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RCgothic

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Everything posted by RCgothic

  1. High chance of Starlink scrub on Monday. F9 can't land in a tropical storm and SpaceX fleet are seeking cover. SpaceX aren't going to intentionally dispose of their flight leader whilst rigged with landing legs and grid fins for an internal mission nobody's paying them for.
  2. Explanation. Good on Tory for hopping on the phone to explain!
  3. I suppose it could be libelous if he's screwed up!
  4. This could be interesting:
  5. In a chart, no. Given that the optimum target is iron, there's simply vastly more energy to be gained fusing light elements than fissioning any heavy element.
  6. It was tweeted 8h ago at the end of Saturday's test window. Sunday's test window is still on. Can be a bit confusing for those of us who are ahead of US time I guess! My repost was probably a little tardy.
  7. And here we go again. This is becoming some form of torture.
  8. Today's not done yet, but a test for of SN4 is looking increasingly unlikely:
  9. At $10 per kg I could design and build a microsat in my garage and pay SpaceX to put it in orbit for me. Even at $100 per kg I could.
  10. Last I knew SLS boosters and core can put a similar payload into LEO as SLS ICPS included. But payload beyond LEO drops off much more quickly for core-only due to poor mass-fraction.
  11. Starship doesn't have to launch full or even half full if flying costs an order of magnitude less than Falcon9. Got a 500kg smallsat to put in orbit and $2m budget for a launcher? Starship. False, it takes 300t of propellant (2-3 launches) to send 220t of starship (dry mass plus 100t) to TLI from LEO.
  12. Starship just doesn't work with an LES, and if that means NASA won't use it then so be it. You don't just bring along auxiliary thrusters capable of blasting 1500t free from Superheavy at MaxQ, and Starship isn't capable of controlled flight in part.
  13. LES doesn't work on Mars or the Moon. The goal for starship is to just be reliable enough that it's not required.
  14. It's not very many vs a stated aim of 35-38 falcon launches for 2020 though. Either they've got a few more in production or they're expecting those 6 cores to each fly 5 times this year! Of course demand may be a little lower due to events. Block 5 has had attrition of 13 to 5 cores over 35 core flights. That's an average of 2.7 flights per core, and a core lost or expended every 5 missions. In fact, put that way it doesn't sound half bad! 80% of missions recovered, including those where no attempt was even made!
  15. I was a little curious about the timings. Do S-IC and FH really burnout at the same time? Do 4 segment and 5 segment boosters really burn out at the same time?
  16. What's wrong with that? If you like large rockets, there are a lot of goodies coming up. USSF-44 is coming up this year, using Falcon Heavy to insert two satellites into GEO - it's a screamingly high performance objective for 2.5 stage Kerolox rocket and will feature twin barge landings. ULA's Vulcan is launching in July next year. It's somewhat between Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy in performance. New Glenn is going to appear as if from nowhere one of these days, with similar performance to partially expendable Falcon Heavy. Starship is probably test-firing today. Starship has a larger diameter than SLS and by itself is as large as the SLS core stage. It will fall to earth like a skydiver, pirouette to a landing, and be ready to do the same the next day. That's super-cool! Super-Heavy will probably be in testing by this time next year (before SLS). It's bigger than SLS. It has *twice* the thrust of SLS. It will take off on a column of fire the like of which this planet has never seen! Expendable it can put ~300t in orbit. For reference that's the entire Apollo CSM/LM stack *AND* a fully fuelled Saturn S-IVB with enough payload mass left over to co-manifest the entire Mir space station, all in a single flight! Believe me, there is plenty to be excited about when it comes to large rockets in the near future. There's no need to be depressed. Human spaceflight is finally getting serious again. It just doesn't require SLS.
  17. I'm actually amazed by how few Falcon cores seem to be active right now! A complete list of known Falcon 9 cores: B1049 4 Flights, prepping for Starlink-7 on May17th. Joint flight leader. B1051 4 Flights, in refurbishment. Joint flight leader. B1058 New, planned for Crew Dragon Demo-2. B1059 2 RTLS CRS flights. In refurbishment. B1060 New, planned for GPS-III (Columbus). B1061 New, planned for Crew-1. That's two fairly used boosters and just one other that's flown! For Falcon Heavy we have: B1052 Side core, 2 flights. Presumed for upcoming USSF-44. B1053 Side core, 2 flights. Presumed for upcoming USSF-44. Presumably a new centre core is in production for USSF-44 but it won't survive that Side-ASDS Core-expended mission.
  18. Testing may be cancelled today, but work continues:
  19. Shared RCS and abort propellant is efficient, I like! This would have been awkward for landing burns though. Ok, so 300s ISP and 1290kg propellant is 235 to 375m/s. Should be sufficient for all docking manoeuvres on a lunar mission. *BUT* not enough for NRHO injection or TEI. Dragon would have to devote up to 2.2t of its 6t payload to get to TEI from NRHO. How much DV for NRHOI?
  20. I've seen 9.5t specifically referred to several times as dry mass, and 11t wet plus 6t of payload is 17t, the limit of payload on F9 LEO ASDS landings so far, so it does make some sort of internal logic. In Flight Abort pics:
  21. Just because we don't hear much about New Glenn doesn't mean it isn't being worked on. You hear nothing and you hear nothing and then suddenly *bam!* Payload fairing. I do wish Blue Origin were a little less Graditim with their press releases, but that doesn't mean they're not being Ferociter behind the scenes.
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