SpaceX's Starship on the roster for Texas takeoff The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has listed SpaceX on its air traffic control advisory for an upcoming attempt to launch the monster Starship / Super Heavy combo from the company's Boca Chica facility. Getting to this point has taken some time, at least in terms of the rapid iterative approach adopted by the …
Yes, it does sound like a lot, but it's not really a lot of changes to make in the months between two flights of an extremely experimental (at this stage) rocket.
Also, I believe SpaceX wrote the list of improvements and the FAA just approved it. SpaceX want it to fly safely too.
Depends
As I understand it, SpaceX wrote the actions, it would have looked a bit unprofessional if they ran with just two that said fill in the BFHole that the BFRocket made and throw a bejus sprinkler in to regrow the wetlands and put out future fires. A whole team of professionals were likely engaged to turn a Directors single verbal requirement into (several) documents, a plan, budget, benefits analysis…. I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
Also, blowing shit up (or watching) is fun
It would not surprise me if SpaceX had a triple digit list of improvements for the next Starship before the point where they attempted their first launch.
Also: the main goal with this launch was to gather data that would guide the future development. Even a non-hickup flight would probably have lead to long lists of changes.
Just compare the look of early hand-welded upper stages and the product on the launchpad today. The changes are huge.
Many weren't that complicated and were things SpaceX had already identified and were either working on or had completed. The 57 required for this flight (the other six were longer term) were completed in September, see this tweet from His Muskiness for the list.
How is this helpful? Or is this just an excuse for government? Don't down vote just yet, think this through. This is a new, experimental, rocket & space vehicle design. It is going to have problems. NASA has had their share of problems throughout history too. NASA self-corrected and didn't need the FAA to make demands.
For the FAA to "demand 63 corrective actions" says one of two things:
1) We know better than you. Here are 63 things you need to do better. Sorry, we keep secrets and didn't want to tell you ahead of time.
2) We don't believe you are making the right efforts to solve your problems. We think your intention is to keep blowing up rockets, so here are 63 things we demand you do different.
However, I think the real answer is the third option... We are in danger of losing government control to private entities, here is a smack-down to re-assert our authority.
Looking at the history of, for instance, the Boeing 737 MAX, I suspect that the "losing government control to private entities" ship sailed quite a while ago.
Per Wikipedia "During the certification process, the FAA delegated many evaluations to Boeing, allowing the manufacturer to review their own product. It was widely reported that Boeing pushed to expedite approval of the 737 MAX to compete with the Airbus A320neo, which hit the market nine months ahead of Boeing's model."
How much such "self-certification" is going on at SpaceX is at this point probably anyone's guess.
There may be a point to ponder that while Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson have both flown in their rocket contraptions, Elon Musk hasn't flown in any of his.
Just sayin'.
Looking at the history of, for instance, the Boeing 737 MAX, I suspect that the "losing government control to private entities" ship sailed quite a while ago.
Per Wikipedia "During the certification process, the FAA delegated many evaluations to Boeing, allowing the manufacturer to review their own product. It was widely reported that Boeing pushed to expedite approval of the 737 MAX to compete with the Airbus A320neo, which hit the market nine months ahead of Boeing's model."
You could also look at the history of SpaceX, the Falcon-9 currently has a 99.3% success rate over it's 281 missions.
The current 'Block 5' variant makes up 221 of those, with a 100% success rate.
How much such "self-certification" is going on at SpaceX is at this point probably anyone's guess.
One would hope the FAA has learnt from the Boeing fiasco?
There may be a point to ponder that while Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson have both flown in their rocket contraptions, Elon Musk hasn't flown in any of his.
Other people have though, to orbit.
Just sayin'.
SpaceX is, statistically, by far the most experienced and successful rocket company out there.
Elon Musk is a narcissistic dick.
Both these things can be true. :)
The Boeing 737 MAX flew thousands of times without crashing due to flawed sensor data and a recalcitrant MCAS system. . . until it did. . . so a "success rate" is somewhat irrelevant.
Whether or not the FAA has learned anything is unclear. Search for "FAA regulatory capture" and then you tell me. I haven't heard of any major reform but maybe I've just missed it.
