NASA Spaceflight link reveals a few details about new engines in development (1 million and 1.8 million lbsf), along with new cores of 20' and 33' (10-meters) in diameter. They make the Falcon 9 v1.1 look like a bottle rocket.
SpaceX reveals a few details of their Mars launchers
- Thread starter gturner
- Start date
More imminent progress, Elon Musk is tweeting that they mounted legs on the Falcon 9 due for CRS launch shortly. Unfortunately, the damn regulators won't let them land on land, so they'd be landing on water again, and I figure unless Falcon 9 does a Jesus,* the water won't work for a very firm landing.
But it's good to hear they are also thinking on how to put the bus horizontally in the fairing though. Can you imagine lying on your seat with the bus sitting on its back, and a guy in the front pulling his seat back and falling down on everyone?
I assume all their new conceptual designs include restartable engines, retro propulsion, hypersonic, supersonic, subsonic and panasonic maneuv... menuev... er... control, and the eventual addition of landing gear. I hope the experience and knowledge from Falcon 9R will be easily transferable to these new designs, despite the fact that they are very different in nature. The article already claims they are stepping into an uncharted territory, they ought to go there with their legs.
* ETA: On a second thought, if they keep the engines running for enough time to get a camera crew there, they could demonstrate a 500 ton Jesus and Hoverboard at once. Take that, fake hoverboard ad.
But it's good to hear they are also thinking on how to put the bus horizontally in the fairing though. Can you imagine lying on your seat with the bus sitting on its back, and a guy in the front pulling his seat back and falling down on everyone?
I assume all their new conceptual designs include restartable engines, retro propulsion, hypersonic, supersonic, subsonic and panasonic maneuv... menuev... er... control, and the eventual addition of landing gear. I hope the experience and knowledge from Falcon 9R will be easily transferable to these new designs, despite the fact that they are very different in nature. The article already claims they are stepping into an uncharted territory, they ought to go there with their legs.
* ETA: On a second thought, if they keep the engines running for enough time to get a camera crew there, they could demonstrate a 500 ton Jesus and Hoverboard at once. Take that, fake hoverboard ad.
That's funny! Heck--the only problem with Sea Dragon would be the ice clinging to it weighing it down...
Over at Phil plait's site we saw this comment:
"With a thrust close to Saturn V the single core could probably fly from Pad 39A or Boca Chica, but that tri-core with >20 million lbf is beyond pad 39A's design limits. Boca Chica is probably too close to Brownsville and South Padre Island's resorts for the tri-cores acoustics as well."
"ISTM the fix is to either build a new pad at KSC, perhaps 39C, or to build a pad along the Gulf coastline (or perhaps a bit inland) between Boca Chica and Corpus Christi. Not much there but gophers."
I responded by saying that the 39 C concept might be the only option. The crawlers are already there...and SLS funds to uprate them are already in place, so that gives him an asset he doesn't have to pay for.
*************************************************************
Still, I worry for Musk...
The USAF has always had the real power. Musk doesn't have a problem with SLS. The idea is that while NASA turns to BEO and SLS, Musk gets LEO replacing Ares I and the medium LV marketplace.
Naturally, ULA hates it.
You must understand that a lot of hatred for HLLVs was actually generated by the EELV lobby.
The whole concept of depots was just a way to force NASA to wear the EELV albatross that was weighing down the Air Force, who wanted to offset any cuts to airplane projects by dumping their EELV problem on someone else.
Griffin saw right through it.
HLLVs allow for all propellant handling to be done on the ground. Passive depots are expected to lose 20 million bucks worth of propellant per month. There was this Aviation Week and Space Technology article a couple years ago or so that talked about a Japanese upper stage being painted white to avoid hydrogen boil off on a simple five hour coast.
Depots complicate things, and you don't need them to go to the moon. But a leaky depot that requires a lot of medium LVs to keep it topped off--hey that's the ticket for ULA!
So Griffin pushed for HLVs as he always did, and the EELV lobby posted a bunch of anti-HLV nonsense people buy to this day. First they said that NASA shouldn't make rockets--but when Musk--a real market solution came along--the Aerospace Corp front then wanted more "in house" work--doing a complete 180. Remember that White Paper attacking Commercial Spaceflight the Aerospace Corp made?
http://spacetalknow.org/wordpress/?p=2728
We have seen some players who were willing to do anything to get their way
http://www.dodig.mil/IGInformation/IGInformationReleases/boeing_managers_theft.pdf
This forced move hurt Musk:
http://www.space.com/1422-spacex-private-rocket-shifts-island-launch.html
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2531521/posts
The USAF first slammed the door on ABMA, get the Saturn killed
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_I#Near-cancellation --interfere with the shuttle, undermine Ares/Constellation, the Tanker scandal/Thundervision, the JSF/F-35, then they try to get the A-10 killed behind the scenes--now this:
http://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-spacex-russia-ukraine-ula-2014-3#ixzz2vbTRc6Tt
"In a statement, a ULA spokesperson vehemently denied Musk's point and fired back at SpaceX:"
That assertion made of Atlas V could not be further from the truth. Atlas V will continue to provide assured access to space for our nation’s national security satellites. ULA maintains more than a two-year supply of RD-180 engines in the United States to minimize potential supply disruptions, and has developed significant engineering and manufacturing capability which ultimately demonstrated the capability to co-produce the RD-180 domestically.
