Only 16080 hours left for SpaceX to send Red Dragon to Mars.
I admire him for being curious and having enough of an interest to explore space, that said, I think it should be left to the Public Sector to do so. Private Sector is so far behind and lacks funds substantially.
>>8036026
>private sector is behind
>public sector is ahead
what in the fuck are you even saying, the only time the public gets off their lazy social-wellfare asses and politicians taking funds for themselves is in times of war
>>8036026
Nope
http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/04/senate-says-it-wants-a-mars-program-then-forces-nasa-to-cut-landing-tests/
>>8036026
>I admire him for being curious and having enough of an interest to explore space, that said, I think it should be left to the Public Sector to do so. Private Sector is so far behind and lacks funds substantially.
"should be left to" as in:
>The government should make it illegal for private ventures to go to Mars, and if Elon Musk continues trying he should go to jail
or
>I think it is silly of Elon Musk to spend his own money on this endeavor. He would be smarter to leave the government to do it.
One of those is monstrously immoral. The other one is pretending to be smarter than the guy who made fat stacks and pivoted into space travel.
>>8035861
as soon as means not before 2018, it can also mean 2100 or 3018 ....
>>8036545
The details are that SpaceX is doing most of it out of their own pocket (paying for the rocket and spacecraft), with free support from NASA, particularly including use of their fancy 24-hour deep space radio system for missions.
Mars launch windows only come along once every 2 years + 2 months. They missed the 2016 window, so the 2018 windows is the first plausible one in which a Falcon Heavy and Dragon V2 could be available.
2018 is the target launch date, 2020 is the fallback.
>>8035861
>Private company that only made it into orbit 8 years ago
>Entire company is worth less than NASA's annual budget
>No superheavy, just some drawings
>Thinks they can land a spacecraft bigger than a rover on another planet
>By 2018
Straight up delusional
>>8036833
falcon heavy is literally gonna fly this year
the BFR will fly before the SLS, probably, since the SLS is going to blow up.
Not sure why you think its not doable, if the rocket can put the payload to mars surface, then ofc its possible for them to do it.
>>8036859
elon pls
>>8036859
>Just make a big enough rocket and point it at Mars
It's not that simple, friend.
>>8036874
Launching to Mars transfer isn't harder than launching to GTO, maneuvering to hit the atmosphere correctly isn't harder than rendezvousing with the ISS, coasting to Mars isn't significantly harder than enduring in orbit, and landing propulsively on Mars is much easier than landing propulsively on Earth.
They're not building anything special for this. They're pretty much just entering trajectory information into hardware they're building for other reasons.
They've designed their products so they can prove every needed system by doing useful work around Earth.
>>8036874
It literally is that simple
How do you think they've been sending rovers to mars? Plotting orbital movements/trajectories/etc is relatively straightforward. The only question is whether they have sufficient deltaV
>>8036833
>random kid posting convoluted opinions about workings he knows nothing about
>people actually sitting around trolling space exploration and rocket discussion topics
Why didn't any of those old movies about the future tell us the future was going to be like this?
If this trend continues, there will be people shitposting just as hard from Mars/Moon colonies & orbital stations in 50-100 years
>"lol you lunatics don't even have a proper gravity"
>"shut your hole orbital shitposter, inertial gravity isn't real gravity"
>"oh yeah!? we can fly helicopters in our O'Neill cylinder. What do you have? Meme buggies, lol"
>"we found more water ice on mars today"
>"fucking slowpoke posters, no one gives a shit."
>>8037114
>russia fails a shitton of mars missions
>hurr this means its really hard!
or surprise: Russia and other governments are institutionally incompetent, then some bureaucrat/politician/party member says "go", and you have to go despite 0% chance of success.
>>8036833
>
kek, you know, Grasshopper was born in 2012, only four years later the absolute madman landed it on a barge in the middle of the ocean.
Also, doesnt delivering payloads to an orbiting ISS count?
>>8037120
>implying we're gonna get much farther into space than we are now
>>8037172
Liberals & cucks will destroy civilization, defending it is "racism".
Thats why the singularity won't happen
>>8037172
>>8037183
You misunderstand something pivotal. You see, we already have all the tech needed to make it to mars and the moon and have viable colonies there. There's not much new science we will be making that will impact humanity. That is why a singularity won't happen. There's no need for it.
What there is a need for is people like Musk who actually want to do this and who have the means to do it. The only reason it wouldn't happen is that no one wanted to do it.
>>8037114
Nobody said it's "easy", but SpaceX is overcoming greater challenges before attempting this, and using proven systems instead of ad hoc ones.
Dragon V2 is planned as a reusable crew capsule that does fully-automated, purely propulsive landing on Earth, in shape to be simply loaded up and sent to space again. That's about ten times harder than a Mars landing.
>>8037114
The fucking poo in loos got a probe into mars orbit first try, it can;t be that hard
>>8037128
Only one country has ever succeeded the first time round and that was India.
Russia never fucked up Venus, Mars is just hard because you have to dodge the aliens with laser cannons. Dragon will get shot down just like Beagle 2 did.
>>8037216
That's actually not true. ESA's Mars Express has been very successful and is an actual scientific mission unlike the Indian demonstrator.
>>8037230
buh the lander failed. spacex wants to land before they've even managed an orbit. im not saying they can't do it im saying they are moving too fast.
>>8037238
>spacex wants to land before they've even managed an orbit
The only reason they'd do orbit first is if they couldn't afford a big enough rocket to send a lander.
This isn't some two-bit space agency struggling to put together a satellite that can survive in space for a few months. This is the world's premier space technology company making plans to follow up demonstrating the world's first and only cost-saving reusable orbital launch technology, the world's most capable launch vehicle, and the world's most advanced crew capsule.
You only get a Mars launch window every 26 months. They're not going to wait an extra two years just so they can take baby steps.
>>8037318
>This is the world's premier space technology company making plans to follow up demonstrating the world's first and only cost-saving reusable orbital launch technology, the world's most capable launch vehicle, and the world's most advanced crew capsule.
Tone it down, you sound like a paid shill. lol
It doesn't even matter if it makes it, in fact failures teach better than successes. As seen with the barge landings.
>>8036833
they can send the craft up in pieces, assembling it in orbit
>>8037324
>Tone it down, you sound like a paid shill. lol
If they're ready to do this in 2018, it will mean that they've caught up on their launch backlog (which almost certainly means reusability is working), started routine Falcon Heavy flights, and Dragon V2 is working, propulsive landing and all.
They'll be standing head and shoulders above everyone else. That's not an exaggeration. Right now, the only thing you can really say against them is that it's still possible that their near-term plans won't work.
>failures teach better than successes. As seen with the barge landings.
It would always have been better to succeed from the beginning. Failure was acceptable with the barge landings because this is an improvised recovery mode. It would be a major setback if they spent a Falcon Heavy and a Dragon V2 and failed their primary mission.
>>8036833
This. At least one person with reason in this retarded Musk fanboi echochamber /sci/ has become.
>>8037114
>Based on what? a couple wikipedia articles you skimmed?
SpaceX twitter feed, I would guess.
>>8037318
>This is the world's premier space technology company making plans to follow up demonstrating the world's first and only cost-saving reusable orbital launch technology, the world's most capable launch vehicle, and the world's most advanced crew capsule.
>Shilling this hard
space flight and going to mars just isn't that fucking hard.
no one who wasn't a fucking DMV employee ever tried. that's all.
>>8037404
>Spacex: "We're gonna build a big rocket with three F9 cores, 27 engines, and we're gonna launch it by 2013"
>2014 happens
>the fanboys: "Oooooooh it's just a 6-month delay, don't worry! Elon said so himself! xD"
The butthurt here when they lost their first paying customer a few months ago was rather glorious
>>8037443
>Beagle was only ever a passenger tagged on at the last moment, Mars Express was the mission.
The most ironic thing about Beagle 2 was that the British at the time were all like "we don't need your european engineering standards", "your regulations are just stifling British ingenuity", "we can built that perfectly by ourselves, we don't need your advice, thank you very much".
Sounds oddly familiar, doesn't it
>>8037448
I'm just waiting for it to blow up. I will bathe in fanboy tears.
>>8037458
It's my own guilty little pleasure too, watching things like that
I don't see what the problem is here. Private companies have sent shit to Mars before. Heck NASA has contracted private to do Mars missions before.
This is pretty much a stunt on SpaceX's part.
>>8037458
Im torn between this and actually wanting space exploration to succeed
>>8037443
>A tiny token payload, it was criticized at the time. I'm not aware of a single paper being published from it's observations either.
>Actually responding to an obvious joke.
/sci/ has the most autistic responses of any board. I don't mean the meme use of the word "autistic" I mean people who actually have enough of a degree of autism that it bleeds through in their posts.
>>8037475
>>8037458
>>8037471
If it succeeds it means there will be 1000s of failures in the future when it becomes standardized and normal folk start space traveling. You'll have youtube channels dedicated to the most awesome wrecks and explosions.
