News SpaceX heavy-lift vehicles: Launch Thread

[XCV330]

Doesn't that have the potential for them to lose any future contracts?

It's become expected by now they prefer live testing to the Boeing method of running simulations for a couple of decades before delivering a shitty product. Though early on I am sure the first few failures of Falcon I gave everyone pause, including Musk.

 

[publiusr]

2008 was a very bleak time. Elon had a divorce. While people were more optimistic in general, it was the lowest ebb for Musk. Now, everything has flipped, as if he has used up the whole planet’s worth of good luck.

SpaceX is on top of the world, and we’re all miserable.

I don’t understand it.

Now I read that Boeing is decreasing R&D again. So help me…but whoever came up with words like “realignment” and “synergy” need to burn in hell with Jack Welsh.

 

[Marc]

bezos and blue origin are taking NASA to court over the contract for the lunar lander to be used in the next moon missions.

they claim that NASA didn't evaluate the proposal properly which lead them to award the contract to SpaceX and going with Starship.

think they're going to have hard ask to win when they idea pretty much exists on paper only compared to the missions that SpaceX has flown plus the upcoming test launch of Starship with a Falcon heavy.


https://www.theverge.com/2021/8/16/22623022/jeff-bezos-blue-origin-sue-nasa-lawsuit-hls-lunar-lander

Jeff Bezos’ space company Blue Origin brought its fight against NASA’s Moon program to federal court, doubling down on accusations that the agency wrongly evaluated its lunar lander proposal. The complaint escalates a monthslong crusade by the company to win a chunk of lunar lander funds that was only given to its rival, Elon Musk’s SpaceX, and comes weeks after Blue Origin’s first protest over the Moon program was squashed by a federal watchdog agency. Now in court, Blue Origin’s challenge could trigger another pause to SpaceX’s contract and a new lengthy delay to NASA’s race to land astronauts on the Moon by 2024.

Blue Origin’s complaint, filed with the US Court of Federal Claims last Friday, was shrouded behind a protective order but was described as a challenge to “NASA’s unlawful and improper evaluation of proposals” submitted during the Moon competition, lawyers for Blue Origin said in a separate filing.

 

[valkyrie013]

Bezoes is being a fracking weasel.. And now when you look up sore loser in the dictionary, his face will be staring back at you.

Hopefully the judge won't grant the pause and let spacex and NASA get on with it. The moon is slipping already because of bloat and bs..

 

[XCV330]

These post award suits happen all the time. SpaceX does it too. When you have an army of lawyers might as well let them exercise now and then

 

[publiusr]

Unlike SpaceX, Bezos is doing damage to space across the board.

He has:

A.) Bought up great minds only to sit on them;

B.) Tied up ULA on engine delays;

C.) Tied up Musk’s hands ALSO with suits so now there is no movement in either old or new space…and

D) where Musk democritized space by giving it to steelworkers in the rough, Bezos’ JR Ewing stunt could not have been better designed so as to alienate the masses.

Despite the Peter Principle at Boeing…SLS gains ground-no Bezos there at least.

So while the press bashes test gods and trash my guys in Huntsville…the fact is that it is Bezos who has become the worst enemy to American Spaceflight since Proxmire-either by accident…or design.

And despite "Jarvis" which was *supposed* to keep engineers out from under the suits---they still flee:
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/20/jef...sing-top-talent-during-nasa-lander-fight.html

Those who announced they were leaving Blue Origin did not specify why, but frustration with executive management and a slow, bureaucratic structure is often cited in employee reviews on job site Glassdoor.

BO delinda est

 

[valkyrie013]

Well it's shelved to Nov 1.. So 2 more months stall.. 6 month+ total so far of Bezoes gummimg up the works? If I don't do it no one will? Ugh..

Ship and booster are still moving forward. Now to just get the FAA out of there hair..

 

[publiusr]

In my best Rod Serling:

There is such a thing as loving one’s profession a bit too much: Consider the case of one Brandon Bostian: FRN.

