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SpaceX Discussion Thread


Skylon

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2 hours ago, Ho Lam Kerman said:

Well, Scott Manley's a DJ, Everyday Astronaut's a photographer, and Matt Lowne is a filmmaker (sort of)- I say we stand a pretty good chance!

(Though with all three of them on board, I worry they'll coordinate a landing- they definitely have the skill!)

"Hullo, it's Scott Manley and today I'm going to be giving you a tour of the Big Falcon Rocket while I fly towards the Mun in real life."

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Out of all people in the spaceflight community, i think Tim Dodd (The Everyday Astronaut) is the most likely person to go in this trip. He is a very good person. Everyone else is just a good person.

Maybe Buzz Aldrin, if he is still alive in 2023, maybe he will be a little too old.

I also just found out the entire Apollo 8 crew is still alive, maybe give William Anders a ride back? He would be 89-90 by then but ehhh.... yeah.

Also, considering Yusaku is from Japan and this is an International thing, maybe send Valentina Tereshkova to the Moon? Maybe even Alexei Leonov, i think he was the one intended to ride an N-1 rocket to the Moon and be the first Cosmonaut to land and walk on the Moon.

Considering its about "capturing people's imagination via art" or something, i doubt they will send a 80-90 year old into space, and go for a youngster like Tim Dodd instead.

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14 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

2 heavy battle tanks.

2 sperm whales or 2/3 of a blue whale.

or 12-16 Tyrannosaurus, which I think is a better unit of measurement here.

11 hours ago, totalitor said:

I am glad to be alive. Great things going to happen.

I couldn't agree more... assuming things go as planned...

8 hours ago, cubinator said:

"Hullo, it's Scott Manley and today I'm going to be giving you a tour of the Big Falcon Rocket while I fly towards the Mun in real life."

[REDACTED] I need to watch that if it happens

1 hour ago, zolotiyeruki said:

During the presentation last night, did anyone else feel like Elon was acting a bit...odd?  Hesitant, stilted speech, odd pauses, etc.

My mum and I discussed this when we watched the presentation. Her theory is that it's just because everything is happening so soon, and they're sending humans into deep space this time, and if anything goes wrong with the mission, SpaceX is basically [REDACTED]

Also, it isn't too unusual, as the above posts have pointed out.

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55 minutes ago, tater said:

This.

 

Tho it certainly speaks to the strengths of his ideas and passion that he’s able to garner support (and lots of funding), and not just for SpaceX, despite sounding like a nervous 8th grader giving his first class presentation. :cool:

 

5 minutes ago, ChrisSpace said:

couldn't agree more... assuming things go as planned

Sometime in the future...

Spoiler

A harsh wind blows across featureless hardscrabble, broken only here and there by the twisted, rusting hulks of a bygone age. Above, the skies roil and churn with clouds the color of gravestones while a tattered band of lost souls shelter in the lee of one wreck. 

@ChrisSpace gives his battered canteen a wistful shake, his eyes eyes growing distant in the fading light, ”It all began when some fool tried to put a dozen dinosaurs and some whale bits into space...”

 

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21 hours ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

Apollo 8 reached peri-Mün 69 hours into the mission, including time in a parking orbit, sounds about right.

I'm not sure whether to be more worried that you typed umlats for that or that I completely failed to notice the first time I saw it. :) 

15 hours ago, AVaughan said:

The press conference was disappointingly light on technical details.  But that was probably to be expected from a briefing aimed at the mainstream press.  Hopefully more details will be released soon.

"So how much will it cost?" I was so happy to hear Tim Dodd asking about the vacuum engines, I was afraid no one was going to.

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5 minutes ago, tater said:

It just occurred to me that for a sense of scale, the entire Shuttle external tank fits easily inside BFS, with several meters to spare in length, even discounting the fins.

 

 

Proof the SpaceX team plays Kerbal, they made it to carry the standard orange tank. -_-

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Work has been nuts so I just now got a chance to come here and comment on the presentation (which I was lucky enough to view live)....

WOWWWWWW

AHHHH!

Okay, got that out of my system.

I must say I was completely sure that those trapezoidal panels were something fancy to protect the engines or act as a collective nozzle or something...and no, it's aft cargo. SMH. 

Aft cargo is neat, though. Competes neatly with Blue Moon, if you think about it. "Hey, we can deliver up to 4.5 tonnes to the lunar surface!" "Oh, that's nice. We can deliver 5 tonnes to the lunar surface. Twelve times. In twelve different places. Reusably. While carrying tourists."

Also teases the possibility of a separate abort assist motor if NASA is hesitant about abort TWR; you could replace several of the pallets with solid motors to give the initial kick away from a RUDing first stage.

On to the control surfaces. This makes a LOT of sense, and it explains why I was never able to get my BFS clones to re-enter properly. The four flaps do NOT have laminar flow over their surfaces during entry, so they do not provide any meaningful lift. Rather, they function as airbrakes. Elon made several comparisons to a skydiver, and that's exactly how it will work. A skydiver falls prone, with all four limbs extended to act as brakes. By pulling in or extending limbs in pairs, the diver can induce pitch and roll, and if skillful, yaw. I didn't see how the BFS could have three-axis control with only two control surfaces, but with four differential braking surfaces, it's fairly straightforward.

It sounded a little odd when Elon made statements about "yeah it is riskier but I like the aesthetics," but on review I think that's looking more holistically. The risk is development risk, not operational risk; it's risky to force landing gear and control surfaces to develop as a single unit because if you can't do it then you've wasted a lot of time. And the aesthetics probably include stuff like simplicity, functionality, and so forth.

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