The thread for space cadets!

[trader/warrior]

Surely must be a lot of big moneyed interest in faking that the earth is round for some reason, as I always said, round earth = profit. I always though if these people consider themselves so sceptical, I'm sure they could independently obsere the ISS and tons of sattelites visible from earth with relatively low cost equipment (only scientific explanation is that they are unexplainable hologram tech, just like the moon ofc). Attending an actual rocket launch itself (from a distance) shouldn't be all to impossible in a lifetime. should be possible to look at some of the tech relatively up close if you're from a nation for space industry. These people just never seem to engage anything directly.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Another successful launch last Wednesday. The landing failed, unfortunately.

Link to video.

Sorry I haven't done a serious non-spacex update in a long while guys. There is a lot of stuff going on in the space world right now but I've just been so busy.

I have the whole week of the 4th off so I'll put something good together.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

SpaceX launched another Dragon to the ISS. We then landed the booster near the launch pad. This was different in that we didn't use a drone ship; instead we flipped the booster around after stage separation and boosted it back to land.


Link to video.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

We launched another satellite to GTO and landed the first stage on a barge. This is our fifth landed core and we're quickly running out of places to put them. This mission was for SkyPerfect JSat corporation of Tokyo. I also highly recommend the hosted webcast of this mission, it had a lot of background information not just on this launch but on spacecraft in general.


Link to video.

 

[warpus]

What do you mean you're running out of places to put them? Aren't they put in some sort of a hangar and then eventually reused?

 

[Thorgalaeg]

My thoughs exactly. Has any core been reused yet?

 

[Thorgalaeg]

dp...

 

[Thorgalaeg]

My thoughs exactly. Has any first stage rocket been reused yet? Or is it a new one in every launch?

 

[trader/warrior]

Awesome.

From what I've heard they haven't reused a first stage yet. Makes sense they would take their time for the first one though. How long did it take for a space shuttle to be refurbished and reused? SpaceX are spoiling us with their pace of progress.

TBH, I got the impression from SpaceX (well, the subreddit for them) in the first half of the year it seemed like the intention was for the launch frequency to be even higher by now. Like more than one per month (to me this seemed incredible, but with spaceX I'm willing to believe lots of things after all they have proven themselves capable of).

There are of course a million things that could affect the launch schedule, from reusability testing to customer requirements, to missing launch windows, etc. etc. I'm not sure whether there has been any official communication from SpaceX on how all these various things have affected progress.

I also thought the intention was to have a reused first stage in a launch by now from Elon Musks statements earlier in the year. I saw the video of a used engine being fired a full burn apparently without refurbishment which is pretty awesome. I guess it might have to do with customers being reluctant to be the first to ride a reused stage or something.

At this point I'm kinda bored with Falcon 9's to be perfectly honest, awaiting the Falcon Heavy and Mars Colonization plans.

 

[Lexicus]

Just read that they've found a reasonably Earth-like planet orbiting Proxima centauri. That's pretty big news.

 

[Lillefix]

Just read that they've found a reasonably Earth-like planet orbiting Proxima centauri. That's pretty big news.

Don't understand that. Wouldn't it be too close to the sun have life. Strong gravity, fast speed and all that. At least that's what I vaguely remember for the Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri manual...

 

[Lexicus]

It seems unlikely to me that the planet harbors life, but it's only four light-years away, hopefully that's close enough that we can learn some more details about it that are impossible for planets that are further away. At this point our ignorance is total enough that any potential sources of new information are what I'd consider big news.

 

[warpus]

From what I've heard they haven't reused a first stage yet. Makes sense they would take their time for the first one though. How long did it take for a space shuttle to be refurbished and reused? SpaceX are spoiling us with their pace of progress.

It does make sense that they would take their time and do it right, but it also makes sense that they would have had a plan. So not having a place to put all these cores is weird to me, because I expected them to have thought of that.

Not criticizing them for not having a place to put these things, just curious why they are in this situation. Is it that they expected a lot of them to fail and the success rate for the landings is a lot higher than they anticipated? Or they didn't expect to have so many launches and so much demand for the technology so early or something?

That or they always planned on having no place to put them. But why?

I ask all this mainly because at my work we don't plan. We just do. But SpaceX seems to plan.

 

[trader/warrior]

That or they always planned on having no place to put them. But why?

It could have to do with the whole fancy corporate "Vertical Integration" thing that's supposed to make their launches so cheap. The entire first stage was specifically dimensioned to be transported by road and just about everything is built on one location in a massive facility where everything is assembled and then trucked out to Cape Canaveral. Just a few too many of those things would take up a lot of storage, but this isn't as big an issue as it would be for a lot of other launch systems, as they could just rent a hangar as you suggested and drive the things out there. But still a bit of a logistical nightmare for someone.

I also heard that they are specifically planning to oversupply the Falcon 9 and then be their own customer to launch some sort of global internet satellite constellation to fill out demand because they will make more than the existing market needs.

Just speculating here though.

It does look pretty cramped and optimized in there, and this was before they had even landed any!

Link to video.

 

[Gigaz]

I think there are calculations showing that the flares from Proxima Centauri would destroy the atmosphere of any earth-like planet.
I guess you could nevertheless terraform it if you can introduce a huge artifical magnetic field for protection.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

What do you mean you're running out of places to put them? Aren't they put in some sort of a hangar and then eventually reused?

My thoughs exactly. Has any core been reused yet?

My thoughs exactly. Has any first stage rocket been reused yet? Or is it a new one in every launch?

Awesome.

From what I've heard they haven't reused a first stage yet. Makes sense they would take their time for the first one though. How long did it take for a space shuttle to be refurbished and reused? SpaceX are spoiling us with their pace of progress.

