SpaceX Tuesday...
Discussion
Dog Star said:
The irony is that if we imagine some warped reality where SpaceX are “unchosen” because of this appeal, it will involve SpaceX independently landing a hoofing great starship on the moon probably a decade before the other team, who will arrive in their tiny little lander, leaving most of it behind etc etc.
The potential for these big military-industrial pork barrel companies to end up looking utterly stupid is immense.
I can see it happening ridiculously quickly. Say SN15 flies OK and the Booster works as planned. They may have Starship in orbit within a year - no people, just a bloody great cylinder. What would you do with that cylinder? Bugger it, fly it to the moon and back, with no payload, it probably has enough fuel to do it in one, but maybe they need to do an inflght refuel. The potential for these big military-industrial pork barrel companies to end up looking utterly stupid is immense.
IMO they'll have Starship orbiting the moon in 2 years. Gateway Station, er, tick.
rxe said:
Dog Star said:
The irony is that if we imagine some warped reality where SpaceX are “unchosen” because of this appeal, it will involve SpaceX independently landing a hoofing great starship on the moon probably a decade before the other team, who will arrive in their tiny little lander, leaving most of it behind etc etc.
The potential for these big military-industrial pork barrel companies to end up looking utterly stupid is immense.
I can see it happening ridiculously quickly. Say SN15 flies OK and the Booster works as planned. They may have Starship in orbit within a year - no people, just a bloody great cylinder. What would you do with that cylinder? Bugger it, fly it to the moon and back, with no payload, it probably has enough fuel to do it in one, but maybe they need to do an inflght refuel. The potential for these big military-industrial pork barrel companies to end up looking utterly stupid is immense.
IMO they'll have Starship orbiting the moon in 2 years. Gateway Station, er, tick.
If the booster works, they'll be in orbit before the end of the summer, whether they can land anything or de-orbit to land at that point is probably unlikely.
F20CN16 said:
No SN15 flight today as the TFR was removed. The earliest opportunity will be tomorrow, so that everyone can make Star Wars puns all day 
Come on SpaceX - Do, or do not; There is no "try". 
There could actually be a double launch (and landing) - They've got a Falcon 9 also scheduled on May the 4th (be with you) from Cape Canaveral. A Starlink mission, this one is.
They're keeping an eye on the weather in the landing area though, so it may not happen.
This will be the booster's 9th flight.
Launch time - Tuesday, 4th May at 8:01 pm UK time (3.01 pm Local time).
Edited by Beati Dogu on Tuesday 4th May 01:24
annodomini2 said:
rxe said:
Dog Star said:
The irony is that if we imagine some warped reality where SpaceX are “unchosen” because of this appeal, it will involve SpaceX independently landing a hoofing great starship on the moon probably a decade before the other team, who will arrive in their tiny little lander, leaving most of it behind etc etc.
The potential for these big military-industrial pork barrel companies to end up looking utterly stupid is immense.
I can see it happening ridiculously quickly. Say SN15 flies OK and the Booster works as planned. They may have Starship in orbit within a year - no people, just a bloody great cylinder. What would you do with that cylinder? Bugger it, fly it to the moon and back, with no payload, it probably has enough fuel to do it in one, but maybe they need to do an inflght refuel. The potential for these big military-industrial pork barrel companies to end up looking utterly stupid is immense.
IMO they'll have Starship orbiting the moon in 2 years. Gateway Station, er, tick.
If the booster works, they'll be in orbit before the end of the summer, whether they can land anything or de-orbit to land at that point is probably unlikely.
Using this Delta-V calculator (http://www.strout.net/info/science/delta-v/) , I get 5km/s of Delta-V in that configuration (100 tonne Starship, 400 tonnes of fuel, 380 seconds Isp).
I'm not sure if Musk meant expending Superheavy as well as Starship in his tweet though. Although to prove a point he might consider it worth it?
Not enough to land though, so it'd be an orbit mission only. Playing with the numbers you might just barely be able to put a ~ 30 tonne lander into orbit, so you could also land *something*, just not a Starship.
MiniMan64 said:
Christ can you imagine if Space X are already sat on the surface to wave NASA down when they finally arrive. They’d look like right idiots
This is getting back to a post I made a few pages ago: cock this up and NASA are going to end up squandering billions on some outmoded tech, throwing most of it into the ocean/atmosphere to burn up/heliocentric orbit/the moon [delete as applicable] all in order to land a crew of two or three people on the moon in a tin can little better than an Apollo LM after enduring several days travel in a tiny capsule eating food out of toothpaste tubes and, as I said, crapping in a plastic bag taped to their arse. Meanwhile, on the surface of the moon, there will be some spiffy huge Starship, crew sat relaxing after a hard day on the surface in their lounge with big panoramic windows and mood lighting. They will probably have a crapper like one of those in a Japanese hotel that washes your bum and plays whale song.
There’s a real risk that this pans out like this - not only will NASA look stupid, so will Blue, Boeing etc etc. Why is their rehashed vision of ancient tech the best they can come up with? Where’s their vision?
NASA also can’t have been happy they had to bring forward the HLS result by at least a week (the press conference was originally meant to be about the SpaceX Crew-2 launch to the ISS). However, Washington is a leaky town and word came out that the Washington Post (which is owned by Jeff Bezos) was about to preempt their announcement.
Dog Star said:
Why is their rehashed vision of ancient tech the best they can come up with? Where’s their vision?
Because 17 years ago - when the project was first mooted, it made a lot more sense. It also sold better to the politicians, because it was making use of existing technology - which, in theory, would keep costs down.The reality has turned out very different, of course.
Starlink launch live at 20:00 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpl_JnG7rcg
garyhun said:
MiniMan64 said:
Still no word on SN15?
Launch window is open until 1am UK time I believe. Everyday Astronaut are doing a livefeed from 6pm UK time.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=diEdOGhC8p0
Russ35 said:
garyhun said:
MiniMan64 said:
Still no word on SN15?
Launch window is open until 1am UK time I believe. Everyday Astronaut are doing a livefeed from 6pm UK time.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=diEdOGhC8p0
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