Imagine this, only with space shuttles and shit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n41JW39ZB5c
>>8037455
Beagle's troubles came from the fact it was late and only received partial testing as Mars Express would fly without it. It had nothing to do with regulations. The prime contractor was EADS Astrium who were also responsible for Huygens, it's nonsense that they didn't draw on the European knowledge base.
Beagle was done as a British project because ESA weren't interested in just having a go. It was cheap and it gave planetary science in Britain a big kick.
>>8037482
I'm sorry, I didn't realise flogging that particular dead horse was supposed to be funny.
Why not solar electric propulsion to mars from LEO?
Whats the point of chemical?
>>8037475
I generally support SpaceX and of course want them to succeed eventually but they need to have a few catastrophes to bring their fucking fanboys back to Earth.
>>8037519
Solar is only good for little things like orbiters. This is why the Moon landings required fat rockets.
>>8037521
True dat
>>8037526
Solar can be scaled up just as rockets can
ofc landing on mars needs a rocket, so does taking off.
But to actually travel the distance, seems SEP would be good enough, you can only launch once every 2 years, so the slow speed doesn't matter.
>>8037539
>"just scale up bro"
This is what is wrong with every SpaceX fanboy.
>>8037508
>he knew it was a joke
That's fine, the response you gave still shows real world autism.
>>8037542
>has nothing better to contribute so he takes things out of context and adds in some ad hominmemes.
>>8037542
fuck u m8
>>8037539
>to actually travel the distance, seems SEP would be good enough
SEP is expensive, especially if you want to scale it up, and you don't save as much mass as you might expect. Low-thrust systems lose the advantage of the Oberth effect, so their delta-v to get out of gravity wells is much higher.
It's better to save high-Isp propulsion for deep-space maneuvering. It would be nice to have something like a fission fragment drive to be able to just do a chemical launch to Earth escape and then accelerate continuously so launch to Mars can be undertaken any time without worrying about windows, and so more distant targets can be reached and returned from.
>you can only launch once every 2 years, so the slow speed doesn't matter.
Slowly spiralling out from LEO to Earth escape means spending lots of time in the van allen belts, and generally more time soaking in damaging space radiation.
Anyway, slow methods are really unsuitable for manned missions.
>>8037519
Cause falcon heavy should already have enough delta V to send a capsule on a one way trip to Mars. They save some delta V by aerobraking (or geobraking) into Mars.
>>8037542
And why couldn't solar electric propulsion scale?
>>8037591
Well we can't use chemical rockets to get to mars with the SLS unless we have propellant depots...
>>8037604
And the Raptor doesn't need propellant because?
>>8037611
Well, SLS is based on LOX/H2. The payload goes to shit if you switch to storables, and a LOX/H2 propellant depot is non-trivial. Anyway SLS is not remotely suitable for multi-launch missions. The cost is high because the production is primitive and labor-intensive (SLS is based on technology from the 1970s and earlier), supporting only a low launch rate. A 12-launch mission would take several years to put together.
I think this 1200-ton mission model is for an Apollo-style single-departure mission, with no ISRU, so they need to carry their return propellant, too.
I'm not sure of whether MCT is using in-orbit refuelling or not. But it has some major advantages over this SLS-based mission: the single-launch payload is larger, LOX/methane fuel is far easier to store in space, it's based on a fully-reusable vehicle supporting a high flight rate, they're using multiple separate departures which will land near each other, they're landing the whole vehicle (which is also the upper stage of the launch vehicle) on Mars, and they're refuelling on Mars for the return journey, if any.
If MCT uses in-orbit refuelling, their system would likely use two to four separate reusable upper stages which are also spacecraft:
1) the transit vehicle itself, which would also serve as the fuel depot and the lander,
2) the fuel tanker, which might refill the transit vehicle once after it reached LEO, and possibly again when it reached a high orbit, such as L2 or an elliptical orbit,
3) the cargo shuttle, which would load the transit vehicle, and
4) the passenger shuttle, which would have extra safety features.
It's not clear whether SpaceX has something like this planned, or if they're just going to launch directly from Earth to Mars. They've said they want to be able to take 100 people per trip. That suggests in-orbit refuelling, since it seems unlikely that they could do this in one launch with a 200-300 ton payload to LEO.
>>8037743
"100 people per trip" either implies a convoy of 20x whatever sends 5 people, or a completely unconceived-of vehicle that somehow holds 100 people. I don't know why you engineers have such a hard time seeing through Elon's BS.
>>8037743
>It's not clear whether SpaceX has something like this planned, or if they're just going to launch directly from Earth to Mars. They've said they want to be able to take 100 people per trip. That suggests in-orbit refuelling, since it seems unlikely that they could do this in one launch with a 200-300 ton payload to LEO.
SpaceX fanboys have changed their tune. i remember when I posted the giga rocket 3x the size of Saturn V that was supposed to go straight to Mars all you lot passionately defended it. now it's "unlikely"
>>8037774
>I remember when I posted the giga rocket 3x the size of Saturn V that was supposed to go straight to Mars all you lot passionately defended it. now it's "unlikely"
Nobody with half a brain thought that was a likely or preferred method of going to mars.
Just like Cars need gas stations to go cross-country, Spacecraft will have to use inter-planetary refuel depots. At the very least something in LEO and then another one orbiting Mars. Maybe even something in between.
Of course that is going to cost a fuck-ton to launch and maintain such depots, which is why reusable rockets are so important. If it was just a matter of building a really, really big one-time rocket NASA would be a better bet.
>>8037792
>Maybe even something in between.
You need to stop talking about space travel until you learn the basics of maneuvers.
>>8037820
There is no reason to believe that you can't send a spacecraft in advance at slower speeds on the same trajectory, maybe a few weeks in advance.
I am sure it would be difficult as fuck and docking would be tricky as well.
But there is no logical reason that it would be impossible, maybe just impractical until technology improves.
>>8037792
Would a Martian fuel depot cut travel time to Neptune? if Musk's meme ideas can at least make scientific exploration of the outer solar system easier then I am on board.
>>8037836
Is this one of those things where you claim that you were only pretending to be retarded?
>>8037844
>cut travel time to Neptune
Why Neptune?
The most commercially useful feature in our Solar System is the asteroid belt inbetween Mars and Jupiter. That is where a theoretical Martian depot would lead too.
Mars Depot would make any Deep-Space mission more feasible because you would be able to extract useful minerals and fuel from Mars itself to power missions, instead of ferrying everything all the way from Earth.
>>8037836
full retard
>>8037854
It is one of those things where someone on the internet says something is not possible but doesn't give a reason why, then pretends they are a super genius who knows everything and is a director at NASA when they are actually just retarded.
>>8037759
>a completely unconceived-of vehicle that somehow holds 100 people
Why do you have trouble imagining a vehicle that can carry 100 people? Planes fly with hundreds of people on them all the time.
A 12-meter-diameter vehicle that launched to LEO weighing 200+tons as an empty shell, before being fuelled, furnished, supplied, and boarded is pretty easily imaginable as a vehicle for 100 passengers for a few months.
>>8037774
>when I posted the giga rocket 3x the size of Saturn V that was supposed to go straight to Mars all you lot passionately defended it. now it's "unlikely"
It's not unlikely that they'll build a rocket 3 times the size of Saturn V (that's their stated plan), capable of launching straight to Mars (even Falcon Heavy can launch straight to Mars). It's unlikely that they'll launch 100 people directly to Mars on that rocket.
In a direct-launch-to-Mars architecture, it's more likely that the vehicle would carry a much smaller number of people. I think 20 is possible, though it might be on the high side.
It does get easier as you go to higher numbers. A life support system for 20 times more people isn't 20 times harder to build and maintain. As you go to larger groups, it makes more sense to use mass-saving tricks like water and oxygen recycling, which can fail to save mass for a small crew.
>>8037881
>is pretty easily imaginable as a vehicle for 100 passengers for a few months
Such accommodations are trickier than you might expect. Being hermetically sealed with hundreds of other strangers for long periods of time might not go as you expect.
You could create a larger 'living community' but that would require more weight, complexity, and volume.
Other option might be deep-sleep but that has never been tried before in such a manner and scale.
>>8037868
>>8037881
Sorry kid your ideas are so retarded that even people who have played Kerbal Space Program know better. Or really, anyone with common sense.
It's really sad that you came to 4chan to talk about science and you are still so much more ignorant and stupid than everyone else that even here you get looked down on, but that's what you get for refusing to read a book.
>>8037907
full retard
>>8037238
Yes, let's pointlessly move like a snail and make sure that any colonization attempts occur 300 years from now.
There's a time and a place for a slow incremental approach and this isn't it. Slow and incremental is well-accounted for via literally every other space agency in the world. If SpaceX thinks they can land shit on Mars, why not let them try? There's no good reason for them to go at anybody else's pace.
>>8037435
And the total sum of funding given specifically to development of regular flights to mars is comparable to the average elementary schooler's lunch money for a week and worse NASA's contractors have made sure that the effectiveness of said funds are equal to a single day's lunch money.
Basically everything has been set up to create a non-ideal climate for any kind of mission more complex than slinging a probe at something. Difficulty isn't what's holding up space exploration, a hopelessly broken system is. Circumvent the broken system and shit will start happening.
