SpaceX fanboys are fucking delusional, A Falcon Heavy is nowhere near big enough for a manned Mars mission. 12 tons to Mars? Fucking lol, the Apollo lunar module alone weighed more than that. Unlike the Moon Mars has an atmosphere which requires a fuckuge heat shield, Mars is millions of miles away which requires months worth of food and water and finally Mars has a decent amount of gravity which requires a sizeable rocket to escape back to Earth. SpaceX is nothing more than a meme company.
>inb4 "muh reuseable rockets!" "muh impeccable track record" "muh private firsts!"
Yeah LEO, whatever that's small fry stuff. Manned Mars missions is a whole other ball game.
>>7917276
yeah they would never do multiple cargo launches and assemble in orbit, its too damn difficult and expensive
>>7917371
>>7917276
It's pretty funny, since ULA keeps pushing multi-launch mission architectures and orbital propellant depots.
>Yeah LEO, whatever that's small fry stuff.
SpaceX has done GTO and BEO launches. Falcon Heavy looks like it will be the most capable rocket to any trajectory until the mid-20s, when SLS testing is done, or SpaceX's own next-generation superheavy is done.
>>7917371
Assemble in orbit of what? Earth? Makes no difference, still in the same gravity well, may as well just go straight there. Mars? So now not only do you want to go there you want to build a space station above Mars too? Also doesn't solve the food problem, this can't stay in space forever.
>>7917276
>A Falcon Heavy is nowhere near big enough for a manned Mars mission.
So launch it more than one time then. Randevouz was invented in the gemini-era
Elon Musk has merely perfected a way to obtain grant money and then spend it all in a way that makes him rich and keeps everyone else entertained.
>>7917394
>Assemble in orbit of what?
The mars transfer vehicle. What else? You launch as many modules as you need and assenle them into a single craft in orbit.
>may as well just go straight there.
Engines have mass. Sending multiple small shipments is less efficient than using a single high power engine to push all of them in one package.
Supplies for use on mars proper could be sent as a separate shipment though as there's low energy transfer orbits that takes a long time but requires less fancy rocketry to pull off.
>>7917394
Many small launches are better than one big one for a number of reasons. Water only needs to be roughly 2-3 times the daily intake of the whole crew as you could (and would need to, realistically) recycle all the water each person uses. Same with oxygen. They can keep people in ISS for a year, so for a mars mission, food wouldn't be the biggest issue.
>>7917394
>Assemble in orbit of what? Earth? Makes no difference, still in the same gravity well, may as well just go straight there.
There are a couple of good places to assemble a multi-launch mission. The main ones are LEO and an Earth-Moon lagrange point.
It takes about 10 km/s of delta-v to get to LEO, and about another 3.5 to get to L2 (a stable orbit opposite the moon).
To go from LEO to Mars transfer takes about 4.5 km/s, while going from L2 to Mars transfer takes about 1 km/s.
This 1 km/s would only require about one third of your launch mass to consist of ruggedly-built modular storable propellant units with simple pressure-fed hypergolic engines.
Let's say you can launch 15 tons to L2 to LEO per Falcon Heavy. You might launch:
- three times to send up the modular transit habitat
- twice to send 2 Dragon capsules (loaded with supplies for the journey) for landing on Mars and on Earth when they return
- three times to send three propulsion units loaded with MMH/NTO propellant
- once to send 1 Dragon capsule containing the crew
That's 9 launches, and the crew would have tens of tons of supplies to sustain them on the ride to Mars. Only the crew launch needs to be done with much care for timing. The rest of the stuff can be launched whenever and sit up there until the Mars transfer window opens and the crew arrives.
To send this much stuff in one launch, you'd need something twice as capable as Saturn V (and about four times as capable as SLS). It's way cheaper and simpler to use multiple launches of a vehicle like Falcon Heavy, which is being developed mainly for satellite launches, and which will get cheaper as you order more launches, rather than to develop a special-purpose monster rocket for this one mission.
>>7917432
As for launching directly to Mars, the only real reason to assemble a multi-launch Earth departure is for the crew habitat.
You'd want to launch all the base equipment and supplies, as well as the ascent vehicle(s), directly to the Mars surface about 2 years before you send the crew, so you can verify that it arrived and is in good working order before committing them to the journey.
At the same time, you'd want to send supplies and storable modular propulsion units to Mars orbit, for the crew to collect and use to return the habitat to Earth at the end of their mission.
This stuff would probably take more launches than assembling the departure mission. I think the whole thing could be done with 40 Falcon Heavy launches or so.
>>7917417
You could also land food on Mars before launching a manned mission.
Fuck, I bet you could build a habitat and everything with robots before you even sent people.
You could set up fail safes, like stockpiling fuel and equipment on the Martian surface.
It's going to cost a boat load, but baby steps might be a safer, more reliable and assured way of accomplishing a productive manned Mars mission.
Quite honestly this whole endeavor should be done with the intentions of colonizing and exploiting Mars for commercial development. Ultimately it will be capitalism that will get more people involved in space work.
