totm nov 2023 SpaceX Discussion Thread

[tater]

 

[Jaff]

That looks like ksp with scatterer and EVE installed 

[tater]

Roscosmos should reply, "Hold my beer."

[ThatGuyWithALongUsername]

3 hours ago, tater said:

Roscosmos should reply, "Hold my beer."

*vodka. But still...

[Racescort666]

22 hours ago, Spaceception said:

This is one thread I'm always catching up on, and I think this is the first time I've ever seen happy reactions to a delay

I always feel like I'm catching up on it as well. I usually just end up skipping through a few dozen BFR speculation posts and I'm right up to current events. Just look for the tweets which are usually relevant. As for the happy reactions to the delay, I feel like @Ultimate Steve is always in school during launches. I wouldn't recommend skipping class to watch, you've gotta graduate man! 

3 hours ago, tater said:

Roscosmos should reply, "Hold my beer. vodka."

FIFY

[DAL59]

On 11/18/2018 at 12:57 PM, Mad Rocket Scientist said:

Those look like the ship from 2001 

On 11/20/2018 at 12:13 AM, CatastrophicFailure said:

Well, he did say it was a pretty radical and counter-intuitive change...  

Anything can be interstellar travel if you wait long enough*

 

*and have enough dv/use gravity assists to escape

[ThatGuyWithALongUsername]

In the slightly late news, the humans-on-mars timeline appears to have officially shifted a bit, unless Elon is making a distinction between the first to land on Mars and the first to colonize it. It has now slipped from 2024 to 2025-2028, which is... a bit less "aspirational," I guess. Also in line with his "moon base" comments earlier. That's around 2025, evidently.

Looking at the Mars transfer windows, the best fit is a 2026 launch. The next launch window isn't until 2029- remember, 2 years is an approximation.

[tater]

4 hours ago, DAL59 said:

Those look like the ship from 2001 

The Pan Am shuttle from 2001 looks like those.

1963 ideas:

1965:

Then most of the early Shuttle concepts in 1969+ were similar, before they switched to designs closer to the real thing.

 

[Kerbal7]

1 hour ago, ThatGuyWithALongUsername said:

In the slightly late news, the humans-on-mars timeline appears to have officially shifted a bit, unless Elon is making a distinction between the first to land on Mars and the first to colonize it. It has now slipped from 2024 to 2025-2028, which is... a bit less "aspirational," I guess. Also in line with his "moon base" comments earlier. That's around 2025, evidently.

Looking at the Mars transfer windows, the best fit is a 2026 launch. The next launch window isn't until 2029- remember, 2 years is an approximation.

He's never sending anyone to Mars.

[ThatGuyWithALongUsername]

9 minutes ago, Kerbal7 said:

He's never sending anyone to Mars.

Do you have anything else to say, other than constantly repeating extremely pessimistic comments? Saying something once is good enough...

 

I am really holding back an https://www.xkcd.com/386/-style retort, I have to get to work on an essay, darn it...

 

EDIT: Though, I will add, looking at the FH timeline for comparison, the mars flights may slip into the 2030's and I would not be surprised. But I think the BFR, or... something like it (once the design settles completely)... will eventually fly.

Edited November 29, 2018 by ThatGuyWithALongUsername

[CatastrophicFailure]

Headline, circa 2118:

ELON MUSK’S HEAD INNA JAR SENDS FIRST COLONISTS TO MARS, BILLIONS EAT THEIR WORDS

BECAUSE THERE IS NO MORE FOOD

”Should have bought Teslas when I warned you,” DISEMBODIED QUADRILLIONAIRE QUIPS

[tater]

26 minutes ago, Kerbal7 said:

He's never sending anyone to Mars.

I'm not a colonize Mars person (makes no economic sense at all).

That said, SLS is never sending any people to Mars, even for just flags and footprints. I'd say the chances of SpaceX doing flags and footprints is substantially larger than SLS doing so (note that I did not say NASA, I said the POS rocket to nowhere, SLS).

Edited November 29, 2018 by tater

[kerbiloid]

Spoiler

I'm optimistic about the SpaceX Martian colonization.

If their Sabatier plant gets broken, they will become colonists. Anyway no fuel to return.

 

[Kerbal7]

3 hours ago, ThatGuyWithALongUsername said:

Do you have anything else to say, other than constantly repeating extremely pessimistic comments? Saying something once is good enough...

