B787_300

I am worried that it will be a bit too windy for launch (and Landing). But hopefully if they do launch it will land safely and then Blue Origin will not look that amazing (they are but suborbital is a lot less impressive than an orbital rocket)

Spaceflight insider has no idea. in that article they state that they can do a two day turn around to launch. They just wanted to be the first to post the news. I have it from a Landing engineer at SpaceX that the launch should still be Saturday if the Static Fire goes well.

Exactly. Remember the leak that is at the start of the thread is just speculation that may or may not come from SpaceX employees or be right. Also while the analogy to setling of America is not perfect it is okay. There were people who came to America in the 1600 and 1700s just to explore the continent. Also there will be minerals and other materials on Mars that might make it worth while to mine.

Meh the plane and the capacity are not the same thing... a better comparison would be a solid pure gold cube that is 1.73 m on a side. Or if you want water it would be a cube with a dimension of 4.642 m.

Also I moved this stuff to a new thread as it does not belong in the re usability thread

Back to the topic at hand, (BFR / MCT stuff can be found at http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/127815-spacex-bfr-mct-discussion-thread/ ) So the RTF should also try to be a RTLS. People have been saying that it wont be because the FAA has not approved it. My question is CCAFS is a Military Range and thus should be a MOA and thus the FAA should have no jurisdiction over the USAF correct? or am i missing something?

It doesnt matter if it has been posted other places before being posted here. This screenshot in particular was posted on Reddit before being posted on the forums and thus was already leaked. The whole reason NSF has a paywall that is L2 is because Chris found out he could get $$ for "special" info and videos. Yes he does get stuff before most people but that is because he has built a following and has contacts. Also NSF would have practically no case against this site because we were not the source of the leak and the info on that site is leaked from other places (SpaceX, NASA, etc) he cannot claim copyright for that and only the person who originally posted it to Reddit broke L2. Squad is NOT bound by the Terms of Service of L2. I have restored the post that has the BFR/MCT info in it. Please remember though that those numbers are speculations by people who may or may not know anything. Just to be clear, I do not approve of people taking the info from behind a paywall and posting it publicly, but once it is out it is silly to try to cap it. And as long as people do not post it to here first, there is really nothing that can be done.

http://spacenews.com/mccain-will-consider-wider-russian-engine-ban/ more business to SpaceX?

Actually it makes no difference, Pub. L. 113–291, div. A, title XVI, §1608, Dec. 19, 2014, 128 Stat. 3626 , provided that: "(a) In General.-Except as provided by subsections (b) and (c), beginning on the date of the enactment of this Act [Dec. 19, 2014], the Secretary of Defense may not award or renew a contract for the procurement of property or services for space launch activities under the evolved expendable launch vehicle program if such contract carries out such space launch activities using rocket engines designed or manufactured in the Russian Federation.

My most recent launch

http://spacenews.com/mccain-will-consider-wider-russian-engine-ban/ This might throw a kink in the plans of ULA

Sometimes, it depends on what the sats are for... this Upcoming SpaceX launch (Orbcomm) has like 9 sats on it. but it is only useful when you dont mind spending the sats propellant to move orbits around other wise you have a bunch of sats that are close together

Plus the Vulcan with the 6 SRBs and ACES will have DIVH mass capability. There is really no reason to even consider doing a Vulcan Heavy

On the inner most dark circle is concrete on that image... the area between the inner black circle and the outer circle is compressed dirt it seems. So it is really not all that much bigger. In other news SpaceX got permission from the USAF to land back on land, hoping FAA will approve too, launch was pushed back to the 19th

Oh most certainly but there are still large issues such as Metal Embrittlement

practically none of it was fuel... fuel costs are very low on almost all missions when compared to the rest of the mission. They had to scrub many lines on the craft and inspect for damages and they had to take the engines off and check them over, and they had to check the tiles. there is a lot of work that had to be done. granted both ULA and SpaceX's re-usability plans are much simpler than the shuttle

Virgin and Strato are not ignoring each other. They had a deal a while back but it fell apart mainly because of Stratolaunch deciding to make their own plane from scratch instead of just joining two 747s together. Also it is not likely that Strato will succeed but i do see that if they get their plane working well that Virgin will switch some payloads to it. Also Strato's plane needs a stupid long runway to take off from where as the 747 especially unloaded has a LOT more options. and hanging a big lump of mass off the 747 is already proven. A 747 can ferry a 5th engine by hanging it in the exact same spot the rocket is.

But because you are now pushing one side up and the other side down you run the risk of not being in a good position when the next wave comes swamping the deck.

remember they could theoretically do airstarts on a 6 SRB version and do a 2 SRB set. also i was under the impression that there were 2 Delta II's left and one was NASA and the other was unclaimed.

Kind of Sort of... it is one of those blurry lines type things to the general public. They did both they subsidzed the development in the hopes of getting a small sat launcher that is inexpensive. But as the product did not work (except on the last flight) and they were not required (AFAIK) to pay back the DoD or pay a penalty (once again AFAIK) it is more of a subsidy than a full on contract with penalty clauses like you would get if you want them to launch a commercial sat

As @Nibb31 pointed out SpaceX would not be here unless they had the Government Contracts. The Gov allowed SpaceX to get their rockets made and tested. Now they can use those rockets for Commercial launches and make money on them. Yes Elon poured a LOT of his own money into SpaceX, but it was really the Gov that got SpaceX off the ground. It is likely that they are now in the Black with their current backlog and contracts though. Their re-usability will depend on what needs to be done to the rocket after flight. If it is like the shuttle and what they planned vs what happened after flight there will be no economical sense in reusing the rocket. If they can truly do a quick visual inspection or other fast inspection and then fill up and go again then it makes a lot more sense for them to reuse it. It all depends and there is really little use in speculating until it actually happens.

I mean the re-usability also depends on the refurbishment that HAS to happen between each flight. An airplanes fuel is nice and warm. A Rockets fuel is both nice and warm (comparatively) and so cold you cant comprehend it (the LOX). The extreme cold affects metals in weird ways. But the most noticeable effect is that the metal becomes very brittle. If the repeated cool down and warm up of the metal starts stressing it too much it might be too expensive on the refurb side to consider flying it again. The shuttle had the same issue. It was originally imagined that they could wheel the shuttle into a hangar swap out the payload bay and do some very light work (changing fluids and such) and be wheeled into the VAB within a week for its next flight. the original shuttle idea is below But in actuality there was a LOT of work that needed to be done on the shuttle between each flight, shown below. This will be an issue for both SpaceX and ULA and Ariane (if Adeline gets made).

As far as I know it is just the FT version and SpaceX is not really calling it a different version anyway because they don't want to have to re-certify or have people claim they need to re-certify.

It was not totally necessary but now the name encompasses more of what is found in this subForum.

Tis Silly that they dont publish the numbers. Even ULA publishes them (and ULA has to publish a lot more because of SRBs)