* Posts by trclark81

3 publicly visible posts • joined 27 Oct 2017

SpaceX gives free ride to replacement for Facebook's fried satellite

trclark81

Re: Weasel words...

"No, no Mr Insurer you misunderstand. We were so keen to ensure your client's launch was a success, that we fully tested the first stage by launching another satellite with it."

As amusing as that is, insurers thus far haven't inflated the premiums for re-flown Falcon 9 first stages. The fact that no additional charge is being applied is actually being seen as a pretty significant thumbs up from the insurers on the idea.

trclark81

Re: Bottom of the class

"Write 100 times :

“I must not split infinitives.”"

Most English style and usage guides as well as dictionaries no longer require, and in some cases don't even mention, the split infinitive "rule". It was an attempt in the 1800's to make English behave like Latin. And as any kid who's been scolded for using a split infinitive can tell you, it didn't make any sense for English. For the past 20-30 years or so, avoiding split infinitives has only been necessary to get articles published in certain media outlets and to avoid the ire of people who ally themselves with long-dead proscriptive grammarians with a Latin fetish. It's not a rule so much as a grammatical wrong long overdue for righting.

Jeff Bezos fires off a blue dart, singes Elon Musk and SpaceX

trclark81

"Which is why SpaceX packs nine of them into a single Falcon 9 rocket."

Eh, half true. Yes, Falcon 9 requires several Merlin engines in part for overall thrust. But it's also for multiple engine out redundancy for both launches and landings. Something that has on one or two occasions allowed a launch to continue to optimal orbit despite engine issues during F9's testing and development phases. That's also why the BFR is designed with a good number of Raptors instead of just one, monster engine. You can debate the merits of having as many as it does, but that it needs more than one engine is not just a performance question.

The other important part of the equation is that Merlin was designed to produce an MVP, minimum viable product, in Falcon 1. Falcon 9 was a bit too heavy a lift for a first-pass rocket from a company that had never done it before. So you build a moderately powerful engine to get the skinny stick to orbit, then pack a bunch of them on your bigger stick instead of building out a brand new engine for each scale of rocket.

Not saying the article is straight up wrong, but it's somewhat necessary for the "singes Musk and SpaceX" thesis. BE-4, New Glenn, and Vulcan are all threats to SpaceX, but they are over the horizon threats, not current ones. And the threat certainly has little to do with how much overall thrust the engine puts out, because that's a design decision more so than a measure of a company's competitiveness. What IS a measure of their competitiveness is that they are able to get the engine to a hot fire phase and book an established customer to put that engine on their next gen rocket. SpaceX will be watching what happens with BE-4 very closely, to be sure. But I highly doubt anyone in Hawthorne is particularly nervous or bothered by this. Not for another 2-3 years, anyway.