An always cool Falcon 9 launch (and other Space News)

[Uttamattamakin]

This guy always has an intersting take on space news.  Like me he is not pro or anti-Space X.  

 

 

[manikyath]

19 minutes ago, Uttamattamakin said:

Other parts of Artemis are also having problems but the HLS system not being ready is a HUGE problem.  Is it no? 

my point is - nothing is ready, not even the things that are supposed to be going up *before* starship. if you want to dunk on starship for not being ready, you should dunk on all of it instead of keeping on the thought that NASA's methods are fundamentally just better...

 

19 minutes ago, Uttamattamakin said:

ULA, and so far everyone else in recent history INCLUDING SPACE X has managed to not have their rockets detonate in a similar manner.

this is so far beside the point i'm not even sure i should go back and explain this...

- prototype

- no payload

- was gonna be expended anyways

- major parts of the mission were done successfully, and lessons were learned from where things went wrong, as is the idea with a test flight

- if you're comparing falcon 9 being very successful "after years of incremental improvements" to "starship not nailing it on the second test flight", i'm gonna refer you back to the strawman argument.

 

19 minutes ago, Uttamattamakin said:

Therefore, a simple Occam's razor conclusion is that it is not "inevitable" that a new rocket system will experience 2 or 3 catastrophic failures before becoming operational.   Therefore, the argument that Starships failures to reach orbit and not detonate are just an inevitable part of doing this is disproven. 

exhibit A:

 

exhibit B:

21 hours ago, manikyath said:

and to bring this back to the factoids of why SpaceX clearly is using the more efficient method of development:

 

funding gone into SLS: approx. 24 billion

funding gone into starship: approx. 5 billion (presuming 6 more years at quoted spendings, this will end up at 17 billion, adding this to offset the difference of how far in the development stage we are)

cost per SLS flight: approx. 2 billion

cost per starship flight: claimed to be 1 million (i'm once again gonna benefit of the doubt this, and 100x that cost.. i'm somewhat pulling that number out my ass, and somewhat doing the number of flights falcon 9's have been doing, times "a handful times more cost than expected")

 

so... based on these crude figures, development of starship will have been cheaper, for a (hopefully eventually) fully reusable superheavy lifter, by at least a decent margin.. and flights will, even at the worst projections, be at least one order of magnitude cheaper.

 

so - if you're correct in your baseless assumption that simulations are the cheaper way to go about it.. starship could be EVEN MORE cheaper than SLS?

 

as for the cost of real-world testing.. this is your reminder that the prototypes being built are by themselves essentially "a byproduct" of their research into how to best build a rocket of this size. wether they fly them or not, they are being built... so essentially the cost of a flight is just FAA paperwork and fuel.

 

different entities with different funding strategies have different methods for developing a very different launch platform, who knew?

 

i will gladly assume your profile is correct and that you *are* a theoretical asterophysicist, and you're very used at being in the lab doing theoretical math on how things will go.. but here in the real world there is no "one good solution", and in some iterations of good solution real-world tests make a lot more sense than in other iterations of good solution. given your profession i presume you have a certain preference to one method over the other - which is fine.. but that doesnt mean there is no merit to doing things other ways.

 

19 minutes ago, Uttamattamakin said:

Again, I don't see why so many here take personally what Space X or anyone else does. 

the only one here taking things personally is you, i dont give a hoot what spaceX or nasa do, all i care about in this topic is that i want to make very clear that your viewpoint is very flawed, and i provide sources that support my viewpoint that the "more real world testing" methodology that spacex does *clearly* has worked very well for them on the falcon 9 side of things, and the financials of starship imply that for starship this will also work very well, so they're just going with the same strategy on a new bigger design.

 

i dont know why you keep clinging onto this idea of real world testing somehow being a problem, and the two prototypes of starship that have flown blowing up is any sort of indication for the rest of the programme.. these are not missions, they didnt carry anything of value, they are testing vehicles, they were meant to blow up at one point or another.

 

2 minutes ago, Uttamattamakin said:

This guy always has an intersting take on space news.  Like me he is not pro or anti-Space X.  

 

 

so.. i decided to sit trough an 18 minute video for you (at 2x), to see where it is related to the debate at hand...

 

funnily enough.. in the first 10 minutes all i hear is unexpected variables that real-world testing brought up (in the form of artemis 1 showed, and by extension has now impacted artemis 2)

 

at around the 13 minute mark; my best guess for why they are "unsure" about exactly how many refueling missions they need, is because the exact size and flight profile of starship is still a variable.

 

at around the 16 minute mark, on "elon time" - i dont think i need to make it any more obvious that i dont see him as more than a rich looney that's funding the work of propper engineers. to put it lightly, this guy's social skill is zero, anything he says should be taken with the biggest grain of salt.

 

as for NASA's rather disappointing scheduling.. well, that's bureaucratic red tape for you, i guess?

 

also - space - delays are the norm...

