BFR concepts and ideas thread.

[sevenperforce]

22 minutes ago, NSEP said:

Then we let the Moon Landing deniers do it themselves. Give them 500,000 dollars to build the cubesat, and 1 million if they succeed on photographing the Moon. And 500,000 dollars extra if they don't see anything on the surface.

There also needs to be a person checking if they aren't photoshopping the images, if they are, then let them pay 2 million back.

Or just grab a random selection of 50 deniers, stuff them into the less dangerous end of the BFS, and drop them off at Tranquility Base.

"We'll reopen the access doors when you admit this is all real."

[NSEP]

2 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

Or just grab a random selection of 50 deniers, stuff them into the less dangerous end of the BFS, and drop them off at Tranquility Base.

"We'll reopen the access doors when you admit this is all real."

. The possibilities are endless with the BFR. I could see this happending within the next 50 years, totally!

[wumpus]

1 hour ago, sevenperforce said:

Or just grab a random selection of 50 deniers, stuff them into the less dangerous end of the BFS, and drop them off at Tranquility Base.

"We'll reopen the access doors when you admit this is all real."

Can we do the same with creationists and anti-vaxers?  We'll give the creationists all the penicillin they want, then allow bacteria evolve that thrive in penicillin.  Anti-vaxers simply need to be concentrated in their own reserves.

[NSEP]

BFR could help these companies build these kind of structures in space.

A future in space seems to get closer and closer, closer than ever. BFR pls work pls work pls work.

[kerbiloid]

(About the video).

488 m in diameter,  76 m thick, mass is not told.
Just several hundred heavy rocket launches - and the station is ready.
With no radiators (while thousands of humans produce a lot of heat themselves, and need a lot of fans, producing even more).

No visible energy sources - but it's OK: unlikely solar panels would be enough, so probably every 100 m a nuclear reactor.
(Yes, every. You can't evacuate thousands in a day week month. So, no accumulators are enough, as well as a single reactor. Fans must keep rotating in any case.)
But it's OK, too: the passengers don't need a solarium, they can get a suntan right in their beds.

Btw that funny word "evacuation".
It's OK when clever mechanical arms catch the rescue ship, attract, and berth it.
But what if the station is out of service, but still keeps rotating?  How to dock a rescue ship? A hundred of rescue ships?

Edited May 7, 2018 by kerbiloid

[YNM]

On 5/3/2018 at 1:14 PM, Scotius said:

Deep space exploration vessel - a BFR equipped with KRUSTY-derived lightweight nuclear reactor

Then it could become reality.

Add a condenser, refinery and tankers... Redirect to Titan...

Pretty sure they'll be happy ever after.

[StrandedonEarth]

On 5/7/2018 at 12:54 AM, YNM said:

Add a condenser, refinery and tankers... Redirect to Titan...

...And get bought by Kinder Morgan...

[YNM]

30 minutes ago, StrandedonEarth said:

...And get bought by Kinder Morgan...

I'm sure Elon won't mind some heating apparatus. XD

[StrandedonEarth]

Heading to the airport soon to fly Vancouver to Cancun. That BFS P2P would be nice about now, although my wife would probably disagree...

[Athen]

So, Spacex has said that they want to make the BFR into public transport, as explained by this video:

The thing is though, is that if you want to have the rocket near a city like that, there would be a lot of noise created from the rocket, even if it is far away from the city. We've once tried to make supersonic planes a thing, but they were too loud for people living nearby. Plus, the average rocket success rate is 90-98%, and if 2 out of 100 planes crashed, nobody would fly. Also, during the end, it appears they would be using a suicide burn to land, but the amount of ge-force endured during a suicide burn is much higher than any trained astronaut, let alone untrained civilians could possibly endure.

I would absolutely love to go to space, but im not 100% sure it's possible. What do you think?

Edit: can the mods please move my post to spaceflight discussion? I didn't mean to post this here. 

 

Edited September 10, 2018 by Athen
can the mods please move my post to spaceflight discussion? I didn't mean to post this here. 

[wumpus]

Any suborbital BFR would be roughly as dangerous as a trip to orbit in a BFR.  While people might accept the danger for going into orbit, I can't imagine somebody betting their life to save 6-10 hours on an international flight (you could presumably book a "sleeper cabin" in a jet cheaper than BFR, so a red eye would be the way to go).

Maybe the 3rd or 4th generation "BFR" will be sufficiently safe.  I just can't imagine them working out all the bugs withing a decade or two (humanity has been launching people into space since 1961 and there is still at least more than 1% chance of death.  It really wouldn't make sense to fly BFR to avoid the cost of a trip at sea).  Perhaps the BFR will have a launch cadence high enough to work the bugs out faster, but it will take awhile before enough customers come forth with things they want in space (Falcon is eating up Earth's space manifest, and BFR could launch pretty much Falcon's manifest in one go).

[kerbiloid]

Only floating.

[Cassel]

How long does the check-in at the airport of an ordinary plane (loading of luggage and boarding passengers) take?

Boarding on the ship will take about 1 hour or more?
Travel by ship how long it can take, ships are slow as far as I know?
Reloading luggage and transfer of passengers from ship to rocket's, how long can it take?
After a 30-minute rocket flight, the same as above only in the reverse order.

