Ultimate Steve

Well, it looks like I'm skipping the first part of Youth Group.

Is the abort system still functional?

Oh... I thought you were being serious!

I'm out of the loop, what happened for April Fool's?

And that's presumably for 4 seats and not 7! Tourism opportunities are there for less!

Ah, that's an interesting concept... I may have to investigate if I have free time soon... Thank you for making me aware of this!

Not today, but over the past few days:

Complete!

Mission complete. Now for the video. It may take a day, it may take a month, as I said before.

Block 5 is the fifth main version of the Falcon 9. Nobody knows exactly what the naming system means, but a lot of people think that Falcon 9 1.0 was Block 1, 1.1 was Block 2, 1.2/Full Thrust was Block 3, Block 4 was a few upgrades to 1.2, and Block 5 is the current and most likely final version. This Falcon Heavy is made up of three block 5 cores.

Delta IV Heavy has a listed payload to LEO of 28.8 tons. If Orion is 25 tons total, that leaves only 3.8 tons of propellant to push the thing beyond LEO, and I haven't done the math but it seems fishy.

Oh, I read that wrong the first time and thought you came up 80m/s short and not 80m/s extra. However, given boiloff, S2 will lose Delta-V over time, so unless the rendezvous is lightning fast, the 80m/s margin will evaporate quickly. In that case, would some sort of Dragon based burn be beneficial? Also, what would be bad about using SuperDracos for this? Acceleration would be manageable. 2 of them, even assuming they are mounted on axis, produce 142kN of thrust, and they can be throttled to 20%, so 28.4kN, giving a minimum acceleration of <0.1g, if I did my math right.

@sevenperforce I think I may have found a hole in your plan. We know (barring a redesign of Orion which may very well have happened) that Orion can withstand the g forces of acceleration. However, we don't know if Dragon 2 can. At 0.9g acceleration, docking to Orion and pushing it around would be akin to putting a 25 ton weight on top of Dragon in Earth gravity, more than twice Dragon's mass. I don't think it's designed to handle those forces. Also, I don't know how deep the SuperDracos can throttle, but IIRC you said Orion needed another push even after the stage two burn. Maybe the Abort system on Dragon 2 has enough fuel for that, if operated at a very low throttle, perhaps with only 2 SuperDraco engines. Actually, at that point you may be better off just using the Dracos, they are more efficient but I'm not sure if they are pointing the right direction, so accounting for cosine losses the SuperDracos may be better...

C I T A D E L This mission actually didn't require much effort to put together. A long time ago, I tried to do a Solid Rocket Booster Grand Tour. I did Eve, Gilly, and got halfway to Moho, but I did not have time to launch what probably would have been at least 8 SRB segments (massive refuelers of a sort) and rendezvous them in solar orbit just to get the mothership to Moho. And then I had to get it all the way from Moho to Jool, that was the plan at least. The precision was most likely not good enough to do gravity assists, unfortunately. The mission was possible on paper, but I didn't have time for it in real life. But, because of starting that challenge, I have SRB only landers for every planet and moon at my disposal, as well as an SRB only lifter that can launch 500-600 tons to LKO, which is actually a bit overpowered for this mission. All I had to do was build the return ship and the transfer stages. I replaced the old texture SRBs and decouplers on the lander, but I didn't bother with the lifter, that's too much replacing to do, so some parts of the craft are going to have the old textures. Assuming I did my math right, and the struts hold, I'm ready to go. I can't say when the video will be up, though. I don't know how long it will take me to fly this thing. the mission may be done tomorrow, it may take a month.

Many of the newer ones should be back-compatible. I tried Tundra, and at least the BFR portion didn't work. I'll see if I can get Dragon working. Any idea which Orion or Dragon mod would be best? Orion in particular, I've never looked at Orion mods before.

Do you know any 1.2 compatible Orion and Dragon 2 mods? If so, I can make them. Also, are Orion and Dragon 2's docking ports compatible?

Speaking of space tourism, if we say that Starship misses its cost mark by 10x and crew capacity mark by 5x, you can still send 20 people to Low Earth Orbit for 5 million dollars each (60M total) and around the moon for 10 million dollars each (initial DearMoon projections showed no refueling trips but I'm assuming it doesn't reach that mass fraction and needs one tanker flight). According to one googled article, there are ~75,000 Americans with more than 30 million dollars. If 0.5% of those would consider a flight around the moon, then that's 375 tourists and 19 flights. The actual percentage of the ultra wealthy wanting to go to space may be less (or even more), but America is not the only country either. If Starship, by some miracle, hits its cost and crew estimates (I do not believe this will happen, 6m is insanely optimistic and 100 people in something that size is really crowded), that's 60k per LEO flight and 120k per circumlunar flight (1 refueler), which significantly opens up space. Suborbital tickets are currently selling for twice the best case scenario circumlunar tickets, so if it can get down to within even a few times the best case scenario cost, tourism may be a large market, and will at least be a market. Also @ZooNamedGames and @tater I must complement you on your debate. You have not, to my knowledge, expressed visible anger towards each other in text yet. Pretty much anywhere else on the internet, this would have long since disintegrated into a shouting match. I have no wish to get involved in the debate myself, as I would probably start shouting, but I do agree with parts of what both of you are saying.

I don't mean to make this into a chore, but using RSS and visual enhancements might also be better. I did this for a class project a few weeks ago. I couldn't get Tundra working in 1.2, though, and I don't know if RSSVE is working for the most recent version.

So, by that logic, naming a Mars Spaceship "New Musk" would be completely out of the question, because he is South African.

Boeing probably can't take that much more bad PR right now, and NASA knows that, but it's still an easy shift to see through if you know anything about the industry.

Yep. @tater

If it is delayed to April 8, it will be on the third anniversary of the first droneship landing.

Falcon Heavy is vertical!

JWST begs to differ.

Does it really count as a flight? It was secured pretty tightly to the launch pad, it may have gone up a few inches but wasn't really intended to be a full flight.