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Skylon

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3 hours ago, cubinator said:

Having legs pop out of the heat shield would be problematic because it would entail having a hole in the heat shield. Personally, I would design legs that retract above the heat shield and wrap over the edge when deployed.

The Russian 'TKS' and the American 'Manned Orbital Laboratory' were intended to have hatches going through the heatshield. Not just any holes for landing legs or something, hatches for people. 

Big Gemini got cancelled and never flew, but the TKS flew, penetrated the atmosphere and landed back safely, not with people inside, but it still had a hole inside.

Edited by NSEP
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14 minutes ago, NSEP said:

The Russian 'TKS' and the American 'Manned Orbital Laboratory' were intended to have hatches going through the heatshield. Not just any holes for landing legs or something, hatches for people.  

Big Gemini got cancelled and never flew, but the TKS flew, penetrated the atmosphere and landed back safely, not with people inside, but it still had a hole inside. 

MOL had one suborbital test flight.

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On 6/23/2018 at 2:00 PM, magnemoe said:

Yes extremely cool, but It could also be extremely embarrassing. An long and wide skirt has an high chance of messing up in 0-g. 
Think the Marilyn Monroe grate scene but longer skirt and hands is busy playing. 

The skirt is not the problem. The problem is that violinists are used to a certain amount of weight pulling their bow toward the center of the earth. Without that, they'd have to re-learn the amount of force to use to play. It would have to be their second or third flight to even have a chance of completing a concerto.

On 6/23/2018 at 10:34 PM, cubinator said:

Wait, I think we might be overlooking a slight problem...do piano keys even work in 0-g? If not, you would need to incorporate a spring into the hammer mechanism.

Also, I think a real piano would be awesome for morale, and an upright is only about 300 kg, so out of 150 t you could probably spare enough mass for at least an upright? That would be awesome to play the Blue Danube on! :D

The bluest Danube.

On 6/26/2018 at 4:12 PM, tater said:

 

Another view:

 

Looks just like my Crew Dragon clone tests in KSP.

Which means KSP's engine is halfway decent.

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11 minutes ago, tater said:

Sometime around NOW, it should be doing an entry burn, maybe over North America.

(stage 2, after a ~6 hour coast, will reenter over the western Atlantic)

Probably not visible in daylight...If this is true then maybe I'll get to see one in action after a future launch.

Edited by cubinator
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3 minutes ago, cubinator said:

Probably not visible in daylight...

Yeah, I agree, though the prop dumps are visible because they are illuminated by sunlight, not because of the engines.

 

Any of y'all up in Canada or the NW US should keep an eye out.

Edited by tater
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On 6/24/2018 at 11:41 AM, NSEP said:

They can probably turn the entire BFS into a web workshop,

*wet

They should fill it with spiders to see how they spin webs in space

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1 hour ago, Spaceception said:

The shortest launch coverage on this thread so far :D

We live in an age there any launch who don't land first stage is boring, this is an good time. 
We will probably live in an time there second stage sacrifice indicate an milestone heavy launch who is even better. 
Yes we are a bit spoiled, that is another good thing. 

Still why waste an block 4 on an dragon mission? i would saved them for heavy GEO launches there you could not recover first stage even if block 5. 


 

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1 hour ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

Slept thru it, myself. Not even the incessant barrage of twitter notifications from my tablet could rouse me, it seems. But now I wake to a new era of no more boring expendable launches!  :D Probably. Maybe. Hopefully...

There's accidentally expendable launches.

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1 hour ago, magnemoe said:


Still why waste an block 4 on an dragon mission? i would saved them for heavy GEO launches there you could not recover first stage even if block 5.

The recent AF contract of a FH for a launch F9 could easily have done expended shows where this is heading. SpaceX is going to make expendable launches “not a thing,” IMHO. Expendable prices need to rise to cover lost opportunity costs of reusing the booster.

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8 minutes ago, tater said:

The recent AF contract of a FH for a launch F9 could easily have done expended shows where this is heading. SpaceX is going to make expendable launches “not a thing,” IMHO. Expendable prices need to rise to cover lost opportunity costs of reusing the booster.

I suspect this is marketing, and that the AF may well want expendable simply for less chances of failures (they often have cargo vastly more expensive than a ULA rocket, let alone a spacex one).  I've heard that the company line is that expendable FH can't launch a significantly heavier cargo to space, but suspect that is only true for LEO and not GTO (or LTO & MTO: lunar and Mars transfer orbits).

But money talks, and not bothering to save tens of millions of dollars of rocket speaks volumes.

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59 minutes ago, Ultimate Steve said:

There's accidentally expendable launches.

Love it! Move over "Rapid Unplanned Disassembly" - we've got a new euphemism for a new age!

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40 minutes ago, KSK said:

Love it! Move over "Rapid Unplanned Disassembly" - we've got a new euphemism for a new age!

“That wasn’t supposed to be an expendable launch!” - Elon Musk in 2020

But it does open up a new mode for mission assurance in the event of a mild inflight anomaly, like an engine out or propellant leak. Writing off the booster is cheaper than losing the payload, at least until companies take advantage of cheap launch costs with cheaper payloads 

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