 

since we're sharing sources on the matter, NSF has an update on the delay just freshly uploaded too, and gives some more insight into why SpaceX doesnt have an exact count of launches required.

 

[wanderingfool2]

14 hours ago, Uttamattamakin said:

No.  I am just looking at what the thousands of other engineers building rockets around the world for everyone but Space X are doing... then noticing that their rockets don't blow up as often. 

 

Is everyone who builds rockets that don't blow up a fool? 

You are seriously being oblivious to different ways of development.  You would be the type of software engineer who when the agile development cycle was introduced started saying they were stupid and wrong for adopting that methodology.

 

Since the software analogy works really well with this, the old school methodology that you are talking about that you keep saying is the way to do things would be akin to the waterfall development; whereas SpaceX and many of the other up and comers are using the agile approach (because it's overall cheaper to develop and quicker).

 

They flew IFT-1 knowing that a single engine failure/fire could cause a cascade which would lead to failure.  They still figured to test it (which told them that they should add more CO2 tanks into the new design)...which meant IFT-2 flew without those fires that doomed IFT-1.  And as an FYI the concrete would have worked had the ground below the concrete not collapsed under the weight...if they had their current system already installed or even your flame trench it would the ground still would have failed and worse yet, it would have had a lot more remediation needed as now you have to disassemble/reassemble the flame trench (which would have put it years behind).

 

IFT-2, the booster exploding AFTER the hot staging means nothing when you compare it to other rockets...because no other rocket has even attempted a maneuver like this (and yes it is going to be mandatory eventually to prevent dumping billions of dollars for single flights) [and for clarity the FTS aborted both the booster and the starship).  The starship loss, looks like an engine fire (probably due to the hot staging) caused it to trigger the FTS BUT that is something that is more addressable as now they know the dynamics involved they can adjust lets say the start sequences.

 

But hey, there never are failures you know except for SpaceX.

 

Lets ignore the Peregrine which had a valve stuck open which caused the propulsion tank to rupture.

Lets ignore that on SLS, had the green run not aborted because there was a chance that problem wouldn't have presented itself (which btw delayed the mission by a year) and had it instead happened on the maiden flight instead where the issue came up that the SLS would have aborted and triggered a FTS (i.e. blew up)

Had the Boeing Starliner not had issues and caused a delay WHILE IN SPACE, it would have been destroyed on return (btw IF SpaceX hadn't bid and won the dragon capsule we would still be relying on Russia to ferry the astronauts to the ISS)...it's mission has now been delayed by 8 YEARS.

 

Astra first flight explosion (actually flew sideways)

Firefly Alpha first flight explosion

Electron, multiple failures (not explosions but losing control of the rocket is just as bad as a triggering the FTS).

 

 

 

The simple fact is, Starship is doing something no other company has tried doing and it's necessary if we want to continue deep space exploration because SLS is too expensive (and the advancements Starship is doing is required in order to drive the cost down)

 

Also, while I do watch the Angry Astronaut and he does have some good takes; he also takes almost an opposing extreme to what he says without always understanding the dynamics behind things.  While Elon tends to be over optimistic, Angry Astronaut tends to be overly pessimistic in terms of timelines and doom and gloom scenarios.  [After all, he thought it would be a "miracle" if they launched before the end of the year...and yet they did...with the booster and Starship actually ready to fly months sooner...just waiting on regulatory approvals].  Actually, even when things looked like Starship was nearing ready again he still predicted at least 6 - 8 months (as a hint it flew in 2)

 

The simple fact is, SpaceX can't say how many flights it might take...Raptor 3 is just around the corner which should allow them to carry a lot more fuel.  IF lets say they decide they want to run it in expendable mode (both booster and upper stage) then the actual amount of times they will have to "refuel" starship is smaller (maybe even as little as 4 times with Raptor 3).

[manikyath]

1 hour ago, wanderingfool2 said:

(and yes it is going to be mandatory eventually to prevent dumping billions of dollars for single flights)

silly correction, but based on very superficial napkin math based on starbase spending and how fast they can build one of them.. i'm gonna estimate it's at most "hundreds of millions" per launch. while that's still a far reach away from the big hiney's dream of a million per launch, it's still at most an order of magnitude below SLS cost.

(as well that economy of scale is defenately something they're targeting, part of why the "many small engines" design was chosen, was that they can actually mass produce these, and transport them on fairly normal trucks)

 

1 hour ago, wanderingfool2 said:

 

The simple fact is, SpaceX can't say how many flights it might take...Raptor 3 is just around the corner which should allow them to carry a lot more fuel.  IF lets say they decide they want to run it in expendable mode (both booster and upper stage) then the actual amount of times they will have to "refuel" starship is smaller (maybe even as little as 4 times with Raptor 3).

NSF covers this far better than TAA, the contact they interviewed about it states that SpaceX will await releasing an actual number until they have performed a test flight where they can measure how much fuel can be transferred.