My side comment wrt Mr Musk still stands. That's a fact. Whether it's salient, well, I suppose that depends on where you're sitting. . . on the business end of a rocket or on the sidelines.
I certainly hope that there's nothing overlooked and that the SpaceX human flights continue safely but given the safety track record of some of Mr Musk's enterprises well documented in this very journal. . . well, I'll just have continue to hope, I guess.
The Boeing 737 MAX flew thousands of times without crashing due to flawed sensor data and a recalcitrant MCAS system. . . until it did. . . so a "success rate" is somewhat irrelevant.
...
I certainly hope that there's nothing overlooked and that the SpaceX human flights continue safely but given the safety track record of some of Mr Musk's enterprises well documented in this very journal. . . well, I'll just have continue to hope, I guess.
So 'success rate' doesn't matter, but 'safety track record' does?
How does one measure the second without the first?
What other metrics do you suggest, as it seems like 'not liking musk' is the one you're using?
Put it another way, if I was going to put myself or something else into space, would I chose the rocket company that has more successful launches than all other rocket companies (state or private) combined, or does that not matter because... Elon?
My side comment wrt Mr Musk still stands. That's a fact. Whether it's salient, well, I suppose that depends on where you're sitting. . . on the business end of a rocket or on the sidelines.
It is a fact, and so long as you take it in context that Blue Origin and Virgin both offer low altitude space tourism flights, and Space X can take you into orbit and dock with the ISS then that's fine, but to imply that all 3 crew vehicles are in the same ballpark is disingenuous.
Also, I might point out that New Shepard is currently grounded due to a booster failure in it's last flight, but that doesn't seem to matter because it's not Elon?? Or was it not the 'businesss end' that failed? ;) Personally, I'll trust a rocket that's flown well over 200 times without issue over one that has flown 30 times, the last of which ended in failure.
My argument is with regulatory capture and, specifically, the Federal Aviation Administration, not Elon.
To clarify, I'm equally dubious about Mr Bezos's efforts as well (I laughed just as hard as anyone at the configuration of his joy-riding vehicle as anyone else). And, of course, Branson's machine killed a couple of test pilots, so there's plenty of slipshod engineering to go around. I think it's all idiotic.
The whole "move fast and break things" ethos of the Silly Valley crowd might be fine when you're building web sites or non-critical software packages but whether it's building robocars, "fully self driving" vehicles that aren't anything of the sort, or rockets carrying humans, well, I don't trust any of them, whether they're named Elon or not.
Just for the record, I can't stand Jeff Bezos, either, and don't deal with any of his companies, and I don't know enough about Richard Branson to have much of an opinion there -- his record company produced a couple of decent albums, if I recall correctly, but I don't know anything about any of his other enterprises other than his spaceflight ventures to really say much.
You trust what you want to. I don't trust any of them as far as I can spit a dead rat.
Yes, it's just you.
NASA did self correct. Since the 1960's, how many NASA rockets have blown up on the pad? Go and look it up.
While the occasional failure is the price of success, after a certain point you should have a design that is reasonably safe and has a good probability of getting off the launch pad before blowing up, and here is a compilation of videos of Space X blowing the launch pad up with "Starship".
This latest version is SN25; the 25th version. At what point would you say it's reasonable for a regulator to start saying "uh, what are you doing?" when tossing huge quantities of explosive and toxic materials across the area?
Space-X residues are remarkably non-toxic compared with many previously used options. Yes, methane in the upper atmosphere is a problem but at least Space-X's engines are efficient which means they don't leave much behind beyond water and co2 and if they explode, same answer, the residues are remarkably non-toxic.
Some of the early (and current military) rockets WERE horrors - nitrogen tetroxide for propellant and hydrazine used for directional control for example, solid rockets particularly dirty.
As for metal residues, at least there's no one shooting in the area now and lead is a lot more toxic than shredded aluminum and stainless steel ;)
>>> Non Toxic ?Strange because the land about the base is barren and a death zone.
>> There are more ways to kill things than just toxins. Fire, flying bits of hard stuff, ...
> And this matters because ?
