>27 engines https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m79 UO4HOQmc

FAKE PIC

File: SpaceX.png (71KB, 1013x438px) Image search: [Google]

71KB, 1013x438px

First Falcon Heavy launch is slated for March 2017 [postponed from October 2016].

I will eat my own poop if it actually launches in March 2017

[spoiler] I'm dead serious, i've done it before [/spoiler]

>>7974292
they believed in deign by trial and error, the N-1 launches were tests, if Korolev didn't die and they didn't run out of commiebux they would have made it work

they probably should have just test fired the engines as a group to find thrust structure issues on the ground but whatever

>>7974342
How did it taste?

>>7974301
>Artist's representation of Falcon Heavy Reusable on launchpad

Thanks Sherlock

>>7974395
>>7974342
I tasted mine too (for science), tastes exactly like raw cabbage. A dull bitter taste.
>>7974371
>Equipped with spacecraft for moon flyby
>Just an engine test
Yeah, no, it failed catastrophically, it would never work, that many engines and pumps and pipes cant not go wrong. Falcon Heavy is doomed. They are idiots thinking "hurr this is just like Kerbal Space Program we can just keep on adding rockets till it gets to Mars" Don't build a super heavy lifter unless you have at least SSME-tier engines

>>7974342
THEY POSTPONED IT AGAIN?

>>7974342

Demo launch is still on for November.

>>7974587
If one of Falcon engines fails, others can compensate.

You must eat more poop.

>>7975388
That's what the N-1 engineers said too.

>>7975745
Is SAS really not as simple in real life as it is in kerbal space program

File: Capture.png (1MB, 1482x857px) Image search: [Google]

1MB, 1482x857px

Next launch in 5 days boys, I love me some fireworks

>>7975785
Why?

>>7975786
Fireworks are pretty

>>7974342
>>7975785
do you have the link to these pages?

>>7974292
In over 20 launches SpaceX has only had one engine blow up, and the rocket just carried on despite the failure.

N1 was doing lots of things that were radically different from past rockets, and due to budget constraints, they were using a philosophy of "testing by flying".

The last N1 flown, for example, blew up because of a water hammer effect when they shut down the first stage engines at the end of their burn. That's the kind of stuff that happens when it's your first test of the assembled stage. The spherical tank design was responsible for the flimsy plumbing as the many-engine design.

Soyuz lifts off with 4 boosters running 6 combustion chambers and nozzles each, and a central stage running 8 combustion chambers. While these are produced in groups as units of 6-8 chambers referred to as single engines, it can reasonably be called a 32-engine lift-off, and Soyuz has been one of the most reliable designs.

People talk about many-engined designs and point to the failed N1 for some reason, and not to the highly successful R7/Sputnik/Soyuz arrangement that had more combustion chambers and nozzles and put both the first satellite in orbit and the first man in orbit, then carried on being useful to the point of currently being the only thing trusted to carry crew at the moment.

>>7974292
>>7974419
F
A
K
E

>>7976128
>1 in 20 success rate
*clap, clap*

>>7976166
... it's a 1 in 20 failure rate.

File: n1 rocket cutaway.png (105KB, 409x618px) Image search: [Google]

105KB, 409x618px

>>7976128
>The spherical tank design was responsible for the flimsy plumbing as the many-engine design.
Should read:
>The novel spherical tank design was as responsible for the flimsy plumbing as the many-engine arrangement.

Of course, the flimsy plumbing was its own problem. They just didn't do a good job on it. Actually distributing propellant from the advanced tanks to the advanced engines was a crude afterthought.

Falcon Heavy and Soyuz both have their engines clustered around the ends of cylindrical kerosene tanks, with a simple, single, straight (insulated) pipe passing from each liquid oxygen tank above through the center of the kerosene tanks.

The LOX tank being on top is important. It means the LOX pipe goes through the kerosene tank. Some kerosene might freeze on the outside of the pipe, which would be a minor waste, but the contents of the pipe could not freeze. A kerosene pipe through a LOX tank could freeze up solid, stopping flow completely.

You can see in this image that they tried to get way fancier with the N1, placing the kerosene tank on top, then routing multiple pipes around the LOX tanks, right outside of the fuselage under added fairings, to the widely-spread engines below.

In theory, spherical tanks require only half the wall thickness per unit volume at the same pressure as cylindrical tanks. In practice, this weight saving is offset by construction complexity and design compromise.

>>7976220
yeah that, still unimpressive.

>>7976235
Are you saying a 95% chance of success is unimpressive?

You know how I know you've never done anything in your life?

>>7976166
>>7976220
>>7976235
On a per-engine basis, it's a 1 in 198 failure rate, and that one failure was an "infant mortality" problem with the Merlin 1C, a bad batch of out-of-spec metal which SpaceX learned to test for and avoid.

Even if you could expect this 1 in 198 failure rate to continue, you'd still only expect about 1 in 8 Falcon Heavy launches to have an engine failure.

The more recent launch failure had nothing to do with the engines. It was a bad strut from a supposedly reliable aerospace supplier. Another "infant mortality" problem: easily avoided in the future, and this kind of thing would be no more likely to occur in a Heavy launch.

File: Niggered.jpg (7KB, 180x210px) Image search: [Google]

7KB, 180x210px

>>7976246
>95% chance of not dieing

Airliners would never sell seats to passengers with those odds

May I remind you that SpaceX and it's Falcon launchers are also intended for human spaceflight

>>7976269
>1 in 8 fail rate.
That's worse than the Space Shuttle. See what I mean about having lots of engines?

>>7976293
Dragon has a launch escape system. Even if the launch vehicle fails, the passengers should not die.

>>7976294
>>Even if you could expect this 1 in 198 failure rate to continue, you'd still only expect about 1 in 8 Falcon Heavy launches to have an engine failure.
>1 in 8 fail rate.
>That's worse than the Space Shuttle.

>>Even if you could expect this 1 in 198 failure rate to continue
I had just explained why you can't expect this 1 in 198 failure rate to continue.

