Rocketry General Thread

Hahahah I never even saw that definitely leaving that typo there. I miss the days of physical keyboards on phones!

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SpaceX is getting some competition:

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Going to post this for scale to supplement @xamino

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ALL MISSILES LIKE MEMBERS

Exciting things being announced this month, including the SpaceX announcements at the IAC later this month :smiley:

https://www.iac2016.org/

The IAC is what I’m waiting for.

Trying to put my SpaceX fanboyism aside I think PR wise BO opted to announce this now because the BFR & Mars architecture is going to be a larger and much more ambitious rocket program…and size is all that matters in unflown and yet-to-be-built rocket designs. I think both large designs are likely to succeed, and it’s the only way true rapid re-usability can succeed. Due to how the rocket equation works, a significant percentage of your rocket will always have to be fuel. The only way to get around this is to massively scale up your rocket in size, so that you can devote a greater absolute weight towards reusability systems.

An example: A typical mass fraction of a rocket is around 90-95%, meaning 90-95% of the rocket by mass is fuel, and 5-10% of the rocket is everything else(structure, tankage, engines, payload, etc). This will always be the case because that’s how the math works out. However, if you scale up the overall mass of your rocket, your 5-10% actually becomes meaningful amounts of mass that can be used beyond the bare minimum of mass necessary for tankage, structure, engines, etc since there is a baseline amount of mass that those will have.

Edit, I recently finished my sim and corresponding write up…it’s not too math heavy and has pretty graphs. I want to post it here…I’m always looking for feedback. Any ideas on how to upload a pdf here?

Double edit: It doesn’t really come through too well, but I do want to say this is very exciting and any competition will only be a good thing for the future of space travel. This is where it all starts.

I hope you know @pictbrige it took every fiber of my being not to make lewd jokes while posting it.

every. fiber.

Blue Origin Announces Big ā€˜New Glenn’ Rocket for Satellite & Crew Launches - space.com

This thing will make a huge Boom! if it fails on the pad during testing.

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It’s a good reason behind the Glenn name, but to me it sounds so plain. Like New Roger, or New Gary :laughing:

Are we doing a streaming thing together for the IAC presentation? Or is this something that our Discord channel organizes during launches/presentations?

I’m sorry I did not know how to work NASA program, I thought it was so

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Conversely, mass production has its own benefits, suggesting that there’s probably a point where fewer, larger rockets simply don’t provide an economical return in the overall system. For example, each Saturn V rocket was a unique item, denying the benefits of mass production - which are not limited to cost.

Additive manufacturing may alter that balance, suggesting that once you have one Saturn V, you can create a small run of additional rockets without needing either expensive hand-crafting or even expensive industrial mass production infrastructure. Just raw materials, a really good manufacturing tool and the right design. Where that stuff overlaps with other industries, so much the better; only the design need differ between rocketry and the rest of the world’s manufacturing.

That is 100% correct. If both of these rocket systems were just more Saturn V clones these two systems wouldn’t be happening or reasonable. What sets these architecture’s apart is that they plan to be fully or partially reusuable which will offset the higher production cost over the rockets lifetime of use. That is the only way to make these large rockets economically. The whole shebang is being completely reliant on reusability working out.

Actually, reuse makes custom rockets more feasible. You make fewer of them for a given number of launches. If you only made one, and could reuse it forever, hand made would be just fine.

I was referring to mass production because SpaceX produces three identical cores to build a rocket while Blue Origin is building one triple-sized rocket (for significantly-less total thrust, oddly). I have no idea what the innards of New Glenn might look like, so they may have a higher degree of componentization, but I’m guessing a Saturn V-style layout. So I give points to SpaceX for their approach because they will get a number of advantages, including three, less-demanding landings instead of one very demanding one. Again, that’s a guess on my part; landing a large rocket may be as east, if not easier, than landing three small ones.

That’s one way to make more casual access to space practical. Even custom rockets would be highly economical if somebody discovered a way to make a boatload of money from being in space. For now, only satellite companies have figured out how to make money - and a good chunk of that comes from governments.

Boeing And SpaceX Closer To Ferrying Astronauts To Space | Video

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Heyyy and were back!

Turns out that recent failure was suspected to be caused by the COPV bottles containing helium that pressure the fuel tanks. Trickly little buggers l. They also inadvertantly caused the crs-7 failure when a strut that holds it to the tank wall broke and it was banging around like donkey Kong broke the tank wall.

This time, the container itself ruptured and the overpressure event burst the tank wall(again) leading to the fireworks.

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NASA SLS Booster Test - See Awesome Fireworks in Ultra Slow Motion | Video - space.com

NASA used many cameras to monitor the performance of the Orbital ATK solid rocket booster, being developed for the new Space Launch System (SLS) rocket. High-speed cameras were used to monitor how the nozzle plug that keeps out the environmental elements was destroyed after ignition. Also, the new NASA High Dynamic Range Stereo X (HiDyRS-X) camera captured multiple high-speed video exposures.

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T-2 days until the International Astronomical Congress begins for this year! I’ll confess I have no idea what’s being presented there except for SpaceX’s plans for their Mar’s missions on Tuesday(Sept 27th) at 11:30 - 12:30 PST (6:30-7:30PM UTC).

From what little rumors I have read I am very excited for this and I think it’s going to blow people away. If you thought New Glenn was ambitious this thing is going to sound insane.

SpaceX already has a link to the stream at www.spacex.com/Mars where you can watch it if you don’t want to navigate through the IAC’s website.

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Thanks for the link.

Keeping a crew alive on the journey there and back is interesting. The life science systems. Would they use those new personal spin gravity devices a couple of times per day to get a good dose of 1g. If they can work out how to house it all, it could really cut down the size of the module. And will there be living plants giving them food? and at least scrubbing some air.

I thought all these life systems are still in early testing still. Considering they only had some lettuce to eat on the ISS last year and that took some effort to achieve. And what about the problem of all the bacteria covering everything.

So many life systems to create and add redundancy for, and shielding, what about that. Early days for all of this I think.

Much more money and effort required I think. And far more than NASA and SpaceX are currently getting.

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According to Elon SpaceX Just did the first test fire of their new ā€œRaptor interplanetary transport engineā€ :open_mouth:

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