Red Dragon confirmed!!

[insert_name]

42 minutes ago, StrandedonEarth said:

Pure aluminum and it's alloys (I imagine there are probably exceptions) quickly forms a protective layer of aluminum oxide when exposed to air, Scratch it, and the exposed aluminum oxidizes and the layer is restored. That's why aluminum is so corrosion resistance. The same principle applies to the chromium used in stainless steel. Mercury, however, will mess up that process.

wow that was cool

[KSK]

9 hours ago, fredinno said:

BTW,Shuttle SRB'S were planned to use graphite epoxy and filament wound casing numerous times in the past, and still be reused.

In any case, that's why I added the engine burn at the end. Such a burn would slow a booster stage down to 0 velocity before hitting the water.

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.

[Kryten]

On 29/04/2016 at 3:38 AM, B787_300 said:

 

 

10 hours ago, fredinno said:

BTW,Shuttle SRB'S were planned to use graphite epoxy and filament wound casing numerous times in the past, and still be reused.

 

Still would've been relatively thick, not equivalent to a liquid stage. In any solid rocket the walls serve as the combustion chamber, they're going to have to be much more solidly built than tanks for liquid regardless of materials. 

[78stonewobble]

It will have to use a non reused/reuseable falcon heavy right?

I'm just curious about how it compares to the Saturn V costwise.

Edited May 5, 2016 by 78stonewobble

[CptRichardson]

4 hours ago, 78stonewobble said:

It will have to use a non reused/reuseable falcon heavy right?

I'm just curious about how it compares to the Saturn V costwise.

 

Tenth of the cost?

[fredinno]

5 hours ago, 78stonewobble said:

I'm just curious about how it compares to the Saturn V costwise.

"Hey guys, let's compare a 120-140T to LEO rocket to a 50T (w/o reuse, realistically 30T) to LEO rocket!"

"I'm totally not comparing apples to oranges!"

19 hours ago, Kryten said:

 

Still would've been relatively thick, not equivalent to a liquid stage. In any solid rocket the walls serve as the combustion chamber, they're going to have to be much more solidly built than tanks for liquid regardless of materials. 

The Saturn I's fist stage was also designed to be water-reused. Apparently it had the structural provisions to do so.

http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/saturni.htm

Juno-5 [Saturn 1] Recovery
Full recovery and reuse of the Juno-5 was planned. The structural provisions were retained in the earliest Saturn I test vehicles, but never used.

[78stonewobble]

5 hours ago, CptRichardson said:

Tenth of the cost?

I don't think it will be that much saved... a third the price, if you're optimistic to only a little over 10 percent cheaper?

4 hours ago, fredinno said:

"Hey guys, let's compare a 120-140T to LEO rocket to a 50T (w/o reuse, realistically 30T) to LEO rocket!"

"I'm totally not comparing apples to oranges!"

Most of us here are hoping for getting some grand usage out of all those rockets. Grand meaning, as allways, probably expensive...

I find myself wondering what we could have done with 40 years of refining the Saturn V production and usage, which might then have ended up as, basically a realization of the big dumb booster concept. Eg. the updating of the F-1A engine to the proposed F-1B supposedly reduced parts from over 5000 to under 100.

[Kryten]

5 hours ago, fredinno said:

The Saturn I's fist stage was also designed to be water-reused. Apparently it had the structural provisions to do so.

http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/saturni.htm

Juno-5 [Saturn 1] Recovery
Full recovery and reuse of the Juno-5 was planned. The structural provisions were retained in the earliest Saturn I test vehicles, but never used.

So was Ariane 1, Falcon 1, and originally Falcon 9, but none of those actually managed to survive a landing.

[cantab]

12 hours ago, 78stonewobble said:

It will have to use a non reused/reuseable falcon heavy right?

I'm just curious about how it compares to the Saturn V costwise.

Once SpaceX have the reusability down, I imagine that if they want to do a launch that requires discarding the booster (for delta-V reasons) then they'll probably do it with a refurbished one.

[78stonewobble]

9 minutes ago, cantab said:

Once SpaceX have the reusability down, I imagine that if they want to do a launch that requires discarding the booster (for delta-V reasons) then they'll probably do it with a refurbished one.

