zolotiyeruki

I think it's important to remember that the "$X hundreds per kg to orbit" is a bit misleading. It's an average cost. The first 1kg of cargo onboard a cargo dragon costs tens of millions of dollars. The last kg costs a few tens of dollars (for the extra fuel) at most.

Sorry, I'm behind on a bunch of stuff--life got crazy for a few days. I'll try to get to it tonight.

Two launch mounts (and sets of catching arms) makes me wonder about the idea of a SuperHeavyHeavy, with two side boosters and a core. I wouldn't want to be near such a beast during launch, that's for sure!

Even if SpaceX don't end up launching a given SH multiple times per day, there are *definitely* advantages to designing the whole system (SH + tower and everything with it) for rapid reuse. Lots of time (and therefore money) saved by not having to haul it back to shore, offload it, tip it over, transport it to the rocket factory, refurbish it, integrate it, truck it out to the launch pad, tip it up, etc. The new process, assuming it works, is "stick the booster back on the pad, stack SS on top, refuel, push the big red button." That certainly fits with the "best part is no part" ethos.

Cool! Let us know how it goes, and post the craft file if you can as well. You might also try using something like Precise Editor to vary the AoI of the wings--when I experimented with it, 3 or 4 degrees (and more wings) was more efficient than 5 degrees and fewer wings.

Thanks for the info on the tanks. Ok, having gone down a few of those rabbit holes about KSP's drag model, I unfortunately have to classify the nose-cones-in-a-fairing as an exploit. It is similar in a lot of ways to the "stick a shock cone on the back of the engine and offset it inward." At one point, out of curiosity, I actually ran the comparison with and without that rear nose cone, and found that it reduced drag by something like 30%.

The reason I ask is because it feels pretty exploity--in the real world, putting a nose cone inside a fairing won't affect your parasitic drag. What are the 0.625m LF tanks arranged around? It looks like you've got eight, radially attached, but I can't fit 8 around a 6.25m tank without overlapping, and if I attach them to a 1.25m core, there are gaps between them.

Do you have a reference for that? This is the first I've heard of that particular trick.

Why would you put the intake on the inside of the fairing? And what's the benefit of putting nose cones inside the fairing as well?

Hey @camacju would you mind posting the craft file for the airplane you took around 23 times? I'm trying to replicate it in stock KSP, and can't seem to match the arrangement.

What if, after landing on Mars, the now-empty tanks get reused as additional living/working space, a la a wet lab?

The idea is that there are (or may be) people who are unwilling to live in Texas as a result of the recent law that was passed, and so they will not pursue (or continue) employment with SpaceX in Texas. So SpaceX could be missing out on some talent.

If you're returning stuff from orbit, it seems like you could ferry up a reentry capsule (a refurbished cargo dragon, perhaps?), stuff your spools of fiber optics in that, and deorbit/recover it in the traditional manner.

Ah, interesting--I've never tried to fly a RAPIER at sea level that fast. You'll have to excuse my asking lots of questions--you've beaten the previous record by a substantial margin, so I want to make sure everything is kosher. For example, wings attached to parts inside a fairing, and sticking out of the fairing, *might* be an exploit. If having them attached internally but protruding through the fairing affects their performance, that's an exploit. The rules don't say anything against ablator being consumed, and the heatshield stays attached, so that's ok. No, deploying a fairing (i.e. shedding it) is not allowed--all the parts need to stay attached throughout. Out of curiosity, what did you have in mind?

How did you get to over 1900m/s? RAPIERS flame out at 1753 or so.

Looking at the tiles on the aerocovers, it sure seems like SpaceX is having to do the same thing at STS did--while not every tile is unique, there sure are a lot of custom tile shapes over there!

The spirit of the challenge is that the craft should be something that could be reasonably constructed in realspace. Tanks poking out through the fairing is something that exploits the physics engine, and a fairing that's z-fighting with most of your fuselage probably needs to be made ever-so-slightly wider.

Command pods are allowed (I've used them plenty). It's command chairs that aren't. For that speed run, it appears that there's a fair amount of clipping going on. That isn't allowed. Also, there's lots of.....stripes? around the cockpit and RAPIER. What's going on there?

Yup, that'll do it. You need to put the second PilotAssistant folder (the one deeper in the file tree) into the KSP GameData folder.

Hmmm, I don't know. Simple question, though: are you sure you installed it in the right folder?

I finally got around to watching the stream. Right after SES, and during the boostback, those were some really cool exhaust interactions!

Dang, color me impressed. What angle of incidence did you use on your wings? I've added you to the leaderboard. You've earned it.

Where else would you propose? It's gotta be on an eastern shoreline, and as far south as possible, and be undeveloped, yet have a road to it. Florida's east coast is pretty much all taken up, which leaves Texas. There don't appear (to my unexpert eye) to be many options that meet those criteria. EDIT: Ninja'd by CatastrophicFailure.

@mikegarrison your points are well taken. IMO, SpaceX gets all the love vs Boeing because: There's a bit of David-and-Goliath going on. Regardless of the reality, there's a perception that the government is putting its thumb on the scales in favor of Boeing (dollars awarded for comparable if not exactly similar objectives, for example). Regulators seem to turn a blind eye toward Boeing, while standing in SpaceX's way. Again, that's the perception, not necessarily the reality, but it's there. And when those legacy contractors appear to be throwing obstacles in SpaceX's path, it comes across as rent-seeking, whether those objections have merit or not. Boeing's been doing aerospace for a long, long time, so there's a expectation that stuff they make will Just Work. There's not much to show (again, for the average public) for the billions of dollars and years of work put into SLS. ("C'mon, you had a massive head start, with engines already built, and SRBs already developed and tested. What's taking you so freakin' long!? We went from nothing to landing on the moon in eight years!") There's a long-festering animosity toward government and military contractors who appear to consistently overpromise, underdeliver, overcharge, and underperform. A perception that their goal is to milk the taxpayer for as much money as possible, rather than deliver exciting, groundbreaking stuff. Whatever the actual engineering challenges, to the non-techy public, there's nothing exciting about Starliner or SLS. All of that stuff has been done before, and many times. It's Just Another Space Capsule and Just Another Big Rocket, doing the same kind of things we've already seen. To the uneducated, there's a perception of "we've been doing this for fifty years. Why are they having so much trouble with it?" On the other hand, SpaceX are doing something novel and exciting. If it were not for booster recovery, there'd be (from the public's perspective) not much interesting about the Falcon 9, because it'd be Just Another Big Rocket. But flipping your booster around after stage separation, and attempting to recover it by landing it on a barge in the middle of the ocean, while livestreaming it, is exciting and new. If/when SS/SH is ready, it is promising to cut launch costs by an order of magnitude. That's exciting. SpaceX have consistently set the bar low, so some level of success is guaranteed. SpaceX have something to show frequently. SpaceX show their failures, and their failures are benign, if not outright fun ("How not to launch an orbital class rocket booster") The frequency with which SpaceX "show" stuff gives assurance to the public, because we can witness the progress being made. "Whoops, we ran out of TEA-TEB. Easy fix." Rather than "It'll take us six months and umpteen million dollars to analyze this software glitch." On the other hand, (e.g. Starliner) when you don't see the progress along the way, you expect the finished product to be "just right." Again, a lot of this is just perception.

Well, I think it'll certainly help they're using methane instead of RP-1. Even a giant spill of that will just evaporate quickly instead of running off and spreading into the environment. I mean, sure, there's still the explosion risk, and the whole greenhouse effect of a large plume of methane, but it won't stay in the water.