Because - you implied the "barren wasteland" is due to toxins, even though we saw - and you have previously talked about - all the fire and flying hard stuff that was chucked around by the launch, but you have pulled "toxins" out of nowhere.
Bit worrying that you - and at least a couple of other people - are finding it so hard to follow the line of your own arguments!
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Yes.
63 changes may be actually confined to sections, assemblies, sub-assemblies etc & potentially already in hand.
I have a friend in the UK who between repairing old cars, TV's\Radios, Cider presses, AGA ranges & computers got nominated* to be a MOT Inspector (I learned a lot about the MOT Inspectors role by association) when my TR7 failed the MOT for welding I showed him the failure sheet of 3 - 4 pages with all that was required to be done & he was "Hmmm thats all one piece, thats another piece, thats another piece, thats part of the first piece, we can get it done this weekend at my place".
*That's the only way to become a MOT Inspector is to receive the gift of a existing MOT Inspectors nomination.
Apart from a few "tweaks" it was arguably a mostly "successful" initial test launch - basically it cleared the tower and that was Musk's declared aim.
Given that, I guess primary goal for this flight will be staging, preferably with everything pointing in the correct direction - that will mean that both the staging ring system and the firing of the starship engines works and max-q was survived.
Secondary goal will be the starship achieving the intended trajectory.
Thirdly splashdown of both stages in/on the correct patches of wobbly wet stuff.
If this ends without any part of the FTS firing it will be astounding!
Excitement guaranteed and I already need another pair of pants ... :-)
Not ripping up the pad would be good, although again the launch is going to be slower (and therefore more damaging) than a "regular" launch, so some damage might well be sustained.
Having the fire suppression system work better in the engine bay will almost certainly let them get to stage separation.
Everything after clearing the tower will be considered a bonus - getting through stage separation, and potentially to (just) sub orbital would be a major achievement.
If that thing survives re-entry then there will be more than one or two beers consumed I imagine.
although again the launch is going to be slower (and therefore more damaging) than a "regular" launch
According to the timeline on SpaceX's site, this launch will have less time between ignition and lift-off than IFT1 - 3 seconds this time versus 5 last time, IIRC. I guess we don't know what a regular launch looks like yet, but that change speaks to them getting the engines lit and throttled up a lot faster than the previous attempt. If part of the problem with the previous attempt was the length of time the booster sat there blasting the pad before lift-off, it would make sense to shorten that time if possible.
It's five seconds between ignition start (which is sequential, so not an instant thing) and lift off (which is scheduled for t+2).
Memory tells me it was ten seconds last time (quite happy to be wrong).
I don't think the final sequence will be sub 3 seconds, but I do expect it to be substantially less time "settling" at full power - of course what I didn't think about is that "full power" is more than IFT2 power. (payload and requirement to minimise gravity losses)
> How is starship going to work on Mars or the Moon with no pad there ?
Pretty well.
Didn't we go over this before? Like how the pad on Earth is used to support the launch of the whole F9 Heavy, but only the little bit on the top is going to be taking off from the Moon (or Mars)?
> gravity being a LOT lower means it doesn't need the rocket motors to be running at 100% (landing or lift off) on the Lunar/Martian surface
I thought the problem with Mars is that has an appreciable gravity but very little atmosphere which makes landing very challenging, so it will need a fairly big firework to get into orbit
Mars gravity is approximately one third that of Earth, so take-off requires one-third the thrust like for like. However, the rocket is likely to be mostly empty at that point, and carrying little weight of fuel, so it's even less than that.
The very thin atmosphere makes no difference to powered landings, as I understand it, only parachute or winged landings.
GJC
Well, we do have a long history of using aerobraking manned missions into the Earth's atmosphere (as in, AFAIK, all of them) and it has proven very useful (ref the recent use of controlled skips to navigate during re-entry), so we'd probably be looking at doing something to use the Martian atmosphere rather than just using more fuel to overpower and generally ignore it.
but, yes, a fully powered controlled descent can work anywhere - and it may be a bit of a coin toss whether the first missions stick solely with powered descent (more fuel but simpler trajectory).
