sh1pman

At first I was like “SLS launch date in 2017, wat”, but then I saw that this thread is ancient. Was it really supposed to be launched last year? And @DAL59, that’s one hell of a necropost.

Probably because space exploration is not as high a priority for the EU. Yes, government should set the goals for its space agency, I’m not questioning that. But maybe the agency should be able to develop its own strategy, the way of achieving these goals, using the money that they were given. Or propose such a project first, and then receive the funding for it. I think it’s better than the situation like “listen up folks, you’re going to build an SLS using parts from these contractors, and nothing else. We don’t care if this rocket is not going to be very useful or lead to any major breakthroughs, you don’t have a say in this” .

(Probably a very stupid question from non-American) Why does the Congress decide how NASA spends its money and dictate which projects should be pursued? I mean, wouldn’t it be better if, instead of saying “here’s the moneys, build us an SLS with these exact capabilities and use it to fly a couple of missions around the Moon”, they said “here’s the money, we need a Moon base by 2025, do it however you want”. Are congresspeople experts on space exploration and know the best way to do it?

Imagine if the first passenger is that crazy flat-earther guy who made a steam rocket to reach space. That would be hilarious.

Maybe a small test flight today (no livestream, booster only?) and a full crewed flight on Sunday?

What are they testing this time?

That’s gonna be incredibly hard. Like, ISRU for fuel is probably easier to do than making the Martian soil fertile.

Organic/biochem But I took some material science courses (quite a few, actually). Got a lot of credits for those. But all of my papers are on anticancer drugs, enzymes and DNA modification.

Yea, wish I could work at SpaceX too. But wrong country and wrong profession, lol. Don't think they need chemists for anything. Still, won't stop me from appreciating what they do.

Making History has some pretty neat structural tubes.

SLS will get really badly beaten up by New Glenn. A decade later New Armstrong (trained by New Glenn) will defeat both BFR and SLS, founding the New Republic shortly after.

Speaking of fairing recovery... Looks pretty wrecked. Seawater must be like acid to fairings.

It can really synergize well with SpaceX’s attitude towards making humans interplanetary species: “we provide the means of transportation, others figure out everything else”. NASA in this case can use their billions not to build a stupid rocket, but to develop the technologies needed to survive out there (something that can’t be commercialized). And then, after a decade (or two) of R&D, businesses can take over once again, using these technologies to build Moon hotels, mine asteroids for precious metals, etc. But I guess we're going to be stuck with SLS and LOP-G instead. Meh.

Doesn't have to be the same route multiple times per day. A single BFS can hop between major cities not too far from each other, carrying 100 or so people every time.

500 people with luggage will be something like 35-50t. Probably too much for single stage, NYC-Sydney flight. But transatlantic flights, with optimized engine setup (e.g. 5 SL and 3 Vac Raptors), IMO, can happen.

Means that NG is almost as capable as FH. Not bad. It can probably outdo FH for BLEO payloads.

So, when she said that they’re going to build bigger BFRs in the future, does that mean they may possibly return to the 12m ITS design? Keep BFR doing work in near-Earth space, and use the bigger ITS for interplanetary flights?

So this engine is supposed to be used with their Launcher One rocket, which is kinda like Falcon 1, but costs more and lifts less. How exactly is it going to pay off?

Less thrust on upper stage - steeper ascent - less horizontal velocity on stage sep - easier to RTLS the booster (or smaller braking burn needed if using a drone ship). Easier booster recovery may outweigh the payload penalty from increased gravity losses.

No, they are different rockets, but SHLV will use several Soyuz-5 cores as boosters for its first stage.

Yes and it's very funny considering that Rogozin said recently that Russia needs to switch from rocket launch business to satellite manufacturing business.

Maybe with expendable first stage, and then two hydrolox stages... Yea, still sounds a bit too high. I only heard the 45t number, but that was for the two stage variant with first stage reuse. It’s probably outdated info by now.

Found this nice video about history, current state and future plans of Blue Origin. (Disregard SpaceX in the title, there’s very little of it)

It’s not the “Forum”, just a couple of impatient players. I, for instance, don’t give a damn about update release dates (or mod update dates). It's out when it’s done, and my questions or demands are certainly not going to affect its readiness.