totm nov 2023 SpaceX Discussion Thread

[kerbiloid]

2 hours ago, Nibb31 said:

There is nothing "simple" about the Falcon Heavy

They yet haven't tried to fuel this on Mars with ISRU methane and oxygen (as they are planning). "That was so easy with Falcon Heavy!", they will scream.

Edited January 12, 2018 by kerbiloid

[CatastrophicFailure]

Le pout. So, new static fire window starts at 7 am my time, in about 5 hours. I’ll be asleep. C’mon, guys, give me something worth waking up for!

im sure the string of forum chatter-generated emails dinging away should be enough...

[Streetwind]

13 hours ago, tater said:

This is great:

And SpaceX said it was a successful launch. End of story.

You know the most ridiculous thing about this? Saying something like this is unheard of. The DoD has never told the press to "go ask someone else" when talking about launch failures before. It's a completely useless deflection, and of questionable legality to boot when taxpayer money is involved... and the DoD knows it. And still they went and said that.

The briefing itself was something like out of a Hollywood movie. Press people grilling the speaker, who tried to politely decline giving details repeatedly... and then a well-dressed officer just abruptly declared the meeting over with a simple "we're not going to tell you anything".

Whatever this was, it was so heavily classified that stuff like the X-37B or a NRO spysat launch could be considered public show-and-tells by comparison. So heavily classified that the DoD itself clumsily fumbles its briefings for fear of saying even one wrong word. The only reason we know it exists at all is because it had to be put on a rocket, and you cannot hide a rocket. Even then it was never really announced, it just appeared on the manifest without a word.

Ironically, had they launched this via ULA, they probably would have a whole lot less public scrutiny, even if it failed. Whose idea was it to put something this secret in the hands of the most publicly popular launch provider on the planet, anyway?  

[Lukaszenko]

Apparently there's also unknown and large risks when lighting up and firing 27 engines simultaneously as opposed to one, or only 9. Resonances, vibrations, whotf knows what else.

If you ask me, if one works then you just add 26 more exactly the same. Should be mundane. 

Good thing they're not asking me 

[kerbiloid]

11 minutes ago, Streetwind said:

Whatever this was, it was so heavily classified that stuff like the X-37B or a NRO spysat launch could be considered public show-and-tells by comparison. So heavily classified that the DoD itself clumsily fumbles its briefings for fear of saying even one wrong word. The only reason we know it exists at all is because it had to be put on a rocket, and you cannot hide a rocket. Even then it was never really announced, it just appeared on the manifest without a word.

That's how legends about Unknown Cosmonauts born.

[StarStreak2109]

And scrubbed until at least Saturday...

[Streetwind]

Perhaps it got dirty, and needed a good scrubbing...  

[StarStreak2109]

[sevenperforce]

3 hours ago, Streetwind said:

You know the most ridiculous thing about this? Saying something like this is unheard of. The DoD has never told the press to "go ask someone else" when talking about launch failures before. It's a completely useless deflection, and of questionable legality to boot when taxpayer money is involved... and the DoD knows it. And still they went and said that.

The briefing itself was something like out of a Hollywood movie. Press people grilling the speaker, who tried to politely decline giving details repeatedly... and then a well-dressed officer just abruptly declared the meeting over with a simple "we're not going to tell you anything".

Whatever this was, it was so heavily classified that stuff like the X-37B or a NRO spysat launch could be considered public show-and-tells by comparison. So heavily classified that the DoD itself clumsily fumbles its briefings for fear of saying even one wrong word. The only reason we know it exists at all is because it had to be put on a rocket, and you cannot hide a rocket. Even then it was never really announced, it just appeared on the manifest without a word.

Ironically, had they launched this via ULA, they probably would have a whole lot less public scrutiny, even if it failed. Whose idea was it to put something this secret in the hands of the most publicly popular launch provider on the planet, anyway?  

Really quite unprecedented.

And still, we have absolutely no indication of a failure.

This may be off-topic...but what about an orbital hypersonic kill vehicle as a backup ICBM interceptor? The DoD likely anticipated DPRK's eventual fielding of a nuclear-capable ICBM well before the Zuma contract was first purchased by NG, and NG would be precisely the right contractor for creating something like this. A minimum-energy ballistic trajectory from the DPRK to the Continental US goes QUITE high, potentially enough time for a vehicle in a reverse Molinya orbit to adjust its trajectory to intercept during the re-entry phase, particularly if it had a good hypersonic glide ratio and plenty of crossrange ability.

Or it could be an orbital anti-ICBM laser station. A Molinya orbit over DPRK would have line-of-sight to deliver a scorching laser blast to any ICBM, from boost phase right up to re-entry, and it would happen entirely outside of the atmosphere, making laser attenuation a thing of the past.

Both of these would be more than hush-hush enough to make the X-37B seem unclassified by comparison. 

EDIT: In support of the latter possibility, Northrop Grumman DID supply the laser for the Boeing YAL-1.