In the meantime Russia is researching nuclear propulsion.
Prototype in 2018.
>>7917814
But since it's not elon musk, everybody will call it vaporware. The rocket that's perpetually 6 months away from maiden flight, on the other hand...
>>7917814
Source? What happened to the outer space treaty?
>>7917417
Come on man, a giant Mars spaceship? Really? You think SpaceX has the money for that? So far all they've shown is the Crew Dragon and you can't live in that for a year.
>>7917423
This fantasy Mars spaceship of yours will need to be at least Mir-sized so that's $4 billion right there just for something to live in. Add radiation shields and engines and navigation, I'm guessing $10 billion just for the spaceship
You aren't going to go to Mars in anything that can be launched on a single rocket.
You will need multiple launches to assemble the Mars vehicle in orbit. Plus several more launches to send supplies and habitat to Mars ahead of the manned flight.
>>7917860
https://www.rt.com/news/334416-russia-space-nuclear-engine/
>>7917860
>This fantasy Mars spaceship of yours will need to be at least Mir-sized so that's $4 billion right there just for something to live in.
Mir's pretty primitive, having been launched in 1986. The BA 330 inflatable habitat is designed to have roughly the same pressurized volume at 20 tons to Mir's 130 tons, and that's to support a crew of 6, twice as many as Mir.
>>7917276
just let nasa do this shit
they're experienced bro
>>7917950
Exactly. SpaceX are fantasists. They only just got into LEO and they already want to go all the way to Mars?
>>7917961
Going to Mars is the whole reason Musk started the company.
>>7917961
>They only just got into LEO
2008. Six years ago. Kennedy announced the Apollo Program only three years after the first American orbital launch. They put a man on the moon only 11 years after that, only 12 years after Sputnik.
First beyond-LEO (GTO) launch: two years ago
First Beyond Earth Orbit launch: one year ago
The idea that older launch providers are somehow more qualified to do big missions flies in the face of the history of spaceflight, which shows old programs becoming stagnant, inefficient, bureaucratic, and uninterested in serious progress.
>>7918062
NASA tried to be edgy with the Space Shuttle and we all know how that ended. The reusable rocket will end the same way. Refurbishment costs will kill it. The boring way is the only way. Deal with it.
>>7917860
>Mir sized
What? You could do it in a spaceshuttle sized craft, maybe a bit bigger. Water and oxygen really isnt a problem and I fail to see why you think a years worth of dried food for a crew of 4-5 is going to take up that much space.
>>7918071
>Refurbishment costs will kill it
A falcon 9 isn't the space shuttle, you don't have to painstakingly inspect and replace thousands of custom tiles after every flight.
and now hes meddling with politics too
>>7918084
You will have to refurbish the merlin
If they ever plan on reusing the upper stage then tiles will be necessary
>>7918079
Can Musk afford a space shuttle?
> years worth of dried food for a crew of 4-5 is going to take up that much space
I did quick calculations and a years supply of rice for four people is three tons. Assuming space food is twice as calorie dense that's still 1.5 tons of food alone. Add in a year's worth of fuel, radiation shields, your return rocket, sick bay you will need a big spaceship.
>>7918097
LAND OF DEMOCRACY
>>7918106
>rice in space
>>7918106
>You will have to refurbish the merlin
Nope. They've run them for hours without refurbishing them. Do you have to "refurbish" the engines on an airliner after every flight?
>If they ever plan on reusing the upper stage then tiles will be necessary
The shuttle used tiles because it was a spaceplane. It couldn't use ablative cooling without having irregular and unpredictable flight surfaces. The tiles were a problem because they were small, difficult to install, and they practically all had unique shapes.
A SpaceX reusable upper stage would simply use an ablative heat shield good for multiple entries, like the Dragon. They'd use the same one for ten flights or so, then put on a new one.
> years supply of rice for four people is three tons. Assuming space food is twice as calorie dense that's still 1.5 tons of food alone.
So because you need 3 tons of supplies, you need 130 ton spacecraft?
>a year's worth of fuel
SPACECRAFT DO NOT WORK THAT WAY
>radiation shields
These don't need to be a separate item. You just hide surrounded by the supplies and waste tanks when a solar storm's on. When there isn't one, you don't need shielding (and it won't do you much good, anyway).
>sick bay
Yeah... they don't get one of those. Or a kitchen sink.
>your return rocket
Return propellant can be separately launched or produced through ISRU. If you send it from Earth, this is definitely a significant launch mass item.
>>7918127
Rice is a pretty good proxy for dry food.
>>7918097
If so many billionaire establishment representatives are ganging up on Trump, doesn't that mean he is the good candidate?
Think about this, this is the first time a president will have more money than the institutions behind them. No one can bribe Donald Trump because he wipes his ass with 100s.
Feel the bern 2016 but man, you gotta at least acknowledge that Trump is probably also good for the people.
