SpaceX Super Rocket?

[bigdad84]

This article portrays SpaceX as having an even larger rocket than the Falcon Heavy? Capable of launching 20 tons more than NASA's biggest SLS version. How big can rockets get before they are to much to handle?

http://m.space.com/24628-will-spacex-kill-nasa-sls.html

Edited February 12, 2014 by bigdad84

[Kerbin Dallas Multipass]

You sure that link is correct? I read 53t to LEO, SLS can carry up to 130

[maccollo]

You sure that link is correct? I read 53t to LEO, SLS can carry up to 130

They have numerous heavy lifters on the drawing board. The one that came up in the news recently was a one that would lift silly amounts of payload payload, like several 100, because musk mentioned that in a CBS interview. There are others like the falcon XX which is supposed to lift 140 tons... Maybe more maybe less. It seems to be quite a ways off.

I am skeptical, not because I think it's not possible, but because I doubt spaceX will develop anything like that without serious government backing, and NASA is busy making their SLS.

BTW a friend of mine has a brother to works at space X. I tried to get him to spill the beans on whether he thinks they will actually fly the falcon heavy this year. Unfortunately I only got the official statement, which is that it will fly sometime this year, without any specific or rough date estimate.

Edited February 12, 2014 by maccollo

[mythbusters844]

He might have been referring to this article.

[Kerbin Dallas Multipass]

He might have been referring to this article.

Ah thanks, now the post makes sense

[bigdad84]

He might have been referring to this article.

Yes! This article! Didn't realize I had the wrong link copied.

[K^2]

You sure that link is correct? I read 53t to LEO, SLS can carry up to 130

53T is Falcon Heavy.

[metaphor]

How big can rockets get before they are to much to handle?

Rockets can get quite a lot bigger than what we have now. The current most capable rocket is the Delta-IVH with 25 tons to orbit. The Saturn V could get about 120 tons to orbit. There have been plans in the past for rockets getting as much as 500 tons to orbit, like this one or this one.

Edited February 12, 2014 by metaphor

[Streetwind]

The article seems rather politically biased. SpaceX probably could develop such a rocket if they really wanted, but I highly doubt it's quite as easy as Elon Musk makes it sound. He has long been known to make enormous claims under the protective cover of "future plans" - and while his ventures have indeed produced impressive results, it's always the more realistic, down-to-earth plans that get implemented in the end. He's a very smart man, he knows not to throw money at fruitless ventures. I'm fairly sure that when Elon Musk says "we could build this rocket for 2.5 billion", what he really means is: "I've tasked an engineer with giving me a rough estimate on a super rocket because I thought the idea was cool. And he said somewhere between 2.5 and 5.0 billion. Probably. We haven't actually drawn up any plans yet, though."

In the meantime, I wish SpaceX all the best luck with next week's launch, and with the Falcon Heavy project later this year.

[Motokid600]

Good.. god could you even imagine? I'm surprised no ones made these into a mod yet..

[Simon Ross]

In reality, there are no practical engineering reasons why you cannot build a booster to launch 200, 500 or even a 1000 tons of payload to LEO

The blocker is that there are no actual missions in the pipeline that require that level of lift capability, therefore, they don't get built

[DerekL1963]

In reality, there are no practical engineering reasons why you cannot build a booster to launch 200, 500 or even a 1000 tons of payload to LEO

The blocker is that there are no actual missions in the pipeline that require that level of lift capability, therefore, they don't get built

Since no rockets are built, not payloads are built. Since no payloads are built, not rockets get built. Since no rockets are built, not payloads are built...

In a viscous, never ending circle.

[Kryten]

Since no rockets are built, not payloads are built. Since no payloads are built, not rockets get built. Since no rockets are built, not payloads are built...

Ridiculous. If a program requires a rocket of a larger size, and it's considered to be an acceptable investment for what the program is, then the rocket gets built-otherwise we'd be stuck with Sputnik and Juno. What's actually missing for larger rocket sizes are programs of the appropriate scale and funding, but they'd proceed in the same way-just look at how Bush's Moon return proposal and Ares-V arrived joined at the hip, no chicken-and-egg issues to be heard of.

[rkman]

This article portrays SpaceX as having an even larger rocket...

The article says "plans to build".

Question is how far evolved that plan is.

[rkman]

Doesn't payload fraction decrease with increasing payload mass?

[jwenting]

anything claiming "x kills y" is by definition not to be trusted...

