The Universe

[Zen Archer (Raconteur)]

 

 

[welshbairn]

Having another go at this in the next few weeks, they hope with a more boring landing. It's worth noting that it's 160 feet tall, 30 feet wide and weighs 1400 tons at take off.

 

[Newbornbairn]

About the size of a space shuttle external tank then?

[D.A.F.C]

Having another go at this in the next few weeks, they hope with a more boring landing. It's worth noting that it's 160 feet tall, 30 feet wide and weighs 1400 tons at take off.
 

Same as Mark Yardley.

[welshbairn]

1 hour ago, NewBornBairn said:

About the size of a space shuttle external tank then?

That's just stage 2, the orbital version will be 400 feet high, all fully reusable, with a mass including cargo of up to 5000 tons. 

[Newbornbairn]

100 tonne payload is quite useful

[AL-FFC]

Road Closures for Boca Chica penned in for the 28th through to the 30th i think it is, Raptor engines got fitted yesterday to SN9 looking like a possible static fire on those dates. (according to nasa spaceflight on youtube. SN10 just went into the high bay to get its nose cone fitted.  

It will be interesting to see how the new raptor engines cope on the descent the next test flight

 

[dorlomin]

China going for an entirely original approach to rocket re-usability. (The important bit at 01:30)

 

China is now shifting from hypergolic (those are incredibly toxic fuels that ignite on contact) to RP1 based fuel. RP1 is highly refined kerosene with liquid oxygen as a oxidiser. Its ambitious for them to be aiming for re-usability on a rocket of this scale with such little experience in kerosene based engines. The problems are the  depth and range of throttling of the engine. This is apparently some pretty precise technologies to master. You can build your basic bell shaped rocket engine to work at a small range of pressures near its maximum to throttle engines up and down as you move through the atmospheric flight envolope i.e. minimum near Max Q, the point of maximal dynamic pressure. But you need a much greater range of throttling for the whole return journey and landing thing. This is one of several reasons why SpaceX is the only company to really get this working on an orbital class booster so far. Though the McDonnel Douglas DeltaX experimental rocket did this for a non orbital booster in the 90s and about the only thing Blue Origin have managed has been their sub orbital "New Sheppard" rocket that can perform a rocket engine landing. 

As with anything from China its very hard to see beyond the opacity of the publicity shots and the propoganda. SpaceX spent years working on Grasshopper . Perhaps China has had years of work under their belt and not let anyone know. Perhaps they acquired the technologies and algorithms by other means. Perhaps this is just a publicity shot and their space industry has the same bureaucratic inertia as the other major rocket providers like Arianespace, ULA, Roscosomos etc and this is just fluff for publicity not innovation. 

Still its a rare insight into their plans and ambitions. Autocracies do not like failing at publicly stated goals so this will likely receive huge funding. Worth keeping half an eye on. 

[budmiester1]

NASA are intending to fire all four Core rockets on its Artemis rocket this evening between 22:00 and 00:00 hrs . This is the last "Green" test and if successful will move onto a proper launch in November  https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-tv-to-air-hot-fire-test-of-rocket-core-stage-for-artemis-moon-missions

[welshbairn]

5 hours ago, budmiester1 said:

NASA are intending to fire all four Core rockets on its Artemis rocket this evening between 22:00 and 00:00 hrs . This is the last "Green" test and if successful will move onto a proper launch in November  https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-tv-to-air-hot-fire-test-of-rocket-core-stage-for-artemis-moon-missions

Livestream started, about half an hour till not very much happens.

 

[Funky Nosejob]

https://www.facebook.com/events/145013087379293

 

[budmiester1]

17 hours ago, welshbairn said:

Livestream started, about half an hour till not very much happens.

 

The engines shut down after only a minute or so, hopefully they can find and fix the problem.

[welshbairn]

8 minutes ago, budmiester1 said:

The engines shut down after only a minute or so, hopefully they can find and fix the problem.