>>7918145
You guys are clearly enamoured with SpaceX. Seems like a cult to me. "Follow me and I'll take you to Mars" Don't come crying to me when this dream never materializes. This takes a lot of money which Musk simply doesn't have.
>>7918156
>If so many billionaire establishment representatives are ganging up on Trump, doesn't that mean he is the good candidate?
The two are not mutually exclusive. Trump is a fascist dirtbag. And the greedy are among the easiest to bribe, just fyi.
>Don't come crying to me when this dream never materializes
No one will. If it weren't for dreamers, nothing would ever be accomplished. You keep finding reasons why things won't work, those of us who aren't so pessimistic will keep finding ways to make things work. Now please go shove your smartphone directly up your ass.
>>7918215
Why are all of the billionaries so lousy to team up together for a good cause yet are able to team up well to go against Trump?
>>7918215
>Trump is a fascist dirtbag
as opposed to the establishment & fucking billionaires?
Fuck elon musk
Hard to see the real point of going to mars.
Why not start collecting nearby asteroids & building space habitats?
It's not like there is anything on mars to go there for.
>>7918202
how much money it "takes" depends on launch cost remaining the same...
>>7917276
What does this have to do with ULA? They won't be going to Mars anytime either.
>>7917407
Pretty sure ULA and Aerojet have him beat on those fronts. He put up significant amounts of his personal capital to fund SpaceX, unlike ULA which refuses to invest in any R&D that isn't directly paid for by the government.
>>7917950
>just let nasa do this shit
You do realize NASA doesn't actually build its own launch vehicles right? They outsource it all.
Judging by the last 30 years they don't seem to have too much experience designing reliable cost effective launch systems.
>>7918202
>I'll just talk about muh SpaceX cult instead of refuting any of the points made b/c I'm a retarded high school kid who's not the least bit involved in science or engineering
>>7918249
Point to were Elon touched you.
>>7918300
just let nasa do this shit
outsourcing allows an economic advantage so that rockets can be built for 99 cents
>>7918285
You want to live on fucking asteroids? What the fuck.
Which ones huh? The ones that don't have a fixed orbit and could launch us to the fucking sun or the ones in the asteroid belt that crash with one another 50 times a day?
Are you literally retarded?
>>7918202
>This takes a lot of money which Musk simply doesn't have.
Gigafactory.
Model 3.
Solar City rooftop solar going cheaper than coal power.
SpaceX clearing its launch backlog with reusable rockets.
SpaceX internet satellite network.
Rides to private space station.
Fully-reusable next-generation rocket with more capacity than Saturn V.
>>7918319
>The ones that don't have a fixed orbit and could launch us to the fucking sun or the ones in the asteroid belt that crash with one another 50 times a day?
Neither of those things is a thing.
>>7918319
You could move the asteroid down to low earth orbit and live on it.
Would be very comfy
and you could play dota, which you couldn't from mars.
>>7918331
So you don't know anything about our solar system? Well I'm glad you feel good about posting in a discussiona bout space regardless.
>>7918352
>The ones that don't have a fixed orbit and could launch us to the fucking sun
The sun is practically inaccessible. The Earth's orbital speed around it is about 30 km/s. The delta-v to reach the sun is huge. The delta-v to reach anything that you can reach the sun from easily is also huge. You're not going to hit it with just a few chance slingshot maneuvers, from anything that we'd be able to travel to.
>the asteroid belt that crash with one another 50 times a day
You get your space science from Star Wars? Asteroid collisions are vanishingly rare. They're separated by huge spaces.
>>7918358
I've never even seen star wars actually, but it seems possible that you could easily collide at those speeds. Obviously it won't be common though but still something to consider in the event it does occur.
>>7917276
SpaceX has not revealed their official Mars plans. Supposedly they will this fall.
>>7918358
>Asteroid collisions are vanishingly rare.
But they do happen. How much do you think a human settlement will stay there? We are supposed to stay there forever, how much hits will we have to take?
We will never invent material strong enough to support collisions from other football stadium sized objects.
Good luck making that settlement in a fucking asteroid.
Also, just being in an asteroid that is just going around, even if not going to a dangerous place, is still a bad idea. What will be your travel options when in a 1000 years you are in fucking andromeda and nowhere near any other human civilization. If we did this on mass we would end up on completely different human settlements that would probably never communciate with each other again. Completely inneficient and just borderline retarded.
The most sensible thing I've heard is to bring settlements to earth's orbit and live there. Everyone else posting in this thread is literally retarded.
>>7918324
don't forget the Hyperloop
>>7918388
>>Asteroid collisions are vanishingly rare.
>But they do happen.
Sure, and sometimes huge asteroids hit Earth and kill all the dinosaurs.
It's really not something to worry about.
>>7918388
you know asteroids are just rocks floating in space following predictable paths? any such collisions are known about years in advance
also near earth asteroids are not in the "asteroid belt"
>>7917276
>private company fanboys
Dont exist m8. Literally makes no sense.
Anyway no one is actually developing a mars mission right now but if they do they might want to assemble it in orbit which could use stuff like spacex rockets.
