Boeing CEO says they will beat Musk to Mars

>corporate space race

just goes to show you that the history of the future will be written by non state actors.
how tragic.

he's referring to the SLS huh?
This is like some lie they are pushing, that the SLS is a "mars rocket"

>>8392298
>SLS
Who wants to be stuck in an oversized apollo capsule for the 3 month trip to mars?

At least Musk is making his Mars ship BIG.

>>8392304
I think they're planning on docking Orion to a habitat for those long flights. Deep Space Habitat is what they're calling it

>>8392260
Couldn't you find a less worthless article?

It doesn't provide a link to the conference or provide much in the way of actual quotes, but does a lot of putting statements of fact next to quotes, so it's not clear whether they're part of what was said or not.

Here's a slightly better one:
http://www.investors.com/news/boeing-sees-getting-to-mars-first-orbiting-space-hotels-factories/

This isn't a statement of anything new that Boeing is doing. Rather, they're just saying, "SpaceX will fail, and as a major contractor we'll be heavily involved in the conventional NASA effort that we like to suggest will get there sometime after everybody currently important at NASA and Boeing retires."

Here's their "vision":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mh4URPtpEYY

Not a plan. Not a commitment. Not something Boeing's going to do on its own initiative or with its own money. No timeline. Just a vague description of how it could happen, hypothetically, phrased as if it were a firm plan.

Like this shit: "The first phase of going to Mars will occur at the International Space Station, where we'll learn about long-duration human spaceflight." While Boeing was a contractor for parts of the ISS, the ISS isn't something Boeing took initiative in doing, and they're not the ones learning about long-duration human spaceflight there. Nor is it necessary at this point to learn more about long-duration human spaceflight, especially in the limited radiation environment of LEO, before going to Mars.

>>8392310
>I think they're planning on docking Orion to a habitat for those long flights.
No they're not. Orion has nothing to do with going to Mars. SLS has nothing to do with going to Mars.

They just like to imply that there's some vague connection to Mars, and draw sketches of ridiculous transit habs with Orion docked to them.

Because Mars would be a neat place to go, and Orion and SLS are what they're doing. That's the whole logic between the suggested SLS/Orion connection to Mars. We're doing X now, we want to accomplish Y in the future, therefore X will lead to Y.

Why would the people of 2040 want a 2010s capsule based on 1960s technology?

>>8392260
He better get his lobbyists to DC and have them start sucking major dick because the only way Boeing is going is if NASA goes and gives Boeing a nice cushy contract.

>>8392347
>Why would the people of 2040 want a 2010s capsule based on 1960s technology?
Because it's probably going to be the only NASA crew vehicle in 2040. The Russians are still using Soyuz, I see little reason why the US won't try and use Orion for at least a couple of decades.

They're both wrong. The first person on Mars will arrive there riding my dick.

>>8392402
>The Russians are still using Soyuz
They're developing a replacement now. They only used it this long because they couldn't afford to develop something better.

>Because it's probably going to be the only NASA crew vehicle in 2040.
This pessimistic about Commercial Crew? It's not like NASA actually builds vehicles themselves. Orion's built by a contractor, just like Dragon.

>I see little reason why the US won't try and use Orion for at least a couple of decades.
I see big reason: Orion's shit. It's primitive, it's heavy, It's not designed to handle interplanetary re-entry, it depends on an external service module, it's not going to fly often enough to be thoroughly tested.

On a Mars mission, the only use for a thing like Orion would be as an atmospheric entry vehicle on the return to Earth, and it's way more mass than is necessary for that, because it's designed for week-long trips to the moon and back. A small, light capsule like Dragon is far more suitable. Since Dragon can also serve as an atmospheric entry and landing vehicle at Mars (and is planned to be tested in this role within the next couple of years), this simplifies the mission equipment.

If Falcon Heavy and Dragon 2 perform as advertised, there's no reason at all to have SLS and Orion. SLS isn't big enough for interesting single-launch missions, and won't support a flight rate allowing multi-launch missions. Orion's only advantage over Dragon 2 is more internal volume, and internal volume is very easy to add with a module that docks with the capsule after launch (as was done in the Apollo missions).

>>8392464
>They're developing a replacement now. They only used it this long because they couldn't afford to develop something better.
They've tried developing replacements before. I don't think the current proposal is likely to get any farther than prior ones.

