Blue Origin Thread (merged)

[Frozen_Heart]

5 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Meanwhile...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/implication-of-sabotage-adds-intrigue-to-spacex-investigation/2016/09/30/5bb60514-874c-11e6-a3ef-f35afb41797f_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-more-top-stories_spacex-738am%3Ahomepage%2Fstory

Or more likely a piece of debris landed up there that they want to pick up. Literally all they asked was to go onto the roof, and it has been completely overblown.

[Technical Ben]

10 hours ago, Northstar1989 said:

The South Pole has the same problem as the Republic of Minerva- it's on Earth, so SOMEONE will try and enforce a claim on it if you seriously begin an effort to settle it...

Additionally, as I pointed out, it's actually a lot harder to keep warm on the South Pole than on Mars.  And huge drifts of snow and ice can cover solar panels and crush greenhouses.  I don't know why people keep insisting it would be easier to survive in the Antartic than on Mars- that's simply NOT true.  You require more heating, more insulation, and a lot more and more dangerous ourside maintenance just to keep the electricity running in the Antartic.  Just like Mars, unprotected exposure will very quickly kill you, but unlike Mars the atmosphere is dense enough for winds to pose a serious hazard (The Martian is unrealistic in this manner- the strongest winds on Mars hold less momentum than a light breeze on Earth...) and to covect all your heat away very quickly.  Compared to all that, the availability of free O2 is a relatively small boon.

Life on Mars would be more easily sustainable than life on Antartica.

 

Regards,

Northstar

And? Those on Mars? If someone wishes to enforce control, they do so here. Disable the launch facility. Make it "illegal". They won't shoot down people mid air, but then you could use that same argument on earth. Will they bomb the poles? Why? As long as your independent on Mars, you can be on the poles/deep seas.

Why can I be confident? If someone is willing to waste time invading or nuking the N/S Pole because they don't like you, they are willing to waste time doing the same but sending it to Mars.

No more heating, no more insulation. How cold is Mars compared to the Pole? Again. I said I'm only using logic and looking to educate with will facts and numbers. You claim Mars is easier because the Poles are colder due to the winds. Can we check that again?

You have brought up the winds. I did not consider them before. So is a single problem, winds, worth the trip? You loose oxygen, radiation protection, water, temperature, gravity, resupply, time to rescue, communication latency and gain "no storms" and "possible moral/social/governmental independence" slightly better than hiding at the pole it's self. Does that make sense to you?

 

(PS, for reference, this might be helpful: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McMurdo_Station I'll note they have no trouble heating the facility

Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amundsen–Scott_South_Pole_Station )

Edited October 2, 2016 by Technical Ben

[kerbiloid]

For me, the weakest place of the sniper conspirancy theory is: if there were a sniper, why he didn't wait until ignition, flame and thunder.

Edited October 2, 2016 by kerbiloid

[Frozen_Heart]

16 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

For me, the weakest place of the sniper conspirancy theory is: if there were a sniper, why he didn't wait until ignition, flame and thunder.

Also it would just punch a hole in a LOX or fuel tank. Not vaporise half the rocket. Pure LOX or kerosene isn't flammable.

You also might need incendiary rounds to light the fuel that did start spilling out, as that stuff isn't actually easy so set on fire.

[Technical Ben]

You mean shooting a barrel does not cause it to explode? Painting it red does not cause it to be more flammable?

[Kryten]

4 minutes ago, WildLynx said:

I wonder, what will happen, if blaming evidence will be found of ULA sabotage, like sniper decided to surrender and tell everything?

You might as well wonder what will happen if it turns out martians did it. We're not living in a Clancy novel.

[Northstar1989]

4 hours ago, Frozen_Heart said:

Or more likely a piece of debris landed up there that they want to pick up. Literally all they asked was to go onto the roof, and it has been completely overblown.

Well, there's a bit more than that.  Apparently they've eliminated all the "obvious" possible causes and thus are left investigating all sorts of oddball ones.  There's also the fact that they saw a flash and some kind of shadow up there just *before* the accident.  And that audio shows a softer bang right before the explosion.

Oh, and did I mention that ULA actually denied SpaceX access to the rooftop? (it's not like it's a space crammed full of company secrets- or at least, it shouldn't be- they could've let them up there...)  And then called in Air Force officials to go up there for them (the Air Force, of course, ULA has been building close friendships and allies with basically since the ULA was created.  So I would hardly call those unbiased investigators likely to notice if there actually was something up there implicating ULA involvement, or even helping explain the explosion- remember, ULA wants this investigation to drag on without results as long as possible because it's bad PR for SpaceX...)

