|
|
Thread Tools | Display Modes |
#11
|
|||
|
|||
NASA is teaming up with Russia to put a new space station near the moon. Here's why.
|
#12
|
|||
|
|||
NASA is teaming up with Russia to put a new space station near the moon. Here's why.
Jeff Findley wrote:
In article , says... More like they're trying to find a use for SLS/Orion that doesn't require them to go back to Congress and ask for tens of billions more in funding for each year. Since Asteroid Retrieval Mission was shot down (because it was stupid to bring the asteroid to high earth orbit where Orion could reach it), NASA has been looking for something, anything, to replace it with. In my opinion, the Deep Space Gateway, as currently envisioned (likely a high lunar orbit or something similar), is "weak sauce" without a lunar lander. Not only that, but if Musk actually gets BFR flying in the next five years it's rather pointless. With an orbital refueling, BFR could land dozens of people on the Moon and bring them all home. For $128 million BFR would put more people on the Moon in one shot than the entire Apollo program (and by a lot). Bring home a ton of samples (literally). Agreed. This could be the vehicle that finally gets NASA manned spaceflight beyond LEO in a truly meaningful way. With its crazy capacity and delta-V capability, it could land all the science experiments on the moon that NASA could dream up (at least in the next 5-10 years). The BFR upper stage is very close to the hypothetical in orbit refuelable SSTO discussed in the sci.space about three decades ago. The BFR spaceship can pretty much replace everything that NASA has ever pictured doing with manned space. I need to go back and look at the various Mars Reference Missions and see just how it compares to the boosters called out in those. Interestingly, BFR is intended to fly fast to Mars, making a 3 month trip of it. NASA with a thermal nuclear rocket wasn't going that fast and were talking 6 months or so in transit. Note that Musk figures that in the next few years SpaceX will capture half of the entire satellite launch business. In the face of that and BFR, NASA's 'lunar orbiting space station' makes even less sense (and it made very little in the first place - what's it for, exactly?). Possibly. But Blue Origin isn't sitting still either, so SpaceX could have some competition. Real competition is a good thing. True, but New Glenn appears to me to be on a slower track than Falcon Heavy, which is its direct competition. I don't think Blue Origin has anything like BFR in their pipeline. There will no doubt be a portion of launches by governments that will choose to use their own vehicles, at least for some time. It would be a bit embarrassing, for example, for Ariane 6 to only fly a few times due to high costs and complete lack of customers. Europe will probably, as usual, favor their own launchers regardless of competition. I loved the illustration Musk showed of a BFR spaceship docked to ISS. Given that the BFR spacecraft can carry 100 people in cabins with supplies for 3-6 months, what the hell would you need ISS for once it's flying? Routine, inexpensive, access to LEO via BFR might turn out to be a viable replacement for much of the activities done on ISS today. Why rotate a crew on ISS every six months when you can just launch another BFR with crew and experiments? But, IMHO, you still need long term (years rather than months) in space laboratories, habitats, power generation, and etc. to perform longer term experiments. So ISS may still have a purpose for some time to come. But, time will tell. Yeah, but you could still do that with the ship off BFR. It has a standard docking port. You could always resupply the one on orbit rather than rotate the vehicles. Put 25 people on it and you could resupply it once a year and keep it up there indefinitely. Truly cheap access to space (CATS) is something the sci.space newsgroup has been discussing since I started reading it back in 1988 or so. It's taken decades to get where we are now (proving once and for all that the all expendable old space "emperor has no clothes"). It may take another 10 or more years for the vision of a truly inexpensive BFR to become reality. But I truly hope that SpaceX's time-line for BFR is fairly realistic and that it is as successful as they hope. I'm sure Musk would like it to be flying to Mars in five years. He'd no doubt like to achieve that dream while he's still young enough to enjoy it. Worst case, we've still got Blue Origin slowly plodding along. Bezos seems quite content to keep funding it at its current pace. That's the advantage of being a multi-billionaire. You don't have to rely completely on outside funding for truly long term investments in new tech. Bezos has essentially said he can and will put a billion dollars a year of his own money into New Glenn until it's done. It's kind of sad really. US corporations are sitting on so much cash these days that could be funding truly long term tech development. Apple, for example, has an obscene amount of cash, but all they seem to be producing is incremental updates to the iPhone that truly don't impress me. I'll be sticking with my 64GB iPhone 6 hand-me-down (was my oldest daughter's) until it dies completely. I'm still using a Samsung Note 3. Most companies are looking at 90 days as 'long term'. You've got to have a CEO with money AND the dream before things start becoming realities. Hell, I still remember when Boeing fired most of their development engineers because they had tens of billions of dollars in orders for airplanes they already knew how to build (that's the way it was phrased). That's why ULA will become increasingly irrelevant. It's run by accountants. -- "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 |
#13
|
|||
|
|||
NASA is teaming up with Russia to put a new space station near the moon. Here's why.