>>you'd still only expect about 1 in 8 Falcon Heavy launches to have an engine failure.
An engine failure, not a launch failure. Depending on the timing and distribution of failed engines, Falcon Heavy could tolerate as many as six engine failures and still put its payload in orbit. Possibly more.

The only Falcon 9 engine failure did not prevent a successful launch. It still put the upper stage in orbit with enough propellant to complete all of its missions. They did put up their main payload to its proper orbit, but they had to ditch a secondary payload because NASA exercised a contract option which was activated when there was an irregularity in the launch. It was not ditched for reasons of technical necessity: there was still plenty of fuel for the upper stage burn to transfer the secondary to its intended orbit.

>>7976113
Just found it
https://spacexstats.com/missions/future

>>7976269
> a bad batch of out-of-spec metal which SpaceX learned to test for and avoid.

That seems to happen to SpaceX a lot.

>>7976578
thanks anon.
a site that keeps track and shares live-streams on everything NASA/ESA/ROSKOSMOS/civilian would be a pretty sweet deal.
something like "This week , 3 launches from X, Y and Z, watch here(insert link)"

What do you expect when you're trying new things

>>7976600
>https://spaceflightnow.com/launch-schedule/

>>7976609
>>7976597

>>7976597
what, one time?

>>7976620
ok i'l be quiet now

>>7976229
Damn shame it blew up, it looked so cool.

>>7976678
Well, N1 got approved several years after Saturn V did, and its main designer/manager (Korolev) died just a couple of years into the project. Then it got cancelled after the Americans finished their moon program.

It would probably have worked if Korolev had been in good health, and they might even have competed effectively with the Americans, but he had been in poor health since his first heart attack in 1960 and died in early 1966.

It was necessary to have a strong, experienced leader to move a program forward so quickly. The Russians had Korolev, the Americans had Von Braun. They were both approaching the ends of their careers at that time, but Von Braun was a few years younger, and Korolev had been subjected to the harshness of the gulag over a misunderstanding, and to the generally poorer living conditions of the Soviet Union thereafter.

Even on a personal level, the space race played out as a demonstration of the superiority of the American way over the Soviet way, with the brutal mistreatment of Korolev undermining his health and ability to perform for his masters.

>>7976923
nothing I hate more than people who can't stop thinking about dick.

you buy a nice watch:
small penis

you buy a nice car:
>small penis

you buy a nice house:
>small penis

Fuck what they think

>>7976923

>Shaun King

>can't stop thinking about dick

>>7976220
Yeah, because it is a new company with only 20 odd launches. I'm confident their record will improve as they get more launches under their belt.

I'm sure you have some very impressive technical job that gives you the knowledge base to criticize SpaceX.

does anyone have a webum of a rocket ascending?
i don't seem to find any launch on youtube

>>7977170
>i don't seem to find any launch on youtube
What? There are shitloads of them, plus more on the websites for space agencies (esa.int nasa.gov etc).

File: falcon9rlanding.webm (452KB, 944x868px) Image search: [Google]

452KB, 944x868px

>>7977170
Yes. But here's one descending because its way fucking cooler.

>>7976902
>misunderstanding
Heh, i would hardly call "torturing people until they give up their friends just so the torture stops" a misunderstanding. Pretty much made his work with Glushkov rather tense

>>7977325
> slippery_when_wet.webm

>>7977880
>>7977880
>i would hardly call "torturing people until they give up their friends just so the torture stops" a misunderstanding
If that was an apology, I accept it.

>>7977896
wat?

File: 1396174020509.gif (1004KB, 420x259px) Image search: [Google]

1004KB, 420x259px

>>7976923
Come ride with me...

>>7977943
FAKE

>>7974301
>>7976156
>>7977951
is this what Tourette look like?

>>7977956
is this what it looks like to post pics that are FAKE

File: 1396174090372.gif (961KB, 420x259px) Image search: [Google]

961KB, 420x259px

>>7977951
...I'll show you a marvelous world...

>>7977976
FAKE
AKE
KE
E

>>7977976
....like the ride of his life

>>7975745
Soviets didn't have the benefit of modern computers and alloys.

>>7975772
>sas
>simple in ksp
unless you have attitude rockets falling out your butthole and gyros between every fuel tank in every stage, if you're still in atmo and you lose an engine you're FUCKED

>>7978242
Well, both Falcon 9 and Saturn V showed the ability to handle single-engine failure during ascent, though "in atmo" might be a point of debate. Not that much atmo at 1.2 min flightime (Falcon 9).

>>7978242
aaaand if that comment was purely in response to KSP then ignore >>7978303

>>7977325
wait,rockets DESCENT?
why?
why would they do that?

>>7979006
to fuck with the flat-earthers and conspiritards

File: dibbidy dibbidy.gif (2MB, 387x373px) Image search: [Google]

2MB, 387x373px

>>7979006
To keep them in one piece for reusability?

>>7979019
oh.
never thought of that
>tfw only play sanbox mode of KSP

>>7979006
Because Elon Musk wants to reuse his rockets and the old fashioned "Let them slam into the ocean at terminal velocity" approach doesn't really give you that option.

>>7979040
Well, parachuting them into the ocean does. But then you have to design them for that impact, and they may need quite a bit of repair.

I think it's sad that reusable liquid-fueled splashdown boosters never really got their fair chance. NASA wanted some for the shuttle, but there were some political shenanigans and instead they got solid-fueled splashdown boosters that had to be disassembled and have a costly explosive mix casted in them in sections between launches.

The ones NASA wanted were pressure-fed liquid-fuel boosters. They might have got those to the point of just needing to be recovered and refilled to be reused.

>>7977956
>>7977959
>>7977977
>is this what Tourette look like?
Yes, so please give generously to the Tourette medical research campaign.

>>7979244
parachuting shit into the ocean turns it into junk
Which is why spacex is landing theirs

>>7979244
But then you would still have to work around the same issues with regards to corrosion and such.

