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1 hour ago, Kryten said:

And there's much more to get hit with nowadays than there was during most of the shuttle era.

To some extent, yeah.  There's also more awareness of MMOD problem.  There's also a great of hype.

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1 hour ago, DeltaDizzy said:

I thought it lost out to spacex.

SN did lose out to SpaceX and Boeing for contracts to fly crewed missions to and from the ISS. However there was still plenty to go around for unmanned supply mission contracts; which SN secured in January of last year.

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3 hours ago, ment18 said:

If it stays in the 1st stage insterstage it has to push the entire 2nd stage right?  Over 100t on F9

Since it has to be robust enough to provide more acceleration during an emergency than it carries during launch, then it would inevitably be at least robust enough to survive.

3 hours ago, sevenperforce said:

I like a pusher-ring LES. Solid, but reusable when not activated. Stays in the first-stage interstage during nominal flights; fires (and blows the interstage apart) on aborts.

But why put it in the first stage interstage? Why try to save the second stage? The second stage has no facilities that would be useful during a launch emergency, and during an emergency is just dead weight, making a ring LES needlessly heavy to launch every time. Why not have it as part of the second stage interstage, just below the capsule?

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4 hours ago, softweir said:

Why not have it as part of the second stage interstage, just below the capsule?

As it was in the late Clipper project.
If the launch were successful, the LES was to add last several hundred m/s to reach the orbit.
It was a ring of 8(?) powder rockets right between the last stage and the craft.

Edited by kerbiloid
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12 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Usually LES weights ~ 1/4..1/2 of the capsule mass and gets dropped after the 1st stage burnout.

Delivering a reusable LES to orbit one must deliver:

  • additional mass of hull to hide the LES in;
  • additional fuel to accelerate the LES mass to to 1..2 km/s, but to 8 km/s;
  • additional mass of the last stage to keep the additional fuel in.

So, instead of launching a single-use traditional LES weighting, say, 3 t, they would spend 3*5 = 15 t of fuel more to get it to orbit and add ~1 t of tthe rocket fuel tanks to keep this fuel inside.
So, a reusable LES means spending 15 t of fuel and hundreds kg of tanks to save 3 t of powder and still several hundred kg of metal.
I.e inner LES = burn 10..15 t of liquid fuel to save 3 t of powder.
Not a great choice unless suppose that LES option happily appears for the already being planned landing engine (which needs almost the same dV as LES).

There is another option, though, which was supposed to be used in Clipper project.
8 solid motors below the ship, on the last stage top.
If abort - they separate from the stage and throw up th ship.
If success - they were supposed to be ignited before the speed gets orbital, and spend their fuel to give the required delta-V to get into orbit.
I.e. LES not spent and not reusable, but used just as an additional stage burning in every flight.

Calculation is a bit flawed as they also use the fuel for orbital operations, yes its more than they need but this gives some margin. 
The Clipper idea is the same but uses less efficient engines and you still have to take it to orbit, the super drako has poor vacuum isp the the drako engines are decent. 
Also the dragon is launched on falcon 9 who has plenty of margin 

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5 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

The Clipper idea is the same but uses less efficient engines and you still have to take it to orbit

Clipper way doesn't need to carry the LES engines back to the Earth, making the capsule grow.

Yes, solids are less efficient, but rather than, they still work to deliver the craft to orbit, not just are a ballast.

6 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

falcon 9 who has plenty of margin 

This sentence can be paraphrased.
"... who is overweighted for its payload mass".

If it has a gap, this means that it doesn't work for 100%.

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I have high hopes for Dream Chaser. Ability to control the descent seems very appealing to me, moreso than just dropping the capsule into the atmosphere and hoping for the best. If cargo verion serves successfuly, maybe crew variant will be built. Who knows - maybe one day we'll see Space Shuttle reincarnated :)

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11 minutes ago, Scotius said:

I have high hopes for Dream Chaser. Ability to control the descent seems very appealing to me, moreso than just dropping the capsule into the atmosphere and hoping for the best. If cargo verion serves successfuly, maybe crew variant will be built. Who knows - maybe one day we'll see Space Shuttle reincarnated :)

Capsules provide lift and crossrange too. DreamChaser is a lifting body, its descent is only slightly more "controlled" than a capsule. A Space Shuttle with actual wings is a huge waste of payload mass.

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7 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

This sentence can be paraphrased.
"... who is overweighted for its payload mass".

If it has a gap, this means that it doesn't work for 100%.

It doesn't mean this at all. F9 has multiple uses, and has evolved a great mass fraction. It has excess capacity that with reuse costs nothing more than fuel.

If D2 is 9-10 tons. And reusable payload to that orbit is 13-18 tons (RTLS vs ASDS), then as long as D2 is under one of those values in mass, extra mass is a non-issue.

 

Launch schedule change: CRS-12 is now NET August 14.

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19 hours ago, ment18 said:

If it stays in the 1st stage insterstage it has to push the entire 2nd stage right?  Over 100t on F9

I was thinking of something like ITS, where you need a high-thrust escape system for the payload-integrated reusable upper stage.

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That's true. If it's 2 stage to orbit, then the whole "spaceship" needs a LES.

I wonder if something akin to superdraco would work on the US, and of not used for abort it is used for deorbit, tmi, etc.

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*Gets back from camp*

*Sees news*

*Screams no*

*Realizes that it's hopefully for the greater good*

I mean, I guess I know how people older than me feel to have a Mars mission pushed back again and again. I just hope it won't be for five decades...

*Packs for immediate vacation eighteen hours after the last one*

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12 hours ago, sevenperforce said:

I was thinking of something like ITS, where you need a high-thrust escape system for the payload-integrated reusable upper stage.

Think something like ITS would need an escape module with just the crew seating area. Remember you might have to use it during landing too. 
 

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4 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Think something like ITS would need an escape module with just the crew seating area. Remember you might have to use it during landing too. 
 

STS considered something like that but found it would require too much extra infrastructure. I think ITS might find similar issues is they tried that.

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A crew vehicle to be used with NASA as a possible customer would require it meet their LOC requirements and would have to have a LES as a result. The pivot to the Moon is because that;s the way everyone is going. NASA never had takers for a manned mars mission from other agencies like ESA, they simply don't have the resources to play that game. The Moon, OTOH, is far more doable. JAXA has expressed interest in using DSG as a staging point for a lander they might build, for example.

Given that NASA is the likely customer, they would need to have it meet their specs.

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