Why does SpaceX have a massive rabid fanbase?

>>8425909
can someone put that picture to scale with BO's new glenn and some of the more known rockets?

>>8425909
>They can't even get a rocket into orbit without it exploding
It looks like there's been 28 Falcon 9 launches and two of them have failed?

>>8425909
What >>8426078 said

Every space program and company has had its explosions. And accidents are bound to happen when you push for new things

That's the reason people love SpaceX though, it's because they're pushing for new innovative tech and what they've developed already is groundbreaking.

Personally though, I am skeptical that they'll develop the mars colonial transporter in the next 5 years, but I would love to be proven wrong

But people love SpaceX because they're pushing for new innovative tech. SpaceX fanboys don't just fap to SpaceX, they fap to Blue Origin too usually

What has ULA done that's new and innovative latley?

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>>8426043
Here you go

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>>8425909
They have a really good PR department.

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>>8426043
Not 100% accurate.

>>8426161
>dat sweet-ass Nova
I still get kinda angry reading about the cut-backs after Apollo

>>8426222

Nova would have worked. But Congress wouldn't want anything to do with it any other expensive programs following the Apollo mission

>>8426121
>resorting to /vp/ may-mays
i don't if Red Bull is even this pathetic

are we forgetting the Russians who did just fine with their rockets until funding ran out, they sent rockets up without people so they could explode and find problems. having a problem and finding it is better than having one and not finding it until there are people on board.

Is the "fucktardedly huge rocket" concept even viable past a certain scale?

I always just assumed it was some limitation of materials or fuel reactions that you couldn't build a rocket bigger than the Saturn V, because for some odd reason every space agency on Earth is planning to build a rocket the approximate same size as the Saturn V but SpaceX are the only people anywhere to look at that design and go "UGH, THICCER"

>>8426231
Nova, nuclear upper stages, mars-missions...so much lost

what happens to the best of my knowledge is that the money spent (shit ton) and lives risked (the more the bigger it is) is increased past the point where it is justified to have such a large rocket although efficient increases.

>>8426256
>Is the "fucktardedly huge rocket" concept even viable past a certain scale?

Eventually, yes, but this is not it. Also, he called it "Big Fucking Rocket [BFR]". The current official name is "Interplanetary Transport Network." "ITS launch vehicle" "ITS tanker" "ITS Booster"

>>8425909
The "Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species" crap is a bit much. They've never had a manned mission, never left LEO, are only a rocket company, know nothing of biology, ecosystems and terraforming in general. They're okay though, but the cult around them is so toxic and corrosive.

Curious to see what would happen with another 2008 downturn in the economy. Wonder if they would survive

>>8426291
>never had a manned mission
They're chomping at the bit to start - NASA has already contracted them to conduct six manned missions to the ISS beginning in December of 2017

>never left LEO
A Falcon 9 reached GTO for the first time back in December of 2013 and they've been back there 10 times since then. They've also put one rocket all the way out at L1.

>know nothing of biology, ecosystems and terraforming in general
They've been pretty clear about "That's somebody else's problem lel"

>>8426291
They can survive fine with those fat, juicy NASA and DOD contracts.

They even got $33.6 million in pure development funds for Raptor from the USAF. DOD wants ITS.

I wouldn't be even slightly surprised if the Falcon Heavy only flew a couple of times with the Falcon 9 upper stage before it switched to a mini-ITS upper stage with a larger-diameter fairing, and then the Falcon Heavy booster was replaced with a flyback booster version of the ITS "spaceship" using the same upper stage.

They never have to get their flight rate above once a month to survive on government contracts.

>>8426305
>never had a manned mission
>They're chomping at the bit to start
I'll believe it when I see it. Two failed launches in less than two years. I wouldn't be getting aboard.

>>8426313
How much does fuel cost impact the cost of the flight?

>>8426313
>fat, juicy NASA and DOD contracts
>survive on government contracts
I sound like a shill now but I gotta point out the whole point of their appeal is that they've severely undercut all the existing contractors. They're already the Wal-Mart of space, they can throw a satellite in orbit cheaper than the Russians or Chinese, let alone ULA or Ariane.

So if your argument is "they're robbing those government fat cats that love to squander money" the counterpoint is "they're robbing them considerably less than their established competition"

>>8426320
Very little. Any given orbital launch system out there, you're spending $200,000 to $300,000 to gas the thing up and then you're spending $50 to $60 million to buy a new one after you trash it.

