totm nov 2023 SpaceX Discussion Thread

[Starman4308]

4 minutes ago, Kerbal7 said:

If they happen at all.

Elon Musk said he was planning to land a Dragon spacecraft on Mars in 2018, but that program was cancelled last July. Then he said he was going to fly two tourist around the moon in 2018 after being launched in a Falcon Heavy. But now that plan has recently been cancelled too. Except it is now going to be carried out by a BFR. Wait, what? If you can't fly 2 people around the moon in a little capsule what chance is there of you flying a 200 ton giant spaceship around the moon that holds 150 people? 

I'll be waiting for the announcement the BFR has been cancelled so he can focus on building the Death Star. 

Maybe you should start out small Elon and work your way up in this human spaceflight thing. Get your feet wet a little bit before you jump in the deep end.

That's a misleading argument and you should know it.

Both of these things were cancelled not because they were impossible or even really particularly difficult, they were cancelled because they think they can perform those missions more economically in the BFR. For example, I believe Elon Musk has stated that, if BFR takes longer than he hopes to get into service, he'll man-rate the Falcon Heavy anyways for the tourism slingshot.

What he's decidedly not doing, however, is continuing to sink time and money into developing a platform that he thinks he might abandon, particularly when the closest thing to a contractual obligation he has is to send tourists around the moon.

[PakledHostage]

44 minutes ago, tater said:

Yeah, if he was saying the sort of things that actually mattered, like "You'll get your Model 3 that you already paid for in 3 months." only to find out it's maybe 18 months, then that's a problem. 

To be fair, people are only putting down a $1000 deposit. The couple of different people that I know who have ordered one haven't "already paid for it". Sure it sucks that the cars are late being delivered, but it isn't quite like you portray it.

[tater]

1 minute ago, PakledHostage said:

To be fair, people are only putting down a $1000 deposit. The couple of different people that I know who have ordered one haven't "already paid for it". Sure it sucks that the cars are late being delivered, but it isn't quite like you portray it.

A friend of mine actually has his, lol.

Didn't realize the deposit was so low, though. None the less, that still matters more than something that doesn't affect their customers at all (BFR), and if it works only makes things more interesting for everyone.

[Kerbal7]

12 minutes ago, Starman4308 said:

That's a misleading argument and you should know it.

Both of these things were cancelled not because they were impossible or even really particularly difficult, they were cancelled because they think they can perform those missions more economically in the BFR.

 

The Dragon landing on Mars would have been a huge technological achievement. I think that landing would have been around an 8 metric ton landing on Mars. Eight time heavier than anything that has been landed on Mars before. If he can't get 8 tons down on Mars in one piece what chance has he with a 200 ton BFR? 

[tater]

25 minutes ago, Kerbal7 said:

If they happen at all.

Elon Musk said he was planning to land a Dragon spacecraft on Mars in 2018, but that program was cancelled last July. Then he said he was going to fly two tourist around the moon in 2018 after being launched in a Falcon Heavy. But now that plan has recently been cancelled too. Except it is now going to be carried out by a BFR. Wait, what? If you can't fly 2 people around the moon in a little capsule what chance is there of you flying a 200 ton giant spaceship around the moon that holds 150 people? 

You seem to miss the entire point. Red Dragon, and the FH tourism round the Moon have been pushed aside in favor of BFS. Because the newer, smaller concept BFS is actually something they can just start building, without having to build entirely new facilities.

It's like FH. Almost all the payloads that needed FH back when it was proposed don't need it any more, F9 can now lift them.

 

25 minutes ago, Kerbal7 said:

I'll be waiting for the announcement the BFR has been cancelled so he can focus on building the Death Star. 

Maybe you should start out small Elon and work your way up in this human spaceflight thing. Get your feet wet a little bit before you jump in the deep end.

It's called not falling for sunk costs.

Why throw money at making F9 and derivatives do X, when a clean sheet design does it better?

[PB666]

Wow, this thread has devolved into a discussion of personality characteristics.

I just want to point out who in the space industry delivers their products on schedule? Every date is a tentative date. I think that the track record right now would point in favor of SX versus the other players.
Noone here is out of pocket if Musk can deliver on Mars, but then again, after we dump 200 billion into public sector financing of Mars and also get nothing which do you think more or less of.