I've watched enough documentaries about historical scandals and cases of industrial theft or sabotage to know something isn't quite right with this whole situation.  I wouldn't rule out that ULA had something to do with the explosion, especially given their proven penchant for underhanded tactics that really ought to be, or actualy  were, illegal (like trying to bar SpaceX from defense launch contracts in the first place- that violated soooo many antitrust laws, and should have gotten the ULA seriously fined...)

Maybe I'm biased.  Something about this explosion has seemed fishy to me from day one.  But SpaceX has previously been very good about figuring out the reasons for launch failures exceptionally quickly in the past.  If they have literally no clue what went wrong this time and have crossed off all the obvious possible technical causes, then there's a reasonable chance this actually was sabotage of some kind.  I really wouldn't put it beyond ULA...

 

Regards,

Northstar

Edited October 2, 2016 by Frybert

[Northstar1989]

2 hours ago, Frozen_Heart said:

Also it would just punch a hole in a LOX or fuel tank. Not vaporise half the rocket. Pure LOX or kerosene isn't flammable.

You also might need incendiary rounds to light the fuel that did start spilling out, as that stuff isn't actually easy so set on fire.

They said the explosion involved a breach of the second stage's helium pressurant system (which they have no clue why occurred).  That actually *could* have caused an explosion, although I don't know whether it could have been caused by a bullet...

 

Regards,

Northstar

Edited October 2, 2016 by Northstar1989

[Exoscientist]

13 hours ago, tater said:

Interesting link about total mission times:

http://www.csc.caltech.edu/talks/mazanek.pdf

Adding just a little dv makes a profound difference in travel times, however, assuming you can deal with the EDL at higher entry velocities. All tend to use that left part of the graph above (Hohmann upper left, basically). Low energy transfers can actually be as short as ~135 days depending on the geometry, apparently.

 What page is that on? I want to find actually what is the departure delta-v  at an opportune departure time to reach Mars in 80 days, as mentioned by Musk.

  Bob Clark

[Frybert]

Folks, if it turns out there is actual evidence of ULA's involvement in the explosions, that line of discussion would be valid, however until that time it is getting very close to 2.2h territory, so lets tone it back a bit shall we? Lets also leave the politics to another forum entirely. 

 

Edit: Some posts have been removed for general offtopicness.

[Northstar1989]

1 hour ago, WildLynx said:

Hitting one of the helium tanks will cause complete and immediate RUD.

I wonder, what will happen, if blaming evidence will be found of ULA sabotage, like sniper decided to surrender and tell everything?

Well, that's interesting- since the helium system was *precisely* what failed.

Anyways, industrial sabotage rarely gets caught.  So I wouldn't count on it.  And besides, better drop it. Wouldn't want to have somebody censor our conversation, would we?  

 

So, where were we?  Ahh yes- can anybody think of a good reason why SpaceX *shouldn't* send their cargo on a slower, lower Delta-V trajectory to save money?

 

Regards,

Northstar

 

 

Edited October 2, 2016 by Northstar1989

[tater]

Because that's not their vision. Their vision is sending people. It's not more complicated than that. The first launch would necessarily be 100% cargo, as it would be unmanned, anyway. Early, subsequent launches would be no where near 100 people, so you'd have a few spacecraft, and a handful of people (so many tons per person of supplies, etc. He wants to build a craft for people, so it's not "cheaper" in a meaningful way to send cargo any slower since the craft is the craft, and designing a different one sort of defeats his stated purpose. A cargo variant could be a thing, I suppose, but the actual cargo matters since you have to get it out of the spacecraft, so things are likely volume-limited to whatever can be manhandled out the cargo doors. Shouldn't be a problem to break down the cargo into pieces, Kenney's 5th AF moved bulldozers into the jungle to build airstrips with C-47s, but none the less I think things will be fairly dense, so the extra volume isn't a big deal.

You can disagree with his vision (I do in several ways), but Musk has not been shy about expressing his opinion.

 

[Technical Ben]

I might play with the idea in KSP (which I'm trailing now :D). I'm going to try setting up a cycler. Already dropped a miner on Duna and am trailing a fuel tanker.

I guess it will go the way of most businesses. The customers would want a cycler (the extra space, confirmed re-usability/reliability). The company wants to reduce immediate costs. The company will get what it wants over the people.

