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2 hours ago, tater said:

Yeah, I was wondering about fabricating a fairing that ends up sealed as the lander structure as per that pic I posed (crappy):

kCm8Blo.png

Not sure if making the tanks the structure helps or hurts.

It's fascinating that a Direct Ascent lander is possible with 2 just launches, though. If the (long pole) of prop transfer was added to such a design, you have a reusable lander, too (though it shares the same issue, that reuse at the Moon basically means replacing the propellants using another vehicle that masses about the same as the lander anyway).

Problem is that you need to take this into orbit, you can drop fairing once out of atmosphere. In the later case why not return the second stage too as in starship. 
The problem is that falcon 9 is pretty marginal here. 
New glen should be able to pull it off to with an reduced payload 

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Just now, magnemoe said:

Problem is that you need to take this into orbit, you can drop fairing once out of atmosphere. In the later case why not return the second stage too as in starship. 
The problem is that falcon 9 is pretty marginal here. 
New glen should be able to pull it off to with an reduced payload 

Well, in the case of Dragon/Crew Dragon the spacecraft is the fairing (aeroshell). Dumping the fairing mass is valuable, clearly, but I was wondering about the lightest possible shell that would also serve as tankage. If the hypergols are in smaller tanks anyway, then dumping the fairing normally makes sense, and the spacecraft is a Dragon pressure vessel, a bunch of tanks, some engines, and some legs.

Given the "naked FH" concept, there is a ton of margin to make a lander, and indeed a lander and a transfer stage if that is a desirable concept vs 2 stage, or even direct ascent designs. That's the amazing thing---naked FH can send a lander that can do a round trip from gateway without staging.

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26 minutes ago, tater said:

Well, in the case of Dragon/Crew Dragon the spacecraft is the fairing (aeroshell). Dumping the fairing mass is valuable, clearly, but I was wondering about the lightest possible shell that would also serve as tankage. If the hypergols are in smaller tanks anyway, then dumping the fairing normally makes sense, and the spacecraft is a Dragon pressure vessel, a bunch of tanks, some engines, and some legs.

You also run into issues like radiators, solar, and so forth. I could see a multipart truncated fairing, where you have a jettisonable fairing over the capsule and upper RCS, a central propellant tank that is the same diameter as the fairing, and a lower fairing around the landing legs/engines/RCS that is not jettisoned until separation.

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3 minutes ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

wait, what?

Going live in about 15 minutes from the official channel. Wasn’t expecting this, anyone know what’s going on?

Read the description, it's the same as the original Starship Update, complete with September 28th date. I think someone accidentally clicked a button somewhere...

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Hans Koenigsmann in an interview:

https://www.handelsblatt.com/technik/forschung-innovation/spacex-chefingenieur-im-interview-die-lage-deutschlands-ist-eine-herausforderung-fuer-raketenstarts/25190580.html?ticket=ST-74994757-WzD6V61Ldpp39XYHgGrH-ap6

(in German)

 

Quote

“I've changed my strategy and, in principle, given up trying to convince Ariane executives of reusability. When I say that Ariane should continue like before, I seem to make more people think. Although the project to continue to build a disposable rocket is about the same as developing a good analog phone now.”

 Ouch.

 

Also:

 

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