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Skylon

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57 minutes ago, RCgothic said:

I work in nuclear engineering. It's not actually very good engineering. Very reliable, but as far from cutting edge as you get. You get away with a lot of sins with a safety factor of x10 and no consideration of mass penalties. We can't afford to fail and so we don't learn much.

I bet SpaceX learns loads.

One of my favorite quotes about engineering comes from Carroll Smith (author and race car engineer): "an engineer is someone who can do for a dime what any fool can do for a dollar".

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52 minutes ago, RealKerbal3x said:

Attaching the fairings to the landing legs would be a good idea, because the legs would be able to spread out more (increasing the tipping moment) while still remaining protected during reentry. There is the downside of slightly increased complexity, but this idea does remind me of the landing legs on the 2016 ITS design, where the landing feet were part of their own aerodynamic fairing.

I guess we’ll have to wait and see what Elon says later.

Complicating stuff to much, the fairing is just an cover, use an pad a bit smaller than the cover then hydraulic cylinder to extend it. If lucky part of the hydraulic can double as shock absorbers.
 

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I have a feeling they already did all the math needed to ensure the legs will spread far enough. Given that most of the mass is closer to the bottom than the top it should be stable enough to withstand wind and rapid movement, just like the one experienced on the crawler thingy a couple of days ago. I wouldn't be too worried about this.

Edited by Wjolcz
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5 hours ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

See, now I have a very hard time envisioning a world where SLS and Starship coexist for any length of time. More-so SLS, Starship, and New Glenn. Just pulling numbers outta my patoot, Starship can do 90% of what SLS can for 10% of the cost. Even politically, i think it becomes very difficult to keep justifying that, especially if Starship is doing so once a month while SLS flies once a year. 

Considering that private companies can go away/under, unless you have a lot of redundancy(probably more than SS+NG), it can still make sense to keep SLS going, even just at a life-support level, to ensure that we do not return to a time when the US cannot put a man in orbit even with both SS and NG making weekly trips to the moon.

Considering the size of the US military budget, $1 bln/yr is not a lot to spend on national pride.

And that is before you get to any of the political jobs in districts type stuff.

As such, I can see SLS lasting well into the 2030's with mandates on military launches making SLS purchases on an ongoing basis.

That said, it looks like ~100 min until Elon's address...

Edited by Terwin
just saw time change for address
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Here's some videos of Falcon 1 and Grasshopper, doing their thing!

(Audience claps in appreciation)

Wasn't that cool? Let's see our new toy fly!

(Audience screams in terror, and rapidly stops being biology and becomes physics)

Also, RIP Starman, you will forever be in our hearts!

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