[Uttamattamakin]

9 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

 

The simple fact is, SpaceX can't say how many flights it might take...Raptor 3 is just around the corner which should allow them to carry a lot more fuel.  IF lets say they decide they want to run it in expendable mode (both booster and upper stage) then the actual amount of times they will have to "refuel" starship is smaller (maybe even as little as 4 times with Raptor 3).

That is all very well taken.  Yes Space X is trying to do things that are revolutionary etc etc.  

The thing is a revolution is worthless if it self destructs all the time.  Revolution isn't always good. 

[wanderingfool2]

2 hours ago, Uttamattamakin said:

The thing is a revolution is worthless if it self destructs all the time.  Revolution isn't always good. 

That is flatly ignorant of what is being done; and again shows your utter lack of basic level thinking.

 

It's that frankly backwards thinking that all those NASA fanboys were saying when Falcon 9 was in development.  Do you really not realize how many rockets they blew up while developing Falcon 9.

 

IFT-1, came close to the booster separation and almost was the most powerful rocket to launch (except that the 4 engines being down meant it didn't actually take that).

IFT-2, first time in history a rocket this size performed a successful hot staging, the stage 2 almost was at the target velocity before the engines gave out, it's the largest mass ever to "reach" space.

 

It would take a real lack of intelligence to assume that within the next launch or two will have a successful orbit (and a decent probability of this next one this Feb. being successful) and that they are making progress.

 

If you haven't clued in as well, the booster having it's FTS activated AFTER the hot staging doesn't have an impact on the final outcome of the stage 2 portion...and again the FTS on the stage 2 while not ideal occurred very late into the flight...and guess what your whole multiple engines arguments doesn't mean a single thing given that it has only 6 engines.

[manikyath]

5 hours ago, Uttamattamakin said:

if it self destructs all the time.

 

16 hours ago, manikyath said:

i dont know why you keep clinging onto this idea of real world testing somehow being a problem, and the two prototypes of starship that have flown blowing up is any sort of indication for the rest of the programme.. these are not missions, they didnt carry anything of value, they are testing vehicles, they were meant to blow up at one point or another.

 

EDIT, i'll bring exhibit A back, just to point out how nonsensical your argument is...

 

[Uttamattamakin]

13 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

That is flatly ignorant of what is being done; and again shows your utter lack of basic level thinking.

 

IF a company that was not Space X and not ran by Elon Musk tries the same thing and experiences similar failures would you give them the same lee way? 

 

11 hours ago, manikyath said:

EDIT, i'll bring exhibit A back, just to point out how nonsensical your argument is...

 

This is MUCH more excusable this is the revolutionary part of these systems landing the rocket on its tail.  That is hard. 

Just getting to space without detonating.  I mean for every rocket but the N1 and its descendants .... that is a solved problem. 

[Uttamattamakin]

Astrobotics Striken Perigrine Lander, though successfully deployed by Vulcan Centar suffered an anomaly in its propulsion system.  This was not serious enough to destroy the probe, but it did mean that landing softly on the Moon is unlikely.  However, other than that all systems aboard the lander appear to be working and able to get power.  In particular a rover that was to be deployed. 

 

https://spacenews.com/astrobotic-gets-payloads-working-on-ailing-peregrine-lander/

Quote

NEW ORLEANS — Astrobotic, which is working to squeeze as much life as possible out of its crippled Peregrine lunar lander, says it has obtained data from many of the payloads on the spacecraft. The company said Jan. 11 that it provided power to, and received data from, nine of the 20 payloads on the lander. They include four NASA science experiments included on the lander as part of Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program: the LETS radiation instrument and the NIRVSS, NSS and PITMS spectrometers. The fifth, a laser retroreflector, is passive and does not have power or data requirements.

 

A NASA technology demonstration payload, the Navigation Dopplar Lidar, is also powered up and generating data. Other payloads that are active and generating data include the IRIS lunar rover from Carnegie Mellon University, the COLMENA micro-rovers from Mexico’s space agency AEM, the M-42 radiation detector from German aerospace center DLR and Astrobotic’s own Optical Precision Autonomous Landing sensor.

 

[manikyath]

Just now, Uttamattamakin said:

This is MUCH more excusable this is the revolutionary part of these systems landing the rocket on its tail.  That is hard. 

Just getting to space without detonating.  I mean for every rocket but the N1 and its descendants .... that is a solved problem. 

let's name some examples then...

 

 

6 minutes ago, Uttamattamakin said:

This is MUCH more excusable this is the revolutionary part of these systems landing the rocket on its tail.  That is hard. 

the booster exploded in the attempt of doing the boostback burn for RTLS. RTLS was a very late stage thing for falcon, swinging around a rocket of this size is, indeed, as you put it; "hard". one might say it requires testing to get things right.

