totm nov 2023 SpaceX Discussion Thread

[Nibb31]

Regardless of fuel cost, noise killed Concorde. A suborbital hypersonic projectile heading towards a major city center is not going to be very popular.

The flight time might be under an hour, but you've got to take into account the total transit time, including transport to and from the launch/landing barge (by boat?), TSA checks, customs, boarding, etc...

A P2P vehicle would probably be very different anyway. You wouldn't need those Vacuum Raptors, nor would it need header tanks. So it would probably be a completely different design.

Edited September 29, 2017 by Nibb31

[Northstar1989]

3 hours ago, tater said:

You have to test things someplace. Might as well be close to home, they flew grasshopper in TX, they didn't first haul it to Antartica.

They really need a cargo version.

Yeah, but it's an awfully expensive test flight.  Probably more along these lines:

3 hours ago, .50calBMg said:

If I had to guess, I might say something along the lines of the general public thinking Mars is impossible for  humans to get to, but the moon is much easier, and would be more likely to fund it because it seems more reasonable.

Politicians are stupid. They will think Mars is impossible, no matter how impressive SpaceX's portfolio becomes (and they still haven't even demonstrated upper stsge recovery yet- they definitely need to do that before politicians will trust them with Mars).  Going to the Moon, on the other hand, most politicians KNOW has been done before.  And there are still plenty of tourists who'd be willing to pay for it...

Edited September 29, 2017 by Northstar1989

[kerbiloid]

1 hour ago, mikegarrison said:

If you want to get coach class numbers of people, you need to have coach class prices.

Even better. No difference on ascent and under zero-G anyway.
Can easily increase the Martians' body count twice.

51 minutes ago, Nibb31 said:

The design seems to have matured a bit since last year

Nice to see how one well-thought-out design (with wings) gets replaced with another well-thought-out design (wingless) in just a year, right before its physical implementation.

45 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

I am highly dubious of his claim that "cost per seat should be about the same as full fare economy". That sounds an awful lot like wishful thinking.

Unless your rich uncle's name is NASA. Then a nephew could make some economy.

37 minutes ago, tater said:

I can see one very interested customer for all of it, including point to point, or even nearly single orbit... sounds like what they always wanted. They being the USAF.

http://www.pmview.com/spaceodysseytwo/spacelvs/sld013.htm

Upd.

Spoiler

 

Putting into orbit the small right thing with additionally putting the heavy left thing.
 

Spoiler

 

Why do those big and heavy rockets land/launch right near these glass cupola?

Edited September 29, 2017 by kerbiloid

[Jaff]

Wait wait wait... did I just read that the F9 & FH will have production stopped for this thing?

 

is that because they expect them all that have been built already to be reusable? Or he’s NFI about such menial things anymore? 

 

Landing a F9 booster is majestic, I can only imagine how glorious FH will be so if they’ve been canned I’ll be disappointed 

[mikegarrison]

3 minutes ago, Jaff said:

is that because they expect them all that have been built already to be reusable? Or he’s NFI about such menial things anymore? 

It's because he thinks the new rocket will be cheaper to get to orbit than the Falcons (once reusuability is factored in), so he figures all the business will go to the new rocket anyway.

Edited September 29, 2017 by mikegarrison

[Nibb31]

8 minutes ago, Jaff said:

Wait wait wait... did I just read that the F9 & FH will have production stopped for this thing?

Yes, that's how he intends to fund the thing: by shifting all resources towards BFR.

I suspect they will stockpile Merlin engines and second stages and reuse all 1st stages. Don't expect F9 launches to become any cheaper. Any savings through reusability are going into BFR development.

It's a huge gamble IMO. He is literally betting the entire company on reusability and BFR.

Quote

is that because they expect them all that have been built already to be reusable? Or he’s NFI about such menial things anymore? 

Landing a F9 booster is majestic, I can only imagine how glorious FH will be so if they’ve been canned I’ll be disappointed 

Probably both. He sort of admitted that FH was a dead end. He said that he hoped to recover F9 fairings, but didn't mention recovering the second stage any more.

There was also no mention of the constellation. I suspect he doesn't want to scare his customer base here.