Spacex's shit is cool because it will push everyone to develop reusable to compete for earth orbit . and this will reduce prices and make interplanetary more affordable.
>>7918431
Also, even for a miles-wide asteroid, deflecting its orbit by a few miles to prevent a collision isn't prohibitively expensive unless you try to do it at the last minute.
One of the things you can do with a big asteroid you're living in is split it into two or more roughly equal masses. Then you can push them apart and stop their separation with a tether.
By adjusting the distance between them, you can avoid obstacles without expending reaction mass, and it's not a very tricky procedure to disconnect and reconnect the tether, or deflect it sideways.
>>7917276
redpill me on this:
why are we going to Mars before we colonize the moon, or at least set up an ISS-like station on the lunar surface?
>>7919171
I think the idea is that Mars can support a large population of humans, and the moon can't, due to it being a bare rock.
I don't believe this is actually correct about the moon. Volatiles are scarce, but not absent, and more can be brought in. The moon is easier to reach and a natural stepping stone to deep space, being a better place in many ways to produce propellant for departure from LEO than the Earth's surface.
...but right or wrong, it is an argument in favor of Mars, which has far more water, nitrogen, and other materials important for life. Another reason is distance from Earth. If a major war breaks out here on Earth, there would be more time to prepare, respond, and possibly intercept before any attacks could reach Mars.
The moons of Mars are also particularly easy to land on and depart from, having negligible gravity, but very possibly containing suitable materials for propellant production.
>>7917814
>>7917890
>In the meantime Russia is researching nuclear propulsion
So is every other space program. Nuclear propulsion is not some big secret or anything.
Don't expect anything pre-2030 though.
![Starship_Orion[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/H0yQZW5.jpg "Starship_Orion[1].jpg")
I want Musk to revive Project Orion.
Travel to Mars on nuclear weapons that were going to be dismantled anyways.
>>7917890
>“Today's engines can only reach Mars in a year and a half, without the possibility of return,” Kirienko said.
So, is he an idiot, or is the translator an idiot?
>Traditional rocket engines are believed to have reached the limit of their potential and can’t be used for deep space exploration.
Whoever wrote the article is certainly an idiot.
>>7918145
>that aircraft-rocket analogy again
>these redditscience pseudo-arguments
>that retardation
SpaceX fuccbois are the worst kind of hipsters
>>7918585
>Spacex's shit is cool because it will push everyone to develop reusable to compete for earth orbit . and this will reduce prices and make interplanetary more affordable.
No, in fact, people who have been launching rockets since before musk was even born basically think it's a dumb idea. but hey, the newcomer is always right if he's as cool as him, right?
>>7920090
This. Rockets and jet engines are not the same thing
>>7920096
Also this. It's by no means a new idea but it's only feasible if there are a large amount of launches otherwise it's just not worth the effort considering you lose 30% of your already tiny payload just by doing this. Musk is hoping lower costs will equal more customers but this isn't a solid rule.
>>7920129
There's that (thermal and mechanicals stresses are orders of magnitude higher in a rocket engine than in a airplane engine, even though they are made of the same materials), but there's also the launch rate. Even when you completely ignore physics/engineering, reusability would make sense like it does for aircrafts if there was enough rocket launch. But then you're comparing tens of millions of flights per year worldwide versus a hundred rocket launches tops.
>But anon, land, refill and relaunch! The SpaceX way!
>>7920161
those cowards never even relaunched anything
hyped up meme masters
>>7918215
>trump is a fascist
You have to be especially retarded to believe that.
Trump is pretty pro-space travel. Buzz Aldrin is his advisor and Trump criticized Obama back in 2012 for cutting NASA's founding.
Apart from that, as much as I like Elon he is either delusional or straight out lies.
What efforts are being put into sustaining the colony on mars? How will we grow food ? How will we protect ourselves from the radiation ? How will we create a magnetic field ?
Mars colonization is more than 50 years away, and this is probably an optimistic projection. We should instead focus on colonizing the Moon, since it is a lot closer and we can travel there easier.
>>7917276
>12 tons to Mars? Fucking lol, the Apollo lunar module alone
60`s tec,man.
the computer/controle pannels in the dragon v2 are really small.Compare it to the apollo`s
>>7920274
>He quotes Mussolini
>He's not a fascist
>>7920274
>How will we grow food ?
Literally the entire plot of The Martian which may I remind you is hard sci-fi
>>7920274
Trump isn't pro-space
>"You know, in the old days it was great," Trump responded, according to The Washington Post. "Right now, we have bigger problems — you understand that? We've got to fix our potholes.
>"You know, we don't exactly have a lot of money," he said.
>>7920331
No-one is pro-space. And honestly, yes there are bigger problems
>>7920328
Yes it was hard sci-fi, but it ignored that there seem to be perchlorates everywhere on Mars.
>>7920328
>The Martian
>hard sci-fi
It was a movie about a botanist that NASA sent to Mars with no seeds and no plans to attempt so much as a garden, who gets stranded because of gale-force Martian winds, and grows a crop of potatoes on the floor of a windowless room with ordinary interior lighting.
