sh1pman

So, today Putin unveiled an interesting piece of rocket technology: a nuclear-powered cruise missile with (supposedly) unlimited range. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/putin-claims-russia-has-nuclear-arsenal-capable-of-avoiding-missile-defenses/2018/03/01/d2dcf522-1d3b-11e8-b2d9-08e748f892c0_story.html?utm_term=.5a3844d81eff Any ideas how it might work? NTR? Nuclear thermal jet? Something else?

Thanks! Yea, I have plans for a longer version with much more crew capacity than that tiny capsule. Question though: does it have to be a command pod, or just a Hitchhiker will be enough?

And sooner or later one of these sentient, self-replicating machines (that can build anything) will malfunction and realize that they don’t really need humans and can continue colonizing the universe on their own. Too many problems with those biological bodies!

DSG got renamed to LOP-G. https://web.archive.org/web/20180226175759/http://www.planetary.org/blogs/jason-davis/2018/20180226-lop-g-snark-details.html

There is a speculation on Reddit about its capabilities, but nothing official yet. It might dwarf that other monster rocket that recently got its own thread due to its awesomeness.

BO's future LC-49 is right beside it too. Just across the street. Coincidence?..

AFAIK, they're planning to launch from Mojave, where their hangars and manufacturing buildings are.

First two are launched vertically. And stratolaunch, does it even need to be at KSC? I thought it could take off from just about anywhere.

So... what’s going to be launched from this horizontal area?

So I found this article on NSF about the BO plans for future launch pads in Florida: https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2018/01/kennedy-cape-brownsville-launch-pads-schedules/ And there is a picture there: And it made me wonder... what the bloody heck is that Horizontal Launch Area for?!

(Whoops, wrong thread, don’t mind me)

I think the right way to do it would be like this: take off with full tanks, get to cruising altitude and speed, note the fuel consumption. Revert to SPH, set the fuel to 5%, take off, get the second fuel drain speed similarly. Then calculate the range using the average of two numbers.

Let’s say it’s 5 million per BFR launch (saw this figure somewhere on SpaceX thread). To go to the Moon and back you need multiple in-orbit refuelings, 5 to 10. That’s 25-50M for the entire trip. Divide it by 100 tourists that SpaceX can fit in one BFR, and you get $250-500k per ticket. That’s assuming the hotel is already there and its construction is not contributing to the ticket cost.

And here I thought Cold War was over.

You sure it’s not the other way round?

Will SpaceX try to save the fairing after Hispasat launch?

Constellation got too big and expensive, so we ended up with SLS. When SLS gets too big and expensive, it’ll be replaced by something else. Not necessarily more sensible.

Leaning tower of SLS, marvelous. Kinda symbolic, too.

So NASA plans to put people on a rocket that never flew before as a single stack? But it’s NOT SAFE!

Actually, it IS dumb for them to continue with SLS if they can instead make their own version of BFR. If SpaceX can do it, NASA can do it as well. Even starting from scratch would be a better idea than this whole SLS-DSG stuff. @Kerbal7 so you like iterative design? No problem, it can start without orbital refilling capabilities, ambitious Mars colony plans, even without a crewed version. Just a launcher with two reusable stages that require minimal to no refurbishment between flights. And it will be a bomb on LEO launch market already. Start small, test things out, then add new stuff. Like refilling in orbit. Or bigger stages. Or crewed upper stage. Every step will improve its capabilities and open up new destinations. In the end, it will be a rocket that can do any mission, while also being very cheap, compared to the SLS that can barely do anything useful. A fully reusable and refillable rocket will be able to do everything that’s planned for SLS, and much more, for a fraction of the cost.

Does SpaceX have an iTunes album with their stream music or something like that?

I'd rather have another JWST or Curiosity or Juno, etc. than a second ISS designed as a busy work for an overpriced rocket.

Orion is unable to go far beyond LEO anyway. Its deep space exploration missions will be capped at high/elliptical Moon orbit. To go anywhere further than that you'll need DST, which requires a working DSG, which is probably even further back in development than BFR.

Trying to increase the density of atmosphere on Mars is pointless, without magnetic field it'll be blown away into space by solar wind anyway.