totm nov 2023 SpaceX Discussion Thread

[Beccab]

 

[RealKerbal3x]

Quote

On December 21, 2021, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket launched Dragon on the 24th Commercial Resupply Services (CRS-24) mission for NASA from historic Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, completing our 31st and final launch of the year. Dragon separated from Falcon 9’s second stage about twelve minutes after liftoff and will autonomously dock to the space station on Wednesday, December 22.

CRS-24 also marked the 100th recovery of an orbital class rocket booster. SpaceX remains the only launch provider in the world capable of propulsive landing and re-flight of orbital class rockets. While most rockets are expended after launch — akin to throwing away an airplane after a cross-country flight — SpaceX is working toward a future in which reusable rockets are the norm. To date, SpaceX has:

• Launched 138 successful missions;
• Landed first stage rocket boosters 100 times; and
• Reflown boosters 78 times, with flight-proven first stages completing 75 percent of SpaceX’s missions since the first re-flight of a Falcon 9 in 2017.

2021 was particularly impressive, during which the SpaceX team:

• Launched 94 percent of all missions on flight-proven Falcon 9 boosters;
• Safely carried eight astronauts to the International Space Station for NASA, in addition to transporting ~28,000 pounds of critical cargo and scientific research to and from the orbiting laboratory;
• Completed the world’s first all-civilian astronaut mission to orbit, which flew farther from planet Earth than any human spaceflight since the Hubble missions;
• Launched humanity’s first planetary defense test to redirect an asteroid, among other important scientific missions; and
• Deployed more than 800 Starlink satellites to low-Earth orbit which are helping to connect over 150,000 customers and counting around the world with high-speed, low-latency internet.

In the year ahead, SpaceX’s launch cadence will continue to increase, as will the number of flight-proven missions, human spaceflights, Falcon Heavy missions, and people connected with internet by Starlink. We’re also targeting the first orbital flight of Starship, and have resumed development of a lunar lander for NASA that will help return humanity to the Moon, on our way to Mars and beyond.

 

[kerbiloid]

They forgot the "first barge landing".

And if they put a hundred or two of employees with oars, it would be the "first rocket galley".

[Gargamel]

5 hours ago, RealKerbal3x said:

CRS-24 launch success!

 

It went FWOOM........ RUMBLE RUMBLE RUMBLE

[tater]

I notice that twitter links load slower on NSF as well. Must be twitter wanting people to use their platform.

[Beccab]

1 hour ago, tater said:

I notice that twitter links load slower on NSF as well. Must be twitter wanting people to use their platform.

As a non Twitter user, in the last few days they also made it so you have to refresh the page once to be allowed to expand a tweet on someone's profile (before it was just on mobile), so that seems likely

[Gargamel]

Does anybody know where exactly they recover the boosters from the drone ships, what’s the timeline for that, and if perhaps it’s viewable by the public? 

[RealKerbal3x]

38 minutes ago, Gargamel said:

Does anybody know where exactly they recover the boosters from the drone ships, what’s the timeline for that, and if perhaps it’s viewable by the public? 

For Cape Canaveral launches, the boosters return to Port Canaveral and get offloaded there. It happens in full public view and there are actually a few webcams pointed at the site.

Also, B4 cryo #2 seems to be underway:

 

[Gargamel]

8 minutes ago, RealKerbal3x said:

return to Port Canaveral and get offloaded there.

The port is a BIG place.    I’ll google around some more. 

[Beccab]

N2 loading on B4 begins, NSF is live

[tater]

 

[RealKerbal3x]

 

[tater]

 

[RCgothic]

One frosty boi:

I think I recall the reason they don't fill completely to the top with LN2 is that it's denser than LCH4.

 

 

Edited December 22, 2021 by RCgothic

[Beccab]

Seeing posts about Starship from official NASA accounts always seems so weird

Edited December 22, 2021 by Beccab

[RCgothic]

Lower tank now completely full.

 

 

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

53 minutes ago, Beccab said:

Seeing posts about Starship from official NASA accounts always seems so weird

NASA brags about its contractors all the time.

(*Contractor, not competitor)

[CatastrophicFailure]

2 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

NASA brags about its contractors all the time.

(*Contractor, not competitor)

Right, but until recently, there’s been a feeling that they didn’t quite want to acknowledge Starship, and not without some validity. 

[Vanamonde]

The lengthy digression about contaminating Mars has been moved here. 

 

[MKI]

1 hour ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

Right, but until recently, there’s been a feeling that they didn’t quite want to acknowledge Starship, and not without some validity. 

Ultimately we (the space community) care about Starship development way more than the people NASA like to target (the general public). 

Since Starship is still very early in development, it makes sense they don't really talk about it to much. NASA has a number of other projects to promote that are much further in development. There's also the element that Starship development will include a bunch of explosions, and I don't think they want to promote those to the public as much, as it would be confusing.