>>8037521
>being hopeful and optimistic is bad
Yeah I get that hardcore fanboyism can be grating, but you can't deny that a giant shot in the arm of hype is exactly what the space industry needs right now. We're finally getting spaceflight back into the eye of the public at large and starting to to mass opinion space-positive. There's a good chance that the space drought could finally be over soon. Why put a tamper on that? I can deal with a few obnoxious folks for that kind of leap.
>>8037881
>that's their stated plan
No, I don't think they have any any firm design on what the MCT rocket is going to look like
Just vague things said years ago that are probably quite dated.
Probably going to be wider than 12 meters, always want to leave room to grow.
>>8037881
>>8037792
>>8037774
If this is refering to the tread here a while back showing a comparison artist drawing, then that drawing was pretty shit. Even the article the drawing came from refered to a launch vehicle no more than 30 feet taller than a Saturn V, not 2-3 times its size like the picture suggested.
>>8037864
>comercially useful
Im not a popsci faggot, i prioritize the exploration of Neptune over space hotels on Mars or whatever
>>8038699
You do know that Neptune is just a bunch of gas, right?
Beyond "ooooh, methane!!!", whats tjere to explore?
>>8038701
weather systems, magnetic fields, more detailed analysis of its chemistry, triton...
Im done with /sci/ this place is pop sci fantasy land. No threads ever on martian geology or venusian cloud systems its all space cities and warp drives.
>>8038707
>Im done with /sci/ this place is pop sci fantasy land. No threads ever on martian geology or venusian cloud systems its all space cities and warp drives.
I know brother, I know.
>>8038711
we need to add the MCT to that image.
>>8038711
Wait, wtf is "Free Will" in this chart? Like the whole "man has free will"-thing?
>>8038732
Are you new or really have not seen those shitty threads?
>>8038741
i'm fairly new. Never been to /pol/ though, but if all the "Flat Earth" and "muh 9/11 mini nukes" thread in here is any indication, I consider myself lucky for that
>>8037114
90% of the failures were shit soviet probes that blew up during launch or failed due to shit quality control en-route.
Even fucking India managed it, and half the country shits outside.
>>8038711
Free will is real you stupid faggot. Only edgy fedora-tier teens think otherwise.
pls happen
>>8038842
Science says otherwise.
http://io9.gizmodo.com/5975778/scientific-evidence-that-you-probably-dont-have-free-will
Check out the citations.
>>8038711
anti-matter,black holes,time and space dilation and relativity are meme science but it does exists.
btw:the name anti-matter needs to be changed.
>>8039376
But, you see, his intuition on this is very strong.
So, your "science" must be wrong!
Because fuck going where the evidence leads if its in any way uncomfortable.
>>8038401
>Even the article the drawing came from refered to a launch vehicle no more than 30 feet taller than a Saturn V, not 2-3 times its size like the picture suggested.
A vehicle 30 feet taller than Saturn V could easily be 2-3 times more massive or voluminous.
How long in days?
SLS is what I am hyped for
>>8039376
>misrepresenting conclusions
come on mate, you can do better than that.
>>8040764
>SLS is what I am hyped for
Give up on that. SLS might get a bullshit demo flight this decade, in a half-assed effort by NASA to pretend they're trying to meet the program requirements given in the law, but it won't be ready for real work until the middle of the 2020s, and even then, even if it does work, it'll be too expensive, unproven, and capable of too few launches to be worth using.
It's just being pushed by old men to plunder the treasury in the few years before they retire. They could throw out SLS and start from a clean sheet and be closer to having a usable super-heavy launch vehicle.
>>8040778
I can partially agree, SLS will be useful but I doubt if they will have one ready if we go to Mars in 2023 they are taking thier time. If NASA wanted to get to Mars they should have used Apollo Nova. Or revisit the shuttle program and have the wings fall of and attach a bigger engine then what they used in the original plans
>>8040782
>SLS will be useful
I don't know what you're basing that on.
They have three missions planned for SLS:
1) a 100% bullshit unmanned test (ASAP, meaning "maybe this decade"),
2) a grossly irresponsible and reckless manned test that will be a moon flyby that's the first flight of a complete Orion capsule and the first flight of a new upper stage (mid-2020s),
3) a rendezvous with a piece of an asteroid brought to a high lunar orbit just to be a target for this mission (they haven't even got a plan to capture the piece of asteroid yet, which is the only interesting part of the mission).
None of these are useful or worthwhile.
Then they've got enough scavenged shuttle engines for one more flight after that, after which they're basically designing a new vehicle. That's the one SLS flight that might be used for real work, the mission with the $40 billion launch cost. If there's any hiccup in the program requiring a second unmanned test (or someone comes to their senses about the suicide mission). And nobody wants to design anything expensive or important to go on a rocket that might or might not ever be available.
It's a joyride rocket, for launching Orion beyond LEO, but not to anywhere interesting.
SLS/Orion is the wreckage of plan to quickly throw together a practical launch system using stuff NASA had lying around. Orion was designed primarily as an ISS crew rotation vehicle, to launch on Ares I by 2012, replacing the retiring shuttle with a safer, lower-cost option.
When the decision to accept delays was made, the decision to continue the program became absurd.
>>8040849
I'd like to say as well that I really don't think Ares I should have been cancelled. It wouldn't have been perfectly safe, but it would have been probably at least ten times as safe as the shuttle.
Ares I / Orion might have killed the crew with a catastrophic SRB failure (like Challenger) during a 30-second window of the ascent, but the shuttle would have killed the crew if either of its two SRBs catastrophically failed at any time, or if there was any damage to the delicate heat shield, and probably if it had to land anywhere but the special shuttle landing strip.
After Columbia, NASA has gone completely safety-insane. Worse, they expect to be able to achieve safety through analysis rather than experience.
They're not going to follow through with the SLS/Orion moon flyby plans. As long as that's 5+ years in the future, it sounds ambitious, but when you look at actually doing it, it's too obviously reckless for a program prompted by crew loss.
>>8037105
>Being this incredulous
>>8040849
You guys are mongoloids. NASA is taking the slow and steady approach. If you bothered to take Musk's dick out of your mouth and actually read NASA's website you would see that the whole point of flying around the moon is to test if systems are "earth independent". Mars is very far away in case you haven't noticed, you can't just pop back home if shit goes wrong, you have to make sure you can survive out there in deep dark outer space.
Also SLS is booked to fly a Europa rover and orbiter. No other rocket can blast a payload that large all the way to Jupiter. Even if it doesn't go to Mars it will be very useful for exploring the outer Solar System.
>>8041292
>NASA is taking the slow and steady approach.
NASA is taking the slow and fruitless approach.
>the whole point of flying around the moon is to test if systems are "earth independent". Mars is very far away
That's a reason to test in LEO, not lunar orbit. In LEO, you can test if systems are Earth-independent, and be back on the ground in an hour if they're not. In lunar orbit, you're days away from any kind of bail-out plan, and need a lot of things to go right to survive one.
>read NASA's website
Propaganda, lies, and excuses.
They didn't want to be constrained to using shuttle parts in their design of a new super-heavy. That's been imposed on them by congress, for the benefit of favored contractors.
SLS/Orion is the wreckage of Constellation. It's too much rocket for LEO, and too much capsule on not enough rocket for BEO. Continued simply to funnel money into the right pockets.
>SLS is booked to fly a Europa rover and orbiter. No other rocket can blast a payload that large all the way to Jupiter.
Oh, they've committed to that? I hadn't heard. The original mission concept was an Atlas V. They're not putting it on SLS because it needs SLS, but because SLS needs a payload.
Anyway, any high-energy mission (i.e. to the outer solar system) SLS can do in one launch, and many that SLS can't, can be accomplished sooner and more cheaply using Falcon Heavy with modular storable propulsion. Falcon Heavy should be flying routinely by the time of SLS's first test flight.
Picture something like Dragon (the orbital maneuvering, ability to dock, etc.) except the cargo's just a big fuel tank and it has one or two SuperDracos for Earth-departure burns. SpaceX could throw something like that together pretty effortlessly. Stack up a few of those at a lagrange point, launched with Falcon Heavy, and you could push stuff to a very high velocity departure.
>>8041395
>It's too much rocket for LEO
I wouldn't say this, its just absurdly expensive compared to SpaceX or foreign countries
Not being able to launch more than once every 2+ years means you can't do any manned BEO missions
>>8035861
WOW! how did you calculate that?
>>8041443
>>It's too much rocket for LEO
>I wouldn't say this, its just absurdly expensive
I meant for sending Orion to ISS in LEO (which congress put in the law anyway, requiring SLS/Orion to have that capability even though it makes no sense and NASA has said they're not going to do it no matter what gets written into the law).
>>8041463
It's just a capability, costs them nothing to have it
Of course it *could* send an Orion capsule to the ISS
We'll have to see what SpaceX does with their raptor powered upper stage
Should also be giving more info on their MCT later this year, betcha it'll be bigger than the SLS while being fully reusable.
>>8041492
>It's just a capability, costs them nothing to have it
The capability to dock with the ISS is a big deal. They had to send up a new docking adapter for the commercial crew vehicles and everything. It would be a serious development effort, for Orion if not SLS.