 

8 minutes ago, Uttamattamakin said:

IF a company that was not Space X and not ran by Elon Musk tries the same thing and experiences similar failures would you give them the same lee way? 

yes. that is how private funding and real world testing works. no one here gives a flying hoot about elon, except you apparently.

 

case in point; electron has been a problem child, it's lost several payloads during it's relatively short lifespan so far, to a variety of issues. they also have some quite "strange" design choices, such as ditching drained batteries on the way up.. essentially this is a long carbon fiber tube that runs on disposable batteries. everything the powers that be knew told that this would never work.. but because private funding they made it work, and they make some quite entertaining streams out of their launches.

 

so far starship has lost zero payloads, and electron has lost 4 out of 41 payloads. but it's a private business, on a free market, where their clients understand the risk of what they are dealing with... so why should we care?

 

similarly - while starship is being developed towards a NASA contract, as far as i can find that contract is a pre-determined amount of cash for the mission, NASA isnt funding the starship development as we are currently witnessing it. they give an agreed upon price, for an agreed upon result. how they get to that result is in private hands, and if those private hands prefer explosions over petaflops, they will do explosions.

 

PS; lovely title change.. as a reminder to yourself, up until page 8 this has been about Starship IFT-2, and after 8 pages you suddenly decide to start renaming the thread to whatever space news has come out today? to what purpose? if i start posting space news here, will you also best answer me?

[wanderingfool2]

57 minutes ago, Uttamattamakin said:

IF a company that was not Space X and not ran by Elon Musk tries the same thing and experiences similar failures would you give them the same lee way? 

Good on you for your whataboutism that completely fails is basic level understanding again

 

Or are you seriously being incompetent to not notice that I HAVE USED Astra's and Electron in examples.

 

1 hour ago, Uttamattamakin said:

Astrobotics Striken Perigrine Lander, though successfully deployed by Vulcan Centar suffered an anomaly in its propulsion system.  This was not serious enough to destroy the probe, but it did mean that landing softly on the Moon is unlikely.  However, other than that all systems aboard the lander appear to be working and able to get power.  In particular a rover that was to be deployed. 

BUT BUT, no Dragon Capsule payload has ever had a failure and ruptured fuel tank /s

 

I seriously hope you see your biasness in that the Peregrine lander (which btw you spelt both Peregrine and Centaur wrong), had a failure that has now doomed the payload to be space debris...and yet where is your whole negativity that this kind of thing has been perfected for years and done by many other companies.  Strange how it's only when Elon's companies have any form of failure and you seem to act like they are irresponsible or lack basic level of ability to do things.

 

 

Again, at least try to use some form of basic level of logic to realize there is a major difference from a test campaign where you are testing/testing to destruction and attempting things that truly have never have been done to this scale vs having something that is completed and supposedly ready.

 

Take Peregrine as an example, it was carrying actual payloads and actual ashes of people...failure is a lot less acceptable than flying an empty rocket and having it's FTS have it crash down in the pre-defined hazard zone.

[wanderingfool2]

 

So as a quick rundown

 

IFT-2 would have made it to orbit and been completely successful IF it actually had a payload.  They decided to vent excess Oxygen to simulate the amount of fuel they would have had had they been carrying a payload.  The venting of oxygen during flight though led to the fires which eventually caused the FTS to activate.

 

[Uttamattamakin]

2 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

 

IFT-2 would have made it to orbit and been completely successful IF it actually had a payload.  They decided to vent excess Oxygen to simulate the amount of fuel they would have had had they been carrying a payload.  The venting of oxygen during flight though led to the fires which eventually caused the FTS to activate.

 

Nice summary. 

 

As one who really wants us to return to the moon and go to Mars and all that I sincerely hope he's right.

[manikyath]

2 minutes ago, Uttamattamakin said:

Nice summary. 

 

As one who really wants us to return to the moon and go to Mars and all that I sincerely hope he's right.

you should best answer that, it's space news after all

[CarlBar]

@Uttamattamakin Actually getting a rocket to go up is fairly difficult there's a reason why the vast majority of US launch vehicles have reused one or more stages from a previous rocket iteration for a very very long time. Even Vulcan Centaur doesn't dodge that as it reuses the SRB's and the upper stage is just a version of a previously used upper stage with bigger tanks. It's still more altered than is the norm for a rocket program, but it also still retains an enormous amount of commonality.

 

Building a launch vehicle from the ground up with everything being new is very difficult. The only US launch systems of any real size to do that since the Saturn V are the Shuttle and Falcon 9. When it finally arrives New Glenn will be the third.

 

The thing you have to understand is that in general orbital rocketry is allways operating right on the limits of what we can physically build. getting things upto orbital velocity takes a truly staggering amount of energy and getting that energy into the payload as efficiently as possibble is very, very, very hard. In addition with Starship Space X are deliberately pushing the bleeding edge of what they can do with their chosen materials. This dramatically increases the problems and risks they have to counteract.