That would seem the most logical.

Tho to me it still seems that the biggest savings have come so far from sensible basic hardware and efficient production of it, much more than reuse. Well, once they actually regularly make launches at what ever possible launch rate we will see.

[sevenperforce]

15 hours ago, 78stonewobble said:

It will have to use a non reused/reuseable falcon heavy right?

I'm just curious about how it compares to the Saturn V costwise.

Elon said they should be able to recover the side boosters for the Mars landing.

[CptRichardson]

4 hours ago, 78stonewobble said:

I don't think it will be that much saved... a third the price, if you're optimistic to only a little over 10 percent cheaper?

The Falcon 9 is ALREADY a tenth of the 'industry standard' *Spits* cost for LEO orbit, is designed to and will very shortly begin to be reused, and the side boosters will most likely be reused F9's.  Yes, this will be cheaper by a margin I don't think anyone wanted to even dream be possible (except for Musk, but his superpowers are 'money' and 'going to space', so he always believed it was possible)

[78stonewobble]

1 hour ago, CptRichardson said:

The Falcon 9 is ALREADY a tenth of the 'industry standard' *Spits* cost for LEO orbit, is designed to and will very shortly begin to be reused, and the side boosters will most likely be reused F9's.  Yes, this will be cheaper by a margin I don't think anyone wanted to even dream be possible (except for Musk, but his superpowers are 'money' and 'going to space', so he always believed it was possible)

So... 92 percent of the price of a saturn V in 2016 dollars per kg to LEO, with that being dependent on the saturn V being produced by 1960's methods.... Yeah, I'm not exactly impressed, other than the shuttle apparently gave certain companies monopolies for 4 decades. I find that impressive.

 

Edited May 6, 2016 by 78stonewobble

[CptRichardson]

1 minute ago, 78stonewobble said:

So... 92 percent of the price of a saturn V in 2016 dollars, with that being dependent on the saturn V being produced by 1960's methods.... Yeah, I'm not impressed.

 

 

 

 

Uh, no, more along the lines of '60 million to drop 4-ish tons on Mars'. Which is stupidly cheap. And that's at the current price-point, not counting the 30-ish million drop in price as they work out reusability.

[78stonewobble]

2 hours ago, sevenperforce said:

Elon said they should be able to recover the side boosters for the Mars landing.

Ah ok... Meaning the prices with recovery is quite a bit higher than expected then or atleast what I could find on wikipedia.

12 minutes ago, CptRichardson said:

Uh, no, more along the lines of '60 million to drop 4-ish tons on Mars'. Which is stupidly cheap. And that's at the current price-point, not counting the 30-ish million drop in price as they work out reusability.

Which isn't what I asked for ... I meant to compaire it with the saturn V and there it's only an 8 percent improvement of $ per kg to LEO. For 40 year old tech with no improvements to technology and manufacturing. Again... I'm not impressed...

PS: It's not 60 million, it's between 90-135 million for the falcon heavy, as stated previously in the thread or maybe more if it's not in reuseable configuration, or how you wanna say that. The mars science laboratory was around 4 tonnes... it got launched with an atlas v, where the cost is between 164 and 223 million (last bit with all bells and whistles). So cheaper sure... but certainly not by 1/10th.

PPS: I want spacex to succeed and I really like elon musk for making a go at it, but my eyes just haven't glossed over with little hearts yet and they probably won't over "we hope to/we mean to/we plan to" and well... promises...

Edited May 6, 2016 by 78stonewobble

[CptRichardson]

30 minutes ago, 78stonewobble said:

Ah ok... Meaning the prices with recovery is quite a bit higher than expected then or atleast what I could find on wikipedia.

Which isn't what I asked for ... I meant to compaire it with the saturn V and there it's only an 8 percent improvement of $ per kg to LEO. For 40 year old tech with no improvements to technology and manufacturing. Again... I'm not impressed...

PS: It's not 60 million, it's between 90-135 million for the falcon heavy, as stated previously in the thread or maybe more if it's not in reuseable configuration, or how you wanna say that. The mars science laboratory was around 4 tonnes... it got launched with an atlas v, where the cost is between 164 and 223 million (last bit with all bells and whistles). So cheaper sure... but certainly not by 1/10th.