[MrZayas1]

Rockets i don't think will be ever so big that they are impossible to control. You see, unlike kerbal space program, scientists can pack as much as they want inside the fueslage of the missile. That makes the possibilities endless and i honestly think that you really can't put limits on what we can achieve, i mean we know so much about our solar system (and those around us) and we haven't really even left Earth yet! So i am confident that we will eventually build stuctures like the halo Infinity just for fun, but i guess we will see!

[Red Iron Crown]

In reality, there are no practical engineering reasons why you cannot build a booster to launch 200, 500 or even a 1000 tons of payload to LEO

The square-cube law would like to have a word with you...

[DerekL1963]

Ridiculous. If a program requires a rocket of a larger size, and it's considered to be an acceptable investment for what the program is, then the rocket gets built-otherwise we'd be stuck with Sputnik and Juno.

Nonsense. The vast majority of boosters are developed 'on spec' - without a specific program in mind. Offhand, the only US exceptions I can think of after the first generation are the Saturn I and V and whichever Titan derivative it was that was the final Dyna-Soar booster. (Though there's persistent and credible rumors that Dyna-Soar booster was funded on the QT out of 'black' budgets for the NRO.)

[Kryten]

Nonsense. The vast majority of boosters are developed 'on spec' - without a specific program in mind. Offhand, the only US exceptions I can think of after the first generation are the Saturn I and V and whichever Titan derivative it was that was the final Dyna-Soar booster.

Note the phrase 'rocket of a larger size'- I meant in terms of increased capability, rather than simply new rocket models. For example, both Saturn models both resulted in significant increases in lift capability, whereas the EELVs didn't (except Delta-IVH, but that was designed around launching KH-11 derivatives).

[Simon Ross]

The square-cube law would like to have a word with you...

Well aware of the square cube law, but doesn't invalidate the building of larger boosters

ISS is a classic example, you can build a space station as a modular unit boosted to LEO on smaller spacecraft/shuttles or you can boost it into LEO as a complete unit using a 500 ton rated booster.

Both approaches work, it all comes down to the economics and politics

[Red Iron Crown]

Well aware of the square cube law, but doesn't invalidate the building of larger boosters

It makes it uneconomical, which is the same as invalidating it. We can't just scale up smaller boosters to larger ones because of the square-cube law. Smaller boosters will always be more efficient than larger ones.

ISS is a classic example, you can build a space station as a modular unit boosted to LEO on smaller spacecraft/shuttles or you can boost it into LEO as a complete unit using a 500 ton rated booster.

How is ISS an example? There is no booster that could lift it in one piece, nor is it a shape that could be made aerodynamic at all. There is no way that it could be lifted into space in one piece, certainly not at anywhere near the cost of lifting individual modules.

[Captain Sierra]

How is ISS an example? There is no booster that could lift it in one piece, nor is it a shape that could be made aerodynamic at all. There is no way that it could be lifted into space in one piece, certainly not at anywhere near the cost of lifting individual modules.

Well, you could just re-arrange it into a more launch friendly configuration. With some of the super heavy lift vehicles planned as of today, I believe it's entirely possible. The limit now becomes fitting it into a fairing.

[SFJackBauer]

Well, you could just re-arrange it into a more launch friendly configuration. With some of the super heavy lift vehicles planned as of today, I believe it's entirely possible. The limit now becomes fitting it into a fairing.

And somehow you throw out the window all of the little real-life physical things that make it such a difficult task, only because it could theoretically be lift in one piece based on its mass.

I've seen someone in this board saying that, if we had a lifter, we could deploy a lunar base, directly to the moon surface, in one go. Why do people focus so much on such a metric like payload capacity, when it is just one of the hundreds of variables involved in doing such a thing?

[Simon Ross]

It makes it uneconomical, which is the same as invalidating it. We can't just scale up smaller boosters to larger ones because of the square-cube law. Smaller boosters will always be more efficient than larger ones.

How is ISS an example? There is no booster that could lift it in one piece, nor is it a shape that could be made aerodynamic at all. There is no way that it could be lifted into space in one piece, certainly not at anywhere near the cost of lifting individual modules.

I'm sorry, but with respect, do you honestly believe Shuttle was an economic way of putting a 500 tone station into LEO piece by piece ?

I'm pretty sure we could have used the $100 billion it cost to have developed a genuine super heavy lift booster and a non modular station and had an awful lot of spare change left over

Using a man rated launch system to simply put hardware into LEO is economically crazy

Edited February 16, 2014 by Simon Ross