Anyone here think this is terrible idea?

In your expert opinion, what is the problem with it?

btw think about how grate the pad explosion is gonna be.

>>8407367
>what is the problem with it?
each engine adds to the probability of failure

it has a shitload of enignes

>>8408524

This engine configuration will work fine.

>>8408524
Each engine adds redundancy too. It should work fine.

>>8407363
literally 3 times more fuel than the N1

prepare for massive fucking explosions

>>8408524
Not if its a very reliable engine
And even the worst case failure doesn't harm other engines.

>>8408964
>if the engine blows up it wont harm the others

>>8408968
correct
Falcon 9 had an engine blow up, and it was fine

best case scenario we get to laugh at a big explosion
worst case scenario they colonize mars

don't really see why anyone would be against it

>>8408992
>don't really see why anyone would be against it
its payed with my hard earned taxpayer money

you communist piece of shit probably is accustomed to living of welfare, well i give the goverment much MUCH more than i receive, so i say, nopey nope, you dont have MY authorizatio nfor this

>>8409022
there are trillions being paid for poor people so that they can keep breeding

a few billions for space exploration is the last thing you should complain about you piece of shit

>>8409110
MASTER SUPERIOR PAYS FOR WHAT MASTER SUPERIOR WANTS

WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO OFFER TO MASTER SUPERIOR

>>8407363
>Anyone here think this is terrible idea?

Chemical fuels do not have enough energy density to impart enough delta-v with a reasonable mass fraction.

However, if you accept a delta-v of only 1km/sec, then chemical fuels work great, and can provide massive thrust.

This sort of design should be used to loft an Orion above the atmosphere. Period.

Then, the Orion can use it's external pulsed plasma drive (nuclear bombs) to actually go and exploit the untold riches of the Solar System.

The guys who build these will be the founders of the next great empire.

>>8409298
You have to accept that society is something we have as little control over as the laws of physics. Orion drives may be physically possible, but they're socially impossible, and are thus for all practical purposes in the same class as perpetual motion machines and antigravity.

Society changes, so one day Orion drives may become possible, but as it stands you might have an easier time planning to land a man on the surface of the Sun and return him safely to the Earth, and there is absolutely nothing you or I can do that could effectively direct this..

>>8409298
>plasma drive = nuclear bombs

you arent even wrong

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>>8407363
SpaceX rockets already use a fuckload of engines.

And yes, SpaceX is using some of the same technology developed that the Russians used in their N1 moon rocket. Except they're doing it crazier.

>>8407363
Holy crap
Who the hell thinks this is a good idea?

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>>8409298
>>The guys who build these will
start WWIII.

If country A starts to launch an orion drive into orbit, country B must immediately launch their nuclear missiles at country A. This is because country B cannot guarantee that country A isn't actually launching a preemptive nuclear strike by launching the 'orion drive rocket' at country B. If country A is launching a preemptive nuclear strike, country B should do as much damage to country A as fast as possible to prevent country A from launching more nukes. This means launching nukes at country A as soon as country A starts putting their 'orion drive' into orbit.

Oh you say that the 'pulse units' don't quite have the punch that regular nuclear bombs do? Well the 10 meter orion reference mission which would have sent an orion drive to mars had an estimated total yield of 0.5 - 1.2 megatons.

Oh and guess what? These aren't regular nukes, these are fucking nuclear shaped charges. That means less energy going into deforming the sky and more energy going into fucking shit up on the ground. 0.5 megatons of nuclear shape charges.

Sure, you could get country B to agree not to nuke country A, but that would take some very difficult political negotiation between the two countries. This is about as likely as world peace or hell freezing over

[1] http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/supplement/GA-5009vIII.pdf

>>8408988
N1 had several engines blow up. It was also fine-ish.

>>8407363
The real question is: why are we keeping up with this conventional rocket meme?

>>8409624

It's interesting to note the nuclear shape charges for the Orion project remain classified.

>>8407363
How many pumps turbines does has?

>>8409796
*have

>>8409796
2 per engine

You fuckin pathetisad fagwarts and your chemical rockets.

>>8409807
feels bad man

>>8409624

The Cold War is over and there are ways to get around that through diplomacy.

But it doesn't matter because even making an Orion drive would require modifying the test ban treaty and START I and II.

>>8408588
Redundancy is worthless in rockets. A failed engine increases the dead weight that needs to be hauled to orbital velocity and reduces the thrust at the same time. So you ain't gonna reach orbit or have to leave a weight margin, thereby worsening the most important metric of rocketry: price per kg to orbit.

>>8410236
Not true.

