The SpaceX Thread

[UserJoe]

68K[/url]":3vh1yd7t]'Rough' doesn't even begin to describe it.

http://www.spacex.com/news/2014/04/29/f ... ding-video

I could barely see the shark swimming away from the landing spot.

 

[UserJoe]

Megalodon[/url]":1zbeea62]

Sputnik[/url]":1zbeea62]Powerful meaning what? What's the force measured?

As a persuader to politicians and the public, which matters when we have current discussions relevant to space policy happening now with eg the ULA block buy and commercial crew and supplies of RD-180.

Musk seems to have seized the moment and is using the Russian-Ukraine situation to his maximum advantage against ULA.

 

[UserJoe]

Sputnik[/url]":26etm910]Megalodon you say "never". But I reckon JFK disproves that. "Unlikely" seems right, but "never" is overstating it.

I'm not convinced there's no secret sauce. If there weren't, they'd be patenting, and releasing more footage.

The secret sauce is their top level systems analysis that showed that cost savings of launcher recovery and reuse could make up for the cost penalty of reduced lift capacity and increased complexity in their target market.

 

[UserJoe]

Just watched the Dragon V2 unveil. Very impressive technology.

 

[UserJoe]

PsionEdge[/url]":17j913fb]

Also, it looks like SNC may lodge an official protest. Anybody who's dealt with government contracting decisions in the past... well ever... shouldn't be surprised by this. My gut says they have a case against the Boeing decision for reasons that have already been posted in the various "Why did Boeing get more money" posts in this thread.

The people that asked why Boeing got more money have no idea how the contract was run and awarded. If SNC is in the same boat then I would not expect their protest to be successful.

It's not likely that SNC does not know how the contract was run and awarded. Based on this story about the protest, it looks like SNC came in with a proposal ~$900M lower than Boeing. From the article:

The company’s own proposal would have saved as much as $900 million compared with the bids chosen by the government and was “near equivalent” on technical aspects, it said in a statement yesterday. It filed the legal challenge with the Government Accountability Office over what it called “serious questions and inconsistencies” in the contract award process.

$900M is not an insignificant amount of money for the size of the contract so NASA needs to have documented defensible reasons to choose the more expensive proposal. Their reasons are likely based on risk of not being successful due to technological risk and/or organizational experience as discussed earlier in the thread. The protest is not likely to be successful but there is a valid reason to protest due to the large cost difference in the proposals.

 

[UserJoe]

SLS is a jobs program first and foremost; its primary purpose is to keep the legacy Shuttle manufacturing sector employed. Whether it does anything useful is irrelevant as far as Congress is concerned.

It doesn't matter what SpaceX and Blue Origin and any other NuSpace company do; Congress wants a Big Dumb Booster, and by God they're getting a Big Dumb Booster, economics and common sense be damned. They want to pretend they're reliving the glory days of Apollo, but they don't actually want to pay anything for it, so they've funded a rocket without any missions.

It's also possible that the publicly stated mission for SLS is not the real mission.

 

[UserJoe]

Skoop[/url]":36dsvvkx]Yes, eventually they did.

BO, which seems much more intent on promoting themselves, had a really nice "commercial" almost immediately following. SpaceX keeps you waiting. On their website, the "Watch Replay" link for Jason-3 is still dead.

Blue Origen is in business to sell space tourism. They are advertising. The SpaceX customers don't need that to sell them.

 

[UserJoe]

Skoop[/url]":1sop4qbk]

I don't doubt that a Russian, Japanese, or Chinese, private company landing a person on the moon would cheer their nation.

I do. When it comes to a private company endeavor. The national sports team, on the other hand, sure.

SpaceX is doing what the national space agency is unfunded and ill-equipped to do (not their fault), so chanting "USA" is rather misapplied in this case. Still, kids gotta yell, so there you go.

Well, the USA does give them the money.

 

[UserJoe]

Megalodon[/url]":3nl3u06b]Sounds like Dragon is successfully installed on ISS.

tie[/url]":3nl3u06b]So NASA is obviously funded sufficiently well to do the same thing. The issue isn't funding, it is NASA's wasteful and dysfunctional development programs. (It's popular to blame Congress, but NASA deserves a huge amount of the blame, too.)