 

The thing about operating out on the bleeding edge of what's possibble is you often run into problems no one else has ever experienced because no ones pushed things quite that far, and physics in the real world likes to produce weird unexpected details out at those extremes that our existing models and theories and extrapolations from past events don't mention because they just don't show up in any other setting so no one bothered to account for them when writing the raw engineering theory. Note they're only occasionally thigs physics can't predict, (somtimes new physics interactions do show up), but instead are thing the engineers didn't even knew applied in that set of circumstances, or they are lab only stuff that they've never even heard off.

 

Blue Origin appear to be taking a very different approach with New Glenn actually. If their BE-4 engine specs are acurratte it's an extremly conservative engine design with very modest chamber pressures, (which limit's it's thrust to weight, thrust to volume and maximum ISP for a given fuel type), and other features. It's a very low risk setup as the only new component is the fuel type, everything else is operating at values well below what even previous generation engines like the RS-25 and the RD-180 operated at. And that means they're operating in a region of material science that is more well understood. I can't be sure they're doing the same for everything else but it wouldn't suprise me.

 

SpaceX by comparison is really pushing the limits of the possibble with the Raptor engines. They're smaller and slightly lighter than what BE-4 is believed to be, (exact values aren't available so they're derived from Thrust to weight values and image measurement), but they achieved even in their first iteration better thrust to weight and ISP, and with Raptor 3 they're expected to achieve a higher total thrust per engines with a smaller lighter design. The downside of pushing that hard is they're a lot more likely to run face first into a problem they didn't even know could exist.

 

It's the same deal with the Booster and Starship themselves, they're both vastly larger than anything else ever launched and thanks to the basic principle of square cube law, things don't allways scale neatly, and in this application no ones really got any hard experiences of what that might mean.

 

On 1/13/2024 at 4:59 AM, wanderingfool2 said:

 

So as a quick rundown

 

IFT-2 would have made it to orbit and been completely successful IF it actually had a payload.  They decided to vent excess Oxygen to simulate the amount of fuel they would have had had they been carrying a payload.  The venting of oxygen during flight though led to the fires which eventually caused the FTS to activate.

 

 

Heard about this in Marcus House's regular saturday video, it's what made me dig this thread up, honestly it was kind of funny when i heard about it, such a simple little thing to trip up over. And given how many spacecraft over the years have doubtless had to dump propellants for one reason or another it's a perfect example of what i was talking about above with unexpected things catching you out.

 

It even makes basic physics sense, Starships volume (being mostly propellent), goes up with it's volume, as does the amount of O2 that needed to be dumped, and thats a factor of the cube of the change in dimensions, but the surface area thats potentially exposed to the resultant O2 cloud is only going up by the square of the change in dimensions, this means the O2 vapour cloud that aerodynamics will cause to partially flow along parts of the craft will likely have a higher partial oxygen pressure, and that makes normally safe non-flammable substances suddenly very flammable indeed. But it's such a niche scenario that it's unlikely SpaceX had proper data to contextualize things sufficiently to spot the risk. It might sound simple to spot on paper ofc, but we've got the benefit of hindsight. Normal procedure in these scenarios is to look at past scenarios of doing something similar in a similar context to figure out what that means for the mission, and the different conditions in those past missions likely means this kind of issue hasn't been a problem with the material types SpaceX was using.

 

Would also be interesting to know if the hot staging played any role, (could have partially carbonised some things in the engine bay that normally aren't), and/or the method of venting, (how they vented it would have played a role in where it would have contacted things).

[Uttamattamakin]

@CarlBar I understand.  I also understand certain basic principles that operate whether we like them or not*.   In simple terms "Don't reinvent the wheel".   Space X is doing something that in theory would be great.  Making rockets that are reusable, with smaller engines that could be manufactured like we mass produce cars.  etc etc. 

 

I really think that the ability to in theory produce those engines on an assembly line is something Musk has in mind.  To make these rockets the way we make cars.  In large numbers at scale.  VS the way they have been done for the longest time which was more artisanal.  Where each rocket was like a 1 off one of a kind product.   Then with Methalox part of it is future in situ resource utilization for which that may have some productions.  These are not terrible things to want but he may be going about this wrong.  Trying to to it all at once. 

 

It's hard to make a rocket go up but so far in this decade most have made them go out and not blow up because they built on what was already known and proven.   Space X could've taken a bit more time and developed their rocket in stages. 

Falcon Heavy GREAT ROCKET.  Builds on Falcon in a very direct way.  Starship does a little but clearly not all that much (or else it isn't that revolutionary is it. )  It would almost be better if they simply scaled a falcon up 1.5x or 2x and did that.  Almost of course not everything scales simply.   Same number of a larger more powerful engines maybe even the same fuel RP1 etc.  Less engines, less plumbing, less complexity and a system that is mostly known to work.

 

Make this Falcon Plus, or Falcon Bigger, or whatever it could be called work.  Then or maybe in parallel develop a Methalox engine for this rocket. 

