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Skylon

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Little Falcon Test Ship ..... 

I can imagine how nervous his engineers were about testing launch and reentry on an expensive 9m Ship.

They can smash up a few little falcons without breaking the bank.

 

I am a little disappointed we didn't get to see a methane F9 on a new methane pad at KSC.

Using the f9 tooling and whatever design/plumbing mods it needed for autogen press and methane rcs.

Would have been very cool.

Edited by RedKraken
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12 minutes ago, Nightside said:

Will it be a working upper stage or just a test bed?

it should be able to at least get a few Starlinks into orbit.

Just drag brakes and a “light weight” heatshield shoukd be a pretty small mass penalty, so I would imagine it’s fully functional, at least for lighter LEO payloads (like Dragon).

One thing’s for sure, til they get the bugs out, it’s gonna be amusing as heck to watch this thing belly flop into the ocean from orbit the first few times. :D

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4 minutes ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

Just drag brakes and a “light weight” heatshield shoukd be a pretty small mass penalty, so I would imagine it’s fully functional, at least for lighter LEO payloads (like Dragon).

One thing’s for sure, til they get the bugs out, it’s gonna be amusing as heck to watch this thing belly flop into the ocean from orbit the first few times. :D

Can Mr Steven catch it? It should have a lot more control authority than a fairing...

Edited by Nightside
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1 hour ago, Nightside said:

Can Mr Steven catch it? It should have a lot more control authority than a fairing...

Much heavier, going a lot faster (no parachute, So terminal velocity), and the MIMMS* Steve-O is way more expensive to fix than a barge if it goes wrong. 

*His Imperial Martian Majesty has mentioned the “bouncy house” idea before, tho if it’s just for data gathering I’d be surprised if there’s a real effort to recover it (intact) at all. 

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18 minutes ago, Toonu said:

I haven't been at SpaceX news feed for some time and just saw that Falcon 9 with BFR there, is it current plan to test the BFR or is it just fake?

I think they really want to make a Small Falcon Spaceship, they also had plans to do a second stage reuse, so why not do both at once?

Apperently this isn't going to be the reuse, just a test.

Edited by NSEP
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It's really a test of TPS at orbital velocities. The stage is still gonna take a swim. If the goal is to analyze the returned stage, then maybe it pops a chute, then gets fished out of the water (or they could even drop it someplace like WSMR here in NM).

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I expect this to be a VERY simple addition to the stock stage 2.

Some fins (they already fly fins on Dragon), a canard, and added TPS. Maybe a chute on the up side of the fairing adapter (more TPS).

They can add this to existing launches (perhaps a Starlink would be a good first one), then gather real life data on EDL specifics at orbital speeds. Stage can also just impact if they have enough sensors on it, though it will be at terminal velocity sideways, not burning up. Why? Because adding stuff to a paid for launch (even one of their own launches for Starlink) and gathering data is cheaper, and easier than trying it full sized.

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3 hours ago, Xd the great said:

Probably not. The parafoil for fairings is already a super duper pain in the ***. SpaceX has failed quite a number of times with its world class engineerers.

And the empty stage weights much more than a fairing. 

I think they are having trouble because the fairing itself is flopping around all the way down.  A rigid body spacecraft with fins and a parafoil is a piece of cake.  The X-38 used one. 

X-38_Landing_(cropped).jpg

 

 

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Meaning that F9 can now launch Mars rovers, interplanetary probes, etc.
 
For reference, F9 can send 4t to Mars, and MSL spacecraft (carrying Curiosity) had a mass of 3.9t.
 
I'm not sure if F9 can launch nuclear materials, though.
Edited by sh1pman
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On 11/7/2018 at 5:55 PM, tater said:

I expect this to be a VERY simple addition to the stock stage 2.

Some fins (they already fly fins on Dragon), a canard, and added TPS. Maybe a chute on the up side of the fairing adapter (more TPS).

They can add this to existing launches (perhaps a Starlink would be a good first one), then gather real life data on EDL specifics at orbital speeds. Stage can also just impact if they have enough sensors on it, though it will be at terminal velocity sideways, not burning up. Why? Because adding stuff to a paid for launch (even one of their own launches for Starlink) and gathering data is cheaper, and easier than trying it full sized.

It cant be too simple- in order to be a reasonable heat shield test, it has to match balistic coefficent with a much larger BFS.

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24 minutes ago, Rakaydos said:

It cant be too simple- in order to be a reasonable heat shield test, it has to match balistic coefficent with a much larger BFS.

No it doesn't, it merely needs to provide data that they can scale I would imagine.

He said June. They are not doing anything terribly complicated to F9 by June.

 

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