>This pessimistic about Commercial Crew? It's not like NASA actually builds vehicles themselves. Orion's built by a contractor, just like Dragon.
While I think Commercial Crew will work, I don't see congress letting NASA ditch Orion for big missions.

As for your points about Orion. You aren't entirely wrong. Orion isn't all that great but we're going to be stuck with it.

Regarding SLS and Falcon Heavy though, if (And I will admit this may be a big if) everything goes right with SLS it will be able to launch more at once than a Falcon Heavy. And while I doubt it will match the price, it's not like congress will give NASA the choice. As for interesting missions, I think that's a matter of opinion. There are a few decent proposals out there. I think the Skylab II proposal has potential(Although I doubt it will ever happen) and while it's going to be inefficient for the upcoming Europa Mission (Congress literally passed a law saying the mission has to use SLS), that probe is going to get it there years faster than it otherwise would.

>>8392480
Clipper is going to be a big deal.

As a scientist, I am extremely interested to see the upcoming ITS used as a launch vehicle for planetary missions. I.E. a viable orbiter to outer objects like Eris, A large Gallilean orbiter like JIMO, maybe with a light weight extra solar probe that get's a shit load of velocity from the huge vehicle

>>8392333
>muh cislunar habitat
>muh international partnership

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ive been to mars there's nothing

>>8392304

Atleast NASA plans for their rocket not exploding on the pad.

GET IN HERE
E
T

I
N

H
E
R
E

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqUIX3Z4r3k

>>8392929
find another planet dr manhattan

I bet they will cheat and designate a cuckold to send on a 1 way trip.

>>8392942

VENUS CLOUD CITIES OR BUST

>>8392480
>if (And I will admit this may be a big if) everything goes right with SLS it will be able to launch more at once than a Falcon Heavy. And while I doubt it will match the price, it's not like congress will give NASA the choice.
SLS/Orion is a four-launch program involving three test launches.

- Before 2020, they hoped to do an unmanned test flight of the partial SLS (with a one-off jerry-rigged upper stage adapted from the Delta IV design) with a partial Orion.
- Then around 2022-2024 (congressionally mandated to fly before 2022, but they've failed to meet deadline before), they'll do a working test flight with a science payload that could have gone on an Atlas V or Delta IV Heavy (and likely will be designed to be, if SLS doesn't pan out).
- Some time after that, they'll do a manned test flight to a high lunar orbit, in the first flight of a complete Orion with humans in it (watch for this as the likely cancellation point, due to the obvious irresponsibility of sending such an untested vehicle out so far without trying things out in LEO first).
- Finally, certainly no sooner than 2026, they'll go to the nowhere that is the retroactive mission of this rocket to nowhere: a brief manned rendezvous with a small piece of asteroid captured by a robotic mission and brought to high lunar orbit (although it would be far simpler and cheaper to robotically bring it down to LEO, even directly to a space station).

If the program isn't cancelled earlier, it certainly will be cancelled after that, because then they'll have run out of old shuttle engines (they are literally depending on engines taken off of the retired space shuttles), and they'll be back in development hell with new, redesigned ones.

In any case, for the next ten years, SLS and Orion won't be available for anything else. Falcon Heavy and Crew Dragon, on the other hand, should each fly for the first time next year, and be routinely launching shortly thereafter, probably over ten times per year.

>>8392266
What is wrong with that?

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>>8392935
this has gone too far

DAILY REMINDER that NASA has neither an actual schedule, nor a cost estimate, for SLS Block II, never mind ANYTHING related to an actual Mars mission spacecraft.

>>8392347

SLS is actually capable of putting things like crew habitats, interplantary transfer stages, and landers into orbit. So far SpaceX cannot, ITS is not likely to be a thing for at least another decade.

>Why would the people of 2040 want a 2010s capsule based on 1960s technology?

Because it works. Same reason why the ITS uses 60s era Soviet methodology.

>>8393345

NASA has a schedule for Block I though, and two planned missions (EM-1 and EM-2) which dovetail nicely into a manned moon landing. Useful if NASA wants to train Astronauts for an interplanetary flyby or Martian landing.

>>8393511
>SLS is actually capable putting things like crew habitats, interplantary transfer stages, and landers into orbit. So far SpaceX cannot
So far, SpaceX is actually capable of putting stuff in orbit (and beyond) and SLS is years from doing so.

