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KSK

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  1. KSK
    Doesn't matter. The engine is still going to end up full of seawater and, as we've already seen with SpaceX's soft touchdowns on water, as soon as the booster falls over, it breaks up. Like Kryten said, it's difficult to deal with on a purely structural level.
  2. KSK
    Then you stick three of those together into a single stage. Go big... and go anywhere! Yep it does, although the N1 was hamstrung by being an all or nothing affair. The individual engines could be tested for sure but they were never tested together - other than building an actual rocket and lighting it. Each of the three nine-engine cores in a Falcon Heavy has been pretty extensively tested - or rather the design has been extensively tested - already. More importantly, computer control systems have moved on quite a bit from the KORD system used in the N1! Also (and I can't find a good source for this) but I've heard that the double ring of engines on the N1 1st stage caused problems with pressure waves and combustion instability, whereas the three Falcon Heavy cores should be independent of each other.
  3. KSK
    Gracefully done. It's not much but have a 'like' for that.
  4. KSK
    Hmmm, I can't actually find a source for that lack of reuse. The CRS flights all used a new Dragon if I recall rightly, so I assumed that the CCrew flights would too. Well - you know what they say about the word 'assume'.
  5. KSK
    It's certainly possible in principle - the Soviet Blok D used LOX and was intended for lunar flights, including MOI and PDI burns plus a final restart and use as a crasher stage. Whether or not the Falcon upper stage is similarly capable, I'm not sure.
  6. KSK
    Company promotes technology as the next greatest thing Company finds out that next greatest thing can't be made to work / can't be scaled up / can't be made to work economically / doesn't fit with changing priorities and/or other technology they've developed in the meantime. Company puts once-greatest thing on the back burner. Seems perfectly reasonable to me. Much better than pigheadedly insisting that your technology is the latest and greatest thing when faced with a mounting pile of evidence telling everyone else the exact opposite. It's also much more of a start-up / Silicon Valley approach to business, which is hardly surprising given Musk's background. Think how many projects Google started for example, only to abandon them later (often leaving an established user-base high and dry in the process). Also - I think it works for them (SpaceX). It generates a buzz and gives them the aura of a company that's innovating and not afraid to try new things or even take a fresh look at old things that were previously deemed to be unworkable . Granted, it only gives them that aura because they've also been successful enough that that stream of ideas and 'pet projects' can't quite be dismissed as vaporware or marketing spin. Either way as a non-industry outsider looking in, I find it refreshing to see a company essentially doing some of their brainstorming in public - and it's always interesting seeing what SpaceX are thinking of doing next, even if some it looks like a stretch goal (to put it mildly) when they announce it.
  7. KSK
    That's what I'm wondering too. Sure - not throwing away that engine would be nice but is it worth the expense of redesigning a working booster, redesigning the Dragon 2, re-certifying both designs and dealing with very large quantities of unpleasant hypergols? My guess is probably not. Also, at the moment, there is quite a lot of commonality between the propellant tanks on both of the F9 stages which helps keep manufacturing costs down. Unless you can use the same tank design for storing and using hypergols as you can for kerolox (which seems unlikely to me but I don't have a sound basis for that), then SpaceX would need a separate production line for its upper stage tanks, which would add expense. Finally - and I'm really reaching into areas of personal non-expertise here, so this may be a load of baloney - but replacing the current upper stage with your hypergol drop tank could change the mass distribution along your rocket quite substantially, unless the drop tanks are the same height as the current upper stage and the hypergols have the same density as kerosene/LOX. That sounds as though it could change the vibration modes of that rocket quite a bit, leading to possible structural problems, pogo problems and a bunch of other things that I don't even know about. Insert obligatory 'real life rocketry isn't like KSP' comment here. With all that said, it's a neat idea but I think one which is probably outweighed by its operational drawbacks.
  8. KSK
    Merchandising - that's where it's at. KSP the mug, KSP the delicious minty icecream desert, KSP the tea towel...
  9. KSK
    The MCT is going to be Nova levels of insanity awesome, if not more, I reckon.