>>7980205
>>7979767
No, parachuting stuff into the ocean doesn't automatically "turn it into junk", and the corrosion issue is way overstated. It just means you have to choose your materials such that they don't corrode *quickly* in contact with sea water.

The problem with the shuttle solid boosters wasn't the harshness of the landing or corrosion, it was the fact that they were huge, multi-segment solid boosters that had to be taken apart and recast, then put back together with new seals. They weren't recovering a complete rocket to refuel and reuse so much as recycling some pipe.

There were all sorts of plans for splashdown-recoverable liquid-fuel boosters, which were a mainstay of Von Braun's future concepts. They never really got tried, except for SpaceX's few halfhearted experiments before switching to flyback boosters.

By the time SpaceX tried it, it no longer made sense. We had Segways and quadcopter drone swarms. Computers had become cheap and powerful, and balancing a rocket on the thrust of one engine was just a software problem.

Spashdown recovery takes considerable attention in hardware design. You do have to control orientation in atmospheric entry, and stand up to atmospheric entry heating, then you need some sort of shock absorption for the impact in the water. Then the floating stage has to survive in the ocean to be picked up.

Here's a Saturn V booster recovery plan:
http://www.collectspace.com/ubb/Forum29/HTML/000880.html

>>7980808
mind walking me though the good/bad with regards to solid vs liquid boosters? All i know is solids ae storable as fuck, while liquids lets you throttle and abort(some solids do that as well)

File: 1453171446762.webm (985KB, 640x640px) Image search: [Google]

985KB, 640x640px

>>7977890
Caution wet floor

>>7981065
You can turn a liquid booster off entirely and, some time later, turn it back on.

A liquid engine can be fired more than once; to do the same with a solid fuel requires that an important component must be refabricated and installed every time.

>>7981331
Oh, and since the geometry inside a solid booster changes as the fuel core burns, that adds a bit of complexity.

>>7974292
It'll end up just like N1

>>7981065
The main thing for reusability is that liquid fuel can be very cheap (RP-1, rocket kerosene, is only a little more exacting in its refining and blending specifications than commercial jet fuel -- in large quantities it would be nearly as cheap, while liquid oxygen is very inexpensive to produce) and quickly and easily refilled.

A reusable solid is not necessarily a bad thing. They're quite popular with high-powered rocket hobbyists. While solid propellant is more expensive than liquid fuel (for instance, powdered aluminum is a major component), it's still much cheaper than complete rockets.

The potential for low costs is much poorer, though. There's no way to just refill and go. You've at minimum got to clean it, recast the fuel, and wait for it to set. Then you've got to transport the fuelled rocket to the launchpad, whereas liquid-fuelled rockets are transported empty and filled on the pad, which is way easier.

File: soyuz-engines.jpg (48KB, 560x420px) Image search: [Google]

48KB, 560x420px

>>7974292
>>7981411
Meanwhile, here's the longest-lived and most prolific, and one of the most successful and reliable engine arrangements.

N1 didn't simply fail because it had a lot of engines, or R7/Soyuz is impossible to explain.

why don't they 3d print the whole rocket?

>>7978533
yes it was purely in response to ksp

>>7981644
Spacex does 3d print a large portion of their rocket motors.

There's no point 3d printing the fuel tanks because they're easy enough to fabricate normally.

>>7981638
well, it failed in the sense that all those engines required loonie-level complex plumbing from the same tanks. There is quite a difference between the plumbing needed to supply 32 Nk-33's from a single pair of tanks vs 1 RD-107/8 from a pair of tanks.
The shoddy quality control, rushed production, transportation method out to the Kosmodrone, the harsh conditions under which it was assembled and such just made an already complex layout even more prone to something bad happening.

>>7974342
>abusing the internet to get an excuse to eat feces

>>7981638
you are now aware that the R7/Soyuz consists of one central core with 4 boosters, and that each of those have 1(one) engine with 4(four) combustion chambers. Not 5x4 engines

>>7983539
>1(one) engine with 4(four) combustion chambers
First off, the booster engines have six combustion chambers, and the central one has eight. The large ones are fixed, the smaller ones gimbal.

Secondly, calling it "one engine with eight combustion chambers" is a completely arbitrary distinction. You could just as easily call it "eight engines fed by a common turbopump". It doesn't speak to the complexity.

SpaceX could say the Falcon 9 booster is powered by the "Merlin Octoweb 1D Engine", a single engine with nine combustion chambers on a common thrust structure. It wouldn't make the actual system any more or less complicated or reliable.

A lot of SpaceX shills in this thread. I can't wait to see the Falcon Heavy blow up, then they will hopefully leave /sci/ for good.

>>7983638
Now that's just mean. Are you an ULA shill?

File: n1 rocket bottom.jpg (347KB, 501x640px) Image search: [Google]

347KB, 501x640px

>>7982804
>There is quite a difference between the plumbing needed to supply 32 Nk-33's from a single pair of tanks vs 1 RD-107/8 from a pair of tanks.
>30 Nk-33's from a single pair of tanks vs 32 combustion chambers grouped among 5 RD-107/8s from five pairs of tanks.
There isn't all that much difference. If there was some advantage to it, there's no reason, for instance, that you couldn't have grouped the 30 engines into five teams of six with one pair of main propellant lines each, and short range local distribution. Five pairs of propellant lines is certainly less complicated than five fully separate tanks, and local tank-pressure distribution to six engines would not be more complex than the RD-107/8's local distribution to 6-8 combustion chambers.

The RD-108 had to distribute not just tank-pressure, but post-turbopump, combustion-chamber-pressure propellants to eight combustion chambers, four of which gimbal! That's a complex plumbing job.

N1 was really not a fundamentally worse design than R7, but the chief designer died early in the project. The basic sketch of the rocket is sensible, but there was nobody able to handle the details on his level.

It's likely that if Korolev died in the middle of R7 development, after settling the basic layout, there would have been no Sputnik and no Soyuz, and Chelomei's hypergolic rockets (like Proton -- compare the Titan II used for Project Gemini) would have dominated the Soviet manned space program. If he had lived in good health for another ten years, the N1 would probably have worked well and been used for a Soviet manned moon landing a few years behind the Americans.