The comparison I've heard is "imagine how much a cross-country plane ticket would cost if at the end of every flight all the passengers and crew had to jump out with parachutes and the 747 is abandoned to crash in the ocean"

(it would be $1.5 million instead of $600)

>>8426321
>>8426313
All nonessential markets contract or stall during periods of economic downturn. Anyone have data showing through the 2000 bubble and the 2008 bubble what happens to the industry?

>>8426321
>the whole point of their appeal is that they've severely undercut all the existing contractors
No, that's not all of it. And the military is deliberately shovelling money to ULA (and by proxy, to Boeing and Lockheed Martin) in compensation for the mistakes made in the EELV program. They weren't looking to avoid doing so, and they're content with the prices they're paying for Atlas V. The military gets lots of money, spends lots of money on its satellites, and just isn't very price sensitive when it comes to launch contracts. However, they did have an eye to the future, and put some money into Falcon 1 hoping for a new option.

As for NASA, the shuttle program was shutting down, and they weren't confident that ULA alone could meet its needs, when the military comes first with ULA. They wanted some contractors who put NASA first, and only SpaceX and Orbital presented realistic plans for producing a new launch vehicle on a reasonable schedule. SpaceX certainly isn't cheap to NASA. They're putting billions of dollars in.

What's exciting about SpaceX to the military is new capabilities. They like Falcon Heavy. They like the potential of a high launch rate, with the reusable boosters. ITS is very exciting to them. Aside from megasatellites no opposing force can put up, there's potential there for a manned military space force. Treaties aren't forever. They know people will take and hold territory beyond the Earth's atmosphere eventually.

ITS might very well get developed primarily on military funds, especially if Donald "negotiate from a position of strength" Trump gets elected.

>>8426305
I wanna work at spaceX as an astrobiologist

>>8426256
The problem is that these components need to be shipped on the ground too. Road and rail transport set an upper limit on the maximum size of components.

In regards to THICCNESS, the closer a fuel tank is to a sphere, the more mass efficient it is, having a lower mass of tank structure per unit mass of propellant. Bigger tanks are more mass efficient too. Why SpaceX and not other launch providers going that route? Maybe SpaceX thinks they can work out the logistics to build such large components, or build them right at the assembly building. SpaceX is very focused on being vertically integrated, doing as much as possible in house.

>>8426400
>>8426406
>>8426411
This shit is why I'm a fanboy. I've seen rockets go up, I've seen rockets blow up, but I've never seen this.

It's easy to overlook the bumps / catastrophes along the way if the trend seems pointed toward this.

SpaceX has a rabid fanbase, beacuse Musk and the company has ambition beyond turning a profit on sat launches.

>>8426487
>Why SpaceX and not other launch providers going that route?
1) They're doing reusables, so they'll get it back after each launch and the cost of building one won't be so crushing.
2) They're very efficient and focused on value for R&D and manufacturing dollar, so it's cheaper for them.
3) They're completely ignoring the existing market, which has no demand for something so huge.
4) They need something at least this big for the Mars trip. If they couldn't just launch it, they'd have to assemble it in space.

>>8426513
I for one would love to see a SpaceX space station or moon base.

>>8426517
SpaceX isn't likely to do either, except as infrastructure in interplanetary space travel.

SpaceX Elevator on Titan. Which brings up liquid methane from the surface and pumps it into automated tanker ships. That then transport fuel to refueling points all over the solar system.

>>8426545
No need to build an elevator, even with a low-performance nuclear thermal rocket you only need to spend about half of the load to get from the surface to escape velocity.

>>8426579
except the surface is covered in liquid methane and god knows what else. not suitable for landing on constantly and the wear on your space ships from being in that environment.

>>8426422
You could probably get an underpaid janitorial position and moonlight sucking their dicks.

>>8426584
>the surface is covered in liquid methane
That could be pretty nice to land on, if it's calm. Good thick nitrogen atmosphere, too. You can make hydrazine if you want.

>>8426504
No, it's because Musk parrots out butt funk that isn't his and journalist huff it like spray paint. 95% engineering is a lie. He's out pumping hollywood tuna and loving the limelight. Guy's totally superficial. Just look at how he bought his cofounder title at Tesla. It's all image. He's a salesman who talks his book

>>8426624
Not everyone can be Von Braun.