(And, if you want to argue that it wasn't ordinary interior lighting, then why the fuck did NASA send out grow lights and enough solar cells to power them?)
>>7920732
>>a botanist that NASA sent to Mars with no seeds and no plans to attempt so much as a garden
>NASA thinks of everything
Anyway, the perchlorates aren't a big deal, and because they're water-soluble, you can rinse them out of soil anyway.
>>7920773
If they wanted to send someone to look for evidence of past or current life. They would send a Micro Biologist.
>>7920775
he probably wanted to study the potential of martian soil for growing crops, not look for life
>>7920789
Then they'd have sent him with a variety of seeds and soil microflora starters, and plans to try them (and maybe some windows).
Don't try to rationalize The Martian. It's a silly show.
>>7920732
watney has seeds AND earth soil. HOWEVER, he doesn't have any edible plants with him which is why he steals the thanksgiving day potatoes.
>>7920790
see
>>7920792
it's at basically the beginning and easily missed.
>One of my tasks for the mission was to see how plants grow here, in various combinations of Earth or Mars soil and atmosphere. That's why I have a small amount of Earth soil and a bunch of plant seeds with me. I can't get too excited, however. It's about the amount of soil you'd put in a window planter-box, and the only seeds I have are a few species of grass and ferns. They're the most rugged and easily grown plants on earth, so NASA picked them as the test subjects.
>So I have two problems: not enough dirt, and nothing edible to plant in it. But I'm a botanist, damn it. I should be able to find a way to make this happen. If I don't, I'll be a really hungry botanist in about a year.
>>7920799
Okay so now we have proved that you can grow potatoes on Mars can we get back to discussing why doing this is a waste of time?
>>7920799
That doesn't make sense, though. Seeds are very light and compact, and food production is not only a natural focus of research for long-term practical interests, but a simple and practical way to add variety to the diets of the astronauts.
>>7919444
>In October 2001, Musk travelled to Moscow with Jim Cantrell (an aerospace supplies fixer), and Adeo Ressi (his best friend from college), to buy refurbished ICBMs (Dnepr-1) that could send the envisioned payloads into space.[15] The group met with companies such as Lavochkin and ISC Kosmotras. However, according to Cantrell, Musk was seen as a novice and was consequently spat on by one of the Russian chief designers, and the group returned to the US empty-handed.
>>7918202
>Gets his argument shredded
>Reverts to "uh you guys don't know what ur talking about ur all just fanboys who don't know anything"
2/10 I replied
>>7920849
lol what shredding? all you have done is claim that Musk will magically build a giant spaceship that will take all his neckbeard followers to Mars to live happily ever after. If that's not a cult I don't know what is. Guy probably has the fuel tanks filled with Kool Aid.
>>7920866
>>>>>You will have to refurbish the merlin
>>>>Nope. They've run them for hours without refurbishing them.
>>>Seems like a cult to me.
>>2/10
>all you have done is claim that Musk will magically build a giant spaceship
What color is the sky in your little world?
>>7920900
So reusing a rocket equals man on Mars right? How could everyone else have been so dumb? It was as easy as recovering the first stage of a rocket, everything else from the biggest spaceship ever built to the as yet un-perfected radiation shields, to the fantasy habitat that is supposed to keep humans alive for years on Mars a hundred million miles away from the nearest supply, is all a piece of cake? Why did NASA, the Soviets or anyone else involved in space for that matter ever think of this? Why is This one guy so much better than all who came before him? You know what , go, fly there on your stupid falcon rocket or whatever, when you all die I'll sit here laughing.
>>7920931
Remember this thing?
>>Gets his argument shredded
>>Reverts to "uh you guys don't know what ur talking about ur all just fanboys who don't know anything"
You're doing it again.
>Why is This one guy so much better than all who came before him?
SpaceX isn't "one guy", and it's normally expected for competent people pursuing technological advancement in an immature field to do "so much better than all who came before".
SpaceX is a private company of people who want to see genuine progress, gathered behind a leader who wants to see genuine progress, and brought millions of dollars worth of seed money he never needs back. Musk brought money and purity of intent. As such, they can do what they see fit to advance the state of the art, as long as they get enough practical work done to keep the lights on.
When SpaceX was founded, the status quo in orbital launch was lame-ass 1960s technology. Orbital rockets had changed, but not significantly improved. Reliability was a little better, but the launches were also that much more expensive.
If you look at the Apollo Project, it was impressive, but also terribly wasteful. Money doesn't vanish when it's wasted, it necessarily goes into somebody's pockets. So this attracted all the parasites, the careerists and profiteers, who by their nature were much more politically powerful than the space cadets who cared about spaceflight. They were not interested in lowering costs.
Even when they sold the idea of lowering costs, as in the space shuttle and EELV programs, they proceeded in ways which would obviously not do so. In the case of the careerists, they derived their importance from the sizes of the staffs working under them and the budgets they oversaw, whereas the profiteers were confident of their ability to skim amounts in proportion to the costs per launch, but doubtful of whether reduced costs would proportionately increase volumes. Neither of them wanted to open things up or attract new competition.
