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RCgothic

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Everything posted by RCgothic

  1. RCgothic
  2. RCgothic
    For Apollo, the goal was commanded, the method was flexible. For Artemis, the method is commanded, the goal is flexible. If Congress says they have to build and use SLS, they have to do it. If Congress doesn't give them funds to study other architectures, they can't.
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  5. RCgothic
    I suppose it could Adama-manoeuvre a load of drones at a height above conventional SAM ceiling and then additionally pancake on a target, but that's kind of ICBM-adjacent. I suspect other nations are unlikely to approve.
  6. RCgothic
    Which is why I said "at risk from". I don't think every .22 round would necessarily penetrate, but a weakening, gouging, or ragged entry hole on the side of the tank could easily lead to catastrophic failure. You don't really want to test it. Larger munitions pose exponentially more risk. 5.56mm would easily penetrate 3.5mm of stainless and nobody wants to find out what a tracer, incendiary or explosive round might do.
  7. RCgothic
    Could do. A methane tank leak probably won't end well. If it's hit on approach and the tanks depress then the engines will go engine-rich and the landing won't be pretty either. If it's on the ground, then it won't be taking off again without pressurised tanks. And the tanks depressurising through a hole could itself cause catastrophic failure. And if hit by an explosive munition it's basically game over.
  8. RCgothic
    They absolutely have to scrap gateway. It's simply not achievable alongside a surface presence, and it's always been entirely purposeless. I also agree they have to scrap the separately designed Basecamp. Just permanently emplace a LSS as a hab. Doing the above would free up so many more crewed surface missions it's ridiculous. -_-
  9. RCgothic
    Yup. That this was going to happen was obvious.
  10. RCgothic
    Rockets are extremely damage intolerant. You do not want to send something like Starship anywhere remotely unsecured. 3.5mm stainless steel tank walls are at risk from .22 rounds, never mind actual military calibre munitions.
  11. RCgothic
    So in practice it'd need to jettison in at least two sections and have a *two or more* catching operations.
  12. RCgothic
    It's just not optimised for anything. If you optimise for a specific mission, at least you can perform that mission unaided. If you optimise for LEO, you can always add a departure stage if necessary. If you optimise for cost, missions are cheap. If you optimise for cadence, it's likely both cheap and opens up a lot of construction/rendezvous architectures. SLS sins in every category. The only thing it's optimised for is politics, and even that will not hold if it's visibly inferior to the competition, which it is.
  13. RCgothic
    Edit: Sorry, traverse the globe at 4° per minute. The rate of change to an observer on the surface would be much greater. At 400km altitude that would be a ratio of 6771km to 400km, roughly 17:1. So roughly 68°per minute, or just over 1.1deg/second.
  14. RCgothic
    To a rough magnitude objects in LEO traverse the sky at about 4° per minute (360 deg per 90 mins).
  15. RCgothic
    A classified US govt payload is listed on Wikipedia as co-manifested. So definitely something meaty.
  16. RCgothic
    True actually. Falcon 19 Heavy would probably not be taller, the engines can only lift so much. So if it's not stretched, it would perform a similar flight profile to Falcon 9. Direct scaling of thrust to payload would give a payload for Falcon19!Heavy of 133t expendable. Probably a bit better due to beneficial square/cube law. Recovery modes would also be easier due to better aspect ratio and more body lift. Directly competitive to SLS to LEO. Cheaper, due to leveraging the cost-effective Merlin engines. Plus more flexible due to scalable recovery options. With high energy 2nd and 3rd stages it'd be very superior. 57 main engines would be charting new territory though.
  17. RCgothic
    A little bit of Raptor info:
  18. RCgothic
    Super Falcon (Falcon 19!) would actually make for a great SRB replacement. Just a little larger diameter (4.5m), basically the same thrust, lighter overall, much better ISP, and recoverable.
  19. RCgothic
    SLS requires all of its performance for its primary mission though. There isn't any spare capacity to waste on recovery experiments, even if recovery of any portion of it were feasible (which is not likely).
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  21. RCgothic
    Test tank is at the launch site:
  22. RCgothic
    There isn't any practical way to make SLS reusable, and if you did it would be so different it wouldn't be SLS anymore. The boosters are barely worth refurbishing even if they were recovered and the best that can be done with the RS25s is a kind of ULA's SMART reuse where the engines alone are recovered.
  23. RCgothic
    So send an empty crew capsule with a Rosie the rocketeer mannequin. Actually exposing crew to unnecessary radiation in a pointless and difficult-to-abort-to orbit is the stupidest type of mission. The chances of irradiating a crew would be halved by putting them on the surface where they can actually do useful work. And a changeover station is not required when the lander can accommodate an entire crew and both lander and capsule can just mate to each other directly.
  24. RCgothic
    I think it'll probably take them longer than the end of August to work up a full 33 engine static fire and wet dress rehearsal.
  25. RCgothic
    The Gateway station is the single most pointless part of the Artemis architecture.
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