>ITS is not likely to be a thing for at least another decade.
The very-low-launch-rate SLS will be occupied with test flights for at least another decade. They have a grand total of four flights scheduled up to 2026.

ITS is pretty far along in its development. They're planning to start flight tests in 2018, and an expendable version of the upper stage, flying as an SSTO, is estimated to be capable of taking about 70 tons to LEO, same as SLS.

Anyway, SLS's per-launch capabilities are much more comparable to Falcon Heavy's than ITS's. SLS is about three times as capable as expendable Falcon 9 (not Heavy). In a single launch, ITS is about 8 times as capable as SLS. With in-orbit refuelling, ITS is about a 50 times as capable as SLS per expended upper stage. When it comes to landing stuff on Mars or the moon, the efficiency of also using the upper stage as a lander and a return vehicle puts ITS at least 100 times more capable at landing and returning payloads than SLS with a separate lander.

>>8392260
>corporate space race

More like government funded private enterprises

>>8393512
>two planned missions (EM-1 and EM-2) which dovetail nicely into a manned moon landing
What bullshit is this? What are you even trying to imply with this "dovetail nicely"?

SLS is about half the rocket Saturn V was, while Orion is about twice the mass of the Apollo capsule. They can't do a moon landing. They can go to a high lunar orbit and back. That's it, and that's all they're planning to do. That's at least ten years in the future and they have no clear plan beyond that. They can't go to low lunar orbit and back, let alone to the moon surface, with this launch vehicle and this capsule.

SLS/Orion is the shattered remnants of the failed Constellation LEO/moon program, continued for the sake of pork alone. Constellation was primarily intended as a shuttle successor. Ares I and Orion were both meant to be reusable, and much cheaper to operate than the shuttle. Ares V was expendable, but much more capable than either SLS or Saturn V, while being more freely usable and less risk-averse because it wasn't going to carry crew, who would rendezvous with the Ares-V-launched mission package in Orion, after being launched on Ares I.

Don't look for either sanity or usefulness in SLS/Orion. It's pure corruption.

>>8393594

The thing about spaceflight: Nothing ever works as advertised. For further information, see literally any vehicle ever.

Elon overhyped everything he does, but ITS is literally the most promises he has made for a single vehicle I have ever seen:

- It will be the biggest and most capable rocket in history, and additionally be able to RTLS and be fully reused, including the upper stage. Nevermind that nobody has done this. Even SpaceX themselves shelved the idea of doing upper stage reusability for the Falcon 9 for the time being, as it wasn't profitable.

- It will use 42 Raptor engines clustered. I'm interested to see how this is solved, and I'm not completely against this idea. Though, the Russians did this with the N1, and I think every launch of that one failed as a result of the engines. Then again, that is nearly half a century ago, so it could work now.

- The schedule also took Elon time to the max: People on Mars within a century, yet no crewed vehicle that can go beyond LEO, no booster, no proposed budget. They will apartent go from Red Dragon to a full colony in, what, 15-20 years? Seems highly unlikely, as it is still getting funded by NASA, who have spent the last decade in Limbo, developing the never-to-be launched SLS.

- In-orbit refuelling: Never been done afaik, and most likely prone to something going wrong and busting the program.

I'm very pro-SpaceX when it comes to their short-term LEO plans. They proved that the Falcon 9 works (when it doesn't RUD), and that reusability can be done properly. But all their Mars plans are just to far out, and reminds me more of the Mars One that it does of an actually structured program. I'm exited to see what comes of it, but I barely have any home for them pulling through.

>>8393620
>Nevermind that nobody has done this.
That's the point of doing it. What kind of garbage has the space industry become when "nobody has done it" is treated as an argument that "nobody can do it".

Nobody had propulsively landed a first stage before. They said they were going to do it, then they did it.

The size isn't unreasonable. It's just a few times bigger than Saturn V, which was built with 1960s materials. The engine design isn't unreasonable: they've demonstrated it on the test stand, and the chamber pressure's only about 20% higher than the previous record-holder, also achieved with 1960s tech. Flyback has been demonstrated. Propulsive landing has been demonstrated, and is working well after just a few tries. Their heat shield material for the upper stage has been demonstrated.

There's nothing about this that suggests it can't be done. Just a terrible, corrupt industry full of embezzlers and space cadets that went backward after the 60s.