In article ,
says... Note that Musk figures that in the next few years SpaceX will capture half of the entire satellite launch business. In the face of that and BFR, NASA's 'lunar orbiting space station' makes even less sense (and it made very little in the first place - what's it for, exactly?). Possibly. But Blue Origin isn't sitting still either, so SpaceX could have some competition. Real competition is a good thing. True, but New Glenn appears to me to be on a slower track than Falcon Heavy, which is its direct competition. I don't think Blue Origin has anything like BFR in their pipeline. The follow-on to New Glenn is envisioned to be New Armstrong. I doubt it's "in the pipeline" since they've yet to actually launch anything to orbit (one step at a time). Here is a cite: https://arstechnica.com/science/2017...es-details-of- its-monster-orbital-rocket/ From above: Moreover, New Glenn is also, as Bezos repeated Tuesday, "the smallest orbital rocket Blue Origin will ever build." In the future, even larger boosters are coming, such as the previously teased New Armstrong rocket. The tech mogul has recently said that lunar exploration is the next logical step for human activity in space. Bezos has grand visions for his launch vehicles as well. Since Bezos does steadily fund Blue Origin and since SpaceX has been known to be a bit overoptimistic with schedules, we may eventually see some actual commercial competition in US between launch vehicles in the SLS class and larger. This encourages me more than anything else. 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. |
#14
|
|||
|
|||
NASA is teaming up with Russia to put a new space station near the moon. Here's why.
Jeff Findley wrote:
In article , says... Note that Musk figures that in the next few years SpaceX will capture half of the entire satellite launch business. In the face of that and BFR, NASA's 'lunar orbiting space station' makes even less sense (and it made very little in the first place - what's it for, exactly?). Possibly. But Blue Origin isn't sitting still either, so SpaceX could have some competition. Real competition is a good thing. True, but New Glenn appears to me to be on a slower track than Falcon Heavy, which is its direct competition. I don't think Blue Origin has anything like BFR in their pipeline. The follow-on to New Glenn is envisioned to be New Armstrong. I doubt it's "in the pipeline" since they've yet to actually launch anything to orbit (one step at a time). Here is a cite: https://arstechnica.com/science/2017...es-details-of- its-monster-orbital-rocket/ From above: Moreover, New Glenn is also, as Bezos repeated Tuesday, "the smallest orbital rocket Blue Origin will ever build." In the future, even larger boosters are coming, such as the previously teased New Armstrong rocket. The tech mogul has recently said that lunar exploration is the next logical step for human activity in space. Bezos has grand visions for his launch vehicles as well. Since Bezos does steadily fund Blue Origin and since SpaceX has been known to be a bit overoptimistic with schedules, we may eventually see some actual commercial competition in US between launch vehicles in the SLS class and larger. This encourages me more than anything else. The real problem here is that all we have about New Armstrong is the name. BFR (which doesn't have a 'real' name) seems much, much further along. New Glenn seems to sort of be pacing Falcon Heavy, but I think it's a couple years behind. New Armstrong isn't pacing anything because so far as we know it doesn't even exist as napkin drawings while BFR has engines and is close to bending metal with a (very aggressive) schedule. The one place Blue Origin seems to have it better than SpaceX is that Bezos can sell a billion dollars worth of stock every year (which is what he's been doing) to fund things while Musk is financing out of operations. -- "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 |
#15
|
|||
|
|||
NASA is teaming up with Russia to put a new space station near the moon. Here's why.