Historically with probes, with multi-billion dollar launch costs and programs, combined with no super-heavy launch capability (Saturn V was cancelled remember).
The mass budget available for the landing systems was limited, so there's a trade off between payload for science and payload for landing, given that most of the people designing these missions are scientists, so they want to maximise science. So some risk is there.
With Super-heavy lift of Starship and the intention for them to be manned will require a greater margin of safety in the landing systems to reduce the risk.
Your reply is broken....
If what you claimed is true then why did NASA use a two part design for the lunar module, where the return vehicle blasted from the base part ? The answer is of course the dust, and in the case of Elons machine, it will uck this dust into its rockets basically destroying them when the dust melts inside.
twat didn't think a blast containing mechanism aka Sound suppression system was necessary (he's sort of built one now, that he can't call it one as he doesn't have permission to make one)
so no musk does not think of a lot of fucking stuff and seems to be surrounded by yes men.
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Sucking stuff into a rocket engine would be a tricky thing to achieve. There's no intake from space, as there's nothing to take in.
NASA left behind all the bits of the LEM that weren't required to get back to the command module to avoid lifting dead weight to lunar orbit.
> on the last launch some of the engines got fucked by the reflected blast throwing shit into the engines.
First - the last launch? Of Starship on its own motors from Earth? And its engines got fucked? You sure you aren't thinking about the last launch of the Starship atop the Falcon Heavy? Two completely different situations.
The question of which launch you are talking about aside: that reflected blast - and the shit - was being carried on/in/by the thick atmosphere that was rushing every which way being pushed by the fiery stuff coming out of the engines. The blast was even reflecting off the atmosphere - what we call "shock waves" and even "sound".
Guess what the Moon lacks?
And, before you say it, Mars has far less of a problem in that regard *and* there is time to tweak things if combined experience from both Earth and Lunar launches shows how things could be improved (oh, and "tweaked" can be as simple - well, I say simple - as changing the firing order of the engines).
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it will uck this dust into its rockets basically destroying them when the dust melts inside
don't worry, this think will never make it to orbit, even less so to the Moon.
Why ? Look at the flight profile: it burnt ~3minutes of the first stage, at which point it reached 7000m altitude and 2000km/h. For the same time, a Soyouz or Falcon or Ariane reaches 70 000m altitude and 8000km/h. (approximately, didn't look up the exact numbers again).
Also, this doesn't make sense engineering-wise : no sane person would make a new rocket with new engines with new cycle with new ergols with new materials with new architecture, too many things that can go wrong and you'll not know what went wrong. If they really knew what they're doing they'd make a Falcon-like rocket with Raptor engines and Falcon upper-stage to minimize the number of unknowns. The Falcon is so successful because they use the same proven ergols and architecture as developed for Apollo and Soyouz. Falcon is an incremental evolution of proven and existing engineering, while Starship is a Hollywood phantasm. We'll have hover-boards and laser-sabres before Starship makes it to the Moon.
The big leaps in technological progress are mostly made by people considered not entirely sane at the time.
In this case, there's a very good reason for using methalox as propellant, which is to make it sustainable. CO2 and water can be turned into methane and oxygen relatively easily, using only electricity as an input, which means that launches can be made an essentially zero-carbon closed-loop process. This also means that, longer term, propellant can be manufactured off-Earth, which is critical to serious spaceflight.
Will the project succeed? I have no idea, but I'm bloody glad that someone is trying, and if anyone can make it work, it's SpaceX.
GJC
> it will uck this dust into its rockets
Rockets famously don't "uck" - they don't suck either! Rockets are more of a blowy sort of thing.
> why did NASA use a two part design for the lunar module
To avoid carrying unnecessary bits of the LEM back up from the Lunar surface to rendezvous with the Command Module.
You may want to read up on Tsiolkovsky's Rocket Equation[1]: basically, it shows that carrying the empties back from the Moon would mean a larger amount of fuel needed in the descent stage, a larger rocket with more thrust to handle that extra fuel, which would need a bit more fuel to support the bigger engine which needs a slightly bigger engine to support the fuel which needs .... And once you've figured out how heavy the entire LEM would be, you get to do the same calculations for the delta V from the Support Module to get safely into Lunar orbit. And then you have to do it all over again for the Saturn V stages, starting from the top and working your way down the stack.