>Even SpaceX themselves shelved the idea of doing upper stage reusability for the Falcon 9 for the time being, as it wasn't profitable.
No, they shelved upper stage reusability for the Falcon 9 family because that effort could be put into the far superior ITS instead. If they weren't doing ITS, they'd be doing a reusable Falcon Heavy upper stage.

You're phrasing it as if they gave up, when they actually increased their ambition.

I stopped reading there, because I can tell this isn't going to get any better.

>>8393620
>- In-orbit refuelling: Never been done afaik, and most likely prone to something going wrong and busting the program.
What is supposed to be difficult about fuel transfer? They dock with each other, and transfer fuel using onboard pumps..
Also need to be able to transfer cargo & people.

If something needs to be tested, then no doubt they'll send up 2 dragons to LEO & test it, or to the ISS.

>I'm interested to see how this is solved
Do you see how many engines the Soyuz uses? So many things that were hard problems in the 60's are non-issues now with modern computer modelling.

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>>8393760
all they need to do is hold and right click the different tanks. shouldn't be too risky.

>>8393620
Thing with the N1 was that it had a major vibration problem while the engines were running and some complex plumbing with all those engines.

Also a lack of funding and their russian version of Von Braun died in 1966

>>8393780
The fuel transfer really is a non-issue with the other features of this design. Once they're docked, they can just use RCS thrusters to settle the fuel, and then the pressurization/liquefaction system can be used to push it from the tanker to the ship by the pressure difference.

They might improve on that, removing the need for the settling thrust and thereby saving a little propellant with a more clever system (such as by boiling out the propellant from one and recondensing it in the other -- faster and easier than it sounds since they're using subcooled propellant, and can store up some extra coldness in advance of the transfer operation), but it's clear that they have a variety of ways to accomplish the task.

Besides, they can do the final development and testing in orbit. They don't have to work it all out in advance. They'll have cheap and frequent access to orbit when they need the prop transfer.

>>8393788
N1 wasn't as bad as people say. Due to funding constraints, they had a policy of testing by flying, with an expectation of failures. They had never fired their engines all together before their first launch attempt.

They only had four tests, and identified issues to correct with each one. The second test was the only really bad one, since it destroyed the pad, delaying the program by a year and a half. Otherwise, things were more or less going as intended.

By the final test before cancellation, the first stage nearly worked, and only blew up due to a hydrostatic shock of abruptly shutting a valve to shut down some of the engines and reduce thrust. A fifth attempt probably would have worked.

>>8392935
Nasa has literally killed infinitely more people than spacex. Once that ceases to be true you can come sit at the big boys table of engineers

>>8393840
you seem to be up to date on your russian lunar rockets

tell me anon, if made to work, would the N1 have had any significant advantage as a design over the Saturn V?

>>8393275
This desu. Money should always be a bigger motivation than >muh patriotism

>>8393652
There's more fanboy horseshit in this post than in a compost field.

>>8392266
Why would you want the state to continue to monopolize space? No government ever has been able to consistently do anything particularly well for extended periods of time – they always have bright spots where they are amazing and then they suck for decades or centuries. Space is no exception, and government space has been in its "suck" phase for a long time now.

Companies eventually start sucking too, but you know what happens when companies suck? They lose their business to competition that's better than they are and die.

>>8396770
>you know what happens when companies suck? They lose their business to competition that's better than they are and die.

yeah sure, all multibillon monopolies still exist not because their dishonest tactics that annihilate the competition, its because they are better at what they do...

sure

>>8393788
Also the Soviets never test fired, test fueld, ,etc their rockets.

the N1 parts might have been testsed as individual pieces, yet not as a whole.

>>8392260
Bitch please. I have almost finished my electric jet airline rocket powerceiling shuttlemobile. I will beat the pants off both of them.

>>8395574
>if made to work, would the N1 have had any significant advantage as a design over the Saturn V?
In its actual form, lower cost, possibly. It certainly wouldn't have lifted more. Despite its greater mass, it only had about half the payload capacity to trans-lunar insertion.

Its original concept involved a nuclear upper stage. In that configuration, it might have done more than Saturn V. However, it might have only about equalled it. The Russians were looking at nuclear rocket engines with room-temperature alcohol/ammonia propellant, with simpler handling and higher density, but lower specific impulse.