To really develop the capability, they'd need to do an unmanned test, then a manned test, or they couldn't realistically say that they had the capability. That would take two SLS/Orion launches (although in my opinion, that's the absolute minimum they should do before sending humans beyond LEO in Orion).
>>8041620
>Putting a compatible port on the Orion would take a serious development effort?
First of all, adding anything to a spacecraft is a big deal, particularly when it's something that's related to the integrity of the pressure vessel of a manned spacecraft. It's a door that you open in space. You don't want to fuck that up.
And it's not just that. They have to design and validate approach and docking protocols. Need to make sure they won't crash Orion into ISS and destroy them both, killing everyone and losing a hundred billion dollars of stuff.
>What of when the private sector puts up space stations soon enough, will they decide its physically impossible to dock with them too?
It'll require a development effort and test flights.
A test flight of the propulsive-landing, reusable Dragon V2 on the flyback-booster, partially-reusable medium-lift Falcon 9 is going to be a bit different in its costs and schedule constraints than a test of the ocean-splashdown, expendable Orion on the expendable super-heavy-lift SLS.
>>8041620
low quality bait
>>8041292
>NASA is taking the slow and steady approach.
That's fine and wonderful but you'd have to be an idiot to not admit that if they continue its present pace and the private space industry continues pace, in a decade or two NASA might as well be flying rockets made of gold. By then private launches will have become so cheap (while likely offering more power) that only someone deep in the pockets of Boeing, Lockheed, etc will be justify the cost.
Maybe there's going to be a place for 10x+ more expensive launches 10-20 years from now but I'm really not seeing it.
SpaceX just updated their payload figures for Falcon 9:
http://www.spacex.com/about/capabilities
Now the base Falcon 9 is advertised as matching Delta IV Heavy for LEO launch (in expendable mode).
Falcon Heavy hasn't changed much, but I wouldn't be surprised if they uprate it to over 100 tons to LEO within a year or two of its first launch. Falcon 9 is near 30 tons now. All else being equal and with crossfeed, Falcon Heavy should be able to do over triple Falcon 9's performance, due to the improved efficiency of the three-stage launch.
If they design for an 8m fairing and add a LOX/H2 Earth-departure stage, it'll be capable of carrying SLS payloads.
>>8041825
Whoops. They had a typo in their new LEO figure.
It said 28,800 kg, now it's 22,800 kg.
Suppose I should have known it was too good to be true.
>>8040760
i was referring to a drawing showing a rocket 2-3 times taller than the Saturn V, when the dimensions in the same article talked about a vehicle no more than 30 feet taller. So i was talking about direct size, not volume/mass.
But yeah, depending on, well pretty much anything, it could be many times as massive.
>>8041825
>55 tons to 100 tons
And where is all this extra power going to come from? More rockets? There are already 27. You guys really think this is KSP don't you? That you can just keep on adding boosters until you get what you want where you want.
>>8041825
>>8041883
...anyway, with the corrected figure of Falcon Heavy with crossfeed likely doing about 70 tons to LEO, that's still the performance of SLS with no upper stage, so with an 8.4 m adapter (or a 5m one for the interim stage that's flying first), it should be able to take SLS upper stages (or equivalent) and payloads.
>>8041925
>And where is all this extra power going to come from? More rockets?
100 tons was based on a typo. 70 tons is a more realistic estimate, if they ever do crossfeed. This 54 ton figure is based on no crossfeed.
Anyway, the extra capacity is coming from uprating the engines about 18%, making the propellant more dense, and extending the fuel tanks. They had been running the old ones at less than full throttle while they continued testing them and improving manufacturing processes. Now they run them at full power, and put more fuel in the rockets (in part by making it colder so more fits in the same size tank).
>>8038711
where is the singularity there?
>>8040782
>have one ready if we go to Mars in 2023
HAHAHA, where did you get that stupid idea
the official plan is to return to moon....SSS ORBIT by 2030... they wont even land there... a lunar landing is not even planned anymore
so give or take another 20 years for a moon landing???
nasa will probably get to mars by the end of the century if ever, if you want mars take a look at the superior god tier musk not at the inferior low tier nasa
How are they slowing down the spacecraft? Does it use parachutes? Or purely propulsive? What heat shield does it have?
>>8042523
propulsive, the dragon can make a propulsive landing in earth, mars with its much lower is a piece of cake in comparison
>>8042523
PICA-X heat shield. Propulsive (rocket) landing. No parachute.
It's the same Dragon V2 (AKA Crew Dragon) which will be used for crew rotation to the ISS. The landing rockets are the same as the launch escape system rockets. It can land the same way on Earth.
>>8042533
I'm not sure, but it'll be basically the same speed.
There's no one best approach. With MSL, which was launched on an Atlas V 541, they were fighting to get the maximum probability of mission success with untested stuff. Red Dragon's straightforward propulsive landing method is more of a brute force approach using proven systems, or you might call it a decisive solution for scalable landings.
MSL was under 4 tons at launch (close to the limit of the launch vehicle), 3 tons of which was a cruise stage and lander, including landing propellant, with only one ton being the payload. Red Dragon will go on a Falcon Heavy, which can throw over 13 tons to a Mars transfer orbit, and the vehicle is over 6 tons dry and empty.
MSL used a variety of crude, ad-hoc solutions to problems. First was the separate cruise stage, using low-Isp hydrazine propellant for course adjustment, which was dumped before entry. Next, the capsule with heat shield used hydrazine thrusters and heavy tungsten bricks for steering, which were dumped. Then there was a parachute, which was also dumped. Finally, the landing was done with hydrazine propellant.
Dragon uses higher-Isp NTO/MMH propellant for everything. It uses the same Draco thrusters for both course adjustments and entry steering. Then it uses the same SuperDraco thrusters for both final deceleration and landing. The only thing that gets dumped is a payload adapter it sits on when it's dumped (in the LEO model, this payload adapter carries the solar panels, though I wouldn't be surprised if they have them somewhere else for the Red Dragon, in a way that allows them to be deployed for use on the surface).
>>8036859
>falcon heavy this year
For how many years have we been saying that?
>the SLS is going to blow up
The SLS is ridiculous, but everything about the SLS has been done before. BFR is the most radical rocket since the Saturn V. BFR would probably blow up first.
>>8043236
Everything on the SLS might have been done before, but not in that way or that configuration.
Plus they are reusing old shit like the engines
>>8043236
>everything about the SLS has been done before
That would be true if SLS had just kept the same booster and main engine arrangement. The shuttle propulsion always only barely worked. When they first put the three SSMEs together, they shook each other apart. When they first used the three SSMEs together with the SRBs under real flight conditions, although it worked, they got all kinds of unexpected damage and were frankly quite lucky it went to space at all.
Now they're using bigger, more powerful 5-segment boosters, which have never flown before. They're using four SSMEs together (an arrangement that still hasn't even been ground-tested) and putting them closer to the nozzles of the more-powerful SRBs (between them, rather than off to the side).
>>8042533
>>8043120
The main difference is straightforward willingness and ability to tackle problems such as superheavy launch vehicles, storable bipropellant thrusters, and supersonic retropropulsion.
NASA had basically decided to spend the 2010s developing a more elegant heat shield and parachute system so their 4-ton launch to Mars on Atlas V could have 2-3 tons of surface payload instead of 1-1.5 tons. It wasn't scalable to larger loads and didn't really bring them any closer to a system that could land people on Mars. That effort has now been cancelled due to budgetary constraints.
SpaceX made a better system for landing payloads on Mars largely by accident, in the course of pursuing other goals. They made a superheavy by accident, when Falcon 9 1.0 was underpowered for the comsat market, and least development effort to overcome that was to stick three cores together, then they were able to upgrade the performance of the cores. Their desire for reusability led to solving the problems with supersonic retropropulsion and propulsive landing. Dragon V2 was not designed for a Mars landing at all, but it was built with versatile multipurpose propulsion, so it works.
Im honestly impressed this tread haven't just imploded in shitposting, tbf.
There is actually some decent discussion going on.
There may still be hope for you, /sci/.
>>8041395
falcon heavy has half the power of SLS
>>8042024
You know I'm not against the falcon heavy, that would be stupid, I'm just saying that there's nothing wrong with the SLS. it hasn't done anything bad yet but everyone is predicting it to fail based on past NASA performance. I say give it a chance, if it works out then it would be the only current rocket in existence that could take us straight to Mars seeing as MCT is currently just a few dildo-shaped sketches on tissue paper. Also we really need something that can drop rovers on Jupiter and Saturn's moons. FH just doesn't have the power for that.
>>8043382
Are you serious? it's all SpaceX shills.Oh well you're right I suppose, at least they come with decent arguments instead of shitopsting
>>8043427
goes pretty much both ways. SpaceX fanboys are shit, but the constant "BTFO"-gang gets old fast as well
>>8043236
>BFR would probably blow up first.
nah, youre thinking its gona be like the N1?, no way, the russians were working with a gun down their throats while drinking vodka and thinking that the space program was some kind of russian roulette
elon musk will run the rocke trough all of the simulations software possible, pay every engineer on earth to look at the plans and lick each square cm2 of plumbing with his very tongue to make sure its in working condition, it is a much more serious enterprise. they wont let it fail catastrophically once the whole thing is assembled.
do you think there were any saturn V explosions?