>>7921051
>>7920931
>So reusing a rocket equals man on Mars right?
Yeah. Reducing launch costs and increasing launch availability is 99% of the problem. Basically, nothing else matters until you can launch enough stuff into space.
The current costs of orbital launch are a thousand times more expensive than they need to be. Not only does this mean that unprofitable things like exploration you want to do cost a thousand times as much, it means your payloads have to bring in a thousand times more revenue to be profitable, so it's that much harder for people interested in space to make money to spend on their unprofitable interests.
All the research on everything else is window dressing if you're not dealing with the problem of launch costs. Refuel-and-refly airliner-like reuse is the key to moving into space. Anyone sneering at the importance or feasibility of this is not relevant to progress in manned spaceflight.
>>7920090
That's an awful lot of meme words anon.
>>7920129
You must be some kind of genius.
>>7920096
>basically think it's a dumb idea
Nope. No one with any knowledge of the space launch business thinks it a dumb idea, unless they're being paid to say so.
That doesn't mean SpaceX will be a success but reusability is not dumb. Also, even without reusability SpaceX will still reduce launch costs due to their focus on vertical integration and streamlined production.
>>7920161
>even though they are made of the same materials
Get a load of this retard.
>>7920167
They've only been around a decade or so.
>>7920849
>>7920900
Don't bother trying to win an argument with him using logic. He might actually have a learning disability.
>>7920931
>This one guy so much better than all who came before him
Yep, you might actually be retarded. Pretty sure no one has claimed SpaceX is just one guy in a big ass building in Hawthorne.
But to answer your question he isn't. He simply has the capital, as well as the drive, to hire tons of people who all want to make this happen. Oh yeah, and the fact that technology has advanced rather far since the time of "all who came before him".
>>7920931
>I'll sit here laughing
At some point your parents will make you move out so I wouldn't get too comfortable anon.
You should hang out on one of the other boards since its quite obvious you aren't even tangentially involved in science or engineering.
Your faggot tier arguments are kind of cute though.
>>7917276
>everything I not like is meme now
>>7921065
The market is not big enough. Jumbo jets work because there are millions of middle-management types wanting to travel to Tahiti every year. Nobody wants to go to the Moon.
>>7922155
>The space launch market won't expand if costs drop 90%
>>7922155
>Nobody wants to go to the Moon.
Are you kidding? Millions of people would like to go to the moon.
The market for air travel is orders of magnitude larger than necessary to support well-designed reusable airliners. The space launch market doesn't have to get anywhere near big enough to support a spaceport by every city.
>>7922380
>>The space launch market won't expand if costs drop 90%
It seriously might not. 10% of way too much can still be way too much. Let's say two years from now, SpaceX can launch a satellite for $6 million, or 7 people to a private space station and back for $14 million.
Are you going to be launching any satellites or going to space at those prices? There are only so many comsats and imaging sats we can use. $2 million to visit a space station is still something just for national science programs and very rich people.
The potential is to lower costs by 99.9%. Three orders of magnitude improvement. ~$5 million per ton to ~$50,000 per ton. There's a dodgy fourth order of magnitude that might be possible for manned spaceflight, by reducing the launch mass from ~1 ton per passenger to ~100 kg, mostly by reducing the safety backups, which could lower the cost of a trip to orbit below $10,000. Further cost reductions are only possible if energy gets cheaper, which is probably better interpreted as society getting richer.
I think that one of the big reasons launch costs haven't gone down is that you probably have to tough it out through two orders of magnitude in cost improvement before you reach a region where incremental price reduction causes a proportional increase in volume and increases profitability.
I see SpaceX as a company just trying to survive until they can build their fully-reusable, high-efficiency LOX/CH4 rocket.
>>7921180
>trying this hard to save his billionaire' honour on 4chan
Some people truly live pointless existences.
>>7922440
where do you get 7 people for 14 million?
where do you get only 1 satellite?
Lets say a launch of the falcon heavy for 10 million dollars
50 tons payload is a lot more than 7 people.
We're talking hundreds.
Would people spend 10,000 dollars to go LEO ? Sure
Would they spent 100,000 dollars to go to the moon? Lots.
The other thing is mining NEO asteroids for fuel, air/water/materials/etc
So you don't have to lift every lb of bulk materials up to orbit.
>>7917276
>Unlike the Moon Mars has an atmosphere which requires a fuckuge heat shield
Yes, and because of that you don't need any fuel to land on Mars. It takes LESS fuel to fly from Earth to Mars that from Earth to Moon!
>>7923223
>where do you get 7 people for 14 million?
90% reduction on SpaceX price for a Crew Dragon launch ($140 million), which is actually a future price probably no less than two years away. NASA's paying way more than that for the first rides, on four-seat flights.