>>7983669
NASA shill.
>>7983729
Why didn't they just make an F-1 sized engine?

File: seems legit.jpg (82KB, 780x569px) Image search: [Google]

82KB, 780x569px

>>7983770
Considering the current budget, I do not think NASA can afford shilling on an european woodcrafting forum.

File: cosmos is a tough place.jpg (156KB, 1120x767px) Image search: [Google]

156KB, 1120x767px

>>7983770
Regarding why the USSR did not use the same engine approach as Apollo, it is said they did not have the technical expertise tu use cryogenics fuel (LH2+LOx) and prefered tried fuel mix (RP-1...)

>>7983770
It would have been more expensive, less efficient, and less versatile, and it would have taken longer.

Developing a smaller rocket engine is faster and easier than developing a larger one. Your equipment and facilities can be smaller, prototypes can be built faster and tested sooner, your materials and fuel costs for testing are smaller, etc.

Additionally, the NK-33 could have been used on much smaller rockets, once it was developed to a high level of reliability, while the F1 was really only good for superheavies.

The advantage of a huge engine like the F1 was a reduction in complexity, and therefore possibly an improvement of reliability and reduction of unit cost (although both benefits are debatable).

>>7974587
>that many engines and pumps and pipes cant not go wrong
stop talking out of your ass and pretending to be an expert, you're simply wrong about this

>>7983810
I do it for free.
>>7983815
So RP-1 can't work in a big engine? Bigger combustion chamber, pump in more fuel? It's not rocket science.
>>7983847
> the NK-33 could have been used on much smaller rockets, once it was developed to a high level of reliability, while the F1 was really only good for superheavies.
This is clearly SpaceX's logic, one Merlin to fly them all. This is why I support SLS. Four SSMEs, nice and simple. No-one has ever succeeded in building a super-heavy with small rockets.

>>7983770
>NASA shill.
do you believe that NASA makes their own rockets or something?

File: 1365781778085.jpg (113KB, 625x477px) Image search: [Google]

113KB, 625x477px

>>7983857
I realized I fucked up before, the F1 engine does use RP-1, so yeah this fuel works too. Liquidhydrogen was only usedthe the second and third stages.

>>7983860
They do occasionally.
>>7983873
holy shit is that a real alien? why haven't they told the world??

>>7983884
>They do occasionally.
name one launch vehicle or even manned spacecraft built by nasa

>>7983857
>No-one has ever succeeded in building a super-heavy with small rockets.
Energia had 20 combustion chambers, each generating only about double the thrust of a Merlin 1D.

Anyway, this line of argument is some bullshit, since only a few super-heavies have ever been attempted: Saturn V, Ares V, N1, and Energia. Arguably, the shuttle could be considered one, but you can't really separate the shuttle orbiter as a payload from the shuttle orbiter as part of the upper stage.

I think Ares V belongs on the "tried and failed" pile as much as N1 (certainly, more money was spent on Ares V than on N1, before it was declared unworkable and dropped in favor of the less ambitious SLS design), so we've got two big-engine approaches and two small-engine approaches, and one failure from each. Now we've got SLS and Falcon Heavy, and I think it's pretty obvious that FH is going to be the far more successful and desirable design.

File: 1377974781898s.jpg (3KB, 125x125px) Image search: [Google]

3KB, 125x125px

>>7983906
The SLS and Ares V architectures are eerily similar, same range of payload, almost same engines... One could say the SLS is a continuation of the Ares program.

>>7983891
>hurr Saturn V was built by contractors
NASA paid for it, NASA designed it, it had a big "NASA" symbol on it
>>7983906
Didn't Ares V just run out of money? A bit different to blowing up.
>I think it's pretty obvious that FH is going to be the far more successful and desirable design
They are both sketchy. SLS because of it's SRBs and FH because of it's 50,000 engines. At least the fickle SRBs are a known problem that NASA has spent a while addressing. FH is shooting in the dark because they have zero super-heavy experience. the SSMEs will never fail that is guaranteed for they are very well engineered tried and tested engines. You can also say the same for Merlin but as you pointed out the SSME has the advantage of having already lifted a near super-heavy payload in the form of the Space Shuttle.

>>7983929
Wasting billions with nothing to show for it is just as much a failure as a blow up
Hell its worse

I don't see the issue with all the engines provided the engines are reliable, and if they do fail they don't blow the whole thing up

They are going to spend like 10 billions to launch 2 SLS then cancel it.

>>7983939
You should support the SLS for no other reason than it's a proper super-heavy. FH is barely so at 53,000 kg. SLS is 130,000 kg. How can you want that to fail? Biggest rocket we will have for a generation.

>>7983919
>same range of payload, almost same engines
Ares V:
- 188 tons to LEO
- J-2-based upper stage (like Saturn V)
- not man-rated, no ability to carry a crewed capsule
- 5 sustainer engines based on shuttle engine
- paired with Ares I for separate launch of Orion capsule
- designed primarily for two-launch, LEO-rendezvous moon-landing missions
- paired with Ares I, total capacity for mission nearly double that of Saturn V
- realistic analysis concluded NASA and the chosen contractors simply did not have to competence to build it and would spend billions of dollars per year indefinitely with no prospects of a launch

SLS:
- 70 tons to LEO (possible future version up to 130 tons, but basically this is just a lie so NASA can pretend to be obeying the law requiring it to be as powerful as Saturn V)
- RL-10-based upper stage
- 4 sustainer engines not just based on but scavenged from the shuttle program
- man-rated, closely paired with Orion capsule
- half as powerful as Saturn V, with a capsule twice as heavy
- no real mission, NASA has had to contrive some bullshit about rendezvous in a lunar orbit
- realistic analysis concluded it would cost $40 billion for four do-nothing test/demo launches completed in the mid-2020s and then both need redesign for the program to continue (due to having run out of leftover engines from the shuttle program) and offer no cost or capability benefit over not having bothered to develop it

SLS is derived from the failure of Ares V, but it's not the same vehicle by a long shot.