I think Proton (originally a moon rocket, though it was highly practical and is still in use) was the better program. It could do over 20 tons to LEO, and was based on storable fuel, making it simpler to arrange flights in rapid succession to assemble a multi-launch mission. If the Soviets hadn't divided their efforts, but threw it all behind Proton, they might have put up a good fight.

The Americans won, in some ways, largely by coincidence. They developed the huge F1 first-stage rocket engine, which made the simple 5-engine Saturn V booster possible, because they thought they might have to build some very large ICBMs to throw big, heavy H-bombs. When they decided to go to the moon, that was just sitting around waiting for them on the shelf. The problems of handling liquid hydrogen and burning them first in jet engines, then in rocket engines were also initially handled in pursuit of a better spy plane and ICBM, and this technology was also just laying around when they decided to go to the moon.

The Soviets had no big engines, and no hydrogen technology, when Kennedy issued his challenge, putting them at a severe disadvantage.

>>8396970
>The Soviets had no big engines, and no hydrogen technology, when Kennedy issued his challenge, putting them at a severe disadvantage.


>>8396970
>If the Soviets hadn't divided their efforts, but threw it all behind Proton, they might have put up a good fight.


but a soviet moonshot would have implied building a craft in earth orbit with the proven soyuz launcher instead of a huge ass unstable rocket, right?

>>8397414
>but a soviet moonshot would have implied building a craft in earth orbit with the proven soyuz launcher instead of a huge ass unstable rocket, right?
Soyuz, like Proton, was new. Both were derived from ballistic missile programs.

N1 was specifically for moon landings.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LK_(spacecraft)

The Soyuz rocket was derived from the R-7 liquid-oxygen ballistic missile:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sputnik_(rocket) 1957 initially 500 kg to LEO
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vostok_(rocket_family) 1960 about 4 tonnes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voskhod_(rocket) 1963 about 6 tonnes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_(rocket) 1966 about 6 tonnes

Soyuz was not really "proven" in those days. It had its own disasters, including a pad explosion that killed ground crew.

Proton was derived from Universal Rocket storable propellant ballistic missile family, and first flew in 1965, a year before Soyuz. The (suborbital) smallest member of the line was also eventually developed into an orbital launch vehicle, now known as Rokot. The UR-100 test program was secret, so it's not clear when the first launch was, although it was no later than 1965.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Rocket
http://www.friends-partners.org/partners/mwade/lvfam/ur.htm

Universal Rocket was designed to be very scalable. A version (UR-700) was proposed that would have had single-launch Saturn V performance to trans-lunar insertion, so the Soviets wouldn't need to do a downsized, minimalistic launch, as was planned from N1, but its development didn't get funded.

Instead, the Proton branch of the Soviet lunar program focused on a manned lunar flyby:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_7K-L1

Like the landing program, political support collapsed when the Americans achieved the goal first.

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>>8392935
Yeah, their rockets explode in the air instead, letting the crew fall to their death with the cabin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Challenger_disaster#Cause_and_time_of_death

>>8396847
What multi-billion monopolies use which dishonest tactics?

>>8393620
Stumbled across this when searching for news about Mars One today.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4BvdyPjbFs

>>8397903

all of them desu

>>8397707
>A version (UR-700) was proposed that would have had single-launch Saturn V performance to trans-lunar insertion,

that thing was a monstruosity it wouldnt have worked in a million years, it was like 50 boosters straped together. It really looked like it was made in KSP

>>8398753
In the case of multi-billion dollar monopolies stamping out competition, often the root cause is corrupt government involvement, such as when politicians pass ridiculous laws that make it harder to compete in a certain field.

No, Boeing won't beat Musk. Boeing just worked out a deal with Qatar airlines, so manufacturing resources will shift to that, adding at least 3 years to however far behind Musk they already are.

>>8398753
I'm just asking cause there are many examples of multi-billion dollar companies being outcompeted, and going out of business, or at least becoming somewhat irrelevant (Nokia, Yahoo, etc), so I thought you have a concrete example.

>>8399017
Boeing has no plans for actually doing reuse
so obv they can't compete

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>>8399013
>it was like 50 boosters straped together.
It was basically just 9 Proton-size boosters stuck together with one engine each, and a Proton on top. Not any worse than the Saturn I design (pic related) or Soyuz.