 

Edited September 29, 2017 by Nibb31

[Jaff]

So what happens to the dragon capsules and the certification F9/FH has/should achieve? 

 

Perhaos i I was hopeful FH would be a success where they think it won’t be but it seems really stupid to put all your eggs in 1 basket. 

 

Hes got got people lining up to get a satalite or something on top of a F9, I don’t think people will be so keen on a new rocket just because of its size. 

[mikegarrison]

There is another issue here, which is scale. In his talk, he mentioned that it's cheaper to charter a 747 across the ocean than it is to buy something like a Q400. This is true. But it's cheaper to fly a Q400 on a feeder route than it would be to fly a 747 that is nearly empty.

His payload cost to orbit for his big f***ing rocket is cheap -- if it flies full. So he needs a big growth market in mass-to-orbit for this to pay off.

[Cassel]

4 hours ago, tater said:

Volume he said was like A380. In economy config, that can hold over 800 people.

 

In first image it looks like space shuttle, but without wings.

[Nibb31]

2 hours ago, Jaff said:

So what happens to the dragon capsules and the certification F9/FH has/should achieve? 

Dragon 2 always has been pretty much a dead end after the ISS contracts, which only represent a dozen flights. It's supposed to be reusable and so is F9, so the only production line they need is for the 2nd stage. If they divert production resources from Merlin to MVac and from lower stages to upper stages, they can build a decent stockpile of expendable upper stages to last a couple of years.

Quote

Perhaos i I was hopeful FH would be a success where they think it won’t be but it seems really stupid to put all your eggs in 1 basket. 

FH has proven to be harder than they thought. Even Musk doesn't seem very confident that it will work.

 

Edited September 29, 2017 by Nibb31

[Jaff]

16 minutes ago, Nibb31 said:

Dragon always has been pretty much a dead end after the ISS CCDev, which only represents less than a dozen flights. It's supposed to be reusable and so is F9, so the only production line they need is for the 2nd stage. They can stockpile these to honor current contracts.

FH has proven to be harder than they thought. Even Musk doesn't seem very confident that it will work.

 

Sorry I means dragon and dragon 2

 

if FH is so difficult, why do they persist with it? Expesially since they have their BFR in the making 

[TheEpicSquared]

23 minutes ago, Jaff said:

 

if FH is so difficult, why do they persist with it? Expesially since they have their BFR in the making 

They need a rocket that can serve high-mass payloads until BFR comes online, I would assume.

[KSK]

I can't tell a lie - this makes me uneasy. Awesome if it works but will it work? It seems like a very large leap into the unknown to bet the company on.

More importantly - will it work on time? I'm a big SpaceX fan but... well Elon time. Have they properly accounted for it?

[Nibb31]

 

41 minutes ago, Jaff said:

if FH is so difficult, why do they persist with it? Expesially since they have their BFR in the making 

Because it's done and they have a couple of paying customers. They might as well fly it at this point.

[_Augustus_]

BFR looks like everything the Shuttle was meant to be, and then some!

[magnemoe]

2 hours ago, Nibb31 said:

Yes, that's how he intends to fund the thing: by shifting all resources towards BFR.

I suspect they will stockpile Merlin engines and second stages and reuse all 1st stages. Don't expect F9 launches to become any cheaper. Any savings through reusability are going into BFR development.

It's a huge gamble IMO. He is literally betting the entire company on reusability and BFR.

Probably both. He sort of admitted that FH was a dead end. He said that he hoped to recover F9 fairings, but didn't mention recovering the second stage any more.

There was also no mention of the constellation. I suspect he doesn't want to scare his customer base here.

 

If they are a bit smart they keep the falcon facilities, they will be useful for repairs if nothing else. 
Move people over to BFR but you have the option to move back. 
Afterwards I see an use for an MFR something fully reusable with say 20 ton to LEO, the BFR will be kind of stupid to use for putting an 3 ton satellite into an polar orbit. 
And no fuel will not be the main part of operational costs, even then mature it would still require maintenance the level of fighter jets or similar high performance crafts. 
 

[sevenperforce]

6 hours ago, sh1pman said:

To be honest, I've never thought about the possibility of refuelling in high elliptic orbit. This will be bloody awesome if they can make it work.