PPS: I want spacex to succeed and I really like elon musk for making a go at it, but my eyes just haven't glossed over with little hearts yet and they probably won't over "we hope to/we mean to/we plan to" and well... promises...

No, SpaceX's figure for a FH launch is $60 million. And that's their current figure, not their reuse figure.

[Nibb31]

15 hours ago, CptRichardson said:

No, SpaceX's figure for a FH launch is $60 million. And that's their current figure, not their reuse figure.

No, that's the price for a F9 launch. FH is supposed to be $90 million. This makes them about 50% cheaper than the competition.

I doubt reuse will bring the prices down significantly, even if it does reduce costs for SpaceX. They are already the cheapest shop in town, with an increasing backlog. Cutting prices even more will only make the backlog longer and won't increase profit, and they are going to need a lot of profit if they want to fund their grandiose plans.

 

Edited May 7, 2016 by Nibb31

[Nothalogh]

On 4/27/2016 at 3:38 PM, Spaceception said:

there aren't any people trained for something like that

That wouldn't have stopped Von Braun

[fredinno]

19 hours ago, 78stonewobble said:

I don't think it will be that much saved... a third the price, if you're optimistic to only a little over 10 percent cheaper?

SpaceX says 30% saved from an expendable F9 FT. But since reuse comes with a significant performance cost (17T down to 10T), it's more like 10-15%.

19 hours ago, 78stonewobble said:

Most of us here are hoping for getting some grand usage out of all those rockets. Grand meaning, as allways, probably expensive...

I find myself wondering what we could have done with 40 years of refining the Saturn V production and usage, which might then have ended up as, basically a realization of the big dumb booster concept. Eg. the updating of the F-1A engine to the proposed F-1B supposedly reduced parts from over 5000 to under 100.

Like Mars?

Time will tell if SpaceX can muster enough money to do that before Elon retires. They need a LOT.

 

The Saturn V wasn't going to last into the 80s, even if AAP happened- Congress didn't want to fund any more Moon Missions, and this was shown by NASA having a really hard time getting just 1 extra Saturn V from the one they got. After all, the Saturn V cost a good 1.22 BILLION per launch, accounting for inflation (and people say SLS is expensive at $500 Million per launch :P)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_V

http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_IB#Saturn_IB_vehicles_and_launches

The Saturn IB is unlikely to have lasted long too, its design was sub-optimal due to the "cluster's last stand" first stage configuration, not to mention NASA was moving to reuse at the time, meaning the 1st stage would have likely been modified for reuse (the fashion of reuse is up to speculation).

https://www.reddit.com/r/ula/comments/3nl5or/ula_strives_to_dramatically_reduce_atlas_v_price/

Also, the Saturn IB was also expensive, Atlas V 551, the variant most similar to the Saturn IB, is $214 Million, while the Saturn IB is $313 Million in cost- not to mention, the LEO Apollo CSM (its main payload) was too small for the rocket- while the CSM was 15-16 T, depending on how much propellant you want to carry, the Saturn IB could carry up to 21 T to LEO.

http://newworlds.colorado.edu/documents/ASMCS/nwo_appendix_K_launch.pdf

 

Also, F-1B was not "Big Dumb Booster".

Doing that requires a whole new engine, since Big Dumb Booster demands a Pressure-fed engine, making a potential "F-1C" pretty much a new design, like the J-2X wasn't really a J-2 due to the extensive amounts of modifications needed.

 

 

Edited May 7, 2016 by fredinno

[fredinno]

14 hours ago, CptRichardson said:

The Falcon 9 is ALREADY a tenth of the 'industry standard' *Spits* cost for LEO orbit, is designed to and will very shortly begin to be reused, and the side boosters will most likely be reused F9's.  Yes, this will be cheaper by a margin I don't think anyone wanted to even dream be possible (except for Musk, but his superpowers are 'money' and 'going to space', so he always believed it was possible)

 

12 hours ago, 78stonewobble said:

Ah ok... Meaning the prices with recovery is quite a bit higher than expected then or atleast what I could find on wikipedia.