Blame balance is shifting more and more to congress IMO. Commercial Resupply which is the bulk of SpaceX's past NASA business is a wild success, and the only problem with Commercial Crew is that it's under funded.

Look, the chanting is a bit over the top but they are justifiably proud, and and the pride isn't hermetically sealed inside SpaceX. SpaceX happened in the US, probably could only have happened in the US.

Maybe some asked them where their rocket engines are made.

 

[UserJoe]

Megalodon[/url]":2fize1ma]
Yes. Not to belittle that though as ULA is extremely sophisticated and can do stuff SpaceX can't do (like direct injection to high orbits). But with SpaceX stealing some of their lunches I think ULA may drop below survival levels.

ULA does have a 100% launch success rate for 100 launches since they were formed. That level of reliability is worth something.

 

[UserJoe]

Orbital had a successful launch tonight. Their new rocket used a different model Russian engine than the rocket that blew up 2 years ago. There's a story on the front page that had a live streaming link of the launch.

 

[UserJoe]

How many "not blowing up the payload" launches do they need for a man rating?

The equivalent of 1-in-300?, or so.

The space shuttle was a lot riskier than that with two loss of vehicle and crew in 135 flights.

 

[UserJoe]

AFAIK there is still a tentatively scheduled Falcon 9 mission to take a crew of four to the ISS sometime in 2018, still penciled in for May 2018.
https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index ... =8184.1220
But given the turmoil, this is clearly uncertain.


ps. If the system gives 1 failure in 135 missions and you fly 135 missions then (simplifying a lot and rounding etc): you have a 25% chance of no failures, 50% chance of one failure and 25% chance of two or more failures.
To find out if the failure rate is really 1 in 135 to say 10% accuracy would have to fly about 100,000 missions.

At a 1 in 135 rate it's actually ~37% for 0 failures, ~37% for 1, and 26% for 2 or more.
If you have a 1 in 300 failure rate then its ~64% for 0 failures, ~29% for 1 failure, and 7.5% for 2 or more.

 

[UserJoe]

The NASA Administrator used Twitter to take a shot at SpaceX yesterday.

I am looking forward to the SpaceX announcement tomorrow. In the meantime, Commercial Crew is years behind schedule. NASA expects to see the same level of enthusiasm focused on the investments of the American taxpayer. It's time to deliver.

 

[UserJoe]

Link to webcast for Musk's presentation. 1900 Texas time, 1700 West Coast, 2000 East Coast.

Webcast appears to have a 1 hour delayed start.

1h 15 minute delayed start...

...and we now have hold music. Good sign.

Well, SpaceX never delivers early.

 

[UserJoe]

He seems even less prepared than usual.

Given what we know about Musk's proclivities, maybe he was more "prepared" than usual.

 

[UserJoe]

Why? We have effectively infinite oxygen and methane, and with a fully reusable rocket, you can send up as many tankers as you need. Also, realistically there's nothing better on the horizon. Chemical rockets are the fastest and cheapest way to get to Mars. Ion or nuclear propulsion would be more efficient, but certainly not cheaper or easier, or even faster.

I absolutely agree with not cheaper or easier, but the whole point would be to go faster. My initial thoughts were based on the VASIMR concept, but it seems the idea of a 200 MW reactor with a mass ratio of 1 KG / KWe is too hypothetical in terms of materials science for anything but long-term (more than 20 years) planning. Excellent analysis here. IF we could get that 200 MW reactor down that small then a 39 day transit is achievable, but otherwise you're looking at an 18 to 24 month mission, minimum (round trip - I don't seriously consider the one-way suicide trip.)

There are just soooo many ways a fragile human can die in 2 years sitting in an irradiated tin can.

NASA has an active nuclear thermal propulsion program. They've had contracts with BWXT to develop fuel and a reactor for it.

 

[UserJoe]

NASA announced Friday the Europa Clipper mission is going to launch on a Falcon Heavy rocket.