This is precisely the mission architecture I had wanted to see. The actual docking and propellant transfer could take place near perigee but the idea is to be almost all the way to the moon first, then do the fuel transfer. The tanker can come back and aerocapture without expending any more propellant.

If they don't have good enough margins for this, they can put both the tanker and the mission vehicle in a lunar free-return, then transfer propellant. The tanker can loop around the moon, come back, and aerocapture; the mission vehicle will have enough to land and return.

5 hours ago, Northstar1989 said:

The Merlin 1D Vac doesn't have a TWR < 1.  What do you think it is, an ion engine?  The STAGE has a TWR <1 at ignition.  Give it less fuel and payload, more Merlin 1D Vac engines, or just look at the TWR closer to engine cutoff, and TWR will be >1.

Obviously that's what I meant.

5 hours ago, Nibb31 said:

Regardless of fuel cost, noise killed Concorde. A suborbital hypersonic projectile heading towards a major city center is not going to be very popular.

The flight time might be under an hour, but you've got to take into account the total transit time, including transport to and from the launch/landing barge (by boat?), TSA checks, customs, boarding, etc...

A P2P vehicle would probably be very different anyway. You wouldn't need those Vacuum Raptors, nor would it need header tanks. So it would probably be a completely different design.

I don't understand why they would keep the booster at all. Swap out the four Vac raptors for SL ones and you could do the suborbital hop with the Spaceship alone. 

I have some concern about the cargo version. What about servicing smaller launches and GTO stuff? Are we going to see an orbital tug? It's a huge waste to put a BFR into orbit just to send up a 6-tonne GTO comsat.

[Julien Kerman]

So no Interplanetary Transport System ?  

[Nibb31]

9 minutes ago, Julien Kerman said:

So no Interplanetary Transport System ?  

What do you mean ?

[tater]

The name, I think, is what he meant.

[Ultimate Steve]

Okay, watched the whole thing at 1.5x speed and I'm probably going to be almost late for school again, so I'll try to keep it short.

• This proposal looks more realistic than last year's.
• I'm skeptical on the landing legs. I know you can't have actual redundancy without 5 or 6, but the short horizontal distance they protrude out is fairly concerning.
• Still don't know how they are going to manage that flip around in the atmosphere.
• We've got video of the carbon tank exploding!
• Shutting down F9 lines? That's a risky business move, Elon. I'd keep some facilities open if I were you, at least the second stage production lines. What if your storage hangar goes down in a hurricane before BFR is flying?
• And I seriously hope you give it a better name. You said BFR is the code-name and not the real name, and I hope you're right.
• WOOOOHOOO SPACE!
• 2024 is a bit optimistic for humans on Mars. I think 2028 might be better, but that's still great!
• Point to point, I'm really skeptical of. Like, extremely. With these things it's not about if one of them will explode with 100 passengers, it's when.
• Nothing about estimated cost.
• Refueling looks more realistic now.

Yay! Mars! I'm out of time, more I'd like to say, but school starts in 5 minutes.

[Nibb31]

20 minutes ago, tater said:

The name, I think, is what he meant.

BFR is the internal codename. ITS was mentioned last year, but Musk said that he didn't like it. The community changed it to ITSy when it downscaled to 9m, but clearly the 12m version wasn't realistic.

He said they still haven't come up with a good name. How hard can it be ? It's not like there is a lack of names on the theme of birds of prey or dragons, which is what they have been using until now. Just call it Lammergeier and be done with it.

Edited September 29, 2017 by Nibb31

[kerbiloid]

BFR = BiFocal Rocket.
Meaningful and decent.
And sounds similar...

Spoiler

 

[TheEpicSquared]

13 minutes ago, Nibb31 said:

Just call it Lammergeier and be done with it.

Doesn’t quite roll off the tongue though.

SpaceX should have a naming competition. Winner gets a free tour of the HQ or something.  

[Nibb31]

2 minutes ago, TheEpicSquared said:

Doesn’t quite roll off the tongue though.

Depends on your tongue. Don't be so anthropocentric!

 

Edited September 29, 2017 by Nibb31