First of all, most launches don't absolutely max out the capacity, even if it would be useful to. Spare capacity is margin for fault. Things like premature engine shutdowns happen, and when they do, often the flight still goes to orbit thanks to the rocket being loaded under its theoretical maximum capacity.

Secondly, you don't need maximum thrust through the whole launch. You need a lot of thrust to get a fully-fuelled rocket off the ground, the engines get more efficient (provide more maximum thrust) as you get into thinner air, and the structure can only take so much acceleration, so you throttle engines down or shut some off, or you drop high-thrust strap-on boosters early in the flight.

Engine-out is a good capability. It does tend to imply that there's a gap between practical maximum advisable payload and theoretical absolute maximum payload, but that's true for any rocket.

>>8410236
It worked on CRS-1:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_CRS-1

In short: one of the engines broke during ascent, but the rocket still delivered its payload to the ISS.

>>8407363
Yes, it is troublesome. If these were moderate performance engines like Merlin, it might not be so dangerous. But these will be the highest pressure chambers ever made. If one ruptures, it is likely to take out all neighboring engines as well.

And that is ignoring the plumbing problem. The Falcon 9 already has a complicated "octopus manifold" to feed its nine engines. I want to see the proposed design for the feed lines to these 42 engines. Complicated plumbing was one of the contributing factors to the demise of the Soviet N1 moon rocket.

>>8410260
as much as I admire the CRS-1 flight, SpaceX kinda lucked out. This was still the tic-tac-toe configuration, and the engine that blew out was one of the corner engines. There would have been more damage if it had been the center or one of the side engines. They were also lucky that the explosion was near the end of first stage flight, instead of near takeoff like the Antares NK-33 failure.

>>8410260
You're proving my point here. This was only possible by leaving a weight margin. This was only possible because of a government contract. So, technically, yes, with government pork, you're right. And that's what SpaceX aims for.

>>8410303
Many of their private launches leave a weight margin, and in fact all of their launches with a planned landing attempt leave a large margin, because the rocket is programmed to spend its landing fuel on the launch if something like that happens.

>>8410303
All launches will be safe with mutliple engine outs and you can see from the design of the ITS that it'll have engine out LANDING capability as well.

Most important metric in rocketry is mass fraction, which an engine out doesn't change, just means they have to burn a little while longer.

>>8407363
what if one engine fails? will it be thrown out of balance or the gimbals be able to compensate?

>>8410800
they can throttle down and up other engines to balance the trust and make up for the lack of thrust.

>>8407363
I kind of liked SpaceX, but I knew this was unfeasible from the moment it was announced. The engines are probably the least troubling part.
>a private company building the largest and most innovative rocket ever
>launching it in only 4 years
>sending people to mars in less than a decade
>landing on the launch pad and being ready to launch again without inspection
>packing more than seven people in a spacecraft
>still needing several launches per mission
>all of the difficulties of sending people to mars
SpaceX's far less ambitious plans (Crew Dragon, Falcon Heavy) are already five years behind schedule. They'd be lucky to have ITS in action only five years behind schedule.

>>8409828

The world isn't ready for nuclear pulse engines or antimatter engines.

Never mind the lack of technology needed to build reliable antimatter engines.....

>>8410884
Falcon Heavy kept getting delayed for various reasons, it wasn't a priority, and it didn't make much sense until reuse was a reality which didn't happen until this year.

>>8409841
Have you paid attention to any developments in the Middle East since the Arab Spring?

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>>8407363

WE N1 NOW !

seriously cant believe not one person at that press conference bought up the problems the soviets had with clustering. It wasnt the engine - it was the plumbing.

>>8410260
Hell it worked on the saturn V. Apollo 13 had an engine failure on lift off and went on fine, the failure that ocurred after was unrelated

>>8411055
>. It wasnt the engine - it was the plumbing
it wasn't the plumbing it was the soviets

>>8411055
Soviets didn't properly test rockets as completed units.

SpaceX's latelest launch explosion was because they were testing something new. they're only real fault was doing it with the payload, to save money and lower price of the launch.

>>8411055
None of the four launch failures can be attributed entirely to the plumbing. Even the last attempt, where they had a water hammer break propellant lines when they shut down some of the first stage engines, could have continued to orbit if the command to stage had been given.

N1 was a program where they never fired an assembled first stage on the ground except during the launch attempts. The engines were individually unreliable, the provisions for roll control were inadequate (until flight 4 -- there was over a year between flight 3 and 4 to add an adequate roll-control system system), the electronic control system was a mess. The main designer died mid-project. They started nearly a decade behind the competing Saturn V, and had only a tiny fraction of the budget to work with (both of which are why they couldn't build a large engine).