NASA doesn't want to make it seem like it is letting things explode, which is bad, and since NASA is paid for by tax payers, muddling the message with awesome explosions would at least create confusion, or worse case resentment. Showing off things exploding isn't a top NASA priority, meanwhile I'm sure they will love to promote whatever successes SpaceX achieves.

 

Its not NASA's fault or anything, its just its a government agency paid for by tax dollars. The PR game is a different deal than SpaceX-fans who jump at the idea of big explosions ;D

 

 

[magnemoe]

2 hours ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

Right, but until recently, there’s been a feeling that they didn’t quite want to acknowledge Starship, and not without some validity. 

Because its an radical disruption, stuff like launching Web on it would be kind of easier  Still moonship won an huge contract. 

[tater]

 

[Jacke]

On 12/22/2021 at 10:41 PM, CatastrophicFailure said:

Right, but until recently, there’s been a feeling that they didn’t quite want to acknowledge Starship, and not without some validity. 

NASA didn't commission Starship.  And why shouldn't Starship be rated under the same scheme as Vulcan (and effectively SLS too): two flights without a significant issue before flying a serious payload.  Even that doesn't seem to be enough when a serious payload like the James Webb Telescope is a $10 billion payload.  And Starship can't be crew-rated on the pad because there is no abort escape.

[Beccab]

2 hours ago, Jacke said:

NASA didn't commission Starship.  And why shouldn't Starship be rated under the same scheme as Vulcan (and effectively SLS too): two flights without a significant issue before flying a serious payload.  Even that doesn't seem to be enough when a serious payload like the James Webb Telescope is a $10 billion payload.  And Starship can't be crew-rated on the pad because there is no abort escape.

That's not what the lack of aknowledgement is about though. If we started to talk about the NASA proposals that used SLS as a baseline since its conception we could continue for a full day and we still wouldn't have mentioned even half of all the optimistic and quite unrealizable plans in the endless search to find a destination for the rocket in need of one: just to say the first few ones that come to my mind:
- crewed Phobos expedition in 2033 with 10 SLS, later becoming 32 SLS in total for two human mars landings in 2039 and 2046 and an expected cost of 217 billions https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2015/09/sls-manifest-phobos-mars-2039/
- crewed Mars orbit expedition again in 2033, first delayed to 2035, then to 2037, then cancelled https://spacenews.com/independent-report-concludes-2033-human-mars-mission-is-not-feasible/
- Skylab II asteroid exploration station, launched in 2022 from SLS Block 2 https://hdl.handle.net/2060/20120016760
- Near Earth Asteroid crewed mission using two SLS, sending a crew to retrieve the samples and take them to Earth https://authors.library.caltech.edu/64681/1/near.pdf
- Two stage lunar lander comanifested with Orion and launched on Block 2 https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2011/12/building-roadmap-sls-con-ops-lays-leolunar-options/

Of course this is because SLS is mandated by congress instead of a commercial launcher, but this doesn't change the fact that SLS was considered as real and done from the day it was conceived, just like Ares V/I and Shuttle-C were before it; instead, only this year some parts of NASA (or external parties that collaborate with NASA) published plans involving Starship or tried to get others to consider its capabilities more. You can certainly argue the reasons behind this, but not that SLS and Starship had the same consideration inside NASA

[mikegarrison]

26 minutes ago, Beccab said:

That's not what the lack of aknowledgement is about though. If we started to talk about the NASA proposals that used SLS as a baseline since its conception we could continue for a full day and we still wouldn't have mentioned even half of all the optimistic and quite unrealizable plans in the endless search to find a destination for the rocket in need of one: just to say the first few ones that come to my mind:
- crewed Phobos expedition in 2033 with 10 SLS, later becoming 32 SLS in total for two human mars landings in 2039 and 2046 and an expected cost of 217 billions https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2015/09/sls-manifest-phobos-mars-2039/
- crewed Mars orbit expedition again in 2033, first delayed to 2035, then to 2037, then cancelled https://spacenews.com/independent-report-concludes-2033-human-mars-mission-is-not-feasible/
- Skylab II asteroid exploration station, launched in 2022 from SLS Block 2 https://hdl.handle.net/2060/20120016760
- Near Earth Asteroid crewed mission using two SLS, sending a crew to retrieve the samples and take them to Earth https://authors.library.caltech.edu/64681/1/near.pdf
- Two stage lunar lander comanifested with Orion and launched on Block 2 https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2011/12/building-roadmap-sls-con-ops-lays-leolunar-options/

Of course this is because SLS is mandated by congress instead of a commercial launcher, but this doesn't change the fact that SLS was considered as real and done from the day it was conceived, just like Ares V/I and Shuttle-C were before it; instead, only this year some parts of NASA (or external parties that collaborate with NASA) published plans involving Starship or tried to get others to consider its capabilities more. You can certainly argue the reasons behind this, but not that SLS and Starship had the same consideration inside NASA

Praising SLS is about getting money. There was no money to be gotten for praising Starship, until Starship got selected as the lunar lander. Then there was money to be gotten for praising it, and lo and behold, the praise began.