Soyuz sheds 4 strap-on boosters on the way up. UR-700 would have shed 6. Big fucking deal. The center core was made up of a cluster of three similar boosters. Saturn I was a cluster of one Jupiter rocket body surrounded by eight Redstone bodies, with eight engines on the bottom.

A bundle of cylinders is a practical and underrated design for a large rocket. It means you don't have to design a special new process for large-diameter fuel tanks, and also has structural advantages.

They developed a special engine for it: the RD-270. A full-flow staged combustion engine that's a major inspiration to SpaceX's Raptor engine. Very powerful, very efficient.

>>8395563
>Nasa has literally killed infinitely more people than spacex.
Astronauts sent to space by NASA: 811
Astronauts sent to space by spacex: 0
Really makes you think.

>>8399757
Basically, unlike N1, UR-700 was in no way functionally inferior to, or significantly more complicated or fault-prone than, Saturn V. They had a direct-to-moon plan, with no rendezvous, taking the re-entry capsule right down to the moon's surface.

It had more commonality with other, more frequently-launched vehicles, and more commonality between stages, which all used the same storable hypergolic propellants, from the strap-on boosters to the return stage that would fly the cosmonauts from the moon surface back to Earth.

>>8399794
flight certification for the manned Dragon2 capsule is being stretched out for unknown reasons. probably ULA working in the background because muh SLS capsule.

>>8392260
Daily reminder that any humans leaving the magnetosphere will accumulate too much brain damage to be useful when they arrive at their destination, and there is as yet, no feasible way to prevent this.

Sorry, it ain't gonna be humans going to Mars, and we won't be going anywhere for a very long time. We'll need to send non-biological machines.

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>>8392260
>Corporate Space Race

GOD DAMN, WHAT A TIME TO BE ALIVE!

>>8393598
Corporations run the governments, anon.

>>8399885
>election season rolls around
>suddenly what I've been telling people for years appears to be a commonplace understanding
Fuck all of you. My heuristics pegged how this shit worked long before I had such a mountain of hard confirmation. You had no excuse to not understand.

>>8399890
I've been saying this since the 1970s and so has most everyone. Get in line, kid.

>>8399878
>flight certification for the manned Dragon2 capsule is being stretched out for unknown reasons
NASA safety paralysis. It's not just affecting Crew Dragon, It's affecting CTS-100 and it's also why the Orion project is such a mess.

It's not about real safety, it's about hundreds of bureaucrats all trying to cover their own asses so they can't be blamed if something does happen.

But also SpaceX, when it comes down to it, is just really far behind on its launches. To have a crew vehicle ready would have little meaning when they still have a backlog of like 70 unmanned customer flights, and have launched under 30 times in total.

What they really need is a mature rocket to set their crew vehicle on top of, with enough room in their schedule to do development flights. This isn't the 1960s. They're competing with Soyuz. They need to fly a few times before they put people in it.

At their current launch rate, taking into account their ISS cargo resupply obligations, they'd have to dedicate an entire year of launches to Dragon only, serving no commercial customers, before they could do an ISS crew rotation mission. Obviously, they can't do that, so Crew Dragon's waiting on a higher launch rate.

There's nobody holding SpaceX up more than SpaceX.

>>8399890
>>8399885
It's not nearly as simple as "corporations run the government".

The voters are disorganized idiots, whose power is limited only by that fact. The political parties are only good at winning elections. Entrenched bureaucracy serves itself above all else. Agencies who necessarily work in secret often pursue secret agendas. Academia and the media distort and manipulate to control. The professions seek to expand their influence and foster dependency. Investors, including retirement savers and cozy retirees, demand returns and care little where they come from. Finance tries to play everyone against everyone else and grab what they can.

Power is grabbed and lost all over the place. It's a big muddle.

>>8392266
2bh I look at it as similar to how Jamestown and certain other colonies were founded except with less American Indians where the Virginia Company funded and placed the colony. Eventually the nations will take over the space colony, probably once terraforming works.

I see the potential for a lot of parallels to be drawn between the colonization of space and the colonization of the new world.

>>8399917
Well so far putting people in the dragons would have been fine for the CRS missions.
The 2 failures would have been survived by a manned capsule.

If only they didn't have to do this massive downtime due to a failure...

>>8397903
There's Microsoft...

>>8399999
Nice quints.