Right now the average working American ~$100 worth of skin into Orion SLS. How much skin do we have in Space X.

[tater]

3 minutes ago, Kerbal7 said:

The Dragon landing on Mars would have been a huge technological achievement. I think that landing would have been around an 8 metric ton landing on Mars. Eight time heavier than anything that has been landed on Mars before. If he can't get 8 tons down on Mars in one piece what chance has he with a 200 ton BFR? 

That's why tiny orbital rockets are the norm right now, instead of large rockets, because smaller is automatically easier? Most orbital rockets are a few cm in diameter?

Larger would in fact be easier, because the ballistic coefficient of the BFS is so much better than a capsule. NASA wasn't willing to pay for propulsive landing on Dragon 2, and SpaceX decided to just do what is required in this case (they got about 1/2 of what Boeing got for CST-100, after all).

[Starman4308]

1 minute ago, Kerbal7 said:

 

The Dragon landing on Mars would have been a huge technological achievement. I think that landing would have been around an 8 metric ton landing on Mars. Eight time heavier than anything that has been landed on Mars before. If he can't get 8 tons down on Mars in one piece what chance has he with a 200 ton BFR? 

You still haven't shown that he couldn't land an 8-ton Dragon, merely that he's not planning to. Not every technological advance has to be purely incremental. Incremental advances are usually the path of caution, but nothing you've said proves SpaceX couldn't land a BFR on Mars the first time they try.

I still think it would be wiser for SpaceX to test some of this technology and equipment with a smaller vehicle, but it's not impossible for the BFR to just work.

[Kerbal7]

2 minutes ago, tater said:

Because the newer, smaller concept BFS is actually something they can just start building, without having to build entirely new facilities.

 

I don't understand. SpaceX has the Falcon Heavy and they have a Dragon capsule. Elon said they had 2 paying customers. Well pony up and deliver big boy. 

[tater]

Just now, Kerbal7 said:

I don't understand. SpaceX has the Falcon Heavy and they have a Dragon capsule. Elon said they had 2 paying customers. Well pony up and deliver big boy. 

I'd add that the lunar tourism is not for US, it's for the 2 people each throwing 100 million dollars at it. If they would prefer their 200 M to go towards BFS, then that's their business. It;s not like they are being kept in the dark.

It's just as irrational to be a member of the Elon cult of personality as it is to be in the "everything Elon says must be BS" cult.

Edited February 18, 2018 by tater

[KSK]

Maybe when SpaceX do land something on Mars, we'll see the end of this 'they were only able to do that thanks to NASA' meme. But I'm not holding my breath.

NASA and SpaceX have a partnership going. Belittling one partner at the expense of the other is a pointless exercise. 

[sevenperforce]

12 minutes ago, Kerbal7 said:

I don't understand. SpaceX has the Falcon Heavy and they have a Dragon capsule. Elon said they had 2 paying customers. Well pony up and deliver big boy. 

Falcon Heavy is nowhere near man-rated. If they put off man-rating FH in favor of working on BFS, they can still do their cislunar tourist flight and be farther along toward their goal.

They need five consecutive Block 5 F9 flights for man-rating.

Same with Red Dragon. Could they have landed a Dragon 2 on Mars propulsively? Absolutely. They would have needed to rebuild the fuel tank system and do a few other things of that nature, but it absolutely would have been possible. But why spend time and money on a dead-end when they can devote resources to building something that can actually land people on Mars?

[Kerbal7]

4 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

Falcon Heavy is nowhere near man-rated. If they put off man-rating FH in favor of working on BFS, they can still do their cislunar tourist flight and be farther along toward their goal.

They need five consecutive Block 5 F9 flights for man-rating.

Same with Red Dragon. Could they have landed a Dragon 2 on Mars propulsively? Absolutely. They would have needed to rebuild the fuel tank system and do a few other things of that nature, but it absolutely would have been possible. But why spend time and money on a dead-end when they can devote resources to building something that can actually land people on Mars?

Okay. So let's say I agree with everything you just said. I don't, but let's just say I do for the sake of argument.

So what is the point of making these announcements that you are going to land a Dragon 2 on Mars and fly people around the moon? 