Edited January 12, 2018 by sevenperforce

[tater]

 

[NSEP]

I don't care that its scrubbed again. Falcon Heavy exists and thats all that matters for me.

[PB666]

53 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

Both of these would be more than hush-hush enough to make the X-37B seem unclassified by comparison. 

EDIT: In support of the latter possibility, Northrop Grumman DID supply the laser for the Boeing YAL-1.

I think if they wanted us to know what it is (or was) they would have told us.  I don't see what the incessant need here is to guess about Zuma.

16 minutes ago, NSEP said:

I don't care that its scrubbed again. Falcon Heavy exists and thats all that matters for me.

lol. Seriously.

[sevenperforce]

2 minutes ago, PB666 said:

I think if they wanted us to know what it is (or was) they would have told us.  I don't see what the incessant need here is to guess about Zuma.

I think some of the interest/curiosity is just because it's puzzling to imagine what, exactly, would have been classified enough for this amount of secrecy.

[PB666]

Just now, sevenperforce said:

I think some of the interest/curiosity is just because it's puzzling to imagine what, exactly, would have been classified enough for this amount of secrecy.

The only reason we really care is that it was launched on SpaceX, if it was launched on super secret rocket somewhere it would not bother us. We somehow think of SpaceX as our domain.

[Exoscientist]

On October 22, 2017 at 6:58 AM, NSEP said:

Im a RSS player and i barely can even get to orbit with 10km/s 

USAF found another launch vehicle to launch their spysats on?

 

   The delta-v to orbit is dependent on your thrust/weight ratio. What would your delta-v be if the T/W was, say, 1.5?

 

   Bob Clark

[NSEP]

1 hour ago, PB666 said:

lol. Seriously.

Yes. This is the rocket to beat all (currently active) rockets and even if its thrown in the trash it still would have been the rocket to beat rockets, that isn't just pair of PowerPoint slides or a a scribble on some paper.

Edited January 12, 2018 by NSEP

[KSK]

2 hours ago, PB666 said:

The only reason we really care is that it was launched on SpaceX, if it was launched on super secret rocket somewhere it would not bother us. We somehow think of SpaceX as our domain.

Actually I disagree. Zuma is an intriguing enough payload that I think we'd still be speculating about it whichever rocket it was launched on. I'll concede that the fact it was launched on a SpaceX rocket certainly fuels the speculation though, since there are plenty of folks here who want to see SpaceX succeed.

Which is hardly surprising.

SpaceX was founded to reduce the costs of spaceflight, with the ultimate goal of making humanity a multi planetary species. So far they've made some pretty exciting steps along the way to that goal, even if the biggest (and possibly insurmountable) ones are still to come.

KSP is a game about spaceflight that attracts spaceflight enthusiasts. It shouldn't be a great shock that there's a decent amount of overlap between the populations of KSP fans and SpaceX fans. Nor do I think it's anything to sneer at.

 

[softweir]

10 hours ago, sevenperforce said:

and it would happen entirely outside of the atmosphere, making laser attenuation a thing of the past.

Not quite true, I believe. While laser attenuation is to a large extent a function of atmospheric absorption, you also get attenuation due to beam divergence. At orbital ranges, a pencil-wide laser beam will be significantly wider at target, and thus proportionately less capable of causing damage. This was one of the reasons for killing the orbital-based laser-satellite aspect of the Star Wars programme.

[StrandedonEarth]

38 minutes ago, softweir said:

While laser attenuation is to a large extent a function of atmospheric absorption, you also get attenuation due to beam divergence. At orbital ranges, a pencil-wide laser beam will be significantly wider at target

This made me curious about the Lunar Laser Ranging experiments, so I found this on wiki:

Quote

At the Moon's surface, the beam is about 6.5 kilometers (4.0 mi) wide^[9] and scientists liken the task of aiming the beam to using a rifle to hit a moving dime 3 kilometers (1.9 mi) away.

But we're getting away from the topic again. But I have tomorrow off and hopefully I'll get to see that tri-body beast belch fire 

Edited January 13, 2018 by StrandedonEarth

[cubinator]

Some good footage and audio of the static fire would help me writing the theme.

[CatastrophicFailure]

Looks like the Falcon has Risen again, that’s promising. Window is 5-10pm local time, so that’s gonna put it at night. Wouldn’t they prefer to do something like this during the day? Although... I suppose if it lights it will be day, one way or another. 

[tater]

 

[CatastrophicFailure]

[Expletive]  

[KSK]

What we need here is some reverse psychology:

CatastrophicFailure: "You know what - I'm going to bed. *yawn*. I'll catch the test on YouTube in a week or so."

FH:  "ROOOOAAAAAAARRRR!"

[Scotius]

I feel your pain CatastrophicFailure - i do. But like i always say: Better delay than fireball. Explosion on the launchpad or during the start would hurt FH program more than ten scrubbed test fires or actual launches. Let people at SpaceX do their thing in peace.