I'm not sure it's a "vision" so much, unless Elon wants to go first. Without that commitment, I'll look on from the sides with a big dose of concern.

[Northstar1989]

9 hours ago, tater said:

Because that's not their vision. Their vision is sending people. It's not more complicated than that. The first launch would necessarily be 100% cargo, as it would be unmanned, anyway. Early, subsequent launches would be no where near 100 people, so you'd have a few spacecraft, and a handful of people (so many tons per person of supplies, etc. He wants to build a craft for people, so it's not "cheaper" in a meaningful way to send cargo any slower since the craft is the craft, and designing a different one sort of defeats his stated purpose. A cargo variant could be a thing, I suppose, but the actual cargo matters since you have to get it out of the spacecraft, so things are likely volume-limited to whatever can be manhandled out the cargo doors. Shouldn't be a problem to break down the cargo into pieces, Kenney's 5th AF moved bulldozers into the jungle to build airstrips with C-47s, but none the less I think things will be fairly dense, so the extra volume isn't a big deal.

You can disagree with his vision (I do in several ways), but Musk has not been shy about expressing his opinion.

 

It's quite simple.  In order to send people, you have to send cargo to support them.  And the limiting factor on getting things to space is mass, not volume anyways, you should know that.

Let's say each MCT can carry 100 people and 100 tons of cargo to Mars.  If you seperate the cargo into a seperate craft, you might be able to transport 500 tons of cargo in a single MCT and increase the crew capacity of each MCT by a third.  So in 4 MCT's you get the same amount of crew and 25% more cargo to Mars fir the samw cost.  The differences are that drastic.  It has nothing to do with volume and all to do with Delta-V.

 

Regards,

Northstar

Edited October 3, 2016 by Northstar1989

[tater]

55 minutes ago, Northstar1989 said:

It's quite simple.  In order to send people, you have to send cargo to support them.  And the limiting factor on getting things to space is mass, not volume anyways, you should know that.

Let's say each MCT can carry 100 people and 100 tons of cargo to Mars.  If you seperate the cargo into a seperate craft, you might be able to transport 500 tons of cargo in a single MCT and increase the crew capacity of each MCT by a third.  So in 4 MCT's you get the same amount of crew and 25% more cargo to Mars fir the samw cost.  The differences are that drastic.  It has nothing to do with volume and all to do with Delta-V.

 

The math is about the mass, but real cargos are often limited by volume. FH can throw more mass to LEO than will actually fit under the fairing, for example (for a crew container, for example, which is largely empty space).

Some cargo can be "closest packing," but things like prefabricated, non-inflatable habitats, for example, are volume limited at some level. You can actually look at the dry mass, the difference between tanker and ITS is only 60 tons, and the specs say 450t cargo to Mars for ITS (including the people). So all cargo on one flight would gain you less than 60 tons (some of the structure of the ITS would have to remain). It also gains you a vehicle on Mars that you cannot use for people should you need to, so it goes back with nothing but rock samples I guess.

[Thor Wotansen]

I've been thinking about what all will be needed there for a sustainable colony, and it' pretty much guaranteed that there will have to be several cargo only ITS trips to get things started.  For instance, an iron smelter/foundry will be very heavy, and if you want to make steel you'll likely need even more heavy equipment, not to mention whatever you will need to mine the ore to begin with.  And if you want to make aluminum then you'll need a whole 'nother set of equipment for that.  Then there's all the hab modules and connecting passages, I suppose Biggelow will be happy to supply those, but you'll need quite a few of various sizes (including huge).  Water mining and refining equipment will be essential for the ITS return, as well as food production.  That of course comes with the ISRU fuel plant, and will supply some oxygen once it's going.  You'll need at least 2.5 years of food for every person there, because we all know that potatoes get boring after a few weeks, however, you could supplement that with hydroponics/aquaponics once you get the water and hab situations sorted.  That means getting viable seed in enough quantity and variety to not be boring, and if you go with the aquaponics, fish as well (fish don't care about gravity, but it might be hard to deal with waste and oxygenation of the water en route unless you find some way to freeze them or something).  The point is, to even start a self sustaining colony would require a vast amount of cargo to get there even before people do, and you'll want at least 20-50 people on the first trip, just so you don't get the first extra-planetary murder 3 months in.  Remember, NASA astronauts are selected to be able to work together for long periods, and SpaceX's gang of colonists won't be.

