Steel for Shuttle

In article ,
says...

On 2019-11-19 07:18, Jeff Findley wrote:

They're not going to send people to Mars for *years*,

When the project was launched, it was going to happen in a few years (I
beleive 2025).

We all know about Musk's aggressive schedules. He thinks five years is
an eternity. Shorter term goals help to motivate people, even if the
goal isn't met.

I have been attacked since the start as not beleiveing Musk's PR promises.

All aerospace companies slip schedules. ULA is currently not talking
about when their reusable ACES upper stage and SMART first stage engine
reuse will be developed. SLS is years behind schedule. Same goes for
Boeing's Starliner crew capsule for ISS and Northrup Grumman's Orion
capsule to fly on SLS. Don't even get me started on James Webb Space
Telescope...

At every step, peopple pointed to me that SpaceX has rocket scientists
who know their stuff and whatever Musk announces would have been
validated by them.

Yep. And they're moving fast and breaking things. It was stated by
SpaceX/Musk that even before the Mk 1 tanking test that blew the top off
that Mk 1 and Mk 2 wouldn't fly. They're not representative of what
will eventually fly, so they've changed their minds about flying them.
Mk 3 and Mk 3 are likely suspects now for suborbital flight testing.

My thining is that Musk comes out with ideas on a napkin and then tasks
engineers to evaluate it. This may work out a better approach than
NASA's rigid methods.

But it also means that whatever Musk announces should be seen as
unvalidated snake oil because it is announced before engineers have done
the math.

This isn't true. Everything that's been announced has had at least some
analysis done. It's just that all the details had not been worked out
yet. Every company does this.

In the case of Orion and Starliner, they both kept Apollo's iconic
aerodynamic shape, so that detail would not change over time. So they
look like the initial renderings, even though the details inside are
completely different than Apollo.

The Apollo LEM design changed a lot over the years too.

But with Starship, they're doing something completely new with the
"belly flop" reentry and deceleration. So, when the details change,
like the aerodynamic surfaces, everyone notices. Same for materials
since SpaceX has been quite open about the design early on.

Blue Origin, on the other hand, has been holding their cards close to
their chest when it comes to the details of their designs. There are a
few notional renderings floating around, but they're all generic looking
two and three stage to orbit launch vehicles (with only the first stage
being reusable in much the same way that Falcon 9 is reused). So they
can make significant changes to the design and no one will really
notice.

Jeff
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