>>8043423
>falcon heavy has half the power of SLS
Actually, it looks like aside from the Earth-departure stage, they're about equal. Falcon Heavy with crossfeed and SLS without an upper stage can each put about 70 tons in LEO.
For instance, the EM-1 mission is SLS with a modified DCSS (Delta IV upper stage) which is put all the way in orbit before separation. So the upper stage is just part of the orbital payload, along with the Orion. Falcon Heavy would be equally capable of putting it there.
I don't see any indication that Falcon Heavy would be less capable than SLS of carrying the Exploration Upper Stage (the upgrade of SLS which would boost its LEO payload to 105 tons) or an 8.4 m fairing. It has plenty of thrust and suffers from an undersized and low-Isp upper stage.
>I'm just saying that there's nothing wrong with the SLS. it hasn't done anything bad yet
Including the work done on Constellation (which was largely renamed "SLS" rather than being a separate development effort), it has cost about $20 billion so far, and is still at least 2 years from a test flight and at least 6 years from flying a useful payload. The costs are prohibitive and launch rate will be low even in the optimistic projections coming out of NASA.
There's nothing right about Constellation/SLS. It already failed in its original purposes of replacing the shuttle for ISS crew rotation and landing Americans back on the moon by 2020. Now it has no reason to exist, but is being continued purely to line the pockets of the people building it.
>it would be the only current rocket in existence that could take us straight to Mars
There are no specific plans to use the SLS for any Mars mission, unlike Falcon Heavy, which is slated for a Red Dragon demonstration launch around the same time as the first SLS test.
SLS is certainly not fit for a single-launch manned mission, nor is it suitable for a multi-launch manned mission, due to its high cost and low flight rate.
>>8043382
>nding at all, but it was built with versatile multipurpose propulsion, so it works.
i second this, this thread is filling me with love for you guys,
Here, have this:
and dont you dare say its offtopic
>>8043427
>they come with decent arguments instead of shitopsting
Lad, most of these "arguments" are just personal extrapolations by a bunch of armchair scientists who educate themselves from a mix of source consisting almost exclusively of /r/space fanscience, spacex twitter feed, a few space news website and occasionally wikipedia.
Those shills know as much structural or chemical engineering as my gra, and it's painfully obvious
>>8043427
>-hoc solutions to problems. First was the separate cruise stage, using low-Isp hydrazine propellant for course adjustment, which was dumped before entry. Next, the capsule with heat shield used hydrazine thrusters and heavy tungsten bricks for steering, which were dumped. Then there was a parachute, which was also dumped. Finally, the landing was done with hydrazine propellant.
>Dragon uses higher-Isp NTO/MMH propellant for everything. It uses the same Draco thrusters for both course adjustments and e
in this world youre either a spacex shill or a person who thinks the space race will go really slow in the next 50 years
>>8043520
saved to be reposted indefinitely
>>8043501
The BTFO crowd is way worse in my opinion because a large portion of them are defeatists that seem like they'd be immensely satisfied if first colonization attempts were delayed well into the 2100s. As someone who considers himself a moderate between the two camps, their posts are almost without fail depressing to read.
The Muskonians might be totally unrealistic in their expectations but at least their posts are fun to read.
>>8043427
haha "spacex shills".
i prefer to be called, advanced gentleman educated trough modern means that supports the right innovation team
you just are an idiot who have been brainwashed by ula goverment bureaucracy, all undeducated persons end up losing their intellect to the thought masters
>>8043537
>fun to read
How so? They are the hipsters of space-related discussion.
>>8043547
lets get something clear, EVERYONE in sci is a broscience with no real knowledge of the field just giving their best guess based mostly on what they read on the internet
youre a hipster if youre complaining about "all those plebs ruining your serious space discussion"
>>8043547
They're fun because they're hopeful and spark the imagination. Unrealistic as it may be, the idea of space travel starting to work its way into normality by 2030-2040 is a rather joyful one for me, and when reading their posts I find myself imagining such a world.
By contrast BTFO posters put me in a world where it's the year 2070 and we're still struggling to do anything more complex than launch satellites, barely any further along than we were in 1975. This is not a world I want to live in at all.
>>8043534
I really really hope someone shows this to him.
>>8043537
I see what you mean. You cant have honest discussions about SpaceX tech/future plans/achievements without some BTFO-retard pissing all over it, and you cant have a discussion with actual criticism, like their constant launch delays, without some fanboy going ape-shit either. Same thing goes for NASA-related topics as well, sadly.
Any worthwhile discussions about rockets, like the whole FH/SLS thing going on here,is not all that common, and a really welcome sight.
>>8043563
also, its a nice break from all the Flat Earth/vax/psudo-crap threads.
Anyone ready for the F9-launch on the 5th, btw?
I think the sls will probably be good at putting more stuff in orbit in one go. But that makes no difference. The lunar landings were barely on the limit of what was possible with one launch. Nowadays all mars plans involve multiple launches and a craft assembled in orbit.
but the bottom line is that if spacex achieves something even resembling to their promises of reusability then the sheer economics of the falcon heavy will make it the obvious choice for ... well almost anything
im having a hard time believing that other launchers will be able to survive musk cracking down reusability, my guess is that goverments all over the world will intervene to keep the jobs. Since most space programs are done as job programs really
>>8043571
>Anyone ready for the F9-launch on the 5th, btw?
I'm not staying up late for routine F9 launches anymore. They've done flyback and barge landing, so I'm not going to miss the first time for either.
Unless I'm really bored, I'm only going to watch launches where they do new stuff: reusing a stage for the first time, Dragon V2, Falcon Heavy, etc.
>>8043643
I'd bet most people are of the same mindset, which is why from a PR and public hype perspective it's really important for SpaceX to keep up a continuous stream of pivotal launches. If they just settle into a routine the current elevated interest in space will die back down, which isn't any good at all. Public interest is ultimately what's responsible for getting congress to increase budgets and give the green light for project proposals.
>>8043678
Well, they've got lots of stuff to keep the public interested aside from launches. There's the DragonFly flight testing. They can unveil their flightsuit. There's the Dragon V2 in-flight abort test. Revealing the MCT concept to the public. Raptor progress videos. Falcon Heavy static fire. They could do an animation of the Red Dragon mission.
They're supposed to really speed up the launch cadence, up to about two per month. They just need to maintain that pace for a year and they'll have cleared their backlog. While people aren't going to be too interested in watching each launch, that'll make for some good news stories.
I think they might actually not be bothering with crossfeed for Falcon Heavy.
It's already oversized for the launch market, and they've got the BFR to work on.
>>8043718
I cant wait for some info on the Raptor, have been rather quiet around it for some time now. Last i heard they were testing some of of the minor components. And like you said, we have both the FH-development and the Dragon V2 tests to look forward too.
Next step will probably be a 1st stage re-use, i hope
I must say, it is rather strange to think of F9 launches as starting to become routine.
>>8043725
>F9 launches as starting to become routine.
the really strange thing is to think of the landings as routine, its seriously like a sci fi future if it works and brings the cost down
how high could they get the reliability of the booster? 90% 99%?
>>8043539
>You've been brainwashed by ULA
This fanboy shit is getting comical now. Fighting over space companies, whose rocket is better? who will get to Mars first? who is brainwashing who? What a time to be alive.
>>8043560
"SpaceX BTFO" poster here, I actually support SpaceX I just fight them because they insult my childhood hero NASA.
>>8043920
you can like multiple heroes :^)
>>8043920
I don't think that SpaceX or Musk insult NASA at all. In fact they respect NASA greatly and cede to them in areas where they have the clear knowledge advantage (as shown by the NASA-SpaceX moneyless mars deal).
If there's anyone that SpaceX's existence insults, it'd be the constituents of the ULA and their associated crony congressmen.
>>8043874
>Wow, landing the first stage is routine already?
Well, it's been accomplished, so now it's not about proving it can be done, it's just about doing it. The first time somebody climbs the world's tallest mountain, it's an event. The second time, it's just someone's vacation slides.
From this point, I'm mostly interested in the statistics, and any crash videos, not in watching the attempts live anymore.
>>8043930
No Musk doesn't but his fanboys do. Constantly praying for the SLS to blow up and all this unnecessary shit. So fuck you I'm gonna pray for the Falcon Heavy to blow up.
>If there's anyone that SpaceX's existence insults, it'd be the constituents of the ULA and their associated crony congressmen.
Let's be honest, nobody likes ULA they're boring, secretive and overpriced. NASA is only the last one therefore doesn't deserve all the hate it gets from SpaceX fanboys.
>>8043930
there is a video of buzz aldrin saying that elon musk is a con artist and a failure
and another video of elon musk reacting to it in tears
true story
>>8043958
I think that hatred is less actual hate and and is really just pent up frustration over how sluggish NASA has been over the past 3 or so decades. Of course that's not NASA's fault, but it's a single target that's more easily hated than politicians and faceless old space corporations.