  10. KSK
    I wonder (serious question) what sort of instrumentation you could put on one of those? A network of 1500 cubesats would be one heck of a science platform - potentially at any rate. Also - adding to the reused hardware comments - remember that NASA will be requiring a new Dragon for each commercial crew flight, possibly giving SpaceX a small fleet of paid-for, only slightly scorched Mars landers to play with. If nothing else it might give them a few more relatively affordable practice shots at the landing. Of course that depends on what the eventual spec of a stock Dragon 2 is, and what needs doing to them to convert them to iDragons. iDragon being an Interplanetary Dragon, of course. But man - if all this works out, tell me this isn't the coolest win-win ever! Highly price competitive launchers for their customers - to be recovered and repurposed into Mars hardware at a complete steal. Next question - Dragon2 is intended for landing anywhere. So where else can it get to, assuming a Falcon Heavy launcher, given what we know about those?
  11. KSK
    Exactly! We've got a private company seriously contemplating a mission to Mars, at their own expense, to test a propulsive landing system that will hopefully pave the way to bigger cargos than ever before being delivered to Mars. Whether that cargo is more rovers, more science experiments in general, prototype ISRU units - whatever floats your boat. So far, all I've seen on this thread is a lot of naysaying, half-assed backseat engineering and complaining that the thing won't be launched fast enough, won't be launched at all or will be worthless anyway because it's not carrying enough science so why bother. Bah. Send me your address on a postcard and I'll mail out the slices of humble pie (best eaten with one's own shorts) in 2020. Yeah - I think 2018 is a stretch too - sue me.
  12. KSK
    Regardless of anything else, that's still an impressively heavy brick to be landing on Mars. It's not strictly comparable of course but the Curiosity rover only(?) weighed 0.9 T, with the entire rover and EDL package weighing in at about 3.3 T. Plus a minimal surface science package means much less redesign and testing of the Red Dragon will be required. I'm betting that the capsule itself will be wired up every which way so that SpaceX can get as much data on the descent and landing as they possibly can.
  13. KSK
    It's a crude solution but it works. I'll get my coat...
  14. KSK
    This makes sense to me, given that NASA have reportedly worked with SpaceX before on supersonic retropropulsive maneuvers. Any additional science payload they can build in time would be a bonus. A SpaceX stunt? I disagree. Or rather - yes it will be a great piece of PR if they pull it off but it also has the rather more serious purpose of giving them an opportunity for them to gain experience with most of the elements involved in getting to Mars and getting something useful to the surface in future. As others have pointed out, they still have plenty to work on for deep-space operations.
  15. KSK
    How many combatants do you see getting involved in a lunar battle? There's a big difference between total annihilation, Cold War nuclear exchange style and total annihilation of a platoon or two of infantry. Besides, there's plenty of room on the Moon for everyone for the foreseeable future, simply because getting people there and keeping them there is such a major undertaking. Why does there only have to be a single base at the peak of eternal light? If you can't agree on a way of sharing that extremely expensive space elevator, then there's no good reason why you couldn't build two. The exact position of that anchor point isn't going to be critical. And this is yet another reason why the whole idea of lunar combat is stupid. Anyone on the Moon is so heavily dependent on equipment just to stay alive, let alone fight, that the borderline between a limited engagement and total annihilation becomes hair thin. If I pop a hole in your spacesuit, it doesn't much matter how badly injured you are - the chances are that you're going to die anyway. Taking prisoners becomes a very cold exercise in 'how many more people can we fit in our base and still keep the life support running.' Planning to capture enemy assets? Better hope they haven't booby-trapped the airlock. So you don't bother. You send an ultimatum: 'evacuate your base within one month or we drop a spent booster on it at the next available launch window.' Or if you absolutely must capture those enemy assets (for whatever trumped up reason you care to give), then you send in the drones, wipe out all the defenders and potential saboteurs and move in. Or simply punch a big enough hole in it to kill everyone inside, wait till they run out of backup air, repair the hole and move in. If they try to fly in additional supplies, it really wouldn't take much to disable a rocket powered lander, at which point it does a thoroughly convenient job of plastering itself all over the regolith. There's just no earthly reason to get involved in this idiocy and if you must get involved, there's even less reason to hamstring yourself (and risk your own troops in the process) with the niceties of limited warfare.
  16. KSK
    Although melting the sand to make the lens to focus the laser would be a real trick without fire. Never mind manufacturing any sort of lasing medium.