Edited October 3, 2016 by Thor Wotansen

[Northstar1989]

1 hour ago, tater said:

The math is about the mass, but real cargos are often limited by volume. FH can throw more mass to LEO than will actually fit under the fairing, for example (for a crew container, for example, which is largely empty space).

Some cargo can be "closest packing," but things like prefabricated, non-inflatable habitats, for example, are volume limited at some level. You can actually look at the dry mass, the difference between tanker and ITS is only 60 tons, and the specs say 450t cargo to Mars for ITS (including the people). So all cargo on one flight would gain you less than 60 tons (some of the structure of the ITS would have to remain). It also gains you a vehicle on Mars that you cannot use for people should you need to, so it goes back with nothing but rock samples I guess.

That's not how rockets work.  The payloads of rockets like the Falcon 9 and Falcoln Heavy are limited by what can fit inside the fairings because they were *designed* with fairings of theur current sizes.  If they had been designed with larger fairings, they could transport less dense cargoes.  And the MCT is still in the design stage- NOW is when SpaceX is deciding how much volume to make available for cargo...

The MCT currently is designed with a payload capacity of 450 tons.  350 of those tons (and a certain volume) are dedicated to crew accommodations for 100 people.  100 remaining tons are for cargo.  Those are the numbers they are currently intending to design around.

However it's easily within limits to expand the design volume of the MCT so that you can have a full 450 tons dedicated to crew accommodations, and enough volume within the aeroshell to allow for that.  Just the same, you can easily fill an alternate version of that expanded aeroshell with nothing but cargo until you run out of space or run out of mass-budget.  Guess which limit you'll bump up against first?

Mass is the limiting factor by a longshot.  In the current design, 100 tons of cargo takes up maybe 10% of the space of 350 tons of crew accomodations.  That's of course with the cargo flat-packed to minimize the mass expended on cargo bay (there's nothing to say they couldn't design in a more spacious cargo bay- but all that extra volume incurs extra structural mass from a larger aeroshell), but the fact still stands that cargo is much denser than crew quarters...

With a cargo-only MCT, you could easily fit 450, even 1200 or more tons of cargo inside the expanded aeroshell (roughly 24% larger than the current preliminary design to allow for a 28% increase in crew capacity- remember that the cargo still occupies volume, even in the current reference design).

The true limiting factor would be that you really can't load much more than the current mass of the tanker on the booster stage and still reach orbit...

Beyond that point, you need to load any additional cargo in orbit, or change the distribution of fuel tanks between the upper and booster stages of the MCT so that the upper stage needs pack less Delta-V to reach orbit (this would, however, increase the length of the manned journey to Mars *unless* you made use of a Cycler Ship  mission architecture...)

Fully-fueled, it appears the MCT will need to pack between 6.4 and 8 km/s of Delta-V to reach Mars and land on it within 90-150 days, depending on how aggressive of an aerobrake Musk plans to make use of at Mars capture.

But you *can* reach Mars with as little as 3-4 km/s on a slower trajectory.  Roughly cutting your Delta-V requirements in half means you could shrink the fuel tanks on the cargo-only MCT and load on extra cargo at launch until you reach the point where, fully-fueled, the cargo MCT packs just enough Delta-V to reach orbit (5.4 km/s with current booster cut-off speeds) and weighs about the same as the fuel tanker (about 50 tons more than the crewed MCT), which seems to be about the upper limit of what the booster can boost towards orbit.

That extra capacity only used for the tanker is probably to provide the crew with better safety margins and engine-out capability, but you *might* be able to dip into it for cargo MCT's launched a full transfer window ahead of the crew (if cargo costs will be under $140k/ton, equipment probably won't be as over-engineered and expensive as current space equipment is, meaning it might be affordable to just build equipment in duplicate in case of a launch-failure...)

 

The bottom-line is this: a crewed/cargo MCT specialization will only save you money in two situations.  The first is if you are willing to give up some safety-margin on cargo launches so it is only about as reliable as the fuel tanker launches.  This will net you a roughly 8-11% increase in the amount of cargo you can deliver to Mars for the same number of MCT launches and crew members sent to Mars, more if you build a seperate (smaller) aeroshell for the cargo MCT due to its lower volume requirements than crew.  But it will cost you in launch failures- so it remains to be seen whether this would actually be economical.

