SpaceX: 2025

"Jeff Findley" wrote in message
...

In article ,
says...


Once you get into self contained suits, EVA techniques to prevent you
from drifting away become essential (hence not just "hand holds" but
also some place to attach your safety tether to as you move around.


All astronauts (except the MMU tests) are tethered during spacewalks.
They have two tethers and at least one is attached at all times.

Skylab used an interesting design where their umbilical connected them to
the station and provided O2. It could also be "locked" in a position.

Gemini used umbilicals too. This contributed to the mobility problems
during early EVAs. Lack of a liquid cooling garment was an issue too.
It was very easy to overheat inside an early Gemini EVA suit, since (I
believe) it relied on O2 from the Gemini spacecraft for cooling.

Sorry, I should have been more clear. The interesting part was the "locking"
part of the Skylab umbilical.

And yes, lack of decent cooling as a real problem for Gemini. And learning
stuff like that is exactly why they had the Gemini program. :-)


Jeff

--
Greg D. Moore http://greenmountainsoftware.wordpress.com/
CEO QuiCR: Quick, Crowdsourced Responses. http://www.quicr.net

Elon Musk and Spacex to reveal the Spacex Marsroadmap at IAC from
Sept 26-30th 2016:

"At the StartmeupHK Festival in Hong Kong, Musk stated that he was prepared to
unveil SpaceX's Mars roadmap at the International Astronautical Conference, which
will take place from September 26 to 30 in Mexico. And according to Berger of Ars
Technica, Musk's plan may call for the kick-off of humans to Mars by 2025, a
fairly ambitious goal that puts it nearly a decade ahead of NASA's nebulous
Mission to Mars plans."

See:

http://nextbigfuture.com/2016/02/elo...al-spacex.html

In article ,
says...

"Jeff Findley" wrote in message
...

In article ,
says...


Once you get into self contained suits, EVA techniques to prevent you
from drifting away become essential (hence not just "hand holds" but
also some place to attach your safety tether to as you move around.


All astronauts (except the MMU tests) are tethered during spacewalks.
They have two tethers and at least one is attached at all times.

Skylab used an interesting design where their umbilical connected them to
the station and provided O2. It could also be "locked" in a position.

Gemini used umbilicals too. This contributed to the mobility problems
during early EVAs. Lack of a liquid cooling garment was an issue too.
It was very easy to overheat inside an early Gemini EVA suit, since (I
believe) it relied on O2 from the Gemini spacecraft for cooling.

Sorry, I should have been more clear. The interesting part was the "locking"
part of the Skylab umbilical.

Interesting. Do you have a reference for this? I'd like to read more
about it. My memory is of Conrad forcing the damaged solar array open,
which caused him to fly free of Skylab. The umbilical did stop him from
floating away, but Kerwin had to pull him back in.

And yes, lack of decent cooling as a real problem for Gemini. And learning
stuff like that is exactly why they had the Gemini program. :-)

Yup. Lots of practice of the skills needed for Apollo.

Jeff
--
All opinions posted by me on Usenet News are mine, and mine alone.
These posts do not reflect the opinions of my family, friends,
employer, or any organization that I am a member of.

"Jeff Findley" wrote in message
...

In article ,
says...

"Jeff Findley" wrote in message
...

In article ,
says...


Once you get into self contained suits, EVA techniques to prevent you
from drifting away become essential (hence not just "hand holds" but
also some place to attach your safety tether to as you move around.


All astronauts (except the MMU tests) are tethered during spacewalks.
They have two tethers and at least one is attached at all times.

Skylab used an interesting design where their umbilical connected them
to
the station and provided O2. It could also be "locked" in a position.

Gemini used umbilicals too. This contributed to the mobility problems
during early EVAs. Lack of a liquid cooling garment was an issue too.
It was very easy to overheat inside an early Gemini EVA suit, since (I
believe) it relied on O2 from the Gemini spacecraft for cooling.

Sorry, I should have been more clear. The interesting part was the
"locking"
part of the Skylab umbilical.