  17. KSK
    Nope - because Lunar combat is a dumb idea (even supposing that there's something to fight over on the Moon), given that the resources and logistics required to get any sort of combat materiel to the Moon is so disproportionately higher than the effort involved to drop a couple of tons of metal on that materiel at high speed. From Wikipedia on the LCROSS mission. The Centaur impact was expected to excavate more than 350 metric tons (390 short tons) of lunar material and create a crater about 20 m (65 ft) in diameter to a depth of about 4 m (13 ft). The Shepherding Spacecraft impact was projected to excavate an estimated 150 metric tons (170 short tons) and create a crater 14 m (46 ft) in diameter to a depth of about 2 m (6 ft). Most of the material in the Centaur debris plume was expected to remain at (lunar) altitudes below 10 km (6 mi).[1] LCROSS started from a polar orbit and so hit the Moon at the relatively low velocity of 9000 km/h. Even so, it made quite a mess. If your Moonbase is anywhere that can be reached by an impactor on a direct trajectory from Earth that doesn't need to bother with that pesky slowing-down-to-go-into orbit procedure - well it's goodbye Moonbase. Unless you can bury it seriously far underground, which is a non trivial task in itself. As for infantry combat in spacesuits - you are kidding right?
  18. KSK
    That was dreadful. Dreadfully dreadful. One virtual sugar-glass bottle flying towards your stage as we speak, sir!
  19. KSK
    Ooooh - can we get a cameo from a troop of burly fisherkerbs too?
  20. KSK
    I think it also helps that they are visibly making progress, even if that progress is a combination of necessary steps and recapitulating earlier achievements by other companies and organisations. Which is not to downplay them in the slightest - rockets are a solved problem but solved does not mean easy to repeat. Falcon 1, multiple iterations of Falcon 9, Dragon, Dragon 2. Multiple iterations of the Merlin engine, each more powerful than the one before. Kestrel, Draco, SuperDraco. Missions to the ISS and if all goes well, crewed flights starting next year. Then of course, there's the whole reusability program, which just ticks every geek box in me, even if the economics have yet to be proven. Somebody is finally trying to break that chicken-and-egg problem of which do you need first - cheaper launch vehicles or more demand for them. Finally, there is the public image. SpaceX was founded to, well, go to space. Spaceflight isn't just another branch of the company - it's the whole reason for the company. Plus, whatever else you may think about the man, Elon does a fine job of self-deprecation and having a dry sense of humour about the test flight failures. Customer flight failures are another matter of course. So yeah, I appreciate the harder-headed comments on this thread too but I don't find it hard to see why folks (including me) can get starry-eyed about them.
  21. KSK
    Have to admit that this choked me up some. Not sure how I've managed to miss this series but I'm catching up right now. And I love the mission patches!
  22. KSK
    OK, I can't resist this. As usual all singing can be deleted at request of thread starter. Serve up the vodka and the beets! They're what good Ussaris eat, A foot of snow just makes us scoff, Scoff with a hacking rattail cough. Yakkity-yak - don't talk back. The Empress (may she live forever), Reigns on through cold and frozen weather. Our politics are not so murky, Just tougher than yak jerky. Yakkity-yak - don't talk back. Yakkity-yak, yakkity-yak. Yakkity-yak, yakkity-yak. Yakkity-yak, yakkity-yak. Yakkity-yak - don't talk back.
  23. KSK
    I suspect that Comrade Kermanskiovitch would not wholly approve of that doctrine. A little too 'overly patriotic', da? Edit: Although, no doubt the Party finds it convenient to have a representative in lowing places... I'll get my coat.
  24. KSK
    Took me a fair bit of re-reading to find it (which I confess was no hardship) - and it turns out I was wrong. Chapter 48: Close Encounters of The Weird Kind *snip* Jerdous opened his mouth as their eyes met, then paused. He stepped forward, looking intently at her. Then closer still. "What?" She blinked. His eyes... it looked like there were little-- "Specks," he said, "those little iridescent specs in the whites of your eyes..." Not exactly little black specks - more the complete opposite I'm guessing. Of course it may be a harmless inherited condition... and yaks may be appointed Kommisar too I believe.
  25. KSK
    Seeing the same behavior here. Also, I never thought I'd hear myself saying this (keep that spoon away from me, Berdous!) but I prefer the comic sans version. The handwritten version is a little too authentically 'doctor's note' unreadable. But that might just be these old eyes.
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