The SECOND is if you are willing to load additional cargo onto cargo-only MCT's in orbit the same way you currently would fuel in the plan Musk presented on.  In this case, you actually could more than double, perhaps triple the amount of cargo you send to Mars with a given number of MCT launches (remember, it takes more than 2x the fuel to obtain 2x the Delta-V, and you could *expand* the fuel tanks on a cargo MCT in this situation as cargo needs less,volume than crew), but of course you would have to engage in orbital cargo-loading operations, and that could get expensive as well...

In the end, I am forced to conclude that Musk's solution of sending crew and cargo together may actually be the optimum balance of R&D costs and long term cost-effectiveness.  An increase in launch failures or the need to load cargo in orbit both eat up most of the cost-savings of sending cargo seperately.  Meanwhile there are other, lower-hanging fruit for saving money on long-term operations at the expense of higher initial R&D: like making use of a lander to ferry crew and cargo down to the Martian surface instead of landing the MCT there...

 

Regards,

Northstar

 

[Northstar1989]

I just want to recap here.  A trend is starting to emerge that ideas that I initially thought were great, like cargo-only MCT's or Cycler Ships will, individually, only yield very small cost-savings (between 8 and 11%) and require, substantial additional R&D investment...

This does *not* mean that these are not good ideas (and some of them are synergistic- providing greater savings when used together: like implementation of cargo/crew seperation and landers/Cyclers).  Only that they are small optimizations to Musk's mission architecture that aren't really worth the R&D investment with the smaller scale of launch volume ("only" a handful of MCT's every two years) that Musk and any sane person would initially anticipate.

SpaceX has probably looked at these ideas as well, and came to similar conclusions.  That these are optimizations best saved for the day when we are launching thousands of MCT's a year (if we ever get to that point), and even tiny improvements to cost-effectiveness are worthwhile.  For the meantime, SpaceX has quite enough on its plate already...

The only advice I could give to SpaceX, if they were somehow listening, is to keep these possible future optimizations in mind when designing the MCT now, to make them easier to later implement...

For instance, placing a small docking-port on the MCT capable of crew-transfers will provide the capabilites that are useful today, like being able to make last-minute adjustments to the crew compliment of an MCT, or perform emergency evacuations if the MCT somehow lost its ability to land and were stranded in LEO...

But it would *also* pave the way for later implementation of lander or Cycler infrastructures, when the cost-savings these provide someday become worth the extra R&D due to the numbers of MCT's flying each year...

 

Finally, I would also like to note that I believe that 100 passengers every two years and 1 ton of cargo per passenger to survive on Mars are both WILDLY over-optimistic figures in the beginning.  I think that SpaceX should slash that crew capacity to roughly a fifth its current amount, and cram as much cargo as humanely possible into the mass-budget that frees up.  People aren't going to be able to survive on Mars with just 1000 kg of equipment each, they're just not.

 

Regards,

Northstar

Edited October 3, 2016 by Northstar1989

[tater]

Don't presume to tell me how rockets work. You entirely missed my point. The mass of cargo/payload is the mass of cargo/payload, ITS, or cargo variant. Regardless, it needs to fit within the same vehicle---or they have to design another vehicle (which might make some sense, but complicates things for them). The tanker and ITS are the same spacecraft, differing primarily in internal fittings (tanks vs crew areas) and engines(?). Yes, they could certainly make a version that keeps the same aeroshell, and holds more cargo at the expense of the crew area. Maybe they will. They are none the less limited in volume to the extent that they can still only bring cargo that fits inside the spacecraft, even if it's well below the mass that it could take to the martian surface. On top of that, it needs to be something they can get OUT of the spacecraft. So a large rover is clearly within reasonable mass limits, but even a cargo-only ITS is only taking a large rover that is in pieces, all of which have to fit out the cargo hatch, and be within the hoisting limits of the crane. Volume is  meaningless for dv calculations (duh), but NOT for logistical calculations. Mars DRA 5 has a rover at just 8 tons, but it's still a clunky shape, so it would have to be constructed. A settlement might also require a more robust rover capable of earth moving (regolith moving? mars moving?), maybe even a backhoe if they want to dump soil on top of things. Anyway, they are limited to stuff they can get to the surface with their tall rocket.

Honestly, I'd think a purpose-built cargo ship would make more sense---one that is not designed to ever return to Earth, sits lower, and perhaps designed to be emptied of cargo, then converted into a habitat.

