Jeff Findley wrote on Wed, 25 Apr 2018
07:39:46 -0400:

In article ,
says...

JF Mezei wrote on Tue, 24 Apr 2018
16:36:20 -0400:

On 2018-04-24 14:21, David Spain wrote:

I am of the opinion that the existing F9 and F9H architectures will be
(crew-wise) underutilized.


Unless the space station life is extended beyond 2025, FH and Dragon2
may very well remain the workhorse for mnanned space in USA.


So Boeing is irrelevant in your mind?


And unless there is real funding for manned space programme beyond ISS,
nobody will see much business case to invest in manned space programme
from now on, unless you go for it on your own (aka: SpaceX with BFR to
Mars).


The issue here is that Bigelow seems to have jumped in bed with ULA.
If that extends to ferrying supplies and 'guests' to 'space hotels',
they might not let SpaceX vehicles dock.


Where the "international" thing may fall in place is if SpaceX gets
serius about mars and other countries want "in" on the project,
supplying modules for the Mars colony or any other "help" they can
provide to SpaceX.


Or just people who want to go to Mars. If there are enough, it would
make sense to launch from almost anywhere.


I personally doubt that would happen very soon unless the flight rate of
BFR/BFS tops 100 per year (which I don't think will happen for a decade
or two). Despite SpaceX's pretty renderings of off-shore launch/landing
platforms, launch and landing sites still aren't cheap to build. I'd
think you'd need significant local investment in order to make a non-US
launch site profitable.


True. It would take some large group of people wanting to 'get out
from under', like the Pilgrims back in the past. Something that would
create an ongoing demand for launches and a combined fund to support
things. On the flip side of that is the limited launch window for
getting to Mars. You only get a window every couple of years, so you
need to launch all your ships in that window. I think Musk's current
'plan' is to send 1-2 ships the first window in 2022 and twice as many
in the next window.


But unless a place like Australia could provide a huge cost and
logistics benefit to have SpaceX launch/land there, SpaceX might not be
so interested when you consider transportation logistics for modules
built in USA.


Remember, BFR Spaceship can do point to point travel on Earth and land
anywhere there's a big enough piece of concrete.


Yeah, paper rockets can do anything. SMH. I still have huge doubts
about the whole point to point thing. The A380 took five aircraft to
fly over 2000 hours in its testing phase. For BFR/BFS the same sort of
times would take well over 1000 flights. That's not happening in a
short period of time.


Given what it is, I don't find BFR Spaceship being able to do this
peculiar or unreasonable at all. If BFR Spaceship is certified under
spacecraft rules for manned flight, I don't see any reason why it
would require any additional testing to operate 'point to point'.


That and point to point only gets BFS to another part of the world.
Unless the booster can self ferry too, you still have the huge first
stage to transport by ship half way around the world. That's only going
to make sense if that remote site can support several Big Falcon
Boosters. One is just a single point of failure for your transportation
system. If it's in the hangar being worked on, it's not flying and
generating revenue.


You're going to have to do that to get it from LA to the launch site
anyway. They're building these things in LA because they're too big
to move other than by ship. That means they're going down through
Suez to get to East Coast launch sites, so they're making a very long
ocean voyage anyway.


Will we get there? Maybe, eventually. I'm a huge SpaceX "fan boy", but
let's get real. BFR/BFS hasn't even been built yet! Hell, Falcon 9
Block 5 hasn't even flown, let alone proven its reuse abilities!


True, but either BFR Spaceship will have point-to-point capabilities
on Earth or it will be a complete and utter failure for its intended
purpose.


All these visions of super cheap spaceflight are where we want to be,
but it's going to take a decade or two to get there, IMHO. Until then,
Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy will be the "workhorses" of SpaceX.


Well, I think Elon Musk is being optimistic as usual with his
'schedule'. He's said himself that five years seems like a terribly
long time to him, so he thinks anything ought to be able to be done in
five years. I personally think he's got around five years LEFT, so
perhaps he'll get a Mars flight off in 2024. Perhaps not.


--
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable
man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore,
all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
--George Bernard Shaw