Alternatively, under the mandate of assured access to space, critical national security payloads could be transferred to ULA’s Delta IV EELV family of launch vehicles in the event Atlas V launch vehicles became unavailable.
The same cannot be said for Space X’s family of rockets – which do not currently meet the needs to service our nation’s national security launch need.
http://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-spacex-russia-ukraine-ula-2014-3
http://cosmoquest.org/forum/showthread.php?149737-Ukraine-and-CCtCap&p=2199010#post2199010
Those lying sacks!
SLS isn't your enemy.
EELVs and this bloody ULA/USAF cabal--that's your real enemy, people!
So help me, the biggest mistake this nation ever made with regard to the military wasn't 'Nam or Iraq--but letting flyboys get their own branch of the service.
This is why I almost hate the fighter jock ethos of "The Right Stuff" as much as I hate Capricron One.
Wolfe made engineers dullards. That ranks right down there Kaku's Cassini-bashing or anything that ever came out of the mouth of William Proxmire.
Over at Phil plait's site we saw this comment:
"With a thrust close to Saturn V the single core could probably fly from Pad 39A or Boca Chica, but that tri-core with >20 million lbf is beyond pad 39A's design limits. Boca Chica is probably too close to Brownsville and South Padre Island's resorts for the tri-cores acoustics as well."
"ISTM the fix is to either build a new pad at KSC, perhaps 39C, or to build a pad along the Gulf coastline (or perhaps a bit inland) between Boca Chica and Corpus Christi. Not much there but gophers."
I responded by saying that the 39 C concept might be the only option. The crawlers are already there...and SLS funds to uprate them are already in place, so that gives him an asset he doesn't have to pay for.
*************************************************************
Still, I worry for Musk...
The USAF has always had the real power. Musk doesn't have a problem with SLS. The idea is that while NASA turns to BEO and SLS, Musk gets LEO replacing Ares I and the medium LV marketplace.
Naturally, ULA hates it.
You must understand that a lot of hatred for HLLVs was actually generated by the EELV lobby.
The whole concept of depots was just a way to force NASA to wear the EELV albatross that was weighing down the Air Force, who wanted to offset any cuts to airplane projects by dumping their EELV problem on someone else.
Griffin saw right through it.
HLLVs allow for all propellant handling to be done on the ground. Passive depots are expected to lose 20 million bucks worth of propellant per month. There was this Aviation Week and Space Technology article a couple years ago or so that talked about a Japanese upper stage being painted white to avoid hydrogen boil off on a simple five hour coast.
Depots complicate things, and you don't need them to go to the moon. But a leaky depot that requires a lot of medium LVs to keep it topped off--hey that's the ticket for ULA!
So Griffin pushed for HLVs as he always did, and the EELV lobby posted a bunch of anti-HLV nonsense people buy to this day. First they said that NASA shouldn't make rockets--but when Musk--a real market solution came along--the Aerospace Corp front then wanted more "in house" work--doing a complete 180. Remember that White Paper attacking Commercial Spaceflight the Aerospace Corp made?
http://spacetalknow.org/wordpress/?p=2728
We have seen some players who were willing to do anything to get their way
http://www.dodig.mil/IGInformation/IGInformationReleases/boeing_managers_theft.pdf
This forced move hurt Musk:
http://www.space.com/1422-spacex-private-rocket-shifts-island-launch.html
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2531521/posts
The USAF first slammed the door on ABMA, get the Saturn killed
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_I#Near-cancellation --interfere with the shuttle, undermine Ares/Constellation, the Tanker scandal/Thundervision, the JSF/F-35, then they try to get the A-10 killed behind the scenes--now this:
http://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-spacex-russia-ukraine-ula-2014-3#ixzz2vbTRc6Tt
"In a statement, a ULA spokesperson vehemently denied Musk's point and fired back at SpaceX:"
That assertion made of Atlas V could not be further from the truth. Atlas V will continue to provide assured access to space for our nation’s national security satellites. ULA maintains more than a two-year supply of RD-180 engines in the United States to minimize potential supply disruptions, and has developed significant engineering and manufacturing capability which ultimately demonstrated the capability to co-produce the RD-180 domestically.
Alternatively, under the mandate of assured access to space, critical national security payloads could be transferred to ULA’s Delta IV EELV family of launch vehicles in the event Atlas V launch vehicles became unavailable.
The same cannot be said for Space X’s family of rockets – which do not currently meet the needs to service our nation’s national security launch need.
http://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-spacex-russia-ukraine-ula-2014-3
http://cosmoquest.org/forum/showthread.php?149737-Ukraine-and-CCtCap&p=2199010#post2199010
Those lying sacks!
SLS isn't your enemy.
EELVs and this bloody ULA/USAF cabal--that's your real enemy, people!
So help me, the biggest mistake this nation ever made with regard to the military wasn't 'Nam or Iraq--but letting flyboys get their own branch of the service.
This is why I almost hate the fighter jock ethos of "The Right Stuff" as much as I hate Capricron One.
Wolfe made engineers dullards. That ranks right down there Kaku's Cassini-bashing or anything that ever came out of the mouth of William Proxmire.
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