>>8426630
The world needs more Larry Pages. That guy never gives interviews which is a rarity in the pretentious vapid shit stain of Silicon Valley

>>8426256
Rockets easily scale way up.

>>8426637
You just like him because you're autistic like him. And you resent Musk because he's so popular, and not an actual nerd or scientist.

>>8426642
>not an engineer

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>>8426642
>not understanding Tsiolkovsky rocket equation

>>8426616
>>8426584
>>8426579
>>8426545
Gravity on Titan is 0.14g. Earth's moon is 0.16g. You may be able to simply send a hose down to methane lakes and suck it up.

>>8426649
Musk is champion of the false narrative of space colonization, in particular, Mars. It's a romanticized tale which co-opts the public discussion away from real world concerns. Considering the changes that need to be made, it's not billions, but trillions of dollars in infrastructure debt. "Yeah, Mars, bitches" while the 60 year old water pipes burst, the 25 year old electric grid goes down, bridges collapse, and if transport fails, in 3 days people kill each other because the shelves in the grocery store are empty. But yeah, ignore the debt saturation and bankruptcies rampant in the energy industry. Wait for the next energy price spike to sideswipe the burgeoning poverty line.

>>8426653
He's right, though. A lot of things get easier as you build a bigger rocket (not a taller rocket, mind you -- tall's good for efficiency though, and the fact that big rockets are easier makes taller ones possible). One of the big things is that it gets thicker-skinned, which makes the material more tolerant of small flaws and you get more mass budget per unit area for surface treatments. This applies to bigger engines as well as bigger fuel tanks.

It's no accident that Saturn V flew barely 10 years after the first object was put in orbit. Scaling up is straightforward. The main issues are cost and schedule. It takes longer and costs more to build test articles, as well as production units, and you need bigger facilities to test them in.

They had problems with N-1, but that was an underbudgeted rush job that had its main designer die mid-project.

>>8426675
That hinges on the efficiency of the fuel itself. Though, there's not much left to do or discover in that realm.

>>8426679
So much this.

Too much is wasted on space. Not just money, but minds are being wasted on endeavours that actually can't help humanity at all. Instead they seek to skip ahead in a long game when their very foundations will crumble under them, achieving nothing.

>>8426679
Not Musk's fault that the cultural marxist traitors are running our countries into the ground, that socialism is the only funding priority, that dysgenetics are the only acceptable "non-racist/bigoted" belief, and the progress people talk about is actually regression

>>8426653
A bigger rocket is easier in a lot of ways than small rockets, has better fuel fraction & payload.
Also much easier to vertically land big rockets than small ones like the Falcon 9

>>8426681
>The main issues are cost and schedule. It takes longer and costs more to build test articles, as well as production units, and you need bigger facilities to test them in.
I'm going to add here: if you're going to develop a big launch vehicle, you should plan on flying it a lot and running the program for a long time.

It makes no fucking economic sense to build a super-heavy-lift vehicle and only fly it a few times, then cancel it. Saturn V was a treasure. They should have continued that for decades, refining it to be more economical and reliable as they gained experience and technology advanced, and launching whole constellations of satellites at once.

>>8426256
>Is the "fucktardedly huge rocket" concept even viable past a certain scale?
Yes. It is the "financial data" (advertised prices etc) that are from fantasy land.

>>8426679
What the fuck dude. I agree colonizing Mars is a waste of time. But the amount of resources it would take to get there, really, is not all that much compared to the scale of the problems you mention. And developing cheap, easy transit to low earth orbit is very valuable.

As far as energy is concerned, that is really not an issue, OPEC can't push prices on their cheap easily available oil too high or the US starts fracking and brings it back down, we are already moving in the direction of sustainable energy, the idea of some energy industry collapse causing mass chaos and starvation is some utter insanity that hasn't even been relevant for a decade.

>>8425909
>Serious bait
fgt pls

>>8426325
>>8426320

Seconded, fuel is cheap. Of course the Raptor engine (and new ITS system) will be fueled by cryogenic methane and oxygen instead of kerosene and oxygen, don't know how the cost will compare...but it was designed that way because methane can be produced on Mars to refuel the engines for the return trip.

>>8427044
You can make synthetic kerosene on mars too
Methane was picked for a whole buncha reasons, not solely because of ISRU on mars.