Interesting. Do you have a reference for this? I'd like to read more
about it. My memory is of Conrad forcing the damaged solar array open,
which caused him to fly free of Skylab. The umbilical did stop him from
floating away, but Kerwin had to pull him back in.


I'm not finding anything and what I'm finding isn't supporting my memory.
The description I recall was that of basically a linked chain with a cord
through the links. By putting the cord under tension, it would essentially
"lock" the links in position. I can't imagine it was super stuff, but I
suspect it helped the umbilical from picking up movement and snagging on
items.

I can't seem to find this. I may have to find a dead tree and look through
that.


And yes, lack of decent cooling as a real problem for Gemini. And
learning
stuff like that is exactly why they had the Gemini program. :-)

Yup. Lots of practice of the skills needed for Apollo.


I just started rewatching From the Earth to the Moon and love the part in
Episode 1 where they lay out what they'll need to do. It's a good reminder
that it WAS rocket science and we needed to learn a lot.

(and the closing scene with Buzz riding the Agena is wonderful.)

Jeff

--
Greg D. Moore http://greenmountainsoftware.wordpress.com/
CEO QuiCR: Quick, Crowdsourced Responses. http://www.quicr.net

On Saturday, January 30, 2016 at 3:15:11 PM UTC-5, Alain Fournier wrote:
Elon Musk: SpaceX wants to send people to Mars by 2025

See:
http://money.cnn.com/2016/01/30/news...d=hp-stack-dom



Alain Fournier

Elon Musk is evidently a visionary. The quest is obviously bold. An will succeed. I have mentioned before the human radiation dose barrier. In strict terms the shielding is costly because it can not be fuel also. No man is allowed to volunteer for a no return version. Even getting a cancer victim is prohibited.

A moon base is required to load the shielding obviously. So begin making moon crust miner machines today. Just transform heavy mine machine to composite machines with metal tools. From now to September is enough time to create a miner. A real beehive theory allows solar power miners. 6 x 6 foot 100 pound loaders. Use miner number and time to load the shielding container..

Next how to get fuel? In Doug's world audacious is required. The farside of the moon has a special orbit spot. A geostationary orbit spot. SO HERE USE THE Cable lifter to get the shield to the asteroid already placed there..

SO now start to plan for a small asteroid to be the shielding.

But where does fuel come from? Design a first step to find fuel in asteroids becomes the necessary action now also. This is obviously the correct time to employ nuclear plants and detonations to move asteroid. Move chemically. Silicon oxide can be transformed to oxygen outcome. Fusion neutrons are usable but the number is always to small.

I will think some more.

On Sat, 30 Jan 2016 15:15:09 -0500, Alain Fournier
wrote:


Elon Musk: SpaceX wants to send people to Mars by 2025

Well, I admire the company, but have they ever hit a target date yet?
Remember, Falcon Heavy was announced to fly in 2013. Now it will be
"toward the end of the year, maybe late summer".

Figure 2030 or so, given SpaceX's history.

Brian

On Sat, 06 Feb 2016 04:37:56 -0700, Fred J. McCall
wrote:


Well, I admire the company, but have they ever hit a target date yet?
Remember, Falcon Heavy was announced to fly in 2013. Now it will be
"toward the end of the year, maybe late summer".

Figure 2030 or so, given SpaceX's history.


Their record for meeting dates is much better than NASA's, in general.

That's damning with faint praise, though.

Brian

On Sat, 06 Feb 2016 20:04:31 -0700, Fred J. McCall
wrote:


Their record for meeting dates is much better than NASA's, in general.


That's damning with faint praise, though.


Perhaps, but who else is in the game? SpaceX is best at meeting
schedules of any player.

I'd give that title to ULA. No one else is even close. Orbital is a
little ahead of SpaceX in that regard, too. That's probably not
unexpected, since both are established players while SpaceX is still
making its transition from an experimental organization into a
reliable launch service.