>>7983929
>the SSMEs will never fail that is guaranteed for they are very well engineered tried and tested engines
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_main_engine#Incidents

After the SSMEs were developed and tested to satisfaction firing separately, and they were first tested in groups of three, they discovered unexpectedly that they shook each other apart. It took considerable design work and modification to get them to work together. Even so, they tended to be damaged in launch, and require extensive refurbishment between flights.

Now they're going to use them in teams of four, with more powerful SRBs, and located closer to the SRBs than they were in the shuttles. They still have not tested them in teams of four.

The SSMEs only ever barely worked. Like every dodgy system that somehow worked on the shuttle, they were individually babied by teams of technicians and engineers. The shuttle program started in the 70s. It's not clear which people were essential to its reliability, how many of them are still around for SLS, how badly out of practice they are, or whether they have adequately trained their replacements.

As for how tried and tested they are, SSMEs have done maybe twice as many engine-flights as Merlins, with the SpaceX design catching up fast (possibly this year), all recent experience, not old models being used long in the past.

In fact, the RS-25D variant being adapted for SLS use has only been used on 30 missions, for 90 engine-flights, starting as recently as 2001 (and ending in 2011). That's only the equivalent of 10 Falcon 9 launches.

>>7983967
>188 tons
lol they went crazy
>no real mission
Does FH have a mission?

>>7984006
So the Merlin is perfect? It will work flawlessly no matter how many you bunch together KSP style?

>>7983959
>You should support the SLS for no other reason than it's a proper super-heavy. FH is barely so at 53,000 kg. SLS is 130,000 kg.
SLS is not 130,000 kg. SLS is 70,000 kg. 130,000 kg is imaginary bullshit future SLS. Congress passed a law requiring that SLS:
1) have more payload capacity than Saturn V,
2) launch no later than 2017, and
3) be capable of sending Orion to the ISS.

NASA has responded by saying:
1) yeah, we can't do that in a remotely reasonable time but maybe in like 2030 or something our replacements will make a 130 ton version of SLS, so we'll just write that down as if its a real plan that serious people would take seriously and actually build a far less capable version,
2) okay, we will cobble together one super-shitty unmanned mission for the late 2010s with an improvised bullshit upper stage and Orion service module just for one launch and fly the real rocket in the 2020s, although we can't actually make 2017 and will probably slip to 2019, and
3) no, fuck that, we're not even going to pretend that it makes sense to launch Orion on SLS just to go to the ISS.

>How can you want that to fail? Biggest rocket we will have for a generation.
It's not a matter of wanting it to fail. It's already a failure. Hobbled by the requirements of using shuttle parts and contractors, it's never going to be a system worth using. It will always cost too much and does too little.

What we want is for it to be cancelled so the money can be spent on useful and interesting things.

Falcon Heavy, on the other hand, will be highly useful. As super-heavies go, the payload capacity to LEO and beyond is low, but the price and launch rates should be excellent. That should make multi-launch missions a reasonable option.

Furthermore, FH/Dragon is much more interesting than SLS/Orion, because Orion's a bloated pig.

Anyway, SpaceX is planning a bigger super-heavy than SLS based on its Raptor engine, for its fully-reusable vehicle.

>>7983967
the sls is a congress way to make the money the got with the shuttle still comes.

>>7983770
>>7983810
>>7983860
Wait I'm confused who's shilling who here?

>>7974292
>bell end

>>7984058
>Bash NASA for making vague plans
>Praise SpaceX for making vague plans

File: Moon l2 1.jpg (95KB, 600x466px) Image search: [Google]

95KB, 600x466px

>>7984058
NASA should only make R&D.

And finance some non lucrative projects like a earth-moon L2 space station (pic related).

obviously under contracts.

The ferry work is supose to be done by a private company,

>>7984016
>>no real mission
>Does FH have a mission?
Yes, FH's primary purpose is to serve the GEO comsat market, while providing sufficient margin for booster recovery after launch of the largest GEO comsats. F9 is somewhat undersized even without booster recovery.

Moreover, it's the heavy variant of an EELV-class rocket, like Delta IV Heavy. So it has a secondary purpose of enabling SpaceX to compete with ULA for all national security launches.

There is the further purpose of providing a low-cost, high-capability option for planetary science missions, particularly to Mars. SpaceX's long term plans are for transportation to Mars, and Falcon Heavy will be able to launch Crew Dragon direct to the Mars surface, which would be their first experience with launch to and landing on Mars.

Falcon Heavy and Falcon 9 together were a much smaller effort than developing separate medium-lift and superheavy rockets. This is a superheavy option almost for free, unlike the SLS, which is costing tens of billions just to get the option.

Constellation had a mission: land Americans on the moon again. Actually, it had two missions, it was also supposed to provide crew transportation to the ISS. So Orion and Ares I was designed to take crew to a LEO rendezvous. Ares V was designed to take a large payload and high-energy earth departure stage to LEO, for the crew to meet and dock with, so they could go to the moon surface. It was designed to meet the needs of the mission. The trouble is that they compromised this focus with a requirement of using shuttle parts and contractors.

When it became obvious they couldn't do both, they threw the mission out the window. What's left is SLS: the rocket to nowhere, a naked pork project which serves no purpose but to channel taxpayer money to the friends of certain Congressmen.

File: lemlkcomparex.jpg (54KB, 737x420px) Image search: [Google]

54KB, 737x420px

>tfw the N1 didn't get Soviets to the moon in the 70s
The Soviet Lander was qt

File: Delta-IV-Heavy-Orion-Exploration-Flight-Test-1-EFT-1-Cape-Canaveral-Air-Force-Station-Space-Launch-Complex-37-SLC-37-Photo-Credit-Mike-Deep-SpaceFlight-Insider-Copy.jpg (145KB, 900x600px) Image search: [Google]

145KB, 900x600px

>>7984058
70,000kg is the prototype.

after first flight 105,000kg will be standard with the EUS upgrade

SLS is literally no different than shuttle program wise Shuttle lasted 30 years. Also SpaceX/scrubX isnt that reliable yet. Let's see them actually launch on time.