A longtime lover of the Iron Horse, he had a fateful appointment half past nine in the evening with The Twilight Zone—-May 12, 2015 to be exact—as Amtrak Train # 188 made for the Frankford Junction in Philadelphia…

Bezos…the Brandon Bostian of boosters

Musk innovates
Bezos litigates
Branson irritates.

And ULA?
https://futurism.com/alleged-leak-ula-elon-musk

 

[publiusr]

Leaked interior photos
https://wonderfulengineering.com/wa...at-reveals-the-interior-of-spacexs-starships/
https://spaceexplored.com/wp-conten...501_254547539993135_5629020399503633649_n.mp4

Elon even has the whistles:
https://interestingengineering.com/elon-musk-presents-the-new-50-cyberwhistle-was-sold-out-in-hours

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

Elon Musk tells SpaceX employees that Starship engine crisis is creating a ‘risk of bankruptcy’
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/30/elo...ps-raptor-engine-crisis-risks-bankruptcy.html

 

[publiusr]

I hope. That’s what Shotwell is for..to be his McCoy:

“Jim, you’re pushing. Your people know their jobs.”

 

[XCV330]

Shuttle failed its original premise because it couldn't become close to its flight rate. SpaceX has to hit that flight rate or their future business model fails. Musk is exaggerating but maybe not by much. At some point someone will hit the flight rate, New Armstrong or whatever Chinese concern steals the best ideas from both of them.

 

[publiusr]

Speaking of spaceplanes…SpaceX might be going to LC-49, an area just south of the FUTURE NOTIONAL HORIZONTAL LAUNCH AREA as per some recent reports.

I think Bezos needs to bury the hatchet, and reach out to Musk and say “let’s work together. I will put New Glenn on the shelf and fund Boeing’s RASV but with your methalox engines…and I’ll fund the methane tanks that both LC-49 and the FNHLA need, side by side. A winged craft for crew, so you can keep Starship all cargo for the time being.”

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

Speaking of spaceplanes…SpaceX might be going to LC-49, an area just south of the FUTURE NOTIONAL HORIZONTAL LAUNCH AREA as per some recent reports.

I think Bezos needs to bury the hatchet, and reach out to Musk and say “let’s work together. I will put New Glenn on the shelf and fund Boeing’s RASV but with your methalox engines…and I’ll fund the methane tanks that both LC-49 and the FNHLA need, side by side. A winged craft for crew, so you can keep Starship all cargo for the time being.”

Bury the hatchet..... Sure. I don't think they could ever work together

 

[XCV330]

Bury the hatchet..... Sure. I don't think they could ever work together

I don't either. I have no idea what's going on but from an outside perspective it looks like Blue did a lot of things wrong. The New Shepard was supposed to be a development tool for the engine design and production process that would translate up the chain into new vehicles, much the way Falcon 1 led to Falcon 9 lead to Falcon 9 Heavy, etc. But at some point in its long secretive development process the New Glenn and the subsequent engines went in a different direction. It's felt like Blue Origin has been playing catch-up to SpaceX all along, and it can do that as long as Bezos wants to throw a spare billion at it whenever he feels like, but at some point it has to be expected to go into black.

Glenn should be flying and metal should be getting bent on Armstrong if they really want to be a serious competitor. I'm sure engine work for ULA Vulcan is profitable, but that's not their original business model, at least from what little has been stated.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

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Ooh

 

[Santaman]

It's all good and well but maybe trying to figure out if humans can actually live on Mars with the low gravity there might be a good idea BEFORE actually putting them there?

 

[XCV330]

Sounds like a good use for a moon settlement.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

Sounds like a good use for a moon settlement.

Which is why I don't get why people like Musk don't go for the Moon first as a settlement then do Mars later?

 

[XCV330]

Which is why I don't get why people like Musk don't go for the Moon first as a settlement then do Mars later?

He's been a Mars first person for decades. He got involved with Zubrin in the 90s, in the Mars Society. He's no longer afiliated, I guess. Zubrin was always somewhat fanatical about how Mars would be settled, i.e. it had to be Zubrins way. SpaceX was founded to develop technologies to enable Mars settlement. It is the entire reason for the company. Making billions is nice too, of course. He's not opposed to the Moon as much as he once was, but he seemed to view it in the past as a road block.