In article ,
says...
Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy, and Dragon 2 are more than enough for now.

Dragon 2 not yet flying.

The uncrewed orbital Dragon 2 test flight is just a little more than a
month away and is scheduled for Jan. 7, 2019. The crewed test flight is
targeted for June 2019.

Space.com Spaceflight
SpaceX's 1st Crew Dragon Test Flight to Launch Jan. 7, NASA Says
By Mike Wall, Space.com Senior Writer - November 21, 2018 04:16pm ET
https://www.space.com/42514-spacex-f...aunch-january-
2019.html


Starliner's uncrewed test flight is scheduled for March 2019 and its
first crewed test flight is scheduled for August 2019.

It won't belong now. NASA has a hard deadline due to them stopping the
purchasing of Soyuz capsules. Russia is so cash strapped there really
aren't any extras. And the lead times are so long on Soyuz that even if
NASA went to them today with cash in hand, it wouldn't help much.

COUNTDOWN RUNNING...
SpaceX and Boeing are running out of time to fly astronauts into space
By Tim Fernholz, July 17, 2018
https://qz.com/1328927/spacex-and-bo...f-time-to-fly-
nasa-astronauts-to-iss-warns-the-government-accountability-office/

From above:

Pressure is rising on Boeing and SpaceX, the two companies trying
to prove the US can still fly humans to space. Both are expected
to miss a November 2019 deadline for producing spacecraft
certified as safe enough to transport astronauts-which means
NASA, humiliatingly, could end up locked out of the
International Space Station next year.

Tick-tock.

Yes, SpaceX has made huge accomplishements. and "huge" is an
understatement. But that does not garantee that BFR/BFS will be
delivered as promised.

I never said BFR/BFS was a sure thing. I even admitted that Starlink
isn't a sure thing either. The only thing that's 100% sure in life is
death (morbid as that may be).

The A 380 is a good example

No, not really. A-380 came into the market at a time when super-jumbos
just aren't in as much demand as they used to be. It also came into the
market which had been dominated for decades by the Boeing 747. Airbus
missed the market for super-jumbos, so all of the issues with it just
seem much worse than they would have if demand for super-jumbos was
still very high.

If anything, BFR/BFS is more like the Boeing 747. It will be a "bet the
company" sort of project when precisely because there is no current
commercial market for a launch vehicle that big.

And Airbus had governments to goto to find funding when a project is
delayed and needs more money. SpaceX doesn't.

Which is why I said *if* Starlink is successful, SpaceX will have the
revenue it needs to fund BFR/BFS. Hell, if Starlink is successful,
SpaceX will *need* BFR/BFS in order to completely launch and maintain
their nearly 12,000 satellite constellation and remain ahead of
competing constellations (none of which will have the benefit of SpaceX
launches without a mark-up for profitability).

It's good to be the lowest cost launch provider. SpaceX has only
cracked half of the reuse nut (the easiest half). I have no doubt that
the BFS/Starship portion of BFR/BFS will be difficult to develop. But
nothing ventured, nothing gained, right?

So you can blindly believe SpaceX will succeed in scaling its
experience to the biggest rocket ever built and won't be late,
will remain on budger. You're free to believe that.

I *never* said that I believed that (because I don't). SpaceX schedules
slip and budgets increase just like every other aerospace provider who's
pushing the edge of the envelope (be it in engineering or the flight
envelope and BFS will push both).

I *did* say that the BFR/Super Booster (whatever it's called) will be
little more than a scaled up Falcon 9 booster only with composite
LOX/methane tanks and Raptor engines. So even there you've got
technical risk. But the risk is still not a lot, IMHO, given the flight
regime of the first stage.

And the reason I pointed out that the development risk in the booster is
relatively low is because you kept proposing lashing together Falcon 9
first stages Kerbal Space Program style to do the job because you
thought that would be easier than designing a new stage. That proposal
makes zero sense because the booster is the relatively easy part and
lashing together lots of liquid stages Kerbal Space Program style (moar
struts!) is daft in the real world. Instead, simply design your liquid
fueled stage to be the size you need, which is the same diameter as the
BFS/Starship upper stage which will initially use sea-level Raptors (so
both the engines and tooling will already be there!).

Again, as I said above, the *big* challenge will be the BFS/Starship
portion. No one has built and flown anything quite like it, so SpaceX
has a huge challenge in front of it. That reusable upper stage is *the
key* to a fully reusable TSTO.

Yet McCall and you criticise me for not being sure it will be a
success with infinite capacity and latency so low traders will
be willing to pay billions for a simple data link.

No, you're being bashed for your straw-man arguments trying to make
Starlink sound like it won't be possible to deploy and be profitable.

Yet, you still believe he will deliver BFR/BFS with the same
capacity/functiosn ., budget and timeframe as originally announced
when he announded that project.

I never said that either. Why do you insist on putting words in my
mouth?

I want to see BFR/BFS succeed as a fully reusable TSTO. That would be a
first and would lower launch costs significantly. I never said I
believed SpaceX would deliver on time, on (development) budget, and with
the same capabilities as originally announced.

In fact I've said if BFR/BFS is 1/10th as reusable as SpaceX wants it to
be (i.e. they have to refurbish it 10x as often as they would like), it
would *still* be better than any expendable launch vehicle in its class.
Such a vehicle would be economically sustainable and could still have a
flight rate of dozens each year with just a few copies of the hardware
being built every year.

That's just a fact based on the economics of reuse.

But supporters of SLS don't get that. They think we're going to expand
out into the solar system via once or twice per year launches of a
system that costs $2+ billion a year. That's just not economically
sustainable. That's precisely why Saturn V was canceled and precisely
why SLS will eventually be canceled.

What I want to see is a large, reusable, TSTO replace SLS so that NASA's
manned spaceflight program can *finally* get out of LEO and back to
actually exploring the solar system.

Jeff
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