In other words, the many engines of the N1 were a symptom of an out-of-control project, not the cause of its failure. It wasn't done out of preference, but out of desperation.

The ITS is anything but a desperate project. The small engines were chosen to maximize thrust-to-weight ratio, after the initial plan was to develop a very large engine. The system is intended to be reusable, and will be extensively simulated and ground-tested.

>>8411101

It wasn't the Soviets, it was the lack of funding....


Naw just kidding it was the Soviets

>filthy fucking communists

>>8411188

>wasn't attributed entirely to plumbing

70% of the failures with each of the four launches dealt with fuel plumbing issues. The other 30% of the problem was the woefully inadequate computer they installed that regulated the engine burn during flight.

>it used vacuum tubes

Saturn V used solid state transistor technology, thanks to Honeywell

>>8411198
>70% of the failures with each of the four launches dealt with fuel plumbing issues. The other 30% of the problem was the woefully inadequate computer they installed that regulated the engine burn during flight.
Yeah, man. Engines blowing up, electrical faults, and an uncontrolled roll due to physically inadequate roll control are totally either the fault of plumbing or the computer.

>>8411209

Fine. All of it were tied to incompetent mechanics, communist red tape, asshole politicians in Moscow, Korolev croaking and a lack of a real desire to build the dildo-like rocket in the first place.

Oh and a lack of a testing facility....funding....etc.

Guess the Soviets should have gotten to Von Braun first. It's not like they had a head start. Guess we should blame the Nazis too for invading.

>Fucking Hitler his Lebenstraum policies

>>8408524
Higher probability of failure, yes.
Probability of that failure causing catastrophic failure: much much lower than a three or four engine configuration

>>8409298
>private sector nuclear bombs
Yeah, lets not do this

>>8409609
rocket scientists

>>8412456

Its headed that way bucko.

do the math
it could loose one engine every 25 seconds and still make it to orbit, I believe

>>8412456
read up on op. plowshare

we were going to blast open the panama canal so it wouldn't require locks

It would have been amazing. a straight river from sea to sea.

But some scientists complained about the fallout. With modern nukes, civil engineering projects can be much safer. Heck, we already have to warn the Russians when we do large blasts at mines because they are about as big as a small nuke. (it would be more efficient to just use nukes, thats the point)

the Russians also once put out a well fire with a nuke

>>8409570
>nuclear bombs don't turn to plasma when they explode

>>8409624
>Oh and guess what? These aren't regular nukes, these are fucking nuclear shaped charges. That means less energy going into deforming the sky and more energy going into fucking shit up on the ground. 0.5 megatons of nuclear shape charges.
But BECAUSE they're shaped charges, the affected area at ~50 meter range is only a 10 meter radius. And they have to be lined up with the target to do any direct damage.

>>8409640
There aren't really any better alternatives. We do have ion engines for space-only applications, they're efficient, but too weak for surface-to-orbit. Nuclear thermal rockets aren't sufficiently developed, there's concerns about accidents, and they're largely incompatible with staging (so a NTR would only be worthwhile if it could deliver adequate performance in a single stage). And Orion drives have obvious political issues.

>>8413189
>. With modern nukes, civil engineering projects can be much safer. Heck, we already have to warn the Russians when we do large blasts at mines because they are about as big as a small nuke. (it would be more efficient to just use nukes, thats the point)
Conventional explosives don't produce radioactive fallout.

>>8413235
Fallout isn't released when the nukes are detonated under ground. Part of plowshare was seeing how deep the nuke needs to be underground to prevent fallout release while still producing a sizable excavation.

>>8413155
>Its headed that way bucko.
"It" is really, really not headed toward private ownership of nuclear explosives.

>>8413235
If you want to talk about nuclear pulse propulsion, make a thread for it, where you can sit by yourself while it sinks to page 10 and not bother all the rest of us who want to talk about space stuff without interacting with you.

I remember back when Falcon9 was starting that people said that it is idiotic to bundle up 9 engines instead of single more powerfull one like DeltaIV Ariane and Atlas are doing.
After all this time it was not the engines causing problems for spacex but QC and the damn helium system.

>>8413989

I'm only joking.

No one would allow for any private entity to own or possess nuclear pits or bombs (outside of government contractors like Pantex. And even then they are bound by tight controls---and all they do is dismantle bombs).

THIS of course totally ignores rogue companies, religious fanatics and terrorists, and third world nations seeking to "align" themselves alongside nations who do possess nuclear weapons.