[1] or just work out the Rocket Equation from scratch yourself - even if you don't get precisely the correct result, that exercise will be useful for you to understand these things
PS
> Your reply is broken....
Hmm, the URL worked for me - did you need me to type the HTML so you could click instead of copy'n'paste? That might have been a friendly thing to do, but given how much of a pain it is on a touch keyboard, I thought you'd ok manage without.
Yes, thank you, you can stop posting that URL as your answer to everything: as we are interested in space-related things, we have read it already.
Maybe, if you re-read that article as many times as you have posted it, you might understand what it actually says and how it relates to your thoroughly mature attempts to argue against your detractors.
We won't be holding our breath waiting for you.
"it will uck this dust into its rockets"
Rockets don't (s)uck[sic], they blow. The only input is the fuels and oxidisers pumped into them from the onboard tanks. To be able to suck in dust from the lunar surface would require the rocket engine to be redesigned as a jet engine of some some form and for the Moon to have an atmosphere.
Here, but it's not possible to provide a direct link. It's not showing yet...
On the off chance that this is a serious question, I would expect that the lander module will be a separate craft altogether. Getting Starship up out of Earth's gravity well is, with appropriate caveats, the hardest part of the job, or at least the most finicky from an engineering perspective.
I believe there are actual rocket scientists who read these comments on occasion, so perhaps one of them will weigh in.
> How is this going to be reusable on space
That is a tricky one. How *are* they going to manage to reuse (presumably, you mean restart the engines and accelerate away) "on space"? Because, as we all know, there is nothing to push against when you are on space; unless they take a launch pad up with them and swing it down under the engines before restarting them? But then it might float away too soon, so they'd have to tie it onto the back of the craft. Hmm, not as easy as it sounds, you may be onto something.
(/s 'cos you really never know...)
"Because, as we all know, there is nothing to push against when you are on space; unless they take a launch pad up with them and swing it down under the engines before restarting them? "
That would work as it's based on the old sailing ship technology when the crew used to blow into the sails to get out of the dead calms ... err ... apparently ...
Mercury & Venus: No way home.
Moon: Landing legs and take enough propellant for getting back to NRHO. Send a tanker Starship to NRHO with enough propellant for HLS Starship to do a return trip to the Moon and for the tanker to get back to Earth. (First two Artemis missions are contracted as 2x single use HLS Starships. Re-use is limited by lack of inspection and repair facilities in NRHO)
Mars: Requires a propellant factory on Mars. The upper stage has enough delta V to go from Mars surface to Earth without a booster.
Belt and outer planets: No plans for re-use at this time because no-one cares about Belters.
FK: Moon: Landing legs and take enough propellant for getting back to NRHO.
cow: The lunar landers of the Apollo program had legs but they also left the bottom half when they returned ? Are you saying you know more than the Apollo engineers who made this two part design instead of one like you are suggesting ?
We all know the moon is covered in dust, which is why the lunar modules of Apollo used a base platform. How are they going to move all that equipment with out a platform for the rocket to return to grab more and deliver ?
Your reply only describes a one time use vehicle that can only deliver their payload onto the moon/mars surface once.
We are getting on from as far away in time from the Apollo programme as modern cars are away from the Ford Model T. Perhaps more pertinently, we are further away in time from Apollo than Apollo was from the Wright Brothers. Engineering refines and improves stuff over time.
Why are you so dogmatically certain of yourself, I wonder? What are your qualifications in this field?
GJC
Yes time has advance but that is not an answer to my question and comments. The Apollo designers gave the Lunar modules a base platform , they must have had reasons and my thoughts match thei design. Your only proof is calling me names... is that really the best you can do ?
Jut because time has advaned doesnt mean we have flying cars... or live on Mars like the cartoons and stories from the old days.
How about you actually address my original statement with a real answer that addresses the concerns or similar that i queried.?
"the "experienced" scientists and engineers who were successful are mostly dead now."