Which isn't what I asked for ... I meant to compaire it with the saturn V and there it's only an 8 percent improvement of $ per kg to LEO. For 40 year old tech with no improvements to technology and manufacturing. Again... I'm not impressed...

PS: It's not 60 million, it's between 90-135 million for the falcon heavy, as stated previously in the thread or maybe more if it's not in reuseable configuration, or how you wanna say that. The mars science laboratory was around 4 tonnes... it got launched with an atlas v, where the cost is between 164 and 223 million (last bit with all bells and whistles). So cheaper sure... but certainly not by 1/10th.

PPS: I want spacex to succeed and I really like elon musk for making a go at it, but my eyes just haven't glossed over with little hearts yet and they probably won't over "we hope to/we mean to/we plan to" and well... promises...

 

3 hours ago, Nothalogh said:

That wouldn't have stopped Von Braun

 

 

 

18 hours ago, Kryten said:

So was Ariane 1, Falcon 1, and originally Falcon 9, but none of those actually managed to survive a landing.

 

16 hours ago, cantab said:

Once SpaceX have the reusability down, I imagine that if they want to do a launch that requires discarding the booster (for delta-V reasons) then they'll probably do it with a refurbished one.

 

16 hours ago, 78stonewobble said:

That would seem the most logical.

Tho to me it still seems that the biggest savings have come so far from sensible basic hardware and efficient production of it, much more than reuse. Well, once they actually regularly make launches at what ever possible launch rate we will see.

 

 

Edited May 7, 2016 by fredinno

[Bill Phil]

Von Braun planned for a bunch of extra stuff after the lunar landings. The shuttle, space tugs, space stations, nuclear tugs, Mars missions.

[fredinno]

2 minutes ago, Bill Phil said:

 

Von Braun planned for a bunch of extra stuff after the lunar landings. The shuttle, space tugs, space stations, nuclear tugs, Mars missions.

 

That wasn't Von Braun. He's often cited for the IPP/STS, but it was the NASA organization and Thomas Paine that made it. Von Braun only made the Mars Mission plans, and that was because he was told to by NASA (even though he thought the timeline for Mars landings was ridiculous- which it was.)

http://www.wired.com/2012/04/integrated-program-plan-maximum-rate-traffic-model-1970/

[fredinno]

15 hours ago, CptRichardson said:

The Falcon 9 is ALREADY a tenth of the 'industry standard' *Spits* cost for LEO orbit, is designed to and will very shortly begin to be reused, and the side boosters will most likely be reused F9's.  Yes, this will be cheaper by a margin I don't think anyone wanted to even dream be possible (except for Musk, but his superpowers are 'money' and 'going to space', so he always believed it was possible)

By another 10-15%? Yeah, I calculated. Look in the comment section of this video, and see the comments made by "Ian Brandon Anderson.

I also found that SpaceX's fully 1st stage reuse is about as economical as SMART reuse, thanks to the fact that the former has a huge payload penalty, while the latter has a very marginal one.

 

 

 

14 hours ago, 78stonewobble said:

Ah ok... Meaning the prices with recovery is quite a bit higher than expected then or atleast what I could find on wikipedia.

Which isn't what I asked for ... I meant to compaire it with the saturn V and there it's only an 8 percent improvement of $ per kg to LEO. For 40 year old tech with no improvements to technology and manufacturing. Again... I'm not impressed...

PS: It's not 60 million, it's between 90-135 million for the falcon heavy, as stated previously in the thread or maybe more if it's not in reuseable configuration, or how you wanna say that. The mars science laboratory was around 4 tonnes... it got launched with an atlas v, where the cost is between 164 and 223 million (last bit with all bells and whistles). So cheaper sure... but certainly not by 1/10th.

PPS: I want spacex to succeed and I really like elon musk for making a go at it, but my eyes just haven't glossed over with little hearts yet and they probably won't over "we hope to/we mean to/we plan to" and well... promises...

http://www.silverbirdastronautics.com/cgi-bin/LVPcalc.pl

Saturn V was 59.8T to GTO, apparently, at $1.22 Billion per launch, or $20.4 Million per mT to GTO.