>>8043979
>I think that hatred is less actual hate and and is really just pent up frustration over how sluggish NASA has been over the past 3 or so decades
I got this vibe too
However
>Of course that's not NASA's fault
SpaceX fanboys need to understand this. Congress slashed their budget to hell, what do you want them to do? Ask aliens for the money?
Oh boy, plebbit wants to send bitcoin to the moon via a crowdfunded spacex mission.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/4h7vdh/if_we_crowdfund_62_million_dollars_we_can_can/
>>8043976
should be illegal to bully autistic ppl
t b h
>>8043958
Don't think of NASA all as one thing. For space, most of the interesting stuff NASA does is JPL. MSFC is disappointments, rehashes, bullshit, and funnelling money to favored contractors.
>boring, secretive and overpriced. NASA is only the last one
MSFC is the first and last.
It's not just overpriced, it's misallocated from interesting stuff to boring stuff. Take ISS for example. It's just an unnecessarily oversized Mir. It's not a propellant depot, preparing for deep-space missions. It's not at a lagrange point, demonstrating the ability to keep astronauts alive beyond the protection of Earth's magnetosphere. It's not a centrifugal gravity demonstrator.
They just did it so the shuttle would have a mission requiring lots of repetitive flights with a low probability of failure.
Meanwhile, JPL has been doing all sorts of exciting real space exploration with unmanned probes. They pick a goal that's interesting and hasn't been done before, and they do it. NASA's manned program used to work that way, until the 70s, when the Nixon administration turned it into pork. Even setting aside the Apollo Program, they've never done anything as interesting as Project Gemini since then.
You have to be actively averse to progress to make manned spaceflight as boring as MSFC has for the last several decades.
MSFC needs to die, at least in its current pork-vehicle form. SpaceX is really cozy with NASA, and NASA has really been favoring it with subsidies, contracts, collaboration, and technical advice. It would be natural for SpaceX to take MSFC's place.
>>8044012
That's kind of silly, but with launch prices dropping, missions conceived and funded entirely by the public could be a very real thing. It'd be pretty cool if someone started a nonprofit org specifically for the purpose of assembling, advertising, and executing 100%-public driven missions. Scientific discovery would explode over the course of a decade or two as it becomes possible to do space things without the encumbrance of Washington and governmental organizations.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zruVHZCAf24
>Estimates 20 years from now as the timeline for humans on mars
Does he think NASA astronauts will be the first ones on mars or something?
>>8043992
>Congress slashed their budget to hell,
No, congress gives NASA plenty of money. They're going to get over $19 billion in 2017. Adjusting for inflation, the funding's been holding pretty steady since the late 80s at around half the absolute peak during the Apollo Program. NASA only ever had significantly higher funding for six years: about double current in '65-'67 and about 50% higher than current in '64, '68, and '69.
NASA's problems are with congress are with things like earmarking and interfering with technical decision-making. It also has its own deep-seated organizational problems, with a huge overhead of salaried older men. It ends up spending too much of its money on go-nowhere projects and do-nothing people.
For instance, it's really obvious at this point that NASA should just drop SLS and Orion. NASA keeps complaining that SLS is so expensive that they won't be able to afford to put anything on it. But instead, congress keeps earmarking more of NASA's budget for SLS.
>>8044132
>half the absolute peak during the Apollo Program.
from 60 to 1970 they made one apollo program
from 1970 to 2020 they made 0 apollo programs, shit, how can they make 0 times what they made earlier. i mean sure, its half the money, but its also more than four times the amount of time!!!
>>8039376
Scientific evidence humans have aimbots. And can't distinguish when the timing is close.
>>8044024
why not both? NASA's entire goal with commercial crew is to support the private space industry. NASA wants to unload all the "routine" stuff onto someone so they can focus on research stuff. It's going to take a long time to happen, but the rewards are going to be pretty great (more efficient NASA and a healthy private space industry)
>>8044056
They pretty clearly are. For as amazing SpaceX is, they're not going to be taking on the risk of manned interplanetary missions especially given the ridiculously high overhead costs with zero chance of profit. Assuming they get into interplanetary transport, probes and automated equipment (such as excavators or refineries) offer actual money.
NASA can afford to get astronauts killed, SpaceX cannot.
>>8044157
>NASA can afford to get astronauts killed, SpaceX cannot.
yeah but assemblying a mars craft using reusable falcon heavies, rather than SLSs is going to be so much fucking cheaper they gonna have no choice but to contract it with em
and if this reusability thing turns out to be possible then its the next big thing, no doubt about it, it will disrupt the launching market
its like jet engine against the propeller
>>8044172
Let NASA design the payload, have SpaceX launch it. Of course this flies in the face of SLS's 20+ year long development, but if it's cheaper it's cheaper. Better yet: let NASA do the manned vehicles, while SpaceX builds the base and landing pad for them on Mars.
>>8044153
>why not both?
NASA can't afford both MSFC and an actually interesting manned spaceflight program. Furthermore, MSFC as a political entity is actively opposed to anyone doing anything more interesting in manned spaceflight than they're doing.
>NASA's entire goal with commercial crew is to support the private space industry.
Nonsense. NASA's goal with commercial crew is to put astronauts in space, precisely because MSFC can't get the job done, and it's deeply shameful for America to have to depend on Russia.
MSFC was very firmly committed to the space shuttle and the space shuttle only until the Columbia disaster in 2003, regardless of the fact that the shuttle was 1970s tech that was only originally intended to operate until the mid-80s and had obviously failed in its purpose by the early 80s.
After that, NASA finally decided to discontinue the shuttle program. Constellation was going to be its replacement, but the Orion capsule, launching on Ares I, would not come to the ISS with twenty-some tons of cargo like the shuttle did, and Ares V was way too big and expensive for resupply. So they contracted for some commercial options.
But Constellation was a miserable failure and would not be rotating crew any time soon, so the crew rotation task also had to be contracted out.
>Red Dragon
That sounds chinese as fuck.
>>8044157
>as amazing SpaceX is, they're not going to be taking on the risk of manned interplanetary missions especially given the ridiculously high overhead costs with zero chance of profit.
The profit is a planet.
SpaceX isn't a publicly-traded company. They're not obligated to produce a return in dollars to shareholders. It's a private company. If the profit the owners want is to establish a self-sufficient colony on Mars, they're free to pursue that.
This started with Elon wanting to launch a camera and a potted plant to Mars, so he could take pictures of it with a Martian landscape in the background and inspire people to explore space. Now he wants to retire on Mars.
>>8044253
>not going to be taking on the risk
must be a hint from elon musk
stop pretending im not cool or ill give my tech to the chinamen
>>8036028
He's right you know.
>>8043976
What did he base his comments on?
I respect anyone who lands on the fucking moon, not to mention punching that idiot like he did, but the man is a bit strange.
>>8043976
The irony about that is the 'old space' that owns Buzz would never have sent him to the moon.
Can't fucking wait. I envy those that get to go.
>>8044157
Yeah I think that NASA astronauts will probably be the first ones to go, even if it is a SpaceX vehicle that gets there. NASA astronauts are pretty much the best/safest bet you can go with for when it comes to manned spaceflight.
After awhile non-NASA folks will begin arriving, but the first mission(s) will likely be NASA-only or NASA-majority.
>>8037895
Meanwhile, nuclear submarines carry typically over 80 people, with months of radio silence.
So that's about the kind of living space you'd need for a Mars mission.
>>8044140
Space Shuttle was a money sink.
But now, they learned their lesson.
They're gonna throw a billion dollar worth of hardware away every 1-2 year.
That's way easier on cost calculations.
That way, pricing is fixed
>>8044782
>>8044656
Some of these guys who were involved in NASA's glory days are actively opposed to progress in spaceflight.
They want the moon landing to remain as some kind of peak achievement people stay in awe of forever, rather than become a footnote in history after randoms go to the moon for a vacation.
If it's surpassed, they only want it done by a similar project, where huge resources are thrown inefficiently at a purely symbolic achievement, with no possible economic benefit or path toward routine repetition of the journey.
These are the guys who want the (one and only) Mars trip done by doubling NASA's budget until 2040.
>>8045569
>>These are the guys who want the (one and only) Mars trip done by doubling NASA's budget until 2040.
>guys like Buzz are all for it.
Exactly. They're all for returning manned spaceflight to the Apollo Project paradigm and keeping it there: nobody's flying but government space program astronauts, only a few of those are flying, billions of dollars are spent on each one, and they're only out there for symbolic gestures.
>>8045569
>No weight restrictions can carry whatever you want.
Since when does living space weighs anything?
No one said this would be a comfy ride. Let's be honest, at least the first generation of people on Mars will have it very tough over there anyway.
Also, discipline will be the last of your problem. Not happy? we'll just send you back on the next launch window. Be grateful you get to eat and breathe until then.
>>8045581
More level-headed than trying to open a casino on Mars.
>>8045595
...and whose plan is to open a casino on Mars?
I'm sure that sounded witty in your head somehow, I just can't imagine in what way.
>>8045593
>Larger spacecraft volume = greater structural weight
Geometry 101
>>8045593
weight is like the #1 factor in space, since that weight has to be put up there, at least until the utopian dream of space mining and manufacturing becomes real
>>8037172
What's your obsession with the singularity shit?