 

I am really holding back an https://www.xkcd.com/386/-style retort, I have to get to work on an essay, darn it...

 

EDIT: Though, I will add, looking at the FH timeline for comparison, the mars flights may slip into the 2030's and I would not be surprised. But I think the BFR, or... something like it (once the design settles completely)... will eventually fly.

At Insight's Post-Landing Brief, NASA Administrator Bridenstine said he hoped people would land on Mars in the mid-30s. He said this was an "aggressive" estimate. Bridenstine talks to the best and brightest on this subject all the time. The smartest people in the class.

I'll take his word, and those of the people around him, over some subsidies hustling charlatan, claiming he's building a "Starship."A Starship that will be building a colony on Mars in 2025. 

But if you want to believe Musk, go right ahead. I think it's naïve but to each his own.  

3 hours ago, tater said:

That said, SLS is never sending any people to Mars, even for just flags and footprints. I'd say the chances of SpaceX doing flags and footprints is substantially larger than SLS doing so (note that I did not say NASA, I said the POS rocket to nowhere, SLS).

 

If we see people on Mars in our lifetimes, It will be through the SLS rocket. 

[tater]

14 minutes ago, Kerbal7 said:

4 hours ago, ThatGuyWithALongUsername said:

 

At Insight's Post-Landing Brief, NASA Administrator Bridenstine said he hoped people would land on Mars in the mid-30s. He said this was an "aggressive" estimate. Bridenstine talks to the best and brightest on this subject all the time. The smartest people in the class.

Every NASA Administrator for decades has put Mars 20 years out. Bridenstine will be just as wrong. They all talk to the best and brightest.

14 minutes ago, Kerbal7 said:

If we see people on Mars in our lifetimes, It will be through the SLS rocket. 

Nonsense, SLS is demonstrably incapable of this task. It can never launch more than once a year, and any SLS architecture for Mars requires multiple launches in a single year (not even 2, more like 4-5). Of Block 2, which is bigger.

Not gonna happen, Blue Origin obviates SLS all by itself in a few years, because it will be capable of distributed launch in a way that will forever be impossible for SLS due to launch cadence issues (upper stage fuels will be cryo, and hence boiloff kills any idea of building a Mars craft over many years).

 

ObSpaceX:

BFR will fly. It's the next rocket for SpaceX, and required to compete with BO. Dev times are measured in years, and BO is leapfrogging F9 with NG. They have to move forward, this is not the old space world of flying Atlas or Soyuz for 60 years.

Edited November 29, 2018 by tater

[tater]

BTW, minus commercial space (right now that means SpaceX, soon we can add Blue Origin), NASA doesn't land people on the Moon by 2030, IMHO. The Gateway architecture makes lunar landing impossible minus commercial space doing most of the work. SLS cannot deliver crew and a lander the same year. It cannot fly crew to Gateway once a year and do anything else, in fact.

It's budget. NASA might very well be forced to keep ISS until 2028+.

NASA cannot fund anythign past ISS+SLS/Orion at the current rate, which means 1 flight a year, and ZERO money to develop any payloads that require SLS. A lander will cost as much as Orion if NASA does it. That's basically the cost of ISS every year for many years. Want a lander? Kill ISS. At that point, NASA human spaceflight will be Orion 2 weeks a year, nothing else (and only those flights assuming they never have any problems that delay anything, since they have zero slop).

[Mad Rocket Scientist]

12 minutes ago, tater said:

Nonsense, SLS is demonstrably incapable of this task. It can never launch more than once a year, and any SLS architecture for Mars requires multiple launches in a single year (not even 2, more like 4-5). Of Block 2, which is bigger.

I agree that SpaceX's mars program currently looks like the best bet, but I do want to defend SLS's potential, if not likely, use for Mars missions. That is, that there is nothing inherently wrong with the design from an technical standpoint.

While it currently seems unlikely that SLS will be able to fly enough, if it flies at all before it gets cancelled, I believe it has the technological potential to fly a Mars mission. With enough political will, and thus money, I think a manned Mars landing could be accomplished with SLS or a similar conservative Saturn V like design. It would likely cost the same as or more than the entire development cost of reusable heavy launch vehicles to just fly the mission and make all the legacy designs work together, but I would defend that cost as more than worthwhile.