TBH, I got the impression from SpaceX (well, the subreddit for them) in the first half of the year it seemed like the intention was for the launch frequency to be even higher by now. Like more than one per month (to me this seemed incredible, but with spaceX I'm willing to believe lots of things after all they have proven themselves capable of).

There are of course a million things that could affect the launch schedule, from reusability testing to customer requirements, to missing launch windows, etc. etc. I'm not sure whether there has been any official communication from SpaceX on how all these various things have affected progress.

I also thought the intention was to have a reused first stage in a launch by now from Elon Musks statements earlier in the year. I saw the video of a used engine being fired a full burn apparently without refurbishment which is pretty awesome. I guess it might have to do with customers being reluctant to be the first to ride a reused stage or something.

At this point I'm kinda bored with Falcon 9's to be perfectly honest, awaiting the Falcon Heavy and Mars Colonization plans.

It does make sense that they would take their time and do it right, but it also makes sense that they would have had a plan. So not having a place to put all these cores is weird to me, because I expected them to have thought of that.

Not criticizing them for not having a place to put these things, just curious why they are in this situation. Is it that they expected a lot of them to fail and the success rate for the landings is a lot higher than they anticipated? Or they didn't expect to have so many launches and so much demand for the technology so early or something?

That or they always planned on having no place to put them. But why?

I ask all this mainly because at my work we don't plan. We just do. But SpaceX seems to plan.

It could have to do with the whole fancy corporate "Vertical Integration" thing that's supposed to make their launches so cheap. The entire first stage was specifically dimensioned to be transported by road and just about everything is built on one location in a massive facility where everything is assembled and then trucked out to Cape Canaveral. Just a few too many of those things would take up a lot of storage, but this isn't as big an issue as it would be for a lot of other launch systems, as they could just rent a hangar as you suggested and drive the things out there. But still a bit of a logistical nightmare for someone.

I also heard that they are specifically planning to oversupply the Falcon 9 and then be their own customer to launch some sort of global internet satellite constellation to fill out demand because they will make more than the existing market needs.

Just speculating here though.

It does look pretty cramped and optimized in there, and this was before they had even landed any!

Link to video.

We have the classic 'dog catches car he's been chasing and doesn't know what to do with it' problem. We have not re-flown a booster yet but as has been mentioned, we are test firing one to ensure that they can be re-flown safely. We have hangars in Florida but these rockets are massive and building shelters for a growing fleet is expensive.

Long story short we're working on bunch of stuff from Falcon re-flight to Falcon Heavy and a bunch of other stuff I can't talk about ( ).


.................

man there's so much I can't say.

Oh and I think the fastest a shuttle was ever turned around was a couple of months but it was typically a 6mo-1yr process and cost about a half billion dollars. What we want to be able to do is land them, do checks, refuel them and re-fly them. It's a big challenge but would represent a massive leap forward in rocket science. Blue Origin's New Shepard booster aims for the same thing although the stresses it faces are at least an order of magnitude lesser than a Falcon 9. I'm not bragging; I think what they are doing and planning to do is awesome. It's just not a straight forward comparison.


..............

On launch frequency, I think we've already surpassed our previous record and by the end of the year, half of all things put into space this year would have been launched on one of our rockets. We're not quite up to once every 2 weeks but we're on the way there.

r/spacex is a pretty good place for information but also filled with amateur speculation

.............

On boredom with Falcon 9 - that's one of the criteria Elon has set for us to be successful; when our flights and landings are so routine that no one cares.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I think there are calculations showing that the flares from Proxima Centauri would destroy the atmosphere of any earth-like planet.
I guess you could nevertheless terraform it if you can introduce a huge artifical magnetic field for protection.

Hmm I would wonder if how much a challenge building a strong enough field to protect the planet would be relative to terraforming it. Would it be harder or easier to build the field than to turn it into Earth 2.0? Probably harder because a lot of the terraforming work could be done 'for free' by organisms we'd bring along or construct from DNA and raw inputs at the other end of the journey.

 

[warpus]

We have the classic 'dog catches car he's been chasing and doesn't know what to do with it' problem.

It surprises me quite a bit that Musk got into all this without having a plan for all those boosters. He doesn't seem to be a guy who gets ahead of himself.

Having said that I understand the "if it becomes a problem then it will be a good problem to have" philosophy, in the sense that if it's a problem then it means that the business is working.

Long story short we're working on bunch of stuff from Falcon re-flight to Falcon Heavy and a bunch of other stuff I can't talk about ( ).

Death Star confirmed

 

[Gigaz]

Hmm I would wonder if how much a challenge building a strong enough field to protect the planet would be relative to terraforming it. Would it be harder or easier to build the field than to turn it into Earth 2.0? Probably harder because a lot of the terraforming work could be done 'for free' by organisms we'd bring along or construct from DNA and raw inputs at the other end of the journey.

Let's say you want to terraform Venus which has the size of Earth without the magnetic field. A real planetary magnetic field would be possible if you send a lot of electricity in circles around the equator (According to my math one Gigaampere which would require a lot of infrastructure)
The other option would be to have a fleet of space ships with magnetic coils to deflect a flare on demand. That is also not exactly simple or cheap. But it would be clearly easier than space mirrors for climate control which are sometimes proposed.

edit: A detailed analysis of space-based solutions would require a lot of plasma physics, consider actual properties of the solar flare, and the time which you have from prediction to arrival. So I imagine there might be a clever trick which requires only weak magnetic fields somewhere between sun and planet to deflect the majority of the flare.

 

[uppi]

(According to my math one Gigaampere which would require a lot of infrastructure)

Just for fun: If you take one year of the current global copper production and made a cable around Venus, you would need 300 GW of power to sustain that current (just resistive losses, excluding cooling power).

It would obviously be much better if you could use superconductors, but I do not think we currently have enough helium for that.