Every fucking thread you post this.
>>8045593
>Let's be honest, at least the first generation of people on Mars will have it very tough over there anyway.
I don't think that's true. It's not like poor settlers hopping on a boat to get to somewhere the farmland isn't all taken.
This'll be rich, technically-proficient people paying to live out their fantasies, taking billions of dollars worth of high-tech stuff, and no dead weight of incapable, entitled people.
>>8045607
>utopian
Learn what this word means before you use it again.
>>8045626
>The word comes from the Greek: οὐ ("not") and τόπος ("place") and means "no-place", and strictly describes any non-existent society 'described in considerable detail'. However, in standard usage, the word's meaning has narrowed and now usually describes a non-existent society that is intended to be viewed as considerably better than contemporary society.
>considerably better than contemporary society.
having some kind of in-space industry sure sounds better than the current
>>8045633
Even so, in space you need a pressure vessel, and that means (past some minimum) the mass does scale linearly with the volume.
However, you also need radiation shielding, but unless you go to a very large size, that'll mostly be in a shelter room for solar storms, barely big enough for everyone to crowd into, rather than in the walls.
>>8045652
>find a bad definition
>stretch the ever-loving shit out of it
Yeah man, every future containing any technological advancement whatsoever is "utopian".
>>8045659
Sure, I'm oversimplifying it, but if BFR really turns out to be 15 meters wide, It will be able to launch a structure with a lot of volume.
We can later fill it with whatever is needed.
>>8045692
>We can later fill it with whatever is needed.
Mostly, I think the plan is to fill it with people. It's supposed to take a hundred people at a time.
I don't think they're going to have a lot of room onboard.
>>8045701
dude, if you put a hundred people in a 15 m wide circle, they each got 1.76 m2 each.
>>8045711
You think that means they'll have a lot of space for spending half a year in?
>>8036799
>Mars launch windows only come along once every 2 years + 2 months.
Why is this? Could you explain?
>>8045715
No, fuel will take most of the volume. Then consumables. But I want people to realize that at these scales, it's not that hard to find space for people to live in.
>SpaceX
>A timeline
Kek.
>>8045735
Elon musk didn't have any money
He had to produce the Falcon 9 and start doing launches with it to fund his company
>>8045728
You perform a homann transfer.
You set your aphelion at Mars's orbit.
The time to get there is fixed. Therefore, you have to time it so that Mars just happens to be there at the same time as you.
So that happens every two years.
>>8045711
>>8045715
The rocket will be maybe 15 m wide, the habitat will obviously be larger, and they will probably have some sort of expanding space craft to live in, for the 6 months.
Once they have extra money, actual "spacex" astronauts, extra launches to experiment with, i'm sure we'll see other shit.
>>8045728
That's how long it takes for Mars and Earth to come to the same relative positions.
Earth has a year of ~365 days, Mars has a year of ~687 Earth days, or about 1.9 years.
Let's say that the Mars year was exactly 2 Earth years and Earth and Mars start lined up. Then, when Earth came back to the same place, Mars would have gone halfway around, then they'd both get back to the same place at the same time after Earth had gone around twice.
If they had the exact same year length, they'd never line up. If Mars's year was only 1 day longer or shorter than Earth's, then it would take 365 years for them to line up.
For any relative position that suits your plans, it will only occur about once every two years and two months. All of the fast, low-cost options occur together, near the correct timing for a hohmann transfer. It is possible to launch at other times, but the flight times will be longer, and generally, more delta-v is required (smaller payload or larger rocket).
>>8045749
So what we're going to end up with is hundreds of rockets sitting in orbit waiting for their window to go to mars
>>8045735
What's missing from that graph is that they've upgraded the performance of Falcon 9 to the point that it can do the missions that originally motivated the development of the heavy variant.
Falcon 9 1.0 was a medium-lift rocket that was advertised as being able to launch 10 tons to LEO or 4.5 tons to GTO, although it was only proven for lesser payloads. Falcon 9 1.1 FT is a heavy-lift rocket that can launch 23 tons to LEO or 8.3 tons to GTO, in expendable mode.
The sweet spot for the GTO launch market is around 6.4 tons. With less than that capability, they couldn't be an option for many of the most lucrative launch contracts.
Their primary motivation for Falcon Heavy has shifted from being able to serve the GTO comsat market to being able to serve the GTO comsat market with flyback booster reusability.
>>8045780
I'm sure if they gave more payload to GTO, like 10+, these comsat companies would make use of it
>>8045785
Well, I think they want to work less on providing huge payloads by flying their rockets in expendable mode, and more on dramatically lowering costs by reusing lower stages and producing upper stages cheaply.
They've talked about an initial price for satellite launches on reused stages around $45 million, and lowering that over time to $15 million as they streamline and automate their launch processes. That's with the care and feeding of a delicate one-of-a-kind comsat. For repetitive launches, their own cost may be under $10 million.
They're also getting into satellite design and production, with their Seattle branch. One of the concepts they're working on is a LEO data constellation for internet service, to compete with the fiber networks. That could be huge, with annual revenues in the billions.
needs a lot more saturn V boost rockets
You know what would be a big market for SpaceX? Alien hunters. Imagine if you could buy a ticket to go to Mars for a week to dig around. Return rockets will probably start mysteriously blowing up though. Wouldn't be good for SpaceX's image but the CIA has to do what the CIA has to do.
>>8046163
>Imagine if you could buy a ticket to go to Mars for a week to dig around.
That's not really how it works. Unless you're going far beyond any kind of technology SpaceX is talking about, to Mars and back is at least a 3-year trip.
>>8046163
Im more inclined to sending Flat-Earthers up there for a few orbits. Livestream the whole thing, so you can watch their reactions.
>>8036833
Elon Musk is a subsidy exploiting hack
>>8035861
I didnt even know earth had dragons
>>8047083
wonder what that makes Dennis Muilenburg
>>8046247
You muppet I meant you stay on Mars for a week not travel there in a week. But you're right anyway, I did forget it takes years to get there and back because Then I would have realized that spending 1 week on Mars is like flying to Australia to spend 5 minutes there.
>>8046919
Flat earthers are just satirical, they aren't serious.....I hope.
>>8045828
There are only so many satellites needing to go into orbit. The satellite market will peak out quickly.
Where is the Raptor? Is it vaporware?
>>8047454
>Flat earthers are just satirical, they aren't serious.....I hope.
I wish...
>>8047454
>There are only so many satellites needing to go into orbit. The satellite market will peak out quickly.
Satellites need to be in lower orbits to reduce latency as much as possible to be comparable with fiber networks. That requires a lot more satellites than current networks because each satellite covers a smaller area when in a lower orbit.
>>8036833
>Knows nothing
>says they're delusional
Your argument sucks.
>>8047454
>I meant you stay on Mars for a week not travel there in a week.
Not really a serious option either. You have to wait for launch windows.
You can get from Earth to Mars in 4 months, and you can get from Mars to Earth in 4 months, but each way, you have to wait for a relative position of Earth and Mars that only comes along once every two years plus two months. You basically have a three-year round trip no matter how short your stay is.
If you really want, you can hang around in space for most of the three years, and just spend a week on the Mars surface, but reducing the length of your surface stay won't reduce the length of your time away from Earth by much.
>>8047454
>There are only so many satellites needing to go into orbit. The satellite market will peak out quickly.
Right now, there are individual satellites that do hundreds of millions of dollars in business every year. At $15 million per launch, they could be upgraded every year.
Besides, it's not about relying on satellite launch as their only market, it's about using the satellite market as a stepping stone to a much larger spaceflight market.
If you get the passenger launch cost down to a few million dollars per person, that opens up all sorts of possibilities with tourism, "research" (national prestige programs), real research, and entertainment.
Get it down to a few hundred thousand, and there will be crowds. To a few tens of thousand, there will be cities.
>>8047727
>a much larger spaceflight market.
what
stop thrwoign buzzwords aroudn
sepcifically WHAT could be valuable to private companies about space other than sattelites
advertising and tourism? very marginally
the only real thing would be asteroid mining but that would be a huge ass expenditure and would only even begin to be something resembling to something that evens begins to look lika something that could be mistaken by sometimes maybe and on odd days as a good investment IF price of rocket launch drops dramatically
>>8047800
>>If you get the passenger launch cost down to a few million dollars per person, that opens up all sorts of possibilities with tourism, "research" (national prestige programs), real research, and entertainment.
>sepcifically WHAT could be valuable to private companies about space other than sattelites
You seem illiterate.
Anyway, "private companies" aren't your only customers. Lots of smaller countries and some larger universities would like to have their own astronauts in space, if they could do it on annual budgets of a few million dollars. Then there are non-profits and private individuals.