It would require a redesign of the SLS program, but not the design of an entirely new rocket. You would have to start planning around much more frequent flights, and start building components on a much larger scale, but the components themselves would require little to no changes. The SLS has no technological reasons to prevent it from flying Mars missions, only political ones.

[tater]

 

[tater]

2 minutes ago, Mad Rocket Scientist said:

I agree that SpaceX's mars program currently looks like the best bet, but I do want to defend SLS's potential, if not likely, use for Mars missions. That is, that there is nothing inherently wrong with the design from an technical standpoint.

While it currently seems unlikely that SLS will be able to fly enough, if it flies at all before it gets cancelled, I believe it has the technological potential to fly a Mars mission. With enough political will, and thus money, I think a manned Mars landing could be accomplished with SLS or a similar conservative Saturn V like design. It would likely cost the same as or more than the entire development cost of reusable heavy launch vehicles to just fly the mission and make all the legacy designs work together, but I would defend that cost as more than worthwhile.

All the Mars DRAs use multiple SLS block 2 launches (or the previous iteration within Constellation, which was actually more capable). On the order of 4. MAV, a crew launch (since they have no other way to get Orion anywhere), then at least 2 to assemble the MDV/hab. More likely 3. Or 4. So one launch, then 2 years later 4-5. That's simply never going to happen. If SLS wasn't so insanely expensive, it would be great.

 

2 minutes ago, Mad Rocket Scientist said:

It would require a redesign of the SLS program, but not the design of an entirely new rocket. You would have to start planning around much more frequent flights, and start building components on a much larger scale, but the components themselves would require little to no changes. The SLS has no technological reasons to prevent it from flying Mars missions, only political ones.

No, except that it's a cost-plus rocket, and it will never be made cost effective.

If reuse has any reasonably positive economic benefit at all, SLS is a dinosaur. Assume we need 4 block 2 flights. That's 520t to LEO. The cost would be the cost of the cargo (a lot), plus at best 5 billion $ (program cost, plus 4*500-700M$ (and that's a very optimistic marginal cost for SLS, I think). So closer to 6 B$.

Assume NG is cost-competitive. 45t to LEO for maybe 100 M$. Slop it up to 150M$, for kicks. 12 launches is 1.8 B$. Assume because the pieces are smaller it takes almost twice as many flights. Still basically costs what the program costs for SLS are.

 

[Val]

I removed some post that had baseless accusations or personal attacks. Keep it clean, please.

[cubinator]

9 hours ago, Kerbal7 said:

At Insight's Post-Landing Brief, NASA Administrator Bridenstine said he hoped people would land on Mars in the mid-30s. He said this was an "aggressive" estimate. Bridenstine talks to the best and brightest on this subject all the time. The smartest people in the class.

I'll take his word, and those of the people around him, over some subsidies hustling charlatan, claiming he's building a "Starship."A Starship that will be building a colony on Mars in 2025. 

I also think that as far as the actual timeline goes, Bridenstine and the other experts at NASA are right. Musk's timeline is unrealistic. But I think that's the point - If we are working on the task as if we want to get it done by 2025, then we are working hard enough to get it done by 2035. It's a way to beat the 20-years-away rule, and I think it's working.

[DAL59]

10 hours ago, Kerbal7 said:

 Bridenstine talks to the best and brightest on this subject all the time. The smartest people in the class.

He also talks to congressmen, who won't delegate enough funding to launch sooner.  

Even though NASA has in total more money than SpaceX, very little of that money is being used to develop manned mars landers.  

Edited November 29, 2018 by DAL59

[CatastrophicFailure]

Static fire for CRS-16 today, looks like a new booster. 

I wonder if it’ll get reused for the expendable flight coming up in a few weeks?

[tater]

1 hour ago, DAL59 said:

Even though NASA has in total more money than SpaceX, very little of that money is being used to develop manned mars landers.  

No money at all is being used to develop crew landers for Mars or the Moon.

The human spaceflight budget is pretty much spending all money of ISS (including COTS and CCDev), SLS, and Orion. They have not yet even spent money on Gateway elements.

We will see what the dev program announced in 30 minutes or so is, but it can't be crew landers, not enough money for that.

 

[Ultimate Steve]

4 minutes ago, tater said:

We will see what the dev program announced in 30 minutes or so is, but it can't be crew landers, not enough money for that.

Looks like they're streaming the announcement on NASA TV, which is usually unblocked for me. Unfortunately I'll be in PE, failing at basketball while it happens. If I could get a summary that would be great!