RedKraken

RTLS reserve fuel is ~16% sep@1800m/s (vhoriz 1250) for F9. When i punch in 16% reserve for the tankers, it drops LEO payload to 50 tonnes. Ouch. On the positive side, i'm getting a nice matchup in RO 1.3.1 for the 130t to LEO using ASDS.

Looks like it. The tankers/boosters have to land downrange or ASDS. RTLS costs way too much at higher speed seps (50% reserve for vhoriz 3300m/s) Tankers might achieve 65t dry by themselves.... 20t worth of structure margin Cargo at 75t ... 10t of margin Crew at 85t .... zero margin Re-done with crew @ 95t (10t margin) gives about 125t to LEO (Engine setup is 12-7-12, ie 12 engines on each tanker, 7 on the center core)

For 31 engines total, i get about 130t to LEO, compared to about 115t for standard 2018BFR. Dry masses still at ~85t. 1600t propellant in the boosters, 1100t in the core.

7 sea level engines on each BFS.... total 21. thrust 200t, isp 330-356s each.

I am getting about 60t to leo from my spreadsheets for triamese BFR2018. Im using 85t dry, 1000t methalox, stage at 33% fuel remaining in center core. Throttle control for core, no crossfeed. Not using 1100t since the twr drops to 1.20 It would be about 80t if you could run the engines harder - 115% thrust. Going to need very strong attachments to keep three 1100 tonne ships together. The dry mass is going to be more than 85t i think.

Maybe the BFS will land horizontally with new leg arrangement ("front canards as legs" from Stranded) and thrusters. SevenPerforce suggested this a year or so back. Or maybe the rear leg arrangement is reflected forward (about the mid-point) to give the BFS "horns" .... lands upside down...with thrusters. That way the cargo would be closest to the ground. Looking forward to the reddit ama. This years BFR update has been a roller coaster.

Cygnus launch in 2min......

Cygnus launch in 2hrs @wallops. RD-181s!!! Don't get to see these engines launch very often. Live : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwMDvPCGeE0 https://twitter.com/northropgrumman https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=45110.100 https://www.reddit.com/r/NorthropGrumman/comments/9va55s/antares_230_cygnus_ng10_launch_updates_and/

Bob Zubrin is pimping an actual mini-BFS for a mars return duties. It significantly lower ISRU requirements....so 8 football fields of solar down to less than 1 i guess. https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/9xogzb/im_dr_robert_zubrin_of_the_mars_society_here_to/ Anyone else like the idea? I think I'd remove ISRU altogether for the bootstrap missions. No ice mining. No football fields of solar. Big guy lands enough propellant for a little guy to bring you home. Surface rendezvous. "Twins". Apologies to Arnie and Danny DeVito. In more detail : BFS (tanker maybe?) lands 100 tons of methalox on mars surface. Landing tanks would have to be resized to protect the extra propellant against boil-off). So 80t reserve tanks resize to 180 or 200t. sFS lands couple of km away configured as a return vehicle. But no propellant left. Crewed mission lands couple of km away in another BFR (with refueling truck onboard). 2 year mission proceeds. Refueling "truck" (landed separately) transfers propellant from BFS to the sFS at the end of the surface mission. When sFR has a half tank, it can fly home to earth. Size the sFR at 1/8 or 1/10 scale of the BFS. Empty BFS requires half-load propellant (550t) to get home. A sFS configured with 4-5 months supplies and crew should be able to get home on less than 100t of propellant.

Some methane engine designs to compare to raptor : RD-0164 (340t, 311-358s,3t) and RD-0169 (73t, 372s,0.75t?) both FRSC, look very promising from 2015. here - https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=32161.40 Could do 2SL + 1vac + S1 landing thrusters(4mx65m, 440t) for roughly Falcon 9 performance : 14t LEO, 4t GTO , RTLS S1, expend S2. Or 9+1 all SL (7.4mx90m, 2100t) for roughly New Glenn performance : 55t LEO, 12t GTO, RTLS S1, expend S2. I would rather see single stick designs that go past 4.1m diameter than multiple urm style. Give up rail / road transport of cores. Fly piggyback or ship. These engine designs were presented 3 -4 years old now, we need to see some test stand data. Anything really. Most recent thing i could find on soyuz-7 : http://tass.com/science/1029619

Looking forward to another mars edl with insight. Always exciting. Plus some very interesting science on this one.

Energia-Buran gave us the fantastic RD-170 engine, which has flown about 70 times on zenit launches. And may fly on the soyuz-5 design. Spawned the RD-180, which has flown about 70 times on atlas V. Spawned the RD-191 and RD-181 which has flown a couple times each on angara and antares. Check out the cygnus (antares 230) launch in about 24hrs time at wallops. Around 150 launches so far. They are heavy, expensive engines, but the performance is outstanding for kerolox. For 25 years, they were the best RP-1 sea-level engines money could buy. (They can't compete with merlins low cost(10%) and superb twr(220%), and raptor looks unbeatable by anything)

Electron liftoff

launch replay

Orbit.....coasting to circ burn by kick.

Electron T-20min https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPwMuUxSrcA

Electron T - 5hrs : needs some business LOX. rehost from https://twitter.com/RocketLab

Electron : 3 days to Nov 11 launch window.... get your business socks ready. rehost from https://twitter.com/RocketLab/status/1059740136617926657

This mockup from purpleefilth on r/spacex I would rename it : "Calm yourselves...its just a test" link https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/9v2j0d/elon_musk_mod_to_spacex_tech_tree_build_falcon_9/e98wqtk

Too heavy? A fairing half is about 1 tonne. This thing could be 4-5 tonnes?

Little Falcon Test Ship ..... I can imagine how nervous his engineers were about testing launch and reentry on an expensive 9m Ship. They can smash up a few little falcons without breaking the bank. I am a little disappointed we didn't get to see a methane F9 on a new methane pad at KSC. Using the f9 tooling and whatever design/plumbing mods it needed for autogen press and methane rcs. Would have been very cool.

Keep tweeting Elon!

Thats a bingo. BO might be able to undercut current F9 big GTO payloads by quite a margin - is 10M per Launch reasonable? But time to market is also key. BO have not launched anything to orbit yet.

One F9 upper stage to LFS conversion kit please. 1. [RP-1] or methane? Sea level engine? 2. CF or [LiAl]? 3. TPS, drag fins and upgrade to structural strength for skydiving entry? 4. Landing with thrusters? superDracs? [chutes]? bouncy castle? 5. Dry mass will go up a lot. 4200kg -> ? Edit : looks like it is just a demonstrator to test TPS, drag fins, and reentry profile. I'll bet they are testing launch characteristics, maxq as well.

Korolev would have been very disappointed with that sep. Its cool that soyuz can fail and still save the crew.