And what Orbital did to get Antares into service in such a short time
is seriously underappreciated, I think. Sure, its a kludge of other
rocket parts, but that's been tried before with far less success,
including their own Taurus. And now they're about to launch a
re-engined Antares after around 18 months since go-ahead. That's
truly incredible. Atlas IIA to Atlas IIAR took five-ish years.

Brian

In article ,
says...

Brian T. wrote:

On Sat, 06 Feb 2016 04:37:56 -0700, Fred J. McCall
wrote:


Well, I admire the company, but have they ever hit a target date yet?
Remember, Falcon Heavy was announced to fly in 2013. Now it will be
"toward the end of the year, maybe late summer".

Figure 2030 or so, given SpaceX's history.


Their record for meeting dates is much better than NASA's, in general.


That's damning with faint praise, though.


Perhaps, but who else is in the game? SpaceX is best at meeting
schedules of any player.

From what I read today, SpaceX is pretty much done with development work
on Falcon 9 and are going to ramp up production. When you don't have to
keep making changes, production becomes much easier. Reference:

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-us...0MD0B120150317

From above:

SpaceX, the technology upstart founded by entrepreneur Elon Musk,
is stepping up hiring of engineers and other workers to help
boost production, including many from other sectors such as the
automotive industry and the military, company officials said.

This year, the company expects to produce at least 180 engines,
with that number set to increase to 240 next year, and 400 in
2017, Shotwell told Reuters in an interview late last week.

Shotwell said increasing production put the company on track
to complete 13 launches this year. It fell short of its targets
last year due to a number of factors.

I'm guessing they have a few engines "left over" from last year, so one
would think that would be enough engines for 13 launches (10 engines per
Falcon 9) plus extra engines to support Falcon Heavy testing (which will
consume a whopping 28 engines per launch).

This increased production should be able to support a considerable
flight rate, even if recovery, refurbishment, and reflight of cores
remains elusive.

Jeff
--
All opinions posted by me on Usenet News are mine, and mine alone.
These posts do not reflect the opinions of my family, friends,
employer, or any organization that I am a member of.

In article ,
says...
From what I read today, SpaceX is pretty much done with development work
on Falcon 9 and are going to ramp up production. When you don't have to
keep making changes, production becomes much easier. Reference:

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-us...0MD0B120150317

From above:

SpaceX, the technology upstart founded by entrepreneur Elon Musk,
is stepping up hiring of engineers and other workers to help
boost production, including many from other sectors such as the
automotive industry and the military, company officials said.

This year, the company expects to produce at least 180 engines,
with that number set to increase to 240 next year, and 400 in
2017, Shotwell told Reuters in an interview late last week.

Shotwell said increasing production put the company on track
to complete 13 launches this year. It fell short of its targets
last year due to a number of factors.

I'm guessing they have a few engines "left over" from last year, so one
would think that would be enough engines for 13 launches (10 engines per
Falcon 9) plus extra engines to support Falcon Heavy testing (which will
consume a whopping 28 engines per launch).

This increased production should be able to support a considerable
flight rate, even if recovery, refurbishment, and reflight of cores
remains elusive.


Crap, tried to Google the recent article and accidentally grabbed one
from last year. :-(

So, they planned on 13 launches in 2015, but only had 6. But, much of
this could be attributed to their launch failure, so there was only one
successful launch in the months of May through December (12/21/2015
being the successful return to flight).

Here is a much more recent article (from 2/4/2016):

http://spacenews.com/spacex-seeks-to...roduction-and-
launch-rates-this-year/

Gwynne Shotwell said, in the article above:

"Now we're in this factory transformation to go from building
six or eight a year to about 18 cores a year. By the end of
this year we should be at over 30 cores per year," she said.
"So you see the factory start to morph."

30 cores per year is about 300 engines per year, which seems to track
with the estimates from the article from last year.

Now, whether or not the increased production translates into launches
will depend on a number of factors. Not the least of which is whether
or not they experience another launch failure.

Jeff
--
All opinions posted by me on Usenet News are mine, and mine alone.
These posts do not reflect the opinions of my family, friends,
employer, or any organization that I am a member of.