They’ve only gone and bloody done it – yawn – again! NASA, SpaceX send four to ISS NASA and SpaceX are celebrating the successful launch of the first non-experimental commercial crewed launch. At 19:27 EST a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket hoisted a Crew Dragon capsule named “Resilience” into space, along with astronauts Mike Hopkins, Victor Glover, Shannon Walker and Soichi Noguchi. The International Space Station …
You say that - during lockdown I excitedly planted some, knowing they would be so much better than shop-bought ones. Barely touched the harvest in the end - turns out you can stick about 4 in a salad before you get bored of them.
Trust me, they'll be disappointed in the long run.
Software engineer at a big employer. The cafeteria had chips as well ("french fries" to us Americans). They were usually cold and not very good, to be honest. There were days the available entree was "mystery meat", so perhaps they did have what I understand to be Glasgow salad.
Who believed (and continue to do so) that only a vehicle designed, owned and used only by NASA can do this job.
Assisted by the best efforts of some members of Congress to force a down select to one supplier (and by "one supplier" they meant Boeing).
Well done to all in the CCiCAP programme and at SX for proving them wrong.
Actually NASA was established because when Army, Air Force and Navy were left loose to play with rockets they were more apt at showing fireworks than putting payloads in space - while no private company was willingly to invest their money without government support - as it wasn't clear you could make money from rockets. Let's face it, no single company could have built the Saturn V and all its components.
Today the landscape is different and rockets become commercially viable - thanks to researches made at NASA too. Even ifs predecessor, the NACA, gave to the industry a lot of basic research about aerodynamics and other matters that made a lot of commercial and military planes possible.
But it is true that when an organization becomes appealing for bureaucrats and beancounters, it ceases to be innovative and able to run large, complex, advanced projects.
If it's any consolation, 2020 has only 6 weeks left to run before the next annus horriblis.
Of your three steps only the launch is a fairly concrete step forward, The other two may be but are as yet unproven, though Biden did sound sincere in his speech about health care.
No, the oxygen tank that exploded on Apollo 13 had been damaged prior to fitment and not repaired properly so not the same hardware. I think it was actually originally fitted to mission Apollo 10, but removed for some reason and damaged during that removal. Other factors contributed to the explosion, but had it not been damaged, it night have held the pressure inside when the stirrer circuitry shorted. For all we know, previous Apollo missions might have suffered the same circuit short because there was a maintenance defect common to several missions that only came to light on Apollo 13, when the tank failed. So maybe you are right, dumb luck.
Literally update the heaters ... Heaters had fault tripped. Updated the "overly conservative" fault limits on the heater resistances in the propellant tanks remotely, booted them back up and, as of the last time I looked, all are currently full of hunky and doryness.
I would guess they're using the resistance of the heaters as a temperature sensor. They said it was a bit colder than the demo mission, so presumably the heaters were a bit lower resistance, the resistance 'spiked' then tripped the system into a lie mode.
When they said they were going to restart the heaters remotely it was scarily reminiscent of an out-of-crew-control "We'd like you to stir up the cryo tanks."
Something I've wondered - Space Shuttle programme just parachuted them into the sea and recovered it from there. So while it's incredibly impressive to do it, is there any real advantage to this approach (other than you don't have to dry them out)?
(I'm equating Stage 1 with the SRBs, both of which are recovered - Stage 2 I'm equating with the External Tank, both of which burn up on re-entry and are lost)
True, I'm being flippant with the "just dry it out" comment - it's whether that reconditioning is any harder than what SpaceX have to do, plus is the cost of that reconditioning on a par with the cost of the added complexity required to have them auto-land (plus the performance 'cost' of having the added weight for the landing machinery and fuel - weight in space travel usually equals cost).
@Annihilator.
To be blunt, given the easily obtainable detail on SpaceX's launch success, refurbishment and relaunch cadence, reliability and dramatically reduced launch costs in comparison to every other existing launch system your question suggests you have either have very little interest in the subject or have been living under a rock for the last decade.
It would appear you can't be bothered with the technicalities so if nothing else, look at the reduction in launch costs and what they are offering in comparison to others.
They wouldn't be in business, or more crucially, developing new launch systems if they were losing money.
To be blunt, given the easily obtainable detail on SpaceX's launch success, refurbishment and relaunch cadence, reliability and dramatically reduced launch costs in comparison to every other existing launch system
Last year they raised $1.3bn and this year $2.1bn from investors. It's easy to reduce launch costs when VCs are willing to make up the difference.
So they have hoodwinked some very wealthy financiers into parting with their money to make it look like they have a successful business plan. Is that your point?
These VC financiers who's business it is to analyse companies, their plans and accounting and then to risk their own capital via investment?
Has it occurred to you the VC funds may be financing the aggressive development of the Heavy and Starship programmes rather than proping up a crap business plan?