Current price for a Soyuz seat is about $75 million. (if they charge less to space tourists sometimes, it's the surplus sale of an empty seat) A 90% reduction on current cost would be $7.5 million per seat.
This is why I'm saying a 90% cost reduction isn't enough.
>Lets say a launch of the falcon heavy for 10 million dollars
>50 tons payload is a lot more than 7 people.
>We're talking hundreds.
Until they develop a new passenger vehicle to go on FH (hint: they won't -- they're saving that for their next generation, fully-reusable design), Falcon Heavy can take 7 people in a Crew Dragon, same as Falcon 9.
Anyway, you're not going to get hundreds of people in an orbital spacecraft with life support, flight suits, luggage/supplies, launch abort, orbital maneuvering, docking, re-entry, and landing capabilities. 1-2 tonnes/person is a good ballpark. Like I said, you might cut that down, but it would be dodgy.
When they say "payload" of a launch vehicle, they mean everything it puts into orbit, not everything inside a spacecraft it puts into orbit. Cargo Dragon weighs about 4 tonnes dry and empty, and has space for 7 guys crammed in like sardines. Unloaded but fueled Crew Dragon will weigh considerably more, with its abort system.
>>7923293
What they charge NASA or the handful of rich tourists is not the actual cost of the launch
It's still able to carry 3+ tons payload to ISS, but only 7 passengers? I guess passengers aren't a priority yet, no place to go.
>>7923356
>It's still able to carry 3+ tons payload to ISS, but only 7 passengers?
There's only room for 7 passengers. You could put a ton of water in a cubic meter, but could you fit ten 100 kg people in that space? Of course not.
Pressurized volume in a capsule that has to survive launch, time in orbit, and entry is expensive, and people need quite a bit of it. People also add demand for life support, thermal management, emergency equipment, etc.
They're not giving passengers a low priority. This is what it costs. Falcon 9 can take ~13.5 tons to LEO. The capsule that fits on it can take 7 people. That's quite reasonable. Soyuz takes 3 people, and goes up on a rocket about half as powerful.
>>7924326
>What SpaceX is doing is not enough to make commercial space travel viable.
What SpaceX is doing is developing a fully-reusable vehicle that runs on the cheapest propellants available and can be refuelled and relaunched with no expensive consumables.
Falcon 1 was a minimum viable product for a company that had limited capital and no experience. Falcon 9 was a rapid, low-cost scale-up to increase revenues and attract investment. The flyback booster and Crew Dragon are incremental devlopments to prove the concept of a rapidly-reusable vehicle while developing experience with flyback, atmospheric entry, and propulsive landing.
All of these are stepping stones toward their end goal in launch vehicles: the clean-sheet, fully-reusable design sometimes referred to as BFR (Big Falcon Rocket). They've been developing its Raptor engine for years already, a full-flow staged-combustion design with separate non-wearing, propellant-lubricated, fluid-bearing turbopumps for the fuel and oxydizer, fed by self-pressurizing oxygen and methane tanks (so there's no complex, costly helium pressurization system).
The thing is meant to be flown like an airliner, to actually be considerably mechanically simpler, lower maintenance, and less weather-sensitive than an airliner.
So don't try and claim that what they're doing isn't ambitious enough.
>it will never be economically feasible because living in space is too hazardous. Sure it isn't risky anymore but eliminating that risk needs a fuckload of systems and equipment.
It only seems like a "fuckload of systems and equipment" because it's being used to support a few people at a time.
The ISS is fully crewed with a half-dozen people aboard. That's a half-dozen people to maintain all of the systems necessary to sustain human life without a biosphere. A station of six thousand people won't be like a thousand ISSes, it'll still be about as complicated as one ISS. The equipment will be bigger, not more complicated.
>>7924432
Similarly, the costs of protecting against micrometeors and radiation go up with the surface area, not the volume. The larger the habitat, the lower the costs per person.
>>7924783
SpaceX says that the current Dragon heat shield should last at least ten atmospheric entries without refurbishment, and they think they can get it into the hundreds.
Once they started looking at minimizing ablation for the purpose of reusing heat shields, they realized an "ablative" heat shield can be evolved into one better described as "self-healing".
SpaceX started with PICA, resin-impregnated carbon fiber. The other major family is resin-impregnated silica. The space shuttle used silica aerogel for its moderate-temperature areas, and carbon-carbon for its peak temperature areas. It's the same basic stuff as ablative heat shields, minus the material that can boil off.
By tweaking PICA, they get the residue of the phenolic resin to form a crust of graphite-like carbon on the carbon fiber -- essentially the same material as the carbon-carbon used for the nose of the space shuttle. The vaporized ablative resin disassociates and deposits carbon when it reaches the extreme heat of the surface. Under ideal conditions, they can get zero ablation. When something goes wrong, and it flakes or gets scratched, it grows a new layer.
So it's essentially a lightweight, inexpensive radiative heat shield with the final manufacturing step accomplished in its first atmospheric entry, and with maintenance done, equally automatically, on subsequent entries. Rather than fighting the extreme conditions of atmospheric entry, it elegantly takes advantage of them.