 

[UserJoe]

Here's an article with some nice pictures of the hoisting operation. As Znu said they don't really let you appreciate the shear size of everything like the closeup he posted does.

 

[UserJoe]

Musk sent an email to SpaxeX employees last Friday saying that the company had a crisis regarding problems with Raptor engine production. He said it was a serious problem for SpaxeX and that they might go bankrupt if they didn't get it fixed. He said they needed to do a starship launch every 2 weeks next year to keep the company afloat. Apparently the next generation Starlink satellites need to be launched with the Starship platform. He called on the employees to work all weekend on the production line and that he was going to join them there.

 

[UserJoe]

The only reason it wouldn't be superfluous would be to maintain some kind of capability redundancy, like if SpaceX were suddenly bought by the Chinese. But the likelihood of that seems extremely low.

It's zero, because they wouldn't be allowed to go ahead with such a transaction.

What's wrong with helping out China with their rocket program?

 

[UserJoe]

Starlink, cheap reusable space access, and the Mars colony are each once in a generation type investment opportunities.

The Mars colony is right up there with Florida swampland in terms of one in a generation investment opportunities.

It will be interesting to see what happens if SpaceX has the capability to put astronauts on the moon before NASA can. Will Musk be content with being a key piece of the NASA system or will he poke his main benefactor in the eye by beating them to it to stroke his ego?

 

[UserJoe]

SpaceX launches don't even get a post anymore (IXPE). The banality of LEO...

Here's a decent article about it.

 

[UserJoe]

Two launches and landings in about 18 hours on the same calendar day.

On one of the launches the rocket was being used for the 11th time.

 

[UserJoe]

Another SpaceX milestone is that they've now landed 100 Falcon 9 boosters.

 

[UserJoe]

It has already been mentioned here that SpaceX has every chance of becoming a leading aerospace company in the future...

They're a $100 billion dollar corporation, with something like 140 launches (with only a couple fails), they proved reusability, they are the largest satellite operator on the planet, they launch their own stuff, commercial stuff, and government/military stuff on the regular, have massive development contracts in place with NASA for key national projects, they are developing the largest rocket ever flown, and inventing the processes whereby complex and complicated rocket parts (say, like the Raptor2 engine) are made to a production scale. All at the same time.

Not sure what else they might need to do for you to consider them a leader in the industry. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

They're also going to make it to the moon before SLS.

 

[UserJoe]

There were several decent questions from the reporters. I'm afraid Eric whiffed a bit with how he phrased his. I'm assuming he wanted Elon to elaborate a bit on what bits of the ground service equipment might still need tweaking or a bullet-point-esque list of testing hurdles they want to clear ahead of the first orbital test. Unfortunately he basically asked, "Assuming the FAA issues a FONSI, how much longer afterward will the hardware be ready?" To which Elon answered only that with a, "About the same time." Oh, well. Here's hoping Everyday Astronaut gets another tour sometime this year and Elon hits a groove while nerding out about all the stuff they're doing.

Elon always seems more confused than he actually is. His awkwardness lets him get away with dodges, and timelines for the ground equipment, which we know they have been having trouble with, was almost certainly an intentional dodge. After the presentation on their stream NSF mentioned that before they can actually do an orbital launch they are going to have to have dozens and dozens of tankers of methane and so far there has been barely any methane delivered. They seemed to think that SpaceX may even need to replace some of the self-built tanks with third party ones.

The last time Musk talked about it he said the FAA approval was the limiter for when the launch happens. He implied that they were ready to go and were just waiting on those laggards at the FAA.

 

[UserJoe]

The Artemis stumbles are now impactin the SpaceX launch schedule. from the link:

SpaceX and Axiom Space originally planned to launch the Ax-1 mission on April 3, but pushed it back to April 6 to allow NASA time for the Artemis 1 wet dress rehearsal. After NASA's Artemis 1 fueling delays on Sunday, SpaceX pushed the launch back again, this time to Friday (April 8).