EDIT: it not only needs to fit, balance is also an issue, they presumably have a range of acceptable CGs for it, and they can adjust with other cargo, but whatever it is needs to be well secured, which might also impact allowable cargoes.

A BA330, for example, would not fit within ITS, except vertically, and you could not get it out. So large inflatables (assuming they are built to Bigelow standards, which are better than ISS modules in many ways) are tough to fit at all. I'd think that this would actually be an issue, it's tough to live in really tiny areas all the time, going outside is sort of a PITA (and there is all the dust, etc to deal with).

Edited October 3, 2016 by tater

[Northstar1989]

18 minutes ago, tater said:

Don't presume to tell me how rockets work. You entirely missed my point. The mass of cargo/payload is the mass of cargo/payload, ITS, or cargo variant. Regardless, it needs to fit within the same vehicle---or they have to design another vehicle (which might make some sense, but complicates things for them). The tanker and ITS are the same spacecraft, differing primarily in internal fittings (tanks vs crew areas) and engines(?). Yes, they could certainly make a version that keeps the same aeroshell, and holds more cargo at the expense of the crew area. Maybe they will. They are none the less limited in volume to the extent that they can still only bring cargo that fits inside the spacecraft, even if it's well below the mass that it could take to the martian surface. On top of that, it needs to be something they can get OUT of the spacecraft. So a large rover is clearly within reasonable mass limits, but even a cargo-only ITS is only taking a large rover that is in pieces, all of which have to fit out the cargo hatch, and be within the hoisting limits of the crane. Volume is  meaningless for dv calculations (duh), but NOT for logistical calculations. Mars DRA 5 has a rover at just 8 tons, but it's still a clunky shape, so it would have to be constructed. A settlement might also require a more robust rover capable of earth moving (regolith moving? mars moving?), maybe even a backhoe if they want to dump soil on top of things. Anyway, they are limited to stuff they can get to the surface with their tall rocket.

Honestly, I'd think a purpose-built cargo ship would make more sense---one that is not designed to ever return to Earth, sits lower, and perhaps designed to be emptied of cargo, then converted into a habitat.

What I'm saying, is that at this point in planning you can always increase the designed volume of the spacecraft, if you find that you won't be able to fit all the mass you want into the current aeroshell.

I never implied some cargo wouldn't have to be assembled from pieces.  Although, one of the benefits of a cargo-only MCT is that it could feature a much larger cargo door than the passenger variant.

I *did* state in no ambiguous terms that cargo is much denser than crew, though.  You should have absolutely no trouble fitting all the cargo your heart desires inside an MCT stripped of its crew quarters- because you'll hit mass limits on what your booster can lift LONG before you hit the volume-limits of an aeroshell originally sized to fit crew quarters... (this is also why orbital loading of additional mass in that unused volume might make sense)

Hmmm, that *is* an interesting idea to hollow out an MCT and use it for early living-space.  Sounds like an expensive use of a new MCT though- if you launched that MCT back to Earth, you could no doubt retrieve enough cargo over 11 additional missions to create a habitable space many times the size of the MCT itself.  It might be a good use for MCT's that have reached the end of their service-lives, though...

 

Regards,

Northstar

Edited October 3, 2016 by Northstar1989

[StarStreak2109]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/implication-of-sabotage-adds-intrigue-to-spacex-investigation/2016/09/30/5bb60514-874c-11e6-a3ef-f35afb41797f_story.html#comments

Washington Post story hinting at sabotage implications in Falcon 9 anomaly....

Edited October 3, 2016 by StarStreak2109

[tater]

A story with no real information written by someone who doesn't have a clue what they are talking about (99% of reporting).

[Kryten]

https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2016/10/its-propulsion-evolution-raptor-engine/

Big, very informative article on raptor and it's development. Confirms the raptor on the test stand now is a scaled version (1MN) without a nozzle extension.

[Rakaydos]

20 minutes ago, Kryten said:

https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2016/10/its-propulsion-evolution-raptor-engine/

Big, very informative article on raptor and it's development. Confirms the raptor on the test stand now is a scaled version (1MN) without a nozzle extension.

Someone in the NSF forum omented that the "scale model" is just the right size to fill that Airforce Contract for a raptor powered upper stage for FH.

[Kryten]

Blue Origin ‏@blueorigin  7m7 minutes ago

Weather no-go for tomorrow’s New Shepard #InFlightEscape test. Webcast now Wednesday 10:45 am ET. #GradatimFerociter