You almost make it sound as though NASA stopped all activities after Apollo and so no new rocket engineers and scientists ever bother to learn from and stand on the shoulders of the giants before them. I guess Space Shuttle and all the other lesser known rockets never happened in your universe? After all, those "experienced" computer scientists and engineers who built the first successful computers are mostly[*] dead now too, so who the hell built all this newfangled shit we are using to interact on this very website?
Can one actually be "mostly dead"? Shirley dead or alive is pretty much a binary thing (ignoring life support on a brain dead "patient", which is effectively dead but I suppose could be classified as "mostly dead", depending on how you define mostly since the brain only small portion of the body but, I suppose, is "mostly" what operates the body.)
> They can't even build new Saturn 5 engines anymore
It is not considered cost-effective to build to that design any more
> so yes a load of experience was lost, like tears in rain...
Please learn to distinguish between "experience" and "tooling, workshops, test fittings, ..." which were indeed removed/demolished/used for something else.
All the same reasons we can't even build a Model T Ford anymore, and most certainly not at the rate they used to roll off the production line (which, by extending your logic, would appear to mean we can't currently build anything better than a Model T...).
Can you say Hyperloop ?
Potsherd: Isn't it lucky there's one Internet weirdo to think of all the things the very experienced scientists and engineers missed?
cow: Good too see your class come thru that you have to start your proof with an insult. I guess that matches Musk and his name calling...
Those same experienced engineers missed the fact that starship would destroy the launch platform, or maybe they just stayed quiet even though they knew it fail because they want a job.
The Apollo design started with one big rocket taking everything required for a journey to the Moon and back in a single launch. That constraint and the end of the decade deadline drove design decisions that included a capsule for re-entry and a command module that only went as far as LLO also an ascent vehicle that separated from the lander. These decisions fitted the technology available at the time.
Starship's original intent was a Mars colony transport. The big feature to make that possible is to refill the stage 2 tanks in LEO. I would love to take credit for this but believe it or not it was not my idea. It was not even SpaceX's idea. NASA were looking at it as a progression of the Apollo program. Congress decided not to fund it. They went further and senator Richard Shelby banned discussion of propellant depots because that would be a direct threat to the existence of the Constellation program self licking ice cream cone. Even a US senator could see the value of re-tanking in LEO.
I do not claim authorship of the Starship HLS design. It came from genuine rocket scientists at SpaceX looking at how a Mars transport could be adapted to handle a journey from NRHO to the Moon and back. They had very different constraints from the Apollo program engineers and more modern technology. That took them to a very different design to Apollo. Real rocket scientists from NASA went through the proposal in detail and were happy with it.
Ripping up the Moon's surface is still a possibility that may require some iterative development. There are some cunning techniques to avoid a repeat of Boca Chica 2023-04-20 on the Moon. First they plan to reduce the gravitational field by a factor of 6. Next they will leave the 3600t booster on Earth. On top of that, HLS will not be landing or taking off with full tanks. SpaceX has already demonstrated launch and landing an HLS sized vehicle from a concrete pad. They could do that on Earth with short legs.
Blue Origin have a contract for an HLS with a more Apollo like configuration. Let's see who gets back from the Moon first.
And third, they will land and take off with engines that are mounted above midpoint of Starship.
Originally this was the plan, see the link below, the first image shows 3 engine mounts just above midpoint. second image shows them in use
https://spaceflightnow.com/2020/05/01/nasa-identifies-risks-in-spacexs-starship-lunar-lander-proposal/
And this is now on spaceX's site
https://www.spacex.com/humanspaceflight/assets/images/hls_artemis_iii.jpg
Showing a ring with probably 4x6 = 24 smaller engines.
flocke: Ripping up the Moon's surface is still a possibility that may require some iterative development.
cow: Possibility ?
The moon is covered in thick layer of dust.. go read about it, starting with wiki...
Any movement including the blast from a rocket leaving the surface will blow up a LOT of dust. Armstrong and all his dozen moon walkers were covered in dust justs from walking...
Its not a possibility it will happen.
