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26 minutes ago, ment18 said:

I actually did a SRB propulsive landing in KSP for the laughs.  I just gave the landing thrusters a certain amount of deltaV that I thought would be enough, and then tweaked that deltaV by removing and adding more thrusters (sepatrons).  I used KOS to trigger the thrusters at a very specific height from the ground, which I tweaked until it worked properly.  I eventually got it to work, though the engine burned a little too long and it jumped after touchdown, non-destructively.  Here is the video.

 

I did a fully-reusable Falcon 5 clone that landed propulsively with solids, for a challenge....

unfortunately the images have died, for some reason, but I think I might still have them somewhere.

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3 hours ago, wumpus said:

Why would you bother with gimballing if you stay in the atmosphere?  Even Spacex uses active fins (titanium paddles) on the way down.  But looking at the picture that is definitely gimballing.

Falcon 9 uses gimbal a lot, it even uses trusters during touchdown burn, you would obviously prefer gimbal over cold gas trusters. 

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Another potential revenue generating "use" for BFR is space tourism.  Assuming SpaceX can get BFR human rated for tourist trips to LEO, they could offer 24 hr and 1 week tourist trips to LEO.  Doing that they could also test the life support facilities for multi-month trips.  (For long duration testing send up a BFR that will act as a hotel for a 6 month duration, then every week send up a new load of tourists, dock to the hotel BFR, and swap passengers.  This could provide a revenue source for long duration life support testing, and improvements to living arrangements, with the possibility of a quick return to Earth if something fails and can't be fixed in space).  

If you were going to pay for a space tourist experience, would you rather pay for 10 mins of zero g with Blue Origin, or pay more for 24 hrs or so on BFR?  (If they can get launch/training/crew costs down to $20M per launch, then 40 paying customers at $1M each is profitable).

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34 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

Has tough about it, my favorite is using an manned BFR as an satellite launcher for polar or other non standard orbits, works as long as the satellite fits in the cargo hold of it. 
Start by doing this for man rating, then tourism for extra income, bonus is that you see more of the Earth from an polar orbit, now you might need to stay up a bit longer than just the deployment but this don't cost so much. 

This is why i like BFR so much other than it being the biggest rocket in development. The concept is extremely simple yet versatile. The whole thing is a creativity playground.

Edited by NSEP
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1 hour ago, AVaughan said:

Another potential revenue generating "use" for BFR is space tourism.  Assuming SpaceX can get BFR human rated for tourist trips to LEO, they could offer 24 hr and 1 week tourist trips to LEO.  Doing that they could also test the life support facilities for multi-month trips.  (For long duration testing send up a BFR that will act as a hotel for a 6 month duration, then every week send up a new load of tourists, dock to the hotel BFR, and swap passengers. 

I guess they'd have to dock sideways, since tail-to-tail docking has no egress/ingress options.

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13 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

I guess they'd have to dock sideways, since tail-to-tail docking has no egress/ingress options.

I've seen pictures of BFRs docked side to side, and side to ISS, so I think that the design includes (or at least used to include) a dorsal mounted docking port suitable for personal transfers.  (Dorsal from the point of view of a BFR during atmospheric re-entry).  For the space tourism in LEO case, you probably don't need to transfer propellant, just passengers and luggage.  (If you are using this to test BFRs life support setup for a Mars mission, then you don't even need to transfer food/water/oxygen, since you should be able to launch with enough of those to last the full 6+ months).

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12 hours ago, NSEP said:

This is why i like BFR so much other than it being the biggest rocket in development. The concept is extremely simple yet versatile. The whole thing is a creativity playground.

I can picture NASA (or someone else) chartering one and turning it into a giant probe. Manned or unmanned, it would be able to carry a lot of scientific equipment to Jupiter or beyond.

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8 minutes ago, tater said:

I parked on the street in a long row of cars with SpaceX stickers. Cool as ——.

I knew I Should have driven through Hawthorne on our way to CSC when we went to Disneyland. But I was already blowing my geek allowance for the trip. 

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5 hours ago, NSEP said:

Very cool, but nah, don't think that would work very well :D

This not real by the way.

How would they though?  A train? 

Edited by DAL59
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21 minutes ago, DAL59 said:

 

How would they though?  A train? 

ship

1 hour ago, zolotiyeruki said:

Have SpaceX released any info on what the interior of the BFR upper stage will look like?  We've seen one fan-made concept, but I'd love to hear what SpaceX have in mind for that huge volume.

Not very much, we know it has 40 cabins, a radiation shelter, and a common area, but that is all we know.

The BFR upper stage (or BFS) is quite far away from becoming a manned vehicle, and i think we will have to wait a while before we get more details of the manned BFS, possible after Dragon V2 or the first grasshop flight.

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8 hours ago, NSEP said:

Very cool, but nah, don't think that would work very well :D

This not real by the way.

All that needs is a giant elastic band strung between the tailplanes of that jet. Climb to 30,000 ft, wind up the elastic band and ping that sucker (Big Falcon Sucker) right into orbit.

It's foolproof I tell you - foolproof!

 

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11 minutes ago, tater said:

waiting in line at Harry Potter ride, might as well keep up with SpaceX news.

I’m pretty sure that line took me over an hour to get through with my daughter when I was at Uni Studios. Of course, later in the day the visible lineup for Hogwarts was practically non-existent. Fun ride though. It’s nice how modern theme parks make (part of) the lineup part of the ride experience

And I’m sure that Crew Dragon will be a fun ride too. Can’t wait to see it fly. 

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On 6/16/2018 at 4:32 AM, Mad Rocket Scientist said:

 

SpaceX has stated that they want to make their operation carbon-neutral someday, which would mean producing methane from CO2 in the atmosphere. In fact, they could even become carbon negative, which, although it wouldn't really make much of a dent in atmospheric CO2, would be a great precedent.

Thunderfoot did some math on extracting methane from air (for making plastics in this case, but the point is the same). Energy required to pump enough air through scrubbers to produce significant amounts of methane is huge and not practical.

 

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