It's not just the downtime, though. Once a month, as long as nothing goes wrong, is naturally going to end up being considerably less than once a month in practice.

They need to get it up to once a week, as long as nothing goes wrong, and ready to restart launches quickly with test flights not carrying a costly payload.

While they've talked about not depending on booster reuse for the price they've set, it's at best a half-truth. Similarly, when they talked about the 30% discount, this was also deceptive.

They've committed operationally to booster reuse. They have not built factory capacity or trained staff to meet their obligations without it. And they intended all along to perform the launches they've contracted on reusable boosters, with only a nominal discount (back down to their original expendable prices, since there have been a few price increases over the years), leaving them a huge profit margin on flights that only consume an upper stage.

Customers who don't take the 10% discount and let their payload ride on a previously-flown booster will find their schedule pushed back another year or two.

SpaceX is getting into the satellite business themselves. They're using their current customers as a stepping stone to get into a position to compete with them from a position of overwhelming advantage, having the only launch operation which can launch every week for under $10 million per shot, and using it for their own mass-produced satellites.

>>8399917
>>8400061
There is also the problem of no space suits.

NASA doesn't have any suits. All we have is what the Russians have and the space walk suits already on the ISS.

Musk needs to give a presentation on the SpaceX suit.

>>8399882
DAILY REMINDER.

>>8399948
>It's not nearly as simple as "corporations run the government".
Of course there's a bit more depth and complexity in practice, but the shorthand gets it across well enough.

Divide and conquer tactics, along with propaganda campaigns built on crowd psychology, covers most of the rest. Too much to bother communicating.

>>8392333
This

The Boeing CEO isn't saying they're going to race SpaceX, he's saying SpaceX will fail and the race hasn't even started yet.

You got click baited. And then you baited all the tards on this board. Congrats.

>>8399948
>It's not nearly as simple as "corporations run the government".

No shit, you massive autist.

>>8393594

>The very-low-launch-rate SLS will be occupied with test flights for at least another decade. They have a grand total of four flights scheduled up to 2026.

And two of those flights, EM-1 and EM-2, will demonstrate it's ability to do Moon missions. All NASA needs at that point is a lander and they can then begin building a base on the moon.

>ITS is pretty far along in its development. They're planning to start flight tests in 2018, and an expendable version of the upper stage, flying as an SSTO, is estimated to be capable of taking about 70 tons to LEO, same as SLS.

an SSTO? Smells like bullshit.

>>8399882
I welcome the AI apocalypse

>>8401068
>And two of those flights, EM-1 and EM-2, will demonstrate it's ability to do Moon missions.
They will only be going to a high lunar orbit. They can't go to a low lunar orbit.

>All NASA needs at that point is a lander and they can then begin building a base on the moon.
There is no capacity on SLS to send Orion and a lander at the same time. It took Saturn V to send the Apollo capsule and a lander. Orion is twice the mass of the Apollo capsule, while SLS has half the capacity as Saturn V.

>an SSTO? Smells like bullshit.
Expendable SSTOs aren't all that hard. Various booster stages are capable, in theory, of going to orbit with a small payload. What they are is inefficient. Three stages, with the bottom two working in parallel (strap-on boosters), is generally considered optimal for mass efficiency.

ITS is designed with remarkable mass ratios. Raptor's supposed to be the rocket engine with by far the highest thrust-to-weight ratio, while also having very respectable specific impulse (especially at sea level, due to the high chamber pressure), and density impulse far superior to any hydrogen-fuelled rocket (which keeps the size of the tanks down). The rocket structure is also unprecedentedly lightweight, with the first composite propellant tanks (which are also the rocket's main body) on an orbital vehicle.

This is exactly what you need for a good SSTO. What you're doing when you stage is getting rid of engine and tank mass. If you just don't have much in the first place, then there's no need to stage. However, to make it reusable will take extra mass, such as heat shielding and landing propellant, so it's less likely that the reusable version could be an SSTO worth launching.

Alternatively, they could put a single-Raptor upper stage on top of a suborbital "spaceship" and have a much more conventionally-sized rocket to replace Falcon 9/Heavy. If they develop the reusable Falcon Heavy upper stage, it could be the same thing.

>>8392266
And at the end of the day, I guarantee you that whatever country the corporation is HQ'd in will forever be a part of the process. So nations will still have a big role in it all I'd say.

Also, checked.