The article does not say or provide illustrations of how much of starship actually leaves the surface. You are making assumptions that the top half returns, but it does not actually say that.
https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/714609/do-solar-flares-move-the-dust-on-the-surface-of-the-moon
The TV show For All Mankind has a reputation for scientific accuracy, so I think it's fair game to ask if it lives up to this reputation.
In this video clip, we see the dust on the surface of the Moon being perturbed by radiation coming from the Sun during a flare:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzlP403rUGA
> We all know the moon is covered in dust
Well, until someone lands a rocket on it, then - as you keep telling us - dust gets blown away. Anything that isn't blown away on landing isn't going anywhere on takeoff (definitely not for the first missions, where the whole point is to leave stuff behind, so taking off with a much lighter craft).
Keep landing around the same area and you'll blow away all the horrid dust and be left with a nice rocky area to use as a pad. No need for any of this silly concrete stuff, which is only there because they didn't bother digging the Earth-side launch complex down to the bedrock (life - it just gets in the way, making all this soft and soggy stuff on top).
Just an idea: you could even land lots and lots of times around the circumference of a great big circle and push all that dust into a great big pile in the middle. If you planned ahead and dropped a few domes and cylinders there first, you've just buried them under a big pile of shielding, useful for hiding (stuff) in when that big old Sun gets a bit feisty.
> nasa seems to think it's important to model this shit
Well, yes, of course.
NASA - and every responsible engineering project - will model everything they can. NASA have been modelling this stuff for decades[1] - surely this can not be a surprise to you?
As expected, any time somebody comes up with new models, especially ones like the one reported on (with good matching of the model to previous physical reality), NASA will take it on board. And, yes of course they'll then use it to test claims such as the ones I've put forwards. Maybe even the wild idea at the end!
If - note that word, if - they do find that some current lander designs and/or descent profiles don't just safely blow stuff away but instead are indicated to cause problematic damage then, gosh, gee, they will inform the relevant parties, who can then modify the designs and profiles to bring them into acceptable bounds. After all, we know for an absolute fact that there is an workably safe design/profile combo, 'cos it was used successfully more than once. We can also reasonably assume that there are unsafe ones (trivially so - unsafe descent profile: don't turn on the rocket again after decelerating from Lunar orbit!). Models like this latest one help to draw the bounds between the two.
> make sure your not talking out your ass.
You leave my donkey out of this! Perhaps you meant to say "make sure you're not talking out of your arse"? Note the apostrophe and extra letter 'e'.
[1] NASA have only been modelling for that short a time because NASA has only existed for decades! Simpler models have been used for over a century - Tsiolkovsky's famous equation dates from the 1890s - and improvements have been made ever since, especially as new data became available: after all, there were still otherwise respectable people who fully expected Apollo 11's LEM to sink deep into the dust! The models were updated as soon as we saw how deep that famous footprint was.
that one: Just an idea: you could even land lots and lots of times around the circumference of a great big circle and push all that dust into a great big pile in the middle.
cow: The whole planet is covered in dust.
that one: Keep landing around the same area and you'll blow away all the horrid dust and be left with a nice rocky area to use as a pad.
cow: There are dust storms on Mars many many times worse than the earth.
Yeh Lunar soil sounds like great stuff it will never be sucked up and melt and destry any rocket system.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_soil
> Lunar soil typically refers to only the finer fraction of lunar regolith, which is composed of grains 1 cm in diameter or less, but is often used interchangeably.[1] Lunar dust generally connotes even finer materials than lunar soil. There is no official definition as to what size fraction constitutes "dust"; some place the cutoff at less than 50 μm in diameter, while others put it at less than 10 μm.[citation needed]
https://moon.nasa.gov/inside-and-out/dynamic-moon/weather-on-the-moon/
> An ongoing stream of solar “wind” gives the Moon a sunburn, charges the lunar landscape with static electricity, and supplies chemical ingredients that could make water
Wow, fine, micro dust particles that are also statically charged, wonderful. That will never cause problems.
Boom boom!
Yeah, poor attempt at a joke/punchline, I know, but the launch itself was exciting and so close to actually getting to "nearly orbit" and certainly met the prime objectives. I can't wait to see the aftermath on the launchpad and whether it properly survived this time :-)
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