>>7924873
>SpaceX says that the current Dragon heat shield should last at least ten atmospheric entries without refurbishment
Seeing as the Space Shuttle couldn't even survive one re-entry Musk must be using alien technology. I find it hard to believe that he can magic out of thin air a solution to a problem that beat NASA. Hell even the X-37 can't do what you are claiming.
>>7925083
>the Space Shuttle
>1970s technology
>giant government project run by bureaucrats and profiteers who pushed out all the top-level competent technical people after Apollo
>omg how could anyone ever improve on that?
>X-37
>secretive military project
>no clear purpose
>no apparent interest in cost-effectiveness
>just an excuse for contractors to extract large sums of money from the US taxpayer
Anyway, both of these are spaceplanes, not simple capsules, cones, or cylinders, which are naturally tolerant of irregularities in the shape of the heat-shielded surfaces.
>>7925083
Dragon capsules are protected by Musk's own sense of self worth.
>>7925122
It flew until 2011 you autist. If these magical tiles really existed why didn't NASA use them? They had plenty time to upgrade. And fuck off about the X-37 is for jollies, X planes have done a lot for science. Just because nobody knows what it is doing up there doesn't mean it is doing bullshit.
>>7925083
>I find it hard to believe that he can magic out of thin air a solution to a problem that beat NASA.
You apparently have this idea of NASA as this organization of super-competent geniuses.
You'll be closer to the truth of NASA if you assume that it's a gang of total fucking retards with insane amounts of money.
If smart people had billions of dollars, actual billions of dollars to work with every year, do you think they could flail around for multiple years in the 21st century without producing a launch vehicle and space capsule? Or does the history of the Orion capsule and its rockets sound like some very stupid, incompetent people not knowing who to hire, or how to recognize when they've given their money to guys who can't get the job done?
Or go back further to the space shuttle. Could that ever have saved money? The external tank alone was quadruple the size of an expendable rocket of the same payload. Even if engines are 75% of the cost of a rocket, and only 25% is building, checking, and transporting the body, there's no way that building quadruple the expendable body to save the engines for reuse can save money. Simple, simple analysis would have shown that the shuttle wouldn't save money even if everything went perfectly, and you didn't have to pay much attention to see nothing was going perfectly.
NASA is a political organization. What that means is, people have power in it for reasons other than competence or sincere interest in pursuing technical or scientific goals. This makes it, effectively, horrifyingly stupid and incompetent. It only ever gets things done by throwing money at people until, by blind luck, it lands on someone who can do it.
>>7925250
This. Nobody who works for the government knows what the fuck they are doing. Anyone with talent goes into private sector because federal pay is dogshit.
>>7925144
>It flew until 2011 you autist. If these magical tiles really existed why didn't NASA use them? They had plenty time to upgrade.
Nothing about the space shuttle program made sense. The program was meant to be ready for routine operation in the mid--to-late-70s and over in the mid-to-late-80s. It started operation in the early 80s and never reached the routine operational schedule. The Challenger disaster (the 25th shuttle flight) happened around when the shuttle program was supposed to be over (1986), with 500 launches completed.
Instead of cancelling the obviously failed program, they built a replacement for Challenger and extended it for DECADES.
They never once landed a shuttle in shape to be worth reusing. Every time, each one had to be extensively overhauled and rebuilt, at greater cost than manufacturing an expendable vehicle. Every year they continued the program, it became a more obvious waste of tax dollars.
And "these magical tiles" weren't sitting on a shelf somewhere. PICA-X was developed at SpaceX, because they started with PICA as a conservative heat shield material (which would likely work without a long or costly development program) and assigned smart people to just make it better and more cost-effective, in whatever way they could.
Like doing a flyback booster that lands with one of nine Merlin 1Ds, they stumbled on the idea because they started with a conservative design, and were encouraged to find whatever way they could to make things more cost-effective. They didn't go with a 9-engine design because of this plan. They just designed an engine for Falcon 1 to launch a minimum-sellable payload, and then 9 was the number of them that would fit under an Interstate overpass. They were going to build Falcon 5, but with the way Merlin 1C turned out, it wasn't powerful enough for the Dragon NASA wanted. The 9-engine design meant that a reasonable amount of throttling could make it hover while nearly empty.
>>7925430
>>7925250
Where is your proof that these magic tiles even exist?
So far I've been met with a slew of fucking outlandish claims
>Manned Moon flyby in 2018
>LEO for $100,000
>Giant Mars spaceship
>Magic spaceplane that can somehow do 10 re-entries without any refurbishment
You're all fucking fantasists.
>>7925144
NASA's a government operation
what do they care about saving money or doing things better?
Everything they did in orbit was literally just makework or other waste of money operations
>>7925487
Dude, are you serious?
>Where is the proof that the capsule is real
>where are the proof that the rocket is real
>>7917276
Falcon Heavy isn't for manned mars missions you dumbass.
>>7926239
How can the heatshield be real if space isnt?