 

Then at some later date, once the rocket is perfected by itself, and the engine is more matured by itself, mate the new engine to the new rocket.   The result is a rocket that builds on the known technology that Space X worked so hard for in Falcon and the new technology of a Methalox engine.  It would be harder to mass produce but then do that innovation on the production process not the product. 

 

Elon likes his very high cadence fast timelines that often cannot be met.  As Angry Astronaut calls it Elon Time kicks in and reality and the laws of nature assert themselves and we either get something that is good but not as good as promised or nothing at all ( like Hyperloop. BUSTED so hard it should be rated XXX).   I am not a fan such is why I can give credit for what is do and criticism for what is due.    

Fans assume anyone who is also not a fan must be a fool.   I see no reason to baby that kind of discourse. 

 

 

8 hours ago, CarlBar said:

Blue Origin appear to be taking a very different approach with New Glenn actually. ... more conservative.

Other than the fuel type.  Which if I recall correctly is important for the future because in theory it could be produced on Mars or the moon from the regolith/soil on those bodies even if there is not a great deal of Ice.  Where Hydrolox really needs water/ice as feedstock to produce it in situ. 

 

It remains to be seen if in new Glenn BE4 still works out.  It seems that Blue Origin is doing something like what I described.  Develop the engine in the context of a rocket that is mostly traditional and known to work.   All the while separately developing the rocket.  Then once they are sure about each system put them together. 

Kinda like how when building a computer first you attach CPU ram and storage then post test it.    Then assemble the rest of it. 

[manikyath]

46 minutes ago, Uttamattamakin said:

Elon likes his very high cadence fast timelines that often cannot be met.  As Angry Astronaut calls it Elon Time kicks in and reality and the laws of nature assert themselves and we either get something that is good but not as good as promised or nothing at all ( like Hyperloop. BUSTED so hard it should be rated XXX).   I am not a fan such is why I can give credit for what is do and criticism for what is due.    

Fans assume anyone who is also not a fan must be a fool.   I see no reason to baby that kind of discourse. 

except no one here is an elon fan... you're again hugely and purposefully misquoting everyone who's opposing you to make some strawman argument that holds no sense.

 

47 minutes ago, Uttamattamakin said:

I also understand certain basic principles that operate whether we like them or not*.   In simple terms "Don't reinvent the wheel". 

then we would've never had falcon 9, never had UNIX or anything that derived from it, elecric cars would have died in 1935 and never returned, heck.. literally "the wheel itself" has been reinvented a handful of times to come up with better forms of "wheel".

 

most of the time "reinventing the wheel" is just doing the same process of invention someone else already did before you, but it's not because we have working cart wheels, that trying to make one lined with rubber wasnt a very important thing in history.

 

in some sense, "dont reinvent the wheel" is in many cases just as stupid as saying "if it aint broke, dont fix it".

 

yes, spacex could do a much more iterative process of first making a rocket with a handful of the new engines, and once that's going well go with the bigger rocket.. but to some sense they did that. they did several flights with just the starship upper stage that (up until the landing itself) performed very well, in a sense they have a more proven trackrecord of making crafts with raptor engines than NASA has a trackrecord of flying SLS. that's also an upside of doing much more real world testing; they are doing flights with these engines before sticking them on production vehicles.

 

besides that, raptor engines have shown to be very reliable so far, it is true that they're a new engine, on a new fuel, on a new rocket platform, but we've had constant iterative design since starhopper first showed that watertowers do in fact fly, in 2019. if the team is big (and efficient) enough, you dont need to iterate one thing before iterating another. there's engineers working on raptor engines, there's engineers working on the booster design, there's engineers working on the starship design, etc.

 

also, SLS, while re-using some components of prior designs, at least assembles them in a very different way, and eventually uses them in a very different way.. so it's not *as* iterative as one would think them to be.

 

besides that - every commercial space company is in the process of reinventing the wheel, because the wheel we had available is *not* comercially viable. spacex reinvented the wheel by making it reusable, rocketlab made the wheel carbon fiber and poop out dead batteries, astra makes their wheels fit in standardized shipping containers so they can theoretically launch from anywhere in the world.

 

and just because we're clearly beating dead horses by now... i'm mostly just gonna be repeating myself below here.

1 hour ago, Uttamattamakin said:

I really think that the ability to in theory produce those engines on an assembly line is something Musk has in mind.

this is why they are going for more smaller engines. easier to produce, easier to transport (they actually fit on a highway trailer, y'know..), easier to mount and replace if one goes bad, easier everything. it's essentially the "replaceable parts" research that revolutionized train maintenance from how steam trains were maintained to how diesel trains are maintained.

IMO the steam train vs diesel train analogy fits much better here than the car analogy.