I would say it will take over 5 hours for a not-so-pleasant journey, as already mentioned by somebody large g-force.

A manned version of Skylon will be made sooner and will be better  for public transport than this kind of BFR use.

[tater]

1. The sonic boom footprint is actually pretty narrow, and the proposal is for the facilities to be offshore.

2. The safety issue is huge, and the notion of P2P travel is that the vehicle would have to be at least as safe as an airliner before they'd expect anyone to climb aboard it.

3. The lowest g load on a reentry burn so far is likely around 3.5g, but that was a boostback for RTLS. I imagine that the ballistic trajectory of BFR is such that much of that deceleration would be aerodynamic, reducing g-load appreciably.

[kerbiloid]

Spoiler

"Ladies and gentlemen! We are glad to inform you that our ship is now on its post-boost route.
Now you have about 30 minutes of free flying in zero-G!
If... When you feel not very good, please.... (...please, stop it... Oh, ... ! Don't worry, ma'am, we'll clean this all.) ... please feel free to use your carebags to satisfy yourself.
Please, don't put them on your tables... (Catch it! Catch it! Yes, thank you... ) ... to avoid their floating along the passengers' cabin."

Spoiler

"Carebag! The space gets closer."

 

 

Edited September 10, 2018 by kerbiloid

[magnemoe]

1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

  Hide contents

"Ladies and gentlemen! We are glad to inform you that our ship is now on its post-boost route.
Now you have about 30 minutes of free flying in zero-G!
If... When you feel not very good, please.... (...please, stop it... Oh, ... ! Don't worry, ma'am, we'll clean this all.) ... please feel free to use your carebags to satisfy yourself.
Please, don't put them on your tables... (Catch it! Catch it! Yes, thank you... ) ... to avoid their floating along the passengers' cabin."

  Reveal hidden contents

"Carebag! The space gets closer."

 

 

As I understand you don't get space sick on suborbital flights. 

But both safety and issues with boat trips scrubs, launch and landing permits and lots of other issues makes it unlikely. 
An later version who is single stage and has an long track record, perhaps you would also have far more orbital launches so some suborbital would not upset many. 
On the other hand an plane is better here as it can go slow if needed and will use airports so connecting flights are easier. 

[kerbiloid]

Just now, magnemoe said:

As I understand you don't get space sick on suborbital flights. 

Why? It's a vomit comet, just big.

[Ultimate Steve]

3 hours ago, wumpus said:

humanity has been launching people into space since 1961 and there is still at least more than 1% chance of death.

By a rough count, the number of man-flights into space is about 1400, being under 600 people. Just in flight, there were 18 deaths, so about 1.3%, you are right... Although it could be argued that the actual chance today is less than that because of improving technology, but it still too dangerous at this point to consider for global transportation.

[kerbiloid]

Will the combustion rockets ever at all be appropriate for civils mass transportation...

Or maybe this requires less stressed future technics. Say, a water tank, a boiler with nozzles, and a microwave receiver (just as an example).
Or even a solenoid + microwave receiver to fly in magnetic fields, without a rocket at all.

Edited September 10, 2018 by kerbiloid

[magnemoe]

1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

Why? It's a vomit comet, just big.

I saw it on an New Shepard video, space sickness would not be an issue, Vomit comet to lots of violent turns 

[kerbiloid]

1 minute ago, magnemoe said:

New Shepard

Afaik (maybe I'm wrong, as I don't follow it), it had just vertically reached 100 km, and zero-G duration was maybe 2-3 minutes.
An intercontinental distance (otherwise why rocket) would be comparable to ICBM, so flight duration 20..30 min, including 10..15 min of zero-G and 10..15 of overloads.

[HebaruSan]

It sounds less plausible to me every time a Falcon 9 launch is rescheduled due to weather. If the big advantage over planes is supposed to be speed, you can't expect your customers to tolerate frequent unpredictable multi-day delays.

But it's Elon's dime at stake, not mine. If they're serious about it, maybe they'll find ways to address that.

3 hours ago, Cassel said:

A manned version of Skylon will be made sooner

Last I checked nobody was paying for development of Skylon; the engines had some funding, but that's all. Has that changed?

Edited September 10, 2018 by HebaruSan

[Ultimate Steve]

2 minutes ago, HebaruSan said:

It sounds less plausible to me every time a Falcon 9 launch is rescheduled due to weather. If the big advantage over planes is supposed to be speed, you can't expect your customers to tolerate frequent unpredictable multi-day delays.

I'd tend to guess that BFR will be affected by weather delays much less than any other rocket because of its mass to surface area ratio, although I agree that rockets will probably always be more susceptible to delays than airplanes. You don't get a go-around or an alternate landing site with BFR.

[Cassel]

8 minutes ago, HebaruSan said:

 

Last I checked nobody was paying for development of Skylon; the engines had some funding, but that's all. Has that changed?

As soon as the engines are created, they will be applied to the next generation of fighters and bombers, which will give the manufacturer huge funds for the development of engines and aircraft for the private sector.

[Ultimate Steve]

3 minutes ago, Cassel said:

As soon as the engines are created, they will be applied to the next generation of fighters and bombers, which will give the manufacturer huge funds for the development of engines and aircraft for the private sector.

I can't imagine liquid hydrogen being used to fuel fighters and bombers any time soon.