[Ultimate Steve]

3 minutes ago, Kerbal7 said:

Okay. So let's say I agree with everything you just said. I don't, but let's just say I do for the sake of argument.

So what is the point of making these announcements that you are going to land a Dragon 2 on Mars and fly people around the moon? 

Plans change often and unexpectedly. SpaceX is not the only culprit in announcing things that they later cancel.

[CatastrophicFailure]

10 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

They need five consecutive Block 5 F9 flights for man-rating.

So speaking of this... the concept of "man-rating" gets thrown around a lot, here. Obviously NASA has some very specific standards SpaceX has to live up to due to the contract, but if SX did want to man-rate the FH, independently of NASA, what would that involve? As far as I know, there's no FAA or other "legal" standard for man-rating a rocket for entirely private use.

[KSK]

15 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

Falcon Heavy is nowhere near man-rated. If they put off man-rating FH in favor of working on BFS, they can still do their cislunar tourist flight and be farther along toward their goal.

They need five consecutive Block 5 F9 flights for man-rating.

Same with Red Dragon. Could they have landed a Dragon 2 on Mars propulsively? Absolutely. They would have needed to rebuild the fuel tank system and do a few other things of that nature, but it absolutely would have been possible. But why spend time and money on a dead-end when they can devote resources to building something that can actually land people on Mars?

Emphasis added. That's really the key point I think. Elon comes out with a bunch of exciting plans - like Red Dragon - that no doubt would have been tremendous technical achievements. But SpaceX isn't about technical achievements for the sake of it. They do need to make some sort of business sense too and what makes 'business sense' can change from one year to the next. They also tend to be stretch goals. Red Dragon - stretch goal for propulsively landed Dragon 2 capsule. Millionaires around the Moon - stretch goal for a human rated Falcon Heavy.

Once the underlying business assumptions behind those stretch goals shift, then the exciting project gets cancelled. NASA refusing to commit to propulsive landing? Bye bye Red Dragon - because SpaceX aint gonna waste the money on building a propulsively landed Dragon 2 just for a couple of one-off Mars stunts. I presume something similar happened with the Millionaires around the Moon.

Edited February 18, 2018 by KSK

[Kerbal7]

6 minutes ago, Ultimate Steve said:

Plans change often and unexpectedly. SpaceX is not the only culprit in announcing things that they later cancel.

Okay friends. Let's just say I have a very strong feeling there is going to be a whole lotta changes in these BFR plans before too long. 

[sh1pman]

1 minute ago, Kerbal7 said:

Okay friends. Let's just say I have a very strong feeling there is going to be a whole lotta changes in these BFR plans before too long. 

I expect delays, but not a lot of major design changes. I think the design is pretty solid already, at least for the cargo version. Last year’s downscaling of ITS was primarily because of operational reasons, so they can use existing facilities to build BFR. 

[Ultimate Steve]

42 minutes ago, Kerbal7 said:

Okay friends. Let's just say I have a very strong feeling there is going to be a whole lotta changes in these BFR plans before too long. 

There will indeed be numerous changes, but If I had to bet I'd say it will still look like the same vehicle.

[tater]

39 minutes ago, Kerbal7 said:

Okay friends. Let's just say I have a very strong feeling there is going to be a whole lotta changes in these BFR plans before too long. 

Good!

Sticking with a bad idea is BAD. Changing with data is called being agile. that's the point.

If they start working on BFS, and they find out that it works far better if it is 7m, instead of 9m, you'll be on here saying what a load of BS it is, they promised 12m, then 9, and here they are at 7, soon it will be 5! In reality, they will have discovered a fact about the nature of the problem they are working, and they changed to something that works better. That would be a win, not a loss.

Pushing on with a bad vehicle, because you've already started it... that;s what SLS is, to be brutally honest. A bad idea (Constellation), doubled down and made possibly worse, with a name change to SLS.

I grew up with my mother constantly saying "roll with the punches."

I see that as a hugely positive strategy.

[YNM]

2 hours ago, Kerbal7 said:

If he can't get 8 tons down on Mars in one piece what chance has he with a 200 ton BFR? 

Pretty high as long as it's figured out nicely.

But right now ? Nil.

1 hour ago, tater said:

Sticking with a bad idea is BAD. Changing with data is called being agile. that's the point.