>>8425909
because investors have yet to see a return on their money they put in.

and so far there has been alot of money put in this that not too many people involved want to see it fail.

>>8425909
It's like cheering for a baby who is making their first stumbly steps, and mouthing garbled english. At least, that's how I'd compare spacex's achievements to NASA's under the analogy of functional adult-ness.

>>8426685
US space program spending has been a huge value.

the USA has spent less on space since the end of ww2. Then the DoD spends in a single year.

For all that, we have put man on the moon, built several space stations, robotic probes to every planet, atomic death ray science robots on mars, weather sats, comm sats, GPS, and all the technological gains from space into the private sector.

>>8427049
What were they?

>>8427354
They've given two reasons:
1) it was the thing that made it easiest to get high chamber pressure, and
2) it's the cheapest source of energy usable as rocket fuel (natural gas).

>>8426406
fantastic

>>8427354
Cheapest rocket fuel in existance
Similar temperature to LOX means common bulkhead design is possible
Capable of autogenous pressurization, don't need helium
Able to gassify and then run methane/oxygen maneuvering thrusters
Clean burning, doesn't coke so reusability is much better
Allows them to make their full flow staged combustion engine, increasing Isp
Has the best Isp of all hydrocarbon's

Methane as a fuel choice rests on its own merits, even if they weren't leaving LEO

>>8427397
>Capable of autogenous pressurization, don't need helium
You never need helium, helium's the simplest way to pressurize a tank in a controlled manner (self-pressurization is going to require a way to boil the methane and oxygen in their tanks, with helium, you just open a valve from the high pressure tank). You can pressurize the fuel tank with steam and CO2 exhaust gas, or you can boil liquid nitrogen, or even just pre-pressurize the tanks and let the pressure drop off as the fuel is consumed.

The high-pressure helium's also useful for many other things, like purging the engines.

The trouble SpaceX is having with helium tanks is very unusual. They went with carbon fiber overwrap tanks, and they put them inside the oxygen tanks, to keep them at a lower temperature, and thus make the pressure lower for the same amount of helium, requiring less mass for strength.

This means the tanks don't have the strength to hold the full helium load except at liquid oxygen temperatures, complicating tanking procedures, and if liquid oxygen gets into the carbon fiber, it will make a sensitive primary explosive.

It also means the tanks are subject to buoyancy forces due to being submerged, which increase with acceleration.

>Clean burning, doesn't coke so reusability is much better
They've stated this isn't a problem with RP-1.

>Has the best Isp of all hydrocarbon's
But inferior density to RP-1, so you need a bigger rocket anyway.

>>8427428
The helium itself is not cheap, wouldn't make sense for a reusable rocket.
They'll need a gassification system to supply fuel to their maneuvering thrusters, so both problems are solved with that.

Removing the need for nitrogen simplifies things, might be driven mostly by the ISRU needs on mars. And if you are boiling nitrogen you might as well be boiling LOX/LCH4.

>But inferior density to RP-1, so you need a bigger rocket anyway.
When you are building it from the ground up, you can make it whatever size you need. Methane is much cheaper, needs much more LOX in proportion to fuel which is cheaper still, and has higher Isp, so you get better payloads

They have credibility on reddit, and reddit creams themselves over people who they think knows more about tech and science than they probably do. Like Musk and Degrasse Tyson.

>>8427506
Point is: not all of the things listed are real advantages of methane.

It makes little more sense to do away with helium if you go with methane than if you're sticking with RP-1.

>>8427606
I don't think you can do self-pressurization with RP-1

So it is a real advantage of methane.

>>8427628
There's little advantage to pressurizing a liquid methane tank with gaseous methane boiled from liquid methane over pressurizing an RP-1 tank with gaseous nitrogen boiled from liquid nitrogen.

In fact, using an inert gas has major advantages over using a flammable one. If some air gets into the RP-1 tank, this is a minor problem. RP-1 isn't very flammable. If some air gets into the self-pressurized methane tank, now it's full of a fuel-air explosive. Worse, liquid oxygen (which can condense out of the air into liquid methane) is miscible with liquid methane, and the mix is so sensitive it can be triggered to detonate by light. Venting a methane-pressurized tank is also extremely hazardous.

So the simplicity of not needing an insulated inert pressurant tank is offset by the complications of dealing with a flammable pressurant.