explain to Europeans. The sheer size of the US (and Canada, they have the same problem) is what precludes a lot of things that are seen as commonplace in Europe. Some of them are self-perpetuating like trash public transit. Well, in the US, most people own cars and don't regularly use public transit. Public transit in the US is generally terrible so people drive their own cars or have to own a car. Cities and metro areas are much more spread out which also makes public transit a challenge. It's easy to spread out when the norm is owning your own car and you have more flexibility of where to live and commute. Internet, as discussed, is also a good example. I would add that eminent domain is a bit more of a challenge in the litigious United States where people are sensitive about how their property is used. I don't know how it is in other developed countries.

Sounds like they're the only game in town too: http://www.lefiell.com/2rocket_engine.html You would think that with having the market cornered and being able to dictate the price of the heinously expensive tubes, they'd be able to afford a better website.

Are we sure it’s just the carbon fiber tooling or are there other infrastructure considerations for being 9m?

Various other ships from BSG but Galactica is not on the list.

I’m not sad... I’m just disappointed.

Without a visual, I don't think that I can give you the best answer but there is probably some perturbation that starts the ring walking from one end to the other. Why it does that is likely due to conservation of angular momentum. As for your real world example, it probably behaves differently at different RPM due to various vibrations in your machine tools and imperfections in the parts.

Shuttle-like door (I assume you mean like the shuttle payload bay). Rolling doors have way more failure points than a (relatively) simple 4-bar linkage like the Shuttle payload bay door.

I think what rubs me the wrong way is how much this one piece must cost and part of me is wondering if there's a better way of manufacturing it to get the cost down. Part of the cost is definitely the scrap/waste from the process, you have a big slab of aluminum and 75%(ish) gets machined away. Yeah, you can recycle the chips but you don't recover 75% of the raw material cost after it's been turned into chips. That's usually only a small part though. The other part is literally how much time it takes; machine time is expensive and I guess it's just been hammered into me enough to try and eliminate machining operations as much as possible. Obviously they're necessary in a lot of cases but we've been asked to move attachment points and heights of attachment points to save on machine time to save cost. Granted, I come from a world where saving $1 per part is a big deal and vehicles come off the assembly line on the order of 1/minute so parts have to be made much faster than that.

This is super cool but I have mixed feelings about how much machine time this takes.

If they launch at 8, it would be 15 minutes after sunset and there's a chance for some awesome illuminated exhaust trails.

There's a chance too that the 25-35 M$ is what they cost at one time and incremental improvements to manufacturing have reduced cost. The more you make something, the better you get at it and things like scrap rate start to go down saving on cost. Also, +1 for Centaur being awesome. The 5m Centaur is going to be awesome.

I suppose this is the most appropriate place for this press release: http://www.rocket.com/article/3-d-printed-rl10c-x-prototype-rocket-engine-soars-through-initial-round-testing Yay! 3D printed RL10!

I must have missed that. I don’t always have time to read every post here.

I would guess that STP-2 would be all new as well.

That is so cool. It hits me right in the feels.

Atlas V was operated by Lockheed Martin before ULA was formed. Hmmm... /baselessaccusation On a serious note: they’re trying to make it sound like it’s a schedule conflict with dates that have been well known for some time. If there was an actual problem with the rocket (they have never flown this configuration before), why not say that? If there was a problem with the Starliner integration, why not say that? This whole situation is strange.

Well, according to this, Beresheet should have commenced the capture burn.

I have taken a particular interest in the ice giants missions that were proposed a few years back. No link because I’m on mobile and at the airport. This kind of up mass could greatly shorten the timeline for a Uranus/Neptune mission. NTR braking stage and the leftover reactor used as a generator (or just jettisoned and we can say we nuked “youranus”) you’d need deep space cryo-cooling to keep the H2 liquid but JWST has kind of been broaching that tech. The amount of awesome a mission like this is indescribable.