JF Mezei wrote:
On 2017-10-01 17:44, Jeff Findley wrote: Moreover, New Glenn is also, as Bezos repeated Tuesday, "the smallest orbital rocket Blue Origin will ever build." Considering the current state of rocket science, once you have the engines, does designing a rocket to have 3, 5 , 9 or 27 engines make such a huge difference in terms of how much experience you need? Certainly to some extent, yes. Once BlueOrigin has its first rocket tested, and re-uses same engines, couldn't it aim for a bigger rocket as the next installment? It certainly could and presumably will but first it needs to get that 'first rocket' (New Glenn) done and flying. Once there, the BE-4 engine is roughly equivalent to SpaceX Raptor; BE-4 has around 25% more thrust but Raptor runs at higher pressures so has better power to weight. Blue Origin also has a lot of structure and weight reduction work to do. Right now the Blue Origin 'next rocket' isn't even at the paper napkin stage. All we have is the name (New Armstrong). Musk explained that they had expected Fancon9 Heavy to use existing Falcon9 for core and the 2 boosters. Turns out they have to redesign structures because of different loads (higher payload, + lateral loads where boosters attach). (This was to explain the delay). But had they decided at the onset on the need to design the structures for the Falcon 9 Heavy Loads, wouldn't that design been straightforwards without needing to push the enelope? You can't 'decide that' until you're far enough in to know what the loads are. Without knowing that you don't know what you're designing to. I can understand building the cryo tanks from carbon fibre for BFR means developing new techniques and going beyond current state of the art. But does Falcon 9 Heavy push any such limits or just scale existing tech within what that tech is capable of? How long has Falcon Heavy (there is no '9' in the name) taken? First concept was in 2005. Real work couldn't start on it until Falcon 9 was done, since it was based on Falcon 9 cores. That actually wasn't done until around 2011 (2 years late). First flight for Falcon Heavy will probably be 2018, so it took 7 years. That's the sort of timeline Blue Origin is looking at (if they hurry) to get from New Glenn to New Armstrong once New Glenn is done (probably in 2020 or a bit later). That says New Armstrong is ready for first test flight in 2028 or so, which is probably a more reasonable date for BFR than the one Musk gave. I guess what I am asking is whehther "baby steps" is still needed for outfits like Blue Origin, or whether state of science allowed bigger leaps once you have your engines? No magic has been discovered. It still takes the better part of a decade to get a new rocket. -- "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 |
#16
|
|||
|
|||
NASA is teaming up with Russia to put a new space station near the moon. Here's why.
|
#18
|
|||
|
|||
NASA is teaming up with Russia to put a new space station near the moon. Here's why.
Jeff Findley wrote:
In article . com, says... I can understand building the cryo tanks from carbon fibre for BFR means developing new techniques and going beyond current state of the art. But does Falcon 9 Heavy push any such limits or just scale existing tech within what that tech is capable of? Carbon fiber tanks will be something new for SpaceX, so it's a risk. The question is, how big of a risk? They've built a big tank and measured how much they can overpressure it before it blows. They need to take another test article and subject it to several hundred cryo cycles at something like 10% overpressure and then tear it down to its component atoms and see how it did. -- "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 |
#19
|
|||
|
|||
NASA is teaming up with Russia to put a new space station near the moon. Here's why.
|
#20
|
|||
|
|||
NASA is teaming up with Russia to put a new space station near the moon. Here's why.
|
Thread Tools | |
Display Modes | |
|
|
Similar Threads | ||||
Thread | Thread Starter | Forum | Replies | Last Post |
Secondary payload that would, advance NASA's exploration of themoon | Sam Wormley | Amateur Astronomy | 0 | April 11th 06 02:15 PM |
Russia Rocket Heads for Space Station | Rudolph_X | Astronomy Misc | 0 | October 2nd 05 06:15 PM |
With NASA of Today How long Would it Take To Go To TheMoon? | G=EMC^2 Glazier | Misc | 130 | August 26th 04 07:42 PM |
Russia's Secret: Did Space Station Nearly Die The Day It Was Born? | JimO | Space Station | 24 | November 29th 03 12:37 AM |
Russia's Secret: Did Space Station Nearly Die The Day It Was Born? | JimO | History | 26 | November 29th 03 12:37 AM |