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4 minutes ago, DDE said:

That's basically the Me-163 - or, if we dig into the Soviet files, the Bereznyak-Isaev BI-1, preceded by several of Korolev's rocket gliders. Nitric acid oxidizer, pretty advanced for its age, and it was starting ground tests by the time of Operation Barbarossa.

 

Wooden aircraft were nothing unusual back then, though.

You couldn't pay me to get in that :o

In many ways fuming nitric acid is worse than NO2/N2O4/N2O5. And it IS hypergolic with wood... At least LOX requires an ignition source

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32 minutes ago, DDE said:

If your craft is big enough, you can use radio during reentry - just coming from above.

Terminal active radio guidance is something the Pershing MARV had.

Hypersonic jet.

spiral43.jpg

That's basically the Me-163 - or, if we dig into the Soviet files, the Bereznyak-Isaev BI-1, preceded by several of Korolev's rocket gliders. Nitric acid oxidizer, pretty advanced for its age, and it was starting ground tests by the time of Operation Barbarossa.

bi1popkol.JPG

Wooden aircraft were nothing unusual back then, though.

hmmm  a spaceX, sort of late WWII jet like rocket with a soviet star on it, Musk does seem to be a Jack of all trades. :wink:

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6 minutes ago, tater said:

 

Is there an actual specified minimum time between rocket launches, or is this new ground?

3 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

Good grief what a death trap.

Still, he was the first person in history to take off vertically under rocket power, so that's something.

 

Yeah I just read the article. It was kind of like falcon... all except the very front was supposed to be reusable :P

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51 minutes ago, Antstar said:

Is there an actual specified minimum time between rocket launches, or is this new ground?

No idea, but they need to come up with a solution, as there are many launches happening, and things like weather delays, etc, will always be a thing, pushing them closer together. They are on neighboring pads, which is an issue as well.

 

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4 minutes ago, tater said:

No idea, but they need to come up with a solution, as there are many launches happening, and things like weather delays, etc, will always be a thing, pushing them closer together. They are on neighboring pads, which is an issue as well.

Remember what happened to the challenger.  The problem with space X is their stages RTLS (as one possibility of three). Adjacent pads is a personnel problem for those on the lagging launch

Edited by PB666
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Just now, PB666 said:

Remember what happened to the challenger.  The problem with space X is their stages RTLS (as one possibility of three).

This launch is not RTLS, it's to land on OCISLY, far out at sea (a super hot landing, this was originally scheduled to be expendable).

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8 minutes ago, tater said:

No idea, but they need to come up with a solution, as there are many launches happening, and things like weather delays, etc, will always be a thing, pushing them closer together. They are on neighboring pads, which is an issue as well.

 

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vs

lorDxKoh_400x400.jpg

 

giphy-downsized-large.gif

Maybe charge admission, proceeds go to charity. 

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11 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

SpaceX launches are more of a risk to the neighboring pad on liftoff than on RTLS.

Why? Of course I know that the stored energy is like that of a small nuke, but if it explodes its more of a BLEVY/ fuel air bomb - much less brisant. Would it really pose a danger to the other pad (I don't think they are that close)? Mind you, I wouldn't want to be within a few kilometers of an exploding rocket, so I can see it being a problem for personnel. Still, given that a rocket can (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BgJEXQkjNQ) explode on the pad before launch I always assumed that these days the rig it all up and fuel it remotely?

 

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15 minutes ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

*snip, just like the old times*

Maybe charge admission, proceeds go to charity. 

Serious idea: both have mentioned KSP, so let's do a twitch livestream where they try to both try to launch a mission to Duna, while answering stuff in the chat. Proceeds go to charity.

Someone should make a kickstarter or something!

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12 minutes ago, Antstar said:

Why? Of course I know that the stored energy is like that of a small nuke, but if it explodes its more of a BLEVY/ fuel air bomb - much less brisant. Would it really pose a danger to the other pad (I don't think they are that close)? Mind you, I wouldn't want to be within a few kilometers of an exploding rocket, so I can see it being a problem for personnel. Still, given that a rocket can (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BgJEXQkjNQ) explode on the pad before launch I always assumed that these days the rig it all up and fuel it remotely?

 

The chances of any interactions are extremely low, but in the unlikely event that the F9 had some weird chain-reaction engine failure and the AFTS took a few moments to catch it, the chance of a ruptured COPV exploding out and hitting the other pad are probably higher than the chances of debris from a failed RTLS landing getting anywhere near the other pad. 

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5 hours ago, Antstar said:

Yes, I know. But if we are being litteral and serious, then metallic gold, please. I believe that is the best performing across the full solar emission spectrum. And a gold rocket would look nice too

I can't argue with that!

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8 minutes ago, tater said:

I want rockets taking off and landing constantly.

If I could have three wishes...

 

I wonder if NASA did any research on this back in the days when they thought the Shuttle would fly every week (from what I recall around fifty launches per year was the goal in 1976). It seems to me that SpaceX's flight rate is now approaching a fraction of those levels, and so it's time to think about running Kennedy like an airport, but with rockets instead of planes. With a redesigned Missile Row there could potentially be a whole new infrastructure of several modern pads with enough separation between them to launch multiple rockets on the same day, so the goal would be to reduce the time it takes to get the rocket set up on the pad. Also, if the northernmost pad and southernmost pad were used at the same time, then they might be far enough away from each other to allow workers to continue to access their rocket on one pad while another flight launched from the other. (In this scenario, there would probably be up to four or five landing zones clustered at the end of Missile Row, to support Falcon Heavy launches going off at the same time as other Falcons. Landings wouldn't need anywhere near as much separation as launches, as FH demonstrated.) At this point, SpaceX is going to be the main force driving development of the Kennedy (and to a lesser extend, Vandenberg) launch facilities for well over a decade.

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23 minutes ago, tater said:

We need our spaceport to operate like a spaceport. I want rockets taking off and landing constantly.

Really, Forum? Really? This is when I run out of likes for the day? :mad:

3 minutes ago, Confused Scientist said:

I wonder if NASA did any research on this back in the days when they thought the Shuttle would fly every week

Well, back in the heyday of Apollo they did have plans for like 4 or 5 Saturn pads (the two that currently exist would have been the southern most), you can still see on satellite where the crawlerway would have gone farther north.

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4 hours ago, Confused Scientist said:

If I could have three wishes...

 

I wonder if NASA did any research on this back in the days when they thought the Shuttle would fly every week (from what I recall around fifty launches per year was the goal in 1976). It seems to me that SpaceX's flight rate is now approaching a fraction of those levels, and so it's time to think about running Kennedy like an airport, but with rockets instead of planes. With a redesigned Missile Row there could potentially be a whole new infrastructure of several modern pads with enough separation between them to launch multiple rockets on the same day, so the goal would be to reduce the time it takes to get the rocket set up on the pad. Also, if the northernmost pad and southernmost pad were used at the same time, then they might be far enough away from each other to allow workers to continue to access their rocket on one pad while another flight launched from the other. (In this scenario, there would probably be up to four or five landing zones clustered at the end of Missile Row, to support Falcon Heavy launches going off at the same time as other Falcons. Landings wouldn't need anywhere near as much separation as launches, as FH demonstrated.) At this point, SpaceX is going to be the main force driving development of the Kennedy (and to a lesser extend, Vandenberg) launch facilities for well over a decade.

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