If they start working on BFS, and they find out that it works far better if it is 7m, instead of 9m, you'll be on here saying what a load of BS it is, they promised 12m, then 9, and here they are at 7, soon it will be 5!

I hope this isn't going to be achieved by crashing a dozen of BFR-prototypes on Mars. Planetary Protection must go crazy.

[PB666]

31 minutes ago, YNM said:

Pretty high as long as it's figured out nicely.

But right now ? Nil.

I hope this isn't going to be achieved by crashing a dozen of BFR-prototypes on Mars. Planetary Protection must go crazy.

dV required to land is less than 4200 m/s. If you have enough dV (i.e. some refuels your ship in LMO) you don't have to worry about the atmosphere at all. But somehow I don't then you are going to see liquid methane, liquid oxygen refueling stations circling Mars anytime soon.

[Kerbal7]

1 hour ago, tater said:

Good!

Sticking with a bad idea is BAD. Changing with data is called being agile. that's the point.

If they start working on BFS, and they find out that it works far better if it is 7m, instead of 9m, you'll be on here saying what a load of BS it is, they promised 12m, then 9, and here they are at 7, soon it will be 5! In reality, they will have discovered a fact about the nature of the problem they are working, and they changed to something that works better. That would be a win, not a loss.

Pushing on with a bad vehicle, because you've already started it... that;s what SLS is, to be brutally honest. A bad idea (Constellation), doubled down and made possibly worse, with a name change to SLS.

I grew up with my mother constantly saying "roll with the punches."

I see that as a hugely positive strategy.

I don't believe the BFR is ever going to be built. It's at least 10+ billion to develop even according to Musk and he doesn't have that much money.  Even if he could get past all the massive engineering problems and find the money it wouldn't make sense. There is no economic incentive for a spacecraft to build a colony on Mars. There is no demand for a colony on Mars at all. There is nothing on Mars. Why would you build a colony there? No one went and built a city in the middle of Antarctica did they? So why would you build a city on Mars where it is even more hostile to life? So there is no real reason for such a spacecraft to begin with.

Even if a BFR is built, the plan is to refuel it after landing on Mars from local resources. Okay, so now before you even land a single BFR on Mars, you've got to build a substantial infrastructure on Mars. You're going to need some sort of big processing plant to produce the liquid oxygen and liquid methane rocket fuel. You'll need to build massive storage and refueling facilities too. Pipes, pumps tanks, the whole 9 yards. All of this would be a difficult construction on Earth and you want to do it on Mars! And how's all this material getting down to the surface of Mars so you can even start construction? Who is putting all this together? Robots? People? Both? Both of those would need their own massive infrastructures to be built. A wave of Elon Musk's hand maybe?

In orbit refueling has never even been done before and that's needed for this BFR plan too. Man! You could go on forever once you get into the technical challenges of this thing.

The BFR is pie in the sky. No way, no how. Not in this lifetime.   

 

[sh1pman]

6 minutes ago, Kerbal7 said:

I don't believe the BFR is ever going to be built. It's at least 10+ billion to develop even according to Musk and he doesn't have that much money.

You could at least google that.

[tater]

5 minutes ago, Kerbal7 said:

There is no economic incentive for a spacecraft to build a colony on Mars.

Don't conflate BFS with Mars colonization, that's not what BFS is for, economically. BFR/BFS (cargo) is for lowering cost to LEO. Being fully reusable means that costs are vehicle costs divided by number of flights, plus operational costs, plus propellant costs. If that number is below current launch costs, it's a win. It need do nothing else.

A crew variant is a different craft, and clearly has no economic benefit, unless it manages to be safe enough that tourism is a thing, in which case tourism is a fairly bottomless market. Thge only economic driver for a crew vehicle aside from that would be the current customer for same: NASA.

I think BFS cargo is a game changer, and the math on reuse was done in the 1960s, by guys contracting to NASA. It;s the only way to eventually exploit space, instead of just visiting it (aside from satellites).

 

The whole point of the ITS/BFR reboot last year was exactly this point. It was a way to pay for it, by replacing falcon 9 with a next gen vehicle that was cheaper to orbit than F9. They'd not leave all that money on the table, just some, and pocket the rest to drive dev costs.