 

 

1 hour ago, Uttamattamakin said:

It's hard to make a rocket go up but so far in this decade most have made them go out and not blow up because they built on what was already known and proven.   Space X could've taken a bit more time and developed their rocket in stages. 

and you post this, after the announcement that what 'terminated' IFT2 was that they dumped LOX because they didnt have cargo on board - in other words, if they had cargo and didnt need to dump LOX, they would have made it trough the entire testing campaign other than the flip and boost-back burn, which is not critical to any space mission (just like landing falcons wasnt a necessity.. so they blew up plenty of them after delivering cargo to space)

 

1 hour ago, Uttamattamakin said:

It would almost be better if they simply scaled a falcon up 1.5x or 2x and did that.

to what purpose though? they're a commercial space company, commercial means "this research needs to pay for itself". to design a bigger falcon is still designing a whole new rocket. they may as well build the "space cargo ship" they want to achieve. i'm also not convinced that 2x'ing a falcon would have made such a big difference to what they're doing now... 

 

1 hour ago, Uttamattamakin said:

Elon likes his very high cadence fast timelines that often cannot be met.  As Angry Astronaut calls it Elon Time kicks in

NSF just has a habit of translating elon time to "actual time", and they've gotten quite good at it. the thing with "elon time" is that he's often correct.. if not accounting for external delays. (FAA, for example) so if you have a good idea of what these external delays usually are, you can translate elon time to a timeframe with stunning accuracy. (case in point, NSF translated elon's first timeframe of IFT-3 to be february)

but then again.. NASA is pushing back their launch schedules because *everyone* is late. that's how space works, they're all making ridiculous schedules that get pushed back. now.. we all know who the absolute king of unrealistic timelines is, but that doesnt take away from what the engineers out at boca chica have actually achieved. fact of the matter is that they flew in november, and in january there's a rocket ready to fly again. let's say worst case scenario that this is the best timeline possible.. that's still FAR more payload than any other rocket company could provide, especially at the costs they are hoping to reach.

 

it is a VERY ambitious goal, but so was landing a rocket on a barge in the ocean.. before they made it such a habit with falcon 9 that it's news if one *doesnt* land. a lot of bad can be said about the management style of the manchild in charge, but fact of the matter is that SpaceX has a trackrecord for taking established values and making them look about as ridiculous as this car;

 

 

[HenrySalayne]

2 hours ago, Uttamattamakin said:

Falcon Heavy GREAT ROCKET.  Builds on Falcon in a very direct way.  Starship does a little but clearly not all that much (or else it isn't that revolutionary is it. )  It would almost be better if they simply scaled a falcon up 1.5x or 2x and did that.  Almost of course not everything scales simply.   Same number of a larger more powerful engines maybe even the same fuel RP1 etc.  Less engines, less plumbing, less complexity and a system that is mostly known to work.

Vulcan uses two large BE-4 engines and is roughly a little bit more capable than a Falcon 9. Would you like something like a Falcon 9 with 9 BE-4 engines? Or how should I interpret your post?

[Uttamattamakin]

2 minutes ago, manikyath said:

except no one here is an elon fan... you're again hugely and purposefully misquoting everyone who's opposing you to make some strawman argument that holds

Really.  Maybe not you but come on. 

 

As for why try with a more evolutionary approach than Starship.  Let me use your own examples. 

Unix it self evolved from an earlier product called Multix.    Unix then evolved and differentiated into a number of products that were not necessarily compatible.  Then the POSIX standard was developed so that certain key software could run on any POSIX compatible OS and hardware.  It is when POSIX came about that we can say that wheel was invented.   Even Windows NT is POSIX compatible.    

 

Falcon 9 did it really reinvent the wheel? Was it revolutionary?  You know rockets that could land on their tail like that were developed and designed and even tested before that one.   The Douglass DC X being an important one that was tested full scale.  
 

A more out there concept  was by Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites.  Scaled had/has a way of doing bizarre things. 

A rocket landing on its tail in various places not so revolutionary as Space X would have us think.  What they did was stick with it, and use better computer tech from decades latter to make it happen.   For that they deserve credit.  They didn't invent that wheel.  

 

[Uttamattamakin]

Just now, HenrySalayne said:

Vulcan uses two large BE-4 engines and is roughly a little bit more capable than a Falcon 9. Would you like something like a Falcon 9 with 9 BE-4 engines? Or how should I interpret your post?

Yes bigger rocket that does not blow up is good.   

Relying on that technology to actually get to the Moon etc is good.  Starship could be a ... test program a development program.  Making it an integral part of Artemis was IMHO a mistake.   Great thing to have someday if it works. 

[manikyath]

1 minute ago, Uttamattamakin said:

Unix it self evolved from an earlier product called Multix

unix was rewritten from the ground up to avoid building up bloat often gotten with iterating on top of older products, i actually found it specificly used as a case for "reinventing the wheel" being a good thing in some situations. they essentially willfullingly did the work already done by multix, but by not building on top of someone else's tower, they could build a stronger base.