Whether the Ax-1 mission stays on April 8 or is delayed again depends on NASA's plans for the Artemis 1 fueling test. In yet another launch traffic wrinkle, SpaceX is also preparing to launch four more astronauts to the space station for NASA on April 20 as part its Crew-4 mission. That flight will launch three NASA astronauts and one European Space Agency astronaut to the orbiting lab.

 

[UserJoe]

SpaceX successfully launched 3 Falcon 9 rockets in 36 hours starting Friday and ending early Sunday morning.

 

[UserJoe]

The SpaceX Starship static fire test on Thursday turned into a real dumpster fire.

 

[UserJoe]

From UserJoe's link:

SpaceX performed a static fire test of a prototype Starship rocket on Thursday, in which all six raptor engines were engaged. The eight-second test appeared to go well, save for the problematic brush fire that ensued.

Not to mention the actual dumpster which burned for hours according to the article. It sounds like SpaceX has a lot of work to do on taking adequate precautions before their tests.

 

[UserJoe]

Another example of why Musk shouldn't run his own companies. From the link:

Four SpaceX workers told Reuters that Musk discouraged employees from wearing yellow-colored clothes for safety purposes because he does not like bright colors.

Three former SpaceX supervisors told Reuters that Musk would have machinery painted in industrial safety yellow repainted to black or blue because of he didn't like how it looked. The ex-supervisors also said that some workers were told not to wear yellow safety vests when Musk was on site.

 

[UserJoe]

This is in reference to a COPV hydrogen tank, which is rated to 10,000 psi. I wasn't able to find any RPVs rated to that, let alone 100,000 psi. I suspect this is a misunderstanding in what I was referring to, but if there's really RPVs rated to 10,000-100,000 psi I would be very interested to hear more about that.

Pressurized water reactors have a normal operating pressure of ~2200 psi.

 

[UserJoe]

It will be lucky to launch a second time this year. If it does, it will cost similar to Falcon Heavy. It won't be a competitor to Falcon 9, not in price nor in cadence.

According to news reports, New Glenn's next launch will probably be late spring.

 

[UserJoe]

Well, it was the mission anyway. The owner seems to have moved on to other pursuits.

We'll have to see whether the focus on Starship and Mars returns.

I think they're waiting to finish the Tesla full self-driving system so that they can use it to control automated Boring Company machines that will build the hyperloop transport system on Mars. The plan will all come together soon. Just a theory.

 

[UserJoe]

Also, they are building out the launch site at Florida, too, so they will launch from there, maybe next year.

Whatever they do, I do believe that anything launching to Mars other than maybe the flyby of a ship for appearances sake is going to take much longer than the fans would like. Figuring out how to manage cryo fuels is going to be a big challenge for them, I suspect.

And that will limit what they can do and how soon they can do it. Whenever there is a tweet about the 2026 launch window--be skeptical. That 's what might be a flyby. But I doubt it will be much of a functional ship that gets there on that occasion, if it happens.

Anyone else remember when Musk said they would make the 2018 launch window with Red Dragon?

 

[UserJoe]

That depended on having propulsive landing for Dragons, because Mars doesn't have oceans or much atmosphere. They thought they could develop propulsive landing for Dragons the same way they did for Falcon 9, by using paid-for customer flights. Specifically, cargo return trips from ISS, paid for by NASA. What changed is that NASA (quite reasonably) refused to let SpaceX risk their down-cargo. For SpaceX to test propulsive Dragons on their own dime would have been expensive. So it got cancelled, in favour of going all-in on Starship. One of SpaceX virtues is their willingness to change their plans when necessary.

Starship landing on Mars in 2027 was plausible when the first propellant transfer tests were happening 2Q 2025, which itself was plausible in 4Q 2024. Now the setbacks with V2 Starship are making it look much less likely. The orbital propellant transfer tests may not happen until next year now, and of course they need to land Starship on Earth before attempting it on Mars. I still wouldn't rule it out. They'll surely pull out all the stops to avoid losing the 2-year transit window.

They probably need to pull out all the stops to meet their NASA commitments for the moon landing system at this point. Their engineering method of measure once, cut n times, solve for n seems to have run into problems with Starship.