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2 hours ago, NSEP said:

 

Is the media going to freak out about it now, almost half a year after announcement?

 

Well, given that Elon and the media haven’t exactly been on the best of terms lately...<_<

18 minutes ago, Jaff said:

Why can’t they just throw them up on a FH?

There’s still some nontrivial development cost and time for a brand new manned spacecraft that might make its first manned flight before the year is out, also a very new rocket that might have three flights by then, too...

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54 minutes ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

Well, given that Elon and the media haven’t exactly been on the best of terms lately...<_<

For anyone who doesn't know:

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Am I right to assume that the grasshopper version of BFR will be a 100% scale? Any new pictures/info about the progress they are making or is everything just standing under the tent until they have a proper hangar/factory for it?

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2 hours ago, Jaff said:

Why can’t they just throw them up on a FH?

 

doesnt need to be NASA approved if they’re private companies? 

It’s literally like me paying my mate to drive me somewhere and back 

Even private trips need to be approved. Heck, to launch unmanned payloads requires stacks of paperwork and approvals for the vehicle.

F9H isn't man-rated. Not yet anyway. At least as far as I know.

It's nothing like paying someone to drive you around in a car. It'd be like paying someone to push you around on a bomb. Imagine if the car was laced with explosives and the chance they'd go off was much higher than the likelihood of a car accident. But let's compare them. That car model still took lots of paperwork and government approval and certification to be sold at all. And your mate likely had to get a license. And depending on how that works out, having a license includes government permission to transport others. Rockets are an entirely different beast than cars. They require much more certification and paperwork, as well as many other concerns once you get to launching them. They're also much more likely to have an accident. They're also capable of falling onto other countries, and the country of origin. That's something that needs to be controlled.

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4 hours ago, DAL59 said:

WHOA I just found something after doing a sitemap analysis of spacex.com:

http://www.spacex.com/protected-page?destination=node/142446&protected_page=6

Make sure to take a look at the internet archive version of spacex.com sometime, it's fun to see how far they've come.

Oh, and while you're at it, read this blog by Kimbal Musk about the very early days of SpaceX: https://kwajrockets.blogspot.com/

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On 6/4/2018 at 10:22 PM, Jaff said:

Why can’t they just throw them up on a FH?

SpaceX public relations are incredible. Weighing the small probability of extremely negative press that will result if the two tourists (read: "People who think Old Faithful erupts at the top of every hour") die against the good publicity of a circumlunar flight gets us that decision.

Edited by Val
Removed reply to off-topic post
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6 hours ago, Jaff said:

Why can’t they just throw them up on a FH?

 

doesnt need to be NASA approved if they’re private companies? 

It’s literally like me paying my mate to drive me somewhere and back  

One of the reasons is that NASA might be a bit mad, they have been hyping SLS/DSG/EM-2 for a while, and if SpaceX were to rush in and fly people around the moon, congress could question NASA for being inefficient, which might lead to some cancellations at NASA, which could put some of the contractors, companies, and employees against SpaceX.

It's a mostly stupid reason, but it's a reason.

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13 hours ago, Bill Phil said:

Solar storms.

Solar storms only come from one direction. It'd be no big deal to manoeuvre to place the bulk of the fuel tank between sun and passenger compartment. Storms don't hit full intensity instantly, and even if they did they'd need exposure longer than it would take to reorient to do serious damage.

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8 hours ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

And now begins the long wait. :( Next mission is CRS-15, now June 29. Telstar 19v now July, and that poor thing that used to be Sherpa pushed back from July to September. ;.;

C’mon, guys, this cadence would be ok for everyone but SpaceX! :huh:

via SpaceFlightNow 

But, we have some good news - Elon likes to release news about in development stuff during these lulls. Maybe we'll get a BFR progress update later this month. Or more D2 info...

...Or an announcement that Mr. Steven's net is getting bigger.

 

 

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1 minute ago, Delay said:

Well, it doubled in size... Not really sure if that's such a big improvement.

Doubled in length and width, so x4 in overall area. It's not the best improvement, but it's still a big one. IIRC they missed by <50m last time. The ship is ~200ft long with the net being half of that, so the new net will be about 400ftx400ft, or 122m*122m.

If they missed the edge of the old net by 50m, then it was a total of (50m miss, old net was 61m, /2 for r is 30m) 80 meters from the center of the net, meaning to hit the net their accuracy would have to increase by 50m, preferably close to 80. However, with the new design, they only have to increase accuracy by (radius doubles, adds 30m, 50-30=) 20 meters to hit the new net, although again the preferred number is 80.

I think. My math skills have already degraded significantly over the summer.

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11 hours ago, RCgothic said:

Solar storms only come from one direction. It'd be no big deal to manoeuvre to place the bulk of the fuel tank between sun and passenger compartment. Storms don't hit full intensity instantly, and even if they did they'd need exposure longer than it would take to reorient to do serious damage.

I didn't make any claims regarding solar storms. 

They come from one direction but you may still need a shelter if anything gets back-scattered or something along those lines occurs.

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There's nothing in interplanetary space for anything to back scatter off of. Probably the worst place to be would be the Van Allen belts, but they'll only be passing through those for a short time.

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3 hours ago, RCgothic said:

There's nothing in interplanetary space for anything to back scatter off of. Probably the worst place to be would be the Van Allen belts, but they'll only be passing through those for a short time.

Stuff inside the spaceship won't cause issues?

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19 hours ago, RCgothic said:

There's nothing in interplanetary space for anything to back scatter off of. Probably the worst place to be would be the Van Allen belts, but they'll only be passing through those for a short time.

AFAIK they can pretty much avoid them. Depends on the inclination.

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20 hours ago, tater said:

That cool drawing of BFS? Here's a better quality version:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TkA6hAyPWu_djuGwUBF68F6ssRCDFkNZ/view

 

Looking at this picture gave me an interesting idea. Crew quarters are essentially a cylinder with an empty tunnel in the center. Start rotating the BFR, and there will be artificial gravity :D Not much of it, sure - but i guess it could be useful on long trips. A bit of gravity is better than zero-g, right?

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20 minutes ago, Scotius said:

Looking at this picture gave me an interesting idea. Crew quarters are essentially a cylinder with an empty tunnel in the center. Start rotating the BFR, and there will be artificial gravity :D Not much of it, sure - but i guess it could be useful on long trips. A bit of gravity is better than zero-g, right?

I think the sickening coriolis forces would be worst than the muscle and bone strength decay. I'll take a look at the math and see how bad it would be.

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20 minutes ago, Scotius said:

Looking at this picture gave me an interesting idea. Crew quarters are essentially a cylinder with an empty tunnel in the center. Start rotating the BFR, and there will be artificial gravity :D Not much of it, sure - but i guess it could be useful on long trips. A bit of gravity is better than zero-g, right?

4.5 meters is not a great radius for that sort of thing.

Also the windows would be in the floor.

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