$17.5 Billion in and 5 years past the promised first launch. It's a good job they spread the work over 40 states so the Senate keeps ponying up whatever they need or it would have been cancelled years ago. $1 billion per launch if they ever manage it and the only thing that's reusable is the capsule. 

[budmiester1]

1 hour ago, welshbairn said:

$17.5 Billion in and 5 years past the promised first launch. It's a good job they spread the work over 40 states so the Senate keeps ponying up whatever they need or it would have been cancelled years ago. $1 billion per launch if they ever manage it and the only thing that's reusable is the capsule. 

That's a colossal amount of money isn't it. How do you think it compares to Apollo in terms of cost , is it more expensive or cheaper per launch ?

[welshbairn]

44 minutes ago, budmiester1 said:

That's a colossal amount of money isn't it. How do you think it compares to Apollo in terms of cost , is it more expensive or cheaper per launch ?

It's pretty similar in today's money, but the technology hasn't changed very much. If SpaceX get Starship up and running it will instantly put it out of business, the whole thing will be reusable. It's a bit like building a brand new plane every time you want to fly people from London to New York, the ticket price would be a million plus instead of about 500. 

https://www.universetoday.com/129989/saturn-v-vs-falcon-heavy/

[renton]

I see Virgin Orbital managed to get a rocket into orbit from under the wing of a 747.

First successful test of what will become the launch profile from the Cornwall spaceport.

https://mobile.twitter.com/Virgin_Orbit/status/1350960438444511232

Edited January 18, 2021 by renton

[Sergeant Wilson]

22 hours ago, budmiester1 said:

The engines shut down after only a minute or so, hopefully they can find and fix the problem.

"It's going to cost you and I'm chocka all week. "

[welshbairn]

On 17/01/2021 at 15:16, budmiester1 said:

The engines shut down after only a minute or so, hopefully they can find and fix the problem.

They say it was low pressure in the hydraulics that power the engine gimballing. Apparently it wouldn't have prevented a successful launch, and they might not test again as they can only do it so often before they have to replace most of the hardware. Meanwhile another SpaceX launch about to start shortly.

https://www.spacex.com/launches/

[dorlomin]

On 17/01/2021 at 15:31, welshbairn said:

$17.5 Billion in and 5 years past the promised first launch. It's a good job they spread the work over 40 states so the Senate keeps ponying up whatever they need or it would have been cancelled years ago

The Senate defined the rocket, not the engineers. Engineers at  NASA hava wanted a new ground up rocket for this since Challenger, presidents have cancelled and amended this project going back to W Bush. It has always been the Senate allocating pork. 

[dorlomin]

On 17/01/2021 at 17:09, budmiester1 said:

That's a colossal amount of money isn't it. How do you think it compares to Apollo in terms of cost , is it more expensive or cheaper per launch ?

Hard to quantify per launch. It shares many costs with other programs. But Apollo was a far far larger portion of US GDP and US government budget. NASA is currently funding most of the ISS, two private human rated launch providers, a couple of private cargo teams, a big chunk of the Russian manned program and its Earth resources, planetary science, etc out of a fraction of the budget they had in the 60s together with Artemis. 

The technology in Artemis is decades ahead of Apollo. But the rocketry is mostly Shuttle derived. That was a purely political decision and a fight between the Senate and the W Bush, Obama and Trump administrations. The project was constantly getting revised, defunded, redirected etc. About the one success of the entire Trump administration was Jim Bridenstine navigating the program to the point actual hardware exists and actual launch dates seem feasible. One of the reasons he favoured a lunar space station was once it was their the various factions in US government would have to commit to using it rather than kicking the can down the road in another set of redesigns. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Gateway

 

ISS is closing in on retirement. We need something to do in space for human spaceflight soonish. Badly thought out as Artemis is (like ISS) it will keep the staffing in place for human space exploration. 

Shuttle was such a blind alley and its legislative benefactors have hung its legacy round the necks of the US engineering for decades (ISS was largely to give Shuttle something to do).