sh1pman Posted August 1, 2019 Share Posted August 1, 2019 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zolotiyeruki Posted August 1, 2019 Share Posted August 1, 2019 (edited) Yeouch, this 2014 quote from the NASA administrator has...not aged well: Quote "Let's be very honest again," Bolden said in a 2014 interview. "We don't have a commercially available heavy lift vehicle. Falcon 9 Heavy may someday come about. It's on the drawing board right now. SLS is real. You've seen it down at Michoud. We're building the core stage. We have all the engines done, ready to be put on the test stand at Stennis... I don't see any hardware for a Falcon 9 Heavy, except that he's going to take three Falcon 9s and put them together and that becomes the Heavy. It's not that easy in rocketry." Edited August 1, 2019 by zolotiyeruki Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wjolcz Posted August 1, 2019 Share Posted August 1, 2019 15 minutes ago, zolotiyeruki said: Yeouch, this 2014 quote from the NASA administrator has...not aged well: Was about to say pretty much the same thing, lol. It's hard to believe it now, but back then landing an orbital rocket was just a cool trick in KSP. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flying dutchman Posted August 1, 2019 Share Posted August 1, 2019 4 minutes ago, Wjolcz said: Was about to say pretty much the same thing, lol. It's hard to believe it now, but back then landing an orbital rocket was just a cool trick in KSP. It still is technically until starship comes along Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mikegarrison Posted August 1, 2019 Share Posted August 1, 2019 Well, he was right. Musk eventually admitted that the original idea of just bolting three Falcon 9s together turned out to be flawed, and Falcon Heavy has a lot less commonality with Falcon 9 than SpaceX intended. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tater Posted August 1, 2019 Share Posted August 1, 2019 (edited) That article also rightly mentions the fact that ULA was actually out in front in this area. It's been part of their cislunar architecture for a long time. Since they don't think in terms of investing in this tech on their own, it languished. It's this sort of thing where Musk and Bezos both improve the situation, because they will spend money on things without the government paying for it (to be fair, at a certain level public companies can't, they have stockholders to answer to). 4 minutes ago, mikegarrison said: Well, he was right. Musk eventually admitted that the original idea of just bolting three Falcon 9s together turned out to be flawed, and Falcon Heavy has a lot less commonality with Falcon 9 than SpaceX intended. True, but I bet if someone had followed up asking Bolden to give the number of flights (in either direction) of FH vs SLS, he'd have said that SLS would have flown X times by the time FH ever flies, not the opposite, that FH will have flown Y times by the time SLS ever flies (Y is likely 4-5 I would think at this point, there's one next year, right?). Edited August 1, 2019 by tater Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kerbiloid Posted August 1, 2019 Share Posted August 1, 2019 Spoiler When they bolt three Starships together, it will be Tristarship. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mikegarrison Posted August 1, 2019 Share Posted August 1, 2019 It's a well-known problem in many industries that sometimes new products can cannibalize the market for older products. Products tend to lose money at first and then become more and more profitable as they age, because all the initial learning curve and investment has been completed. But product lines also age in the market, and eventually they become less attractive to buyers. So it's a balancing act between letting your product go stale versus killing it off too soon while it is at the height of its profitability. I'm not saying that's what happened in this case, but it's a common scenario where one part of a company is trying to introduce something new while another part of the company sees that new thing as a competitor. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tater Posted August 1, 2019 Share Posted August 1, 2019 One thing people in the "old space vs new space" war often forget is that few of the "new space" technological ideas are really new. Maybe the way they run the business is new, but reusable rockets, transferring propellants, etc, ad nauseum have been staples of space planning for decades. Since there were not powerful market forces pushing them towards making them, they waited for their customer (the government) to pay them for it to go past white papers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scotius Posted August 1, 2019 Share Posted August 1, 2019 7 hours ago, magnemoe said: Yes, and they are containers, you see one is open. I guess they painted them while to not heat up so much. D'oh! Spot check failed And to think - we thought one needs at least a barn to build a spaceship. Well, nope - all you need to do, is to stack some containers around - and you are good to go Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kerbiloid Posted August 1, 2019 Share Posted August 1, 2019 That's what they lack: Spoiler Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CatastrophicFailure Posted August 1, 2019 Share Posted August 1, 2019 Hmm, this is interesting... Must've gotten some deep data they didn’t like from the first one. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tater Posted August 1, 2019 Share Posted August 1, 2019 The weather was lousy both of the first 2 days anyway. I'm not overly concerned with this launch as they are throwing the booster away. Maybe we see a fairing catch, though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CatastrophicFailure Posted August 1, 2019 Share Posted August 1, 2019 (edited) Curiouser and curiouser... Guess there’s no SSO flights that can’t RTLS planned at Vandy any time soon, but... weren’t they already working on a second barge at Florida? Orrrrrrrr.... could it perhaps be heading for Boca? Also, disagreeable valve: Edited August 1, 2019 by CatastrophicFailure Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Raven Industries Posted August 1, 2019 Share Posted August 1, 2019 The progress on Starhopper sort of reminds me of how quickly structures like the Empire State Building went up. It also reminds me that building a spacecraft takes less time than building a local freeway intersection... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nightside Posted August 2, 2019 Share Posted August 2, 2019 2 hours ago, Raven Industries said: The progress on Starhopper sort of reminds me of how quickly structures like the Empire State Building went up. It also reminds me that building a spacecraft takes less time than building a local freeway intersection... Well that intersection has WAY more lives depending on it and needs to be used more than a couple of times. It also probably cost more. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CatastrophicFailure Posted August 2, 2019 Share Posted August 2, 2019 41 minutes ago, Nightside said: Well that intersection has WAY more lives depending on it and needs to be used more than a couple of times. It also probably cost more. More like as many pockets as possible need to be greased during the multi-decade building of said intersection... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tater Posted August 2, 2019 Share Posted August 2, 2019 Cool: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tater Posted August 2, 2019 Share Posted August 2, 2019 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CatastrophicFailure Posted August 2, 2019 Share Posted August 2, 2019 Quote SpaceX plans to increase the Falcon launch frequency to 20 launches per year from LC-39A and up to 50 launches per year from LC-40 by the year 2024." Great googamooga! Plus 24 Starship launches... that’s more than a launch every four days! No wonder they’re relocating the other drone ship... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nightside Posted August 2, 2019 Share Posted August 2, 2019 29 minutes ago, CatastrophicFailure said: Great googamooga! Plus 24 Starship launches... that’s more than a launch every four days! No wonder they’re relocating the other drone ship... I guess that frequency will be to get starlink flying. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tater Posted August 2, 2019 Share Posted August 2, 2019 Page 169 of the PDF I linked above has some interesting Raptor data. Quote The nominal operating condition for the Raptor engine is an injector face stagnation pressure (Pc) of 3669.5 psia and a somewhat fuel-rich engine O/F mixture ratio (MR) of 3.60. The current analysis was performed for the 100% nominal engine operating pressure (Pc=3669.5 psia) and an engine MR of 3.60 Quote 2Table 1: Raptor Nozzle Characteristics Throat Radius (in)4.362 Downstream radius of curvature (in)1.309 Tangency angle (deg)32.0 Nozzle lip exit angle (deg)6.0 Nozzle exit diameter (in)51.226 Nozzle throat to exit length (in)60.06 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tater Posted August 2, 2019 Share Posted August 2, 2019 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Delay Posted August 2, 2019 Share Posted August 2, 2019 Quote Starship LZ-1 at first. What? This makes it seem like Starship gets extra LZs, but LZ-1 and LZ-2 - the already extant ones - are HUGE! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flying dutchman Posted August 2, 2019 Share Posted August 2, 2019 (edited) What do you all think elon has changed about the fin design? It looked like a pretty good design to me.. Edit: really i've been dying to find out more about this. Edited August 2, 2019 by Flying dutchman Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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