SLS is a fucking tank of a rocket compared to falcon "heavy"

Also BFR is still just a slideshow rocket

File: ares1.jpg (171KB, 1032x730px) Image search: [Google]

171KB, 1032x730px

>>7984111
The worst thing is ditching the Ares I/Ares V which were clearly designed for differing important roles and replacing them with a rocket that will do neither properly.

>>7984118
>SLS is literally no different than shuttle program wise Shuttle lasted 30 years.
That's exactly the problem. The shuttle was shit. It was supposed to be flying by late 1970s, and the program was supposed to be over by the mid 1980s, with 500 launches completed.

It barely got going by the time it was supposed to be over. It ended decades later with under a third of anticipated launches completed.

Ever hear of Skylab? That American space station they had back in the 1970s? They used the last Saturn V to launch it, and it served much the same purpose as Mir or the ISS, being more efficient thanks to its non-modular structure. It has one third the pressurized volume of the ISS and half the crew capacity, at one sixth the mass, and went up in a single launch. It was supposed to be reboosted by a shuttle mission.

The shuttle was so late that Skylab's orbit decayed, and it splashed.

Now, what's the big thing they did with the shuttle? They put up the ISS. Well, they put up half of the ISS... a couple of decades after depriving America of Skylab...

>Also SpaceX/scrubX isnt that reliable yet. Let's see them actually launch on time.
They've been flying at a higher rate than the space shuttle. The space shuttle flew 135 times in total. Falcon 9 has launched 22 times, most of them since the F9 1.1 debut in late 2013.

SpaceX is a new company, with a new launch vehicle.

Compare Atlas V:
2002: 1 launch
2003: 2 launches
2004: 1
2005: 2
2006: 2
2007: 4
2008: 2
2009: 5
2010: 4
2011: 5
2012: 6
2013: 8
2014: 9
2015: 9

SpaceX is doing fine.

>after first flight 105,000kg will be standard with the EUS upgrade
>Also BFR is still just a slideshow rocket
BFR will probably be around before any "standard" SLS with the performance you're claiming. SpaceX is set up for constant development of new models, like a car company. The people who designed Falcon 9 have been done with it and working on BFR for years.

>>7984218
>Compare Atlas V:
Anyway, for convenience, the Falcon 9 version looks like this:
2010: 2 launches
2011: 0 launches
2012: 2
2013: 3 (final 1.0 and first 1.1)
2014: 6
2015: 6 successful and 1 failure which grounded them for half a year
2016: 2 so far and 1 coming up on Friday

The mature launch cadence for selling their expendable vehicles to the conventional launch market is supposed to be about 1 F9 and 1 FH per month, for a total of 24 launches per year (the global total last year was 87 launch attempts and 82 successess, with the most active model being Soyuz with 17 launches, 2 partial failures). This year they may reach their F9 launch cadence, with FH getting up to pace around 2018-2019.

>>7976229
That's a very good explanation, thanks.

>>7984218
>SpaceX is a new company, with a new launch vehicle.
>10+ years, 4000 employees
This "spacex is a startup" meme is just an excuse made up by musk shills to justify spacex' mediocrity.

>>7984250
Not some musk shill but they are in a heavy industry and compared to Boeing and Lockheed Martin etc they are new to it.

>>7984256
>>7984250
Yeah, I mean look at these launch figures for Atlas V and Falcon 9:
>>7984218
>>7984239

The Air Force's EELV program called for bids in 1994. Four years later, a launch contract for Atlas V was awarded in 1998. Its first launch was another four years later in 2002. In 2008, six years later, it only did 2 launches, with its best year to that point being 2007 at 4 launches. It took ten years after its first launch to reach 6 launches in one year, and it has never broken 10 per year.

NASA's COTS program called for bids in 2006. A launch contract for Falcon 9 was awarded in 2008. Its first launch was in 2010, only two years later. Now it's six years later, and they've already done two launches by April. They were grounded for half of last year, and still did half a dozen launches.

You don't just decide one day to open up shop and start launching rockets. Even if you just want a house, you don't expect to decide to build one and have it finished in less than about a year, right? You have to pick the site, clear the lot, dig the basement, pour the foundation, etc. There are a number of steps which take time and require prior steps to be completed first.

To set up expendable rocket production, you probably have to do a prototype version first. That was Falcon 9 1.0. It took them a couple of years to make the first one, and using prototyping methods, they could only build these at a rate of one or two per year, unless they wanted to throw money at it and have an expensive rocket. So it took them another three years to get a routine production method figured out, and the design of the rocket changed quite a bit in the process. Then they had to scale up, to hire and train new staff, and buy or build and install more equipment. It took about another year to get up to speed. Then they had a grounding-worthy failure.

This just is how it goes. They're not perfect, but they're doing fine.

>>7984111
>Implying Ares I and Ares V also didn't exist to channel taxpayer money to the friends of certain Congressmen.

I mean you're not wrong that Constellation gave us a slightly more specific goal, but other than that it was just as much a shitshow as the SLS. The Ares I was shaping up to be an overpriced POS and as for the Ares V, the SLS is going to give us the same capability in the same time frame so we really didn't lose much there.

>>7984399
Why can't the US get anything done correctly?
The Russians had the right idea with upgrading Soyuz with the times instead of trying to radically redesign your whole space program every decade. Apollo + an upgraded Saturn 1B would have been fine for low earth orbit.

>>7981183
leg didn't lock.

it landed perfectly otherwise.

>>7984516
NASA deteriorated into a jobs program, where different interest groups pitch ideas based on how much it would enable them to spend rather than legitimate scientific inquiry.

>>7984516
You can pretty much blame it all on the space shuttle.