F9H is selling 8.0T to GTO, at $90 Million per launch, or $11.25 Million per mT to GTO.

F9H has about 0.55% the cost of Saturn V to GTO. Not bad.

Reuse is likely included in the latter number (FH isn't being sold yet, and SpaceX already has boosters they can use for reuse, so I see no reason for them NOT to )

Let's add SLS, just to hell with it.

SLS Block I is supposed to be $500 Million per launch, and send 32.9T to GTO.

SLS is $15.2T per mT to GTO.

 

Also, I find it funny people take SpaceX's promises of Mars Colonization so seriously.

I thought you guys knew better than not to take "promises" too seriously.

Considering Space is 99% promises...

 

 

•  

 

Posted 1 hour ago (edited) · Report post

15 hours ago, CptRichardson said:

The Falcon 9 is ALREADY a tenth of the 'industry standard' *Spits* cost for LEO orbit, is designed to and will very shortly begin to be reused, and the side boosters will most likely be reused F9's.  Yes, this will be cheaper by a margin I don't think anyone wanted to even dream be possible (except for Musk, but his superpowers are 'money' and 'going to space', so he always believed it was possible)

 

14 hours ago, 78stonewobble said:

Ah ok... Meaning the prices with recovery is quite a bit higher than expected then or atleast what I could find on wikipedia.

Which isn't what I asked for ... I meant to compaire it with the saturn V and there it's only an 8 percent improvement of $ per kg to LEO. For 40 year old tech with no improvements to technology and manufacturing. Again... I'm not impressed...

PS: It's not 60 million, it's between 90-135 million for the falcon heavy, as stated previously in the thread or maybe more if it's not in reuseable configuration, or how you wanna say that. The mars science laboratory was around 4 tonnes... it got launched with an atlas v, where the cost is between 164 and 223 million (last bit with all bells and whistles). So cheaper sure... but certainly not by 1/10th.

PPS: I want spacex to succeed and I really like elon musk for making a go at it, but my eyes just haven't glossed over with little hearts yet and they probably won't over "we hope to/we mean to/we plan to" and well... promises...

 

4 hours ago, Nothalogh said:

That wouldn't have stopped Von Braun

 

 

 

19 hours ago, Kryten said:

So was Ariane 1, Falcon 1, and originally Falcon 9, but none of those actually managed to survive a landing.

Source?

I thought Falcon 1 never launched enough to get to do sea landings, since those were slated for a "v1.1" that never happened.

18 hours ago, cantab said:

Once SpaceX have the reusability down, I imagine that if they want to do a launch that requires discarding the booster (for delta-V reasons) then they'll probably do it with a refurbished one.

 

Or a Falcon Heavy core- reusing the core comes with enormous payload penalty, and is the primary reason behind the F9H's abysmal payload fraction.

 

17 hours ago, 78stonewobble said:

That would seem the most logical.

Tho to me it still seems that the biggest savings have come so far from sensible basic hardware and efficient production of it, much more than reuse. Well, once they actually regularly make launches at what ever possible launch rate we will see.

Probably why nobody at ArianeSpace really considers reuse, or at Rocosmos, or even ULA (aside from reusing engines).

After all, they all had bad experiences with reuse before (sans ULA).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buran_%28spacecraft%29

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_fly-back_booster

 

Edited May 7, 2016 by fredinno

[AngelLestat]

21 hours ago, Nibb31 said:

No, that's the price for a F9 launch. FH is supposed to be $90 million. This makes them about 50% cheaper than the competition.

I doubt reuse will bring the prices down significantly, even if it does reduce costs for SpaceX. They are already the cheapest shop in town, with an increasing backlog. Cutting prices even more will only make the backlog longer and won't increase profit, and they are going to need a lot of profit if they want to fund their grandiose plans.

 

As I explain in the past, there is a better economic strategic behind price reduction

 

Edited May 7, 2016 by AngelLestat

[tater]

^^^this addresses none of his statement that you quote. 

There is a finite market, and reducing price doesn't help unless it is so low that it somehow creates a new market, which would be an order of magnitude or lower in cost/kg to be a thing, I think, and even then it's dubious.