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SpaceX Discussion Thread


Skylon

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21 minutes ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

Yeah, but... 150k cubesats with no propulsion all in the same orbit...

I’m reminded of that one scene from WALL-E. 

That, or the start of earth’s very own Halo ring...

No propulsion? Only of they were designed with no propulsion... Back when this forum was proposing to launch our own cubesat, one of the proposals was an engineering test to see if we could go from an eliptical earth orbit to landing on Deimos with an ion engine, with enough gravity assists.

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1 hour ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

Yeah, but... 150k cubesats with no propulsion all in the same orbit...

Not a space debris problem, the orbits would decay in a few years.  

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59 minutes ago, tater said:

Cubesats are a thing because every gram matters. When payloads are not mass or even much volume limited, then different design constraints apply. Just make sats with loads of propellants for electric propulsion.

This, I expect it would be way more common to do testing in space, of full scale stuff. Just buy an random 1 ton slot for testing an ion drive, an antenna and some other stuff, put it in moon orbit. 
Launch it from an passenger BFR with the primary payload. And yes you could combine the launch with an passenger version or later cruise. 

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1 hour ago, Rakaydos said:

Bezos can basically outspend NASA for a decade, though.

He's spending 1 B$/yr tops, on BO right now. He's worth over 100 B$, and the NASA budget is ~20 B$. So even if he spent every penny, he could not outspend NASA for a decade.

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9 hours ago, StrandedonEarth said:

Into nearly identical orbits, with the mother of all cubesat dispensers...

If the cost-to-orbit is so cheap, maybe it's no big deal to simply add a super-cheap propulsion, like a compressed air tank with a de Laval nozzle, for example.  I wonder how much delta v you could get out of something like that.

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21 minutes ago, Supercheese said:

How far away can one realistically expect to be able to visually observe the launch? I'm at a business conference in Orlando, Florida, but likely won't be able to drive out to the space coast for a good viewing seat...

If you're very lucky, watch from on top of a tall building, and look in exactly the right direction, you might be able to see the rising contrail from about T+30 onward.

EDIT: Actually, I just did the math, and if you have a clear line of sight due East, you could possibly see the rocket at less than a kilometer of altitude...so closer to T+20 onward.

Edited by sevenperforce
Correction
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1 hour ago, Kr0noZ said:

Well, Orlando to the coast is less than 1 hour... I'd try to make that happen because AWESOME.

I live in Germany, so no spaceport within thousands of kilometers...

Quite a few other Space related locations in Germany though. But yeah, nothing that could beat seeing a space launch though.

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36 minutes ago, Kr0noZ said:

Well, ESO HQ is about 1 hour away, but the cool stuff they have is in Chile.

Chile? That would be the southern European southern observatory though, not quite the stuff i was talking about. 

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