The Apollo Program was glorious. Problematically glorious. It attracted all the wrong sorts of careerists to NASA while at the same time making NASA very influential. The massive Apollo budgets also attracted profiteering contractors. And it all inspired jealousy in other branches of the government, particularly the military, which had done most of the work that led to the success of the mission, before this new civilian agency was founded to take all the credit.

It's not just that the shuttle wasn't good. It's also that it was approached in an anticompetitive way. The people pushing it wanted to kill everything that might steal flights from it or make it look bad. From the 70s to the start of the 21st century, the US government was actively opposed to anything that would be clearly better than, or serious competition to, the space shuttle. Until the Challenger disaster, this even included routine cargo launches -- they fully intended that, starting as soon as possible, no American payload should launch on anything but a space shuttle.

That's why the US, which had developed three different capsules between 1958 and 1968, yet had no alternative to the shuttle when it was grounded after the Challenger and Columbia disasters, or when the shuttle was discontinued. Active opposition to having any alternative, as long as the shuttle program was still going.

And you know what? There's still active opposition to any manned vehicle other the shuttle successor, SLS/Orion, in Congress and in NASA. There are still Congressmen cutting commercial crew and making angry noises that NASA's not sending Orion to the ISS. Yeah, sure, money, but I think there's something else at play here: nobody who was involved with the shuttle (and this was a lot of important people) wants to admit that it was a terrible mistake, or wants evidence to be produced to that effect.

I'm just going to continue this a little >>7984745

Look at the plans they're making for SLS/Orion, the way they're talking about it, like this cobble-job of 70s shuttle tech and 60s Apollo tech must be essential for humanity's future in space. In the 2020s, they're going to carry on "building a foundation" somehow, and in the 2030s, SLS/Orion is still going to be there, with its 1960s single-use fiberglass heat shield, and its 1960s capabilities and cost effectiveness, and it's going to be essential for the very first manned Mars landing.

If we say our prayers and pay our taxes and eat our Wheaties, in twenty or twenty-five years, we can have a flag-planting mission to the red planet. Glory! Glory! All thanks to the space shuttle, in the end, which was something We Needed To Do, because it Proved Reusability Doesn't Work and also supplied the parts we needed to build something we had in the 1960s.

Never mind the guys talking about three orders of magnitude cost improvement, who are starting to successfully land their rockets and talking about heat shields like brakepads, that last hundreds of re-entries. They're just a distraction. What the future really needs is technology from before the internet. We need to preserve it. Encase it in amber. Stop trying to do better and tell our sons and daughters to tell their sons and daughters that this is as good as it gets.

>>7983627
>First off, the booster engines have six combustion chambers, and the central one has eight. The large ones are fixed, the smaller ones gimbal.
Thanks, forgot about that part.

>Secondly, calling it "one engine with eight combustion chambers" is a completely arbitrary distinction. You could just as easily call it "eight engines fed by a common turbopump". It doesn't speak to the complexity.
I agree with you on the arbitrary part. However, by far one of the most complex parts of a rocket engine will be the turbo-pumps, and no, making 5 vs 30 turbopumps only ads cost and time, not complexity. It does, however, ad to the chance of things failing. 8x0,000001% chance is more than 1x0,000001% chance.

>SpaceX could say the Falcon 9 booster is powered by the "Merlin Octoweb 1D Engine", a single engine with nine combustion chambers on a common thrust structure. It wouldn't make the actual system any more or less complicated or reliable.


I agree with you on the whole arbitrary-thing as there is no clear defining line on what defines "an engine", but going by the the industry itself, from all documents and articles i can find, everybody refers to an engine when it has a stand-alone turbopump. That is why the RD-107 is seen as 1 engine, even though it has more than one chamber. Had the Falcon 9-engines shared a single turbopump, then it would be "1 engine with 9 chambers" and so on.

>>7985083
1 vs 8 turbopumps *

>>7984111
Sure FH can get it's Crew Dragon to Mars but all the astronauts onboard will die because it can't carry the food, shielding and return fuel. Orion is rated for Moon travel, Crew Dragon is nothing more than an ISS shuttle.

>>7985487
Unless you attatch a bunch of extra modules to the Orion it doesnt have much more endurance than the old Apollo CM. Unless you attatch service modules and storage, the Orion is no less an ISS-shuttle than a Dragon 2

>>7985487
Nobody in their right mind is thinking "lets just send a Crew Dragon to Mars with a bunch of people". What >>7984111 is referring to with
>There is the further purpose of providing a low-cost, high-capability option for planetary science missions, particularly to Mars. SpaceX's long term plans are for transportation to Mars, and Falcon Heavy will be able to launch Crew Dragon direct to the Mars surface, which would be their first experience with launch to and landing on Mars.
is the idea of sending a science-package(no people) with a Crew Dragon to Mars, and getting it back to earth. This would serve both a scientific purpose and give experience that NASA/SpaceX can use when developing a later Mars-transporter(for people).

As >>7985501 mentioned, both the Orion and Apollo are no more suited for long missions without a hefty Service Module attached(21 and 14 days), than a Crew Dragon would be.

>>7974292
F
A
K
E

File: image.jpg (73KB, 688x440px) Image search: [Google]

73KB, 688x440px

> meanwhile, the African Space Program:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=f4CGwSqrGq8

>>7985545
back from the trip to whatever tourette specialist you use?

>>7985553
That picture is FAKE

>>7985547
Nigeria actually has satellites in space.

>>7985564
there there buddy, show me where the evil lizzard-people touched you

>>7985576
> built and engineered by white man
> bought by niggers

>>7985547
Kek

File: 7121000945_0bc460e030.jpg (208KB, 500x347px) Image search: [Google]

208KB, 500x347px

>>7985585
Who launches your fat asses into space America?

>>7985695
Who pays for it you drunken slav?

>>7985584
evil lizzard people are FAKE
just like OPs pic, which is FAKE

>>7985862
>Russians
>Slavs

Stop this. They're Tatars.