>>8047825
its still a very VERYYYYY small market
doesnt matter if my using of the language is correct or not
that only matters for subjective stupid artistic non scientific expressions
for example
in science
if you say
PEN BE RED IS
doesnt matter if its uncorrectely spelled, its saying the pen is red
if you think that saying that:
The majestuous pen is colored by a glad amber coloure.
is better, then you are one of those delusionals that have an artistic brain and only want to speak in artistic because they realize that we are in the age of scientifc where we are objectively superior and want to create some sort of fictional value to not udnerstanding science
>>8047841
>doesnt matter if my using of the language is correct or not
Don't expect people to waste their time on you if you won't show basic respect for their time and attention by making the effort to express yourself properly.
>>8047841
Look, if you're still going to troll or act retarded, that's fine.
- Swear
- Ad hominem; Call people names
- Don't provide counter-arguments
- Reject realism and the scientific consensus
That's ok.
Just don't loop.
Looping is cancer.
Personal incredulity and the argument from ignorance are fallacies. You're ignorant.
You imply you have no knowledge of the other kinds, therefore they don't exist.
That is wrong irrational.
:D
>>8047884
>Just don't loop.
what is looping?
>>8047884
>Personal incredulity and the argument from ignorance are fallacies. You're ignorant.
>You imply you have no knowledge of the other kinds, therefore they don't exist.
i never thought i had to try so hard to convince real scientist that space tourism will never be a big industry
>>8047841
>its still a very VERYYYYY small market
Your delusional
Every single country in the world would be glad to have their own space station, their own astronauts, it'll be a market of billions annually
Tourism will be a market of billions
This funds SpaceX whole launch program, their development of more launch/landing sites, their new rockets or engines, etc
Meanwhile they are building up hundreds of used first/second stages.
>>8047941
>i never thought i had to try so hard to convince real scientist that space tourism will never be a big industry
Can I just point out that you had pretty much the same statements in the 1920's when the first large airplanes came around?
>its a nice toy and something for the military, but nothing us normal people will ever use
and so on.
You might be 100% right. Maybe space tourism never becomes a big thing. But maybe it does. It would be foolish to sit here and pretend that either of us knows how things like that will evolve over the next 50-100 years.
>>8048137
I remember when I was talking about the possibility of a future hoverbike market. I said the exact same things as you, that people said a lot of shit wouldnt catch on 80 years ago but it did and that maybe it won't catch on but it's doable and the market is a possibility so we should give it a try anyway.
/sci/ went into it's usual "hurr durr nothing will ever change" mode. This is why I am convinced that most of the pro SpaceX people on /sci/ are if not shills at the very least Reddit invaders because they they talk completely differently to the rest of /sci/. Always optimistic, willing to believe in far-out futuristic ideas compared to /sci/'s usual "if it was a good idea then it would have already been done" attitude.
>>8048446
This is stupid. /sci/ is always full of people ready to argue over anything, someone will support any position on any subject.
What I'm hearing here is that you're used to being able to blend in with the people who actually do dig into the details just by being a pessimistic shit about anything that someone comes in here and is excited about, and now the people who do their homework and support their arguments are saying, "Yeah, this should work." and your shortcut to feeling clever isn't working anymore.
Almost everything that people bring to /sci/ full of enthusiasm is somewhere on the scale from impractical to impossible, at least in the near term. Thorium power, fusion power, solar roadways, EMdrive, E-Cat, Skylon, talking to girls, flying cars for everyday use, etc. are a bunch of pipe dreams. There are disadvantages or obstacles that people are ignorant of or willfully ignoring, and sooner or later they come out in the discussion.
Scoffing today at the idea that SpaceX will make dramatic improvements in the cost and availability of spaceflight, though, is like scoffing in 1961 at the idea that a man would land on the moon by the end of the decade. It only sounds informed and reasonable to people who aren't informed and reasonable.
>>8048137
>1920's when the first large airplanes came around?
but airplanes connected different places with life, this is the connection to somewhere absolutely hostile to human life from every imaginable point of view, only extreme daredevils will be interested
no one takes an airplane today because its exciting they do it because its a faster way to get to another person they know
>>8048517
Making retarded comparisons doesn't help your point. It actually does the opposite, you know
>>8050700
i mean, even if a ticket to luna costed as much as an airplane ticket most people will seriously doubt before spending money on something so utterly useless like that
even in the bestest of betsest of scenarios it will cost a couple of dozen orden of magnitudes more than a regular airplane ticket
>>8045749
So I guess then by that same token if we wanted to visit planets much further in our solar system we would have more windows of opportunity, although it would take longer to get there.
HOW MANY HOURS NOW?
>>8052093
>if we wanted to visit planets much further in our solar system we would have more windows of opportunity
Depends on how you're getting there.
Trips to the outer solar system may use the slingshot effect multiple times, depending on a complex arrangement of planets in the inner and outer solar system to reduce initial delta-V requirement.
>>8051544
>>8050700
>this is the connection to somewhere absolutely hostile to human life from every imaginable point of view, only extreme daredevils will be interested
The stratosphere isn't exactly friendly to human life either, but people fly through it without being "extreme daredevils".
>even in the bestest of betsest of scenarios it will cost a couple of dozen orden of magnitudes more than a regular airplane ticket
Do you even know what an order of magnitude is? A dozen orders of magnitude is a factor of a trillion. The world economy through all history is not a couple dozen orders of magnitude more than a penny.
Anyway, the real best case scenario is that we make such progress in energy production and automation that the only real cost of either an air journey or a space journey is your time spent travelling.
>>8052565
>The stratosphere isn't exactly friendly to human life either, but people fly through it without being "extreme daredevils".
you are still blatantly, and obviously saying im right, denyng the fact that earth travel connect 2 destinations inhabited by humans, but space travel will always be only bout the trill, until theres a city or somehting up there theres no real reason to go, and its a VERY long way to go before theres a city up there
Do you even know what an order of magnitude is? A dozen orders of magnitude is a factor of a trillion. The world economy through all history is not a couple dozen orders of magnitude more than a penny.
of course youre right on this one, it was obviously an hyperbolated artistic god tier subjective comment that speaks about my normal non autist mind that still speaks scientifc (undifferent of the yours of cours)
>>8052565
>Anyway, the real best case scenario is that we make such progress in energy production and automation that the only real cost of either an air journey or a space journey is your time spent travelling.
this is stupid falseness, space travel will never be the same as air travel.
space travel will always be forever more energetically consuming than air travel, not only the mere act itself is more energetically consuming but space travel will always be more complex and have more procedurements that require energetical expenditure in refurbishes , and that is just only objective literral true weather you like it or notty
>>8048517
>Scoffing today at the idea that SpaceX will make dramatic improvements in the cost and availability of spaceflight, though, is like scoffing in 1961 at the idea that a man would land on the moon by the end of the decade.
No, scoffing at the idea that SpaceX will make dramatic improvements in the cost and availability of spaceflight is like scoffing about Howard Hughes' idea that the H4 would make dramatic improvements in the cost and availability of heavy airlift.
And it's the correct thing to think. Musk is the modern Hughes.
>>8052644
>Musk is the modern Hughes.
-Hughes in his time had already made the objectively, literally, cannot-do-anything-else-than-agree-with-me-unless-you-forever-want-to-be-regarded-as-an-idiot-non-knower-of-stuff, most efficient $$/kg rocket of all times. WHILE losing performance to ship characteristics aimed at reusability?
Didnt think so little kiddy bob, now walk on home boy if you knowy wahts bestest for little inferior. LEst not me, the great superiority of the (yes you cant deny it i woned over you tremendously just now) now might get pretty mad maddy at you and demand compensation
>>8052644
>Howard Hughes' idea that the H4 would make dramatic improvements in the cost and availability of heavy airlift.
The H4 wasn't key to some grand ambition for the future, but a rushed WW2 project attempting to fill a need with inferior materials. Everyone knew these rushed efforts produced mixed results, and development was affected by wartime shortages and the low strategic priority granted to this effort (which, even in the best case, would not have been completed in time to contribute to the European theater for which it was intended).
When the war ended, it was only completed to answer critics who claimed that it couldn't even fly, and was undertaken only for war profiteering. It might not have been a practical success, but it was an engineering marvel: the largest plane ever built at the time, made from such an inconsistent and untrustworthy material as wood.
If your idea of Howard Hughes's legacy is the Spruce Goose, you haven't paid any attention to his life. He was a highly successful and influential figure in the aerospace industry (and in other industries), who died a billionaire, and was a significant contributor to the modern situation of routine, affordable air transport.
Comparing Musk to Hughes is neither an insult nor a dismissal, and if you think it was either, you're an idiot.
>>8052823
>Comparing Musk to Hughes is neither an insult nor a dismissal, and if you think it was either, you're an idiot.
yeah but still anyway musk is a billion time more god tiers than hughes
musk is about to make science fiction real
SCIENCE FICTION REAL
REAL SPACE TRAVEL AFFORDABLE
who can claim that? come on, please speak with realism
T - 6h 39min
>>8047841
you strike at an interesting tangent here.
They say the next generation is to be an artistically-minded one, do you feel this will impede in our development of innaspace?
>>8053506
art is superior to sicence in all
artistic doctor and artistic engineer will outperform scientifc doctors and scienfitic engineer
put a painter in front of nasa and we get to mars in 5 years, true story
>>8053659
>art is superior to sicence in all
sure little buddy
next time to get cancer get a violinist to treat it