 

2 minutes ago, Uttamattamakin said:

Falcon 9 did it really reinvent the wheel? Was it revolutionary?

yes. falcon 9 *is* a revolution in space travel. before falcon 9 NASA had a hard 'no' on reusability claiming its problems could not be resolved. even some of the editors at NSF had some pretty intense things to say about the ridiculous idea of landing them, let alone landing them on some barge out in the ocean.

 

the revolution isnt that they thought to make it reusable, the revolution is that it is commercially viable to the point that for NASA's "everyday business" it makes more sense to contract a commercial entity than to fly their own thing.

 

as for reinventing the wheel.. it was developed from the ground up, mostly out of a necessity (because they couldnt buy parts for this ridiculous idea why would we even sell our engines to you you lunatic.) but that is what "reinventing the wheel" means - yes.. i did go look this up, just for you.

 

10 minutes ago, Uttamattamakin said:

What they did was stick with it, and use better computer tech from decades latter to make it happen.   For that they deserve credit.  They didn't invent that wheel.  

invent <-> reinvent. the "idea" of landing a rocket has existed for a long time (heck, it's even in the thunderbirds movie and series), but so has the "idea" of a flying car.. but that lunatic that made a porsche with 4 fans under the hood doesnt get any credit from klein vision actually producing the "aircar" and flying it between two airports.

 

and again - they designed their wheel from the ground up, so yes.. they reinvented that wheel. they didnt invent wheels that came before it, but they 'reinvented the wheel' in a form that worked.

 

also - if you are now gonna claim that the DC-X to the falcon 9 isnt "reinventing the wheel" in what universe *is* falcon 9 to starship "reinventing the wheel" then?

you're arguing against your own claims here..

 

PS; astra is making a rocket system that completely fits inside shipping containers, that means rocket, but also ground support equipment, launchpad, etc. when they manage to make that a market viable product, that will be another revolution. did they invent putting wheels in containers? no. but they made it happen.

[Donut417]

On 1/13/2024 at 2:23 AM, Uttamattamakin said:

As one who really wants us to return to the moon and go to Mars

I can see the moon but Mars I think is still out of reach. Mars is likely a one way trip. Unless we invent something like an Epstein Drive. I dont see that kind of tech coming any time soon or if ever considering the state the world is in currently.

[HenrySalayne]

9 minutes ago, Uttamattamakin said:

Yes bigger rocket that does not blow up is good.   

Relying on that technology to actually get to the Moon etc is good.  Starship could be a ... test program a development program.  Making it an integral part of Artemis was IMHO a mistake.   Great thing to have someday if it works. 

I think you lack a feeling of scale. The BE-4 engines are roughly equivalent to Raptor 2s. A theoretical "Falcon 9 MaX / Ultra" with 9 Raptor engines would have roughly one quarter the performance of Starship Super Heavy.
Even SLS with its amazing RS-25 engines (also known as SSME) could use Raptors or BE-4s as replacements. Only three of these engines put the Space Shuttle into orbit.

Starship Super Heavy is on another scale we haven't seen before. The mighty Saturn V had 58% the launch mass of a Starship.

19 minutes ago, Uttamattamakin said:

Making it an integral part of Artemis was IMHO a mistake.

You should read up why SpaceX's draft was successful. Not because it was the most capable or most practical, but because it was the furthest in development and it was the cheapest. Anything else would have put Artemis on hold even longer. BTW, it was April, 16th 2021 - less than 3 years ago - that NASA chose Starship HLS. Any other proposal would be probably a decade away today.
The initial problem is the sub-par delta-v capability of Orion, leading to a rectolinear halo-orbit. This shifts inadequacies of the spaceship to the HLS, which needs to be more complex.

[manikyath]

4 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

I can see the moon but Mars I think is still out of reach. Mars is likely a one way trip. Unless we invent something like an Epstein Drive. I dont see that kind of tech coming any time soon or if ever considering the state the world is in currently.

another problem with returning from mars is actually lifting off from mars - it could be assumed that one would need fuel production on martian soil before that becomes in any way viable. from what i've read (i dont really follow these details much, surprisingly.. i'm just here because big boom) the idea of returning to the moon is largely a learning curve to eventually go beyond that..

 

and as we've learned space is an industry held together with delays.. so when they say "eventually", it's gonna be later than that

[manikyath]

43 minutes ago, Uttamattamakin said:

Relying on that technology to actually get to the Moon etc is good.  Starship could be a ... test program a development program.  Making it an integral part of Artemis was IMHO a mistake.

i wasnt going to.. but i changed my mind, so...

 

let's entertain this idea.

 

let's say they make starship a testing program for what will eventually become "BFR". BFR is the production version, BFR is what NASA signs to make an integral part of artemis.

 

but BFR is essentially "just" the production version of starship, based on starship's final development iteration.

 

other than the name, in what way would this be different than what they're doing now?