T-1 day, 2 hours and 20 min

>>7985487
>Orion is rated for Moon travel, Crew Dragon is nothing more than an ISS shuttle.
Orion was designed primarily as an ISS shuttle, for launch on Ares I. It's actually far less suited to a moon mission than Crew Dragon, due to being overweight.

Orion's design was based on a simple scale-up of the Apollo capsule. Where the Apollo CSM was built for a maximum of 3 crew, Orion was built to provide comfort for up to 6 astronauts, and has triple the internal volume. All in all, it ended up being twice the mass. On a moon mission that's an extra 5 tons of dead weight. That's additional mass that doesn't just need to be launched to the moon orbit, but circularized and launched back. To do moon-surface missions, you need something like the Ares I/V dual-launch mission architecture, which would have had nearly double Saturn V's capabilities.

Crew Dragon also offers about 50% more internal volume than the Apollo capsule, but it does so mainly by being rounder. It has a slightly narrower diameter. There is a seating arrangement for 7 passengers, but they'd be packed in tight. It's only about 20% more massive than the Apollo capsule, but unlike the Apollo or Orion capsules, it's not dependent on an external service module. Its modern, integrated systems are considerably more mass efficient.

People like to claim that Dragon isn't designed for beyond-LEO operations, but this isn't true at all. NASA only asked for a Dragon that could go to LEO, but SpaceX had their own plans, so it's full of stuff NASA didn't ask for, up to and including the capability of surviving a trip to Mars and landing propulsively on the Mars surface.

Falcon Heavy / Dragon is a much better combination for moon missions than SLS/Orion. FH is indeed considerably less powerful, but Dragon is also much lighter, and FH will be cheap and capable of a high launch rate, making multi-launch missions feasible. A three-launch moon landing could probably be done for under $1 billion, by 2020.

>>7974292

It's too many, place a certain amount of duplicate parts on any machine and on is going to break on every run.

The amount of duplicates you can have on each machine varies but rocket engines have a relatively high failure rate.

I guarantee this rocket will fail every 3 launches or so

>>7986042
...until the first delay or scrub.

>>7986281
SpaceX fanboy here. I laughted. Then i remembered that SES-launch. Then i cried

>>7985543
>>7985501
Crew Dragon is actually suited to long missions without a service module, thanks to the DragonLab and Mars lander mission profiles. Aside from the crew's needs, it can operate on a zero-consumable basis.

For orbital missions, aside from crew consumables, it can operate indefinitely while spending nearly half the time in the Earth's shadow, using its rechargeable batteries. In deep space, it should have about 10 kilowatts of continuous power, and a 5 kilowatt continuous surplus which could be applied to long-term life support purposes.

Assuming oxygen is provided as lithium peroxide, crew can be sustained with about 5 kg of consumables per day: 2 kg lithium peroxide, 2 kg water, 1 kg food and sundries. Orion's supposed to be good for up to 21 days, with 4 crew. Half a ton of consumables can easily fit in Dragon with 4 crew members.

Furthermore, that 5 kilowatt surplus could be used for advanced recycling of supplies: reverse osmosis water purification, electrolysis of water, calcining of lithium carbonate (or sodium carbonate), a sabatier reactor, and methane pyrolysis. Supplies could be reduced to 0.5 kg per day or less, mostly of dry food.

One Falcon Heavy launch could probably put 2 astronauts on the Mars surface alive (although they'd have to be landing near a proper habitat and supplies, and means of return would need to be sent separately, if it was to be a two-way trip). They could have something like a BEAM (the inflatable room being sent up tomorrow) in the trunk for living space, and nest in the supplies during solar storms.

>>7984745
>>7984811

jesus christ someone is asshurt

Has it occurred to you that NASA's priority, as a government agency, is to build something that just werks and that just continues to werk? Having the latest tech means nothing if it's not reliable. Technologies are made, their vulnerabilities understood, and are thus preferred over ones that are newer but are less understood. It's called risk management.

The goal here is to get to space. Orion and SLS are capable of that. Once Altair is built, moon missions will become possible and NASA can then focus on that.

>>7979767
>Which is why spacex is landing theirs in their dreans

>>7987269
Altair? I am so sorry Anon, but Constellation was dropped 7 years ago...

>>7987269
>Technologies are made, their vulnerabilities understood, and are thus preferred over ones that are newer but are less understood. It's called risk management.
That is 100% not what's going on with SLS/Orion. NASA engineers are pretty much unanimously against the design of SLS, which has been imposed on them by Congress.

>The goal here is to get to space. Orion and SLS are capable of that.
lol

Yeah, the goal is just to "get to space". The time and money it takes to gain the capability, the cost to use the capability, how frequently the capability is available, and what it lets you do once you get to space... that stuff's all irrelevant. It just has to "get to space" once, and then it's okay if you're all out of money and can't do it again.

>Once Altair is built, moon missions will become possible and NASA can then focus on that.
Altair was part of Constellation. You know, the thing that got cancelled. That cancelled thing with the two-launch architecture powerful enough to do a moon mission even with the extra mass of Orion.

File: 1460044842161.png (829KB, 1287x745px) Image search: [Google]

829KB, 1287x745px

T - 10h 24min

>>7987440
>hold hold hold!

File: 90kcDgA.jpg (131KB, 750x1004px) Image search: [Google]

131KB, 750x1004px

T - 1 h 17min

File: 1353241274659.gif (1MB, 350x219px) Image search: [Google]

1MB, 350x219px

>>7987440
>>7987473
>>7988403
Looks like they fuckin did it. ULA BTFO

What's the best number of engines to have on a stage core? Too many and reliability is affected. Too few and there's no redundancy.

Perhaps 5 as the Saturn had redundancy. Could you get away with 4?

IIRC the original plan after the Falcon 1 was to stick 5 merlins on the first stage of the next rocket, but then Elon decided they needed more powah.

>>7990336
One is generally a good number. To have any kind of real redundancy you need quite a few.

>>7990470
There have been several successful missions in history with one or more engine failures. They all would have failed on one engine