Wow, quite a reaction. If you recall, the Space Shuttle design was expected to be cheap as chips and highly reusable (weekly launches, quick turnaround of refurb) - experience said it wasn't so in the end. As for relaunch options, one thing that stuck in my mind was the fact touted at the launch of the final shuttle mission that the SRBs contained elements from the first launch - the SRBs weren't refurbished as a whole. I note that the SLS approach will contain SRBs.
There's quite a difference between reuse, refurbish, launch cadence, time cost and $ cost - each a priority depending on use case. Yes I could go off and do a cost-benefit analysis if I chose to waste a day, or I could throw out a general question as to how more efficient it is or isn't to see if anyone knows. It seems you don't know either, and are just going with the "well it must be" answer. It's not like billionaire Elon Musk isn't renowned for vanity projects - I really wouldn't rule out him doing this for fun. As someone else said, it's also easy when VCs are funding a lot of it, and if you think VC funding means that it must be sustainably profitable in the long-run, then you're very wrong. There was debate as to the break-even point of the re-use - Elon stated 2-3 times would be the break-even point, other companies are claiming that it's 10. Again - both sides have reasons to lie there.
Yes I do recall and others here have accurately pointed out why the 40 year old SS design never met the reusability and cost savings originally touted.
As for my answer, I kept it simple for you and based on the reasonable observation that wealthy people, who want to stay wealthy, don't throw large amounts of their own money at vanity projects. If you wish to believe otherwise that's up to you. I will take a wild stab in the dark and say you are not a financier by profession.
Who these other companies are who are supposedly making reusability claims is a mystery as no one else is doing it on a commercial scale. Until someone else actually does, it's reasonable to look at the launch costs that SpaceX charge in comparison other launch providers and make an assessment of their savings.
It seems a more rational approach than jumping to the conclusion there is some non specific deception taking place.
> it's whether that reconditioning is any harder than what SpaceX have to do,
Remember the shuttle SRBs are (almost) literally empty metal tubes that you fill with explosives.
The SpaceX engines are more like the shuttle main engines - ditching an entire shuttle in the sea and refurbishing it would be a little trickier.
Significantly the real commercial driver for recovering SpaceX is probably speed rather than direct cost. If you want to reach the sort of launches/day rate that spaceX would like to make real money then the sheer effort needed to manufacture/ship/assemble and test new rockets may be impossible
@Annihilator "Recovery" from bobbing around in the sea was always a bit of a euphemism. You really don't want to get salt-water on precision engineered rockets. I mean, I sigh inwardly getting it on my push bike. Horrible stuff. Plus the boosters land softly in controlled circumstances rather than splat into the North Atlantic.
As others have mentioned, stage one (and ancillary boosters when used), are NOT SRBs. An SRB is basically a firework rocket. There's not much to it other than a hollow metal tube and a bellend!
Stage 1 and the strap-ons, which are basically the same as stage 1, are full on space rockets with expensive engines, pumps and fuel tanks which won't take kindly to being dumped in the ocean. Those shuttle SRBs took months to refurbish and get back onto a launch system. SpaceX can get a 1st stage and/or booster back onto the launch pad in days.
I know you would struggle to refurb a Falcon S1 that had landed in the water, I meant the whole SRB vs liquid fuel rocket costs/refurb options. SRBs are still being used (and reused) as part of the SLS programme.
I meant comparison of total cost of SRB + recovery in water vs total cost of Falcon + recovery on dry land. And by total cost, I'm including the development costs. A Falcon launch could be as low as a million dollars, but not cost effective for a while if the initial development was a trillion dollars. From what I can tell, SpaceX haven't come close to breaking even yet.
I think the payback will be quicker than expected. Don't forget, when a Falcon 9 launches you get the 1st stage back. No other current orbital launcher does that. SRBs can only be recovered if you are using them in the first place. If Falcon 9 needs strap on boosters you get those back as well as the 1st stage. Except, of course, if the launch requires all the fuel, in which case you only get the boosters back, not the core stage. but then you charge based on the core stage being disposable, ideally using a core stage that's at or near end of life having already done multiple launches :-)
"...while it's incredibly impressive to do it, is there any real advantage to this approach (other than you don't have to dry them out)?"
With SRBs they were recovering metal rings from the sea. The Falcon is a more complex liquid fuelled system with turbopumps and electrical systems. For the SRBs, a good wash and dry and then inspection and that's it, ready to add propellant. The amount of work to do after getting a Falcon booster wet makes it prohibitively expensive to ditch and recover.
Servo control systems are amazing when they work.
Remember decades ago watching some "fuzzy-logic 5th-generation buzzword-thingy" crane control where the crane gantry was flying backwards and forwards apparently randomly to keep a load on the end of a long line almost stationary in the wind
"Temperatures remain stable and the crew remains safe"
No news on Musk's temperature... after testing positive for Covid-19, and exhibiting minor symptoms, causing him to watch the launch from home
https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1327125840040169472
In general I've been watching, from the moon landings on, or reading about space exploration with great interest.
(I used to lecture about data communications via satellite on behalf of InMarSat way back in the past.)
Only, it just struck me, what is the carbon footprint of a rocket launch?
I'm guessing that it can't be trivial.
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