SpaceX And/Or Rocketry In General

Gary Charpentier
Gary Charpentier
Joined: 13 Jun 06
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RE: The move is meant to

Quote:
The move is meant to fix an agency that has been plagued by corruption and major financial scandals.


By making it a Wall Street Banker run place?

David S
David S
Joined: 6 Dec 05
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RE: The move is meant to

Quote:
The move is meant to fix an agency that has been plagued by corruption and major financial scandals.


By adding even more potential for corruption and financial scandals.

David

Miserable old git
Patiently waiting for the asteroid with my name on it.

Chris S
Chris S
Joined: 27 Aug 05
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RE: By adding even more

Quote:
By adding even more potential for corruption and financial scandals.


Well they seem to think not David, but then again that's Russian propaganda for you which is mainly aimed at the home market anyway. But if the West upsets them we don't get lifts to and from the ISS.

Waiting for Godot & salvation :-)

Why do doctors have to practice?
You'd think they'd have got it right by now

Gary Charpentier
Gary Charpentier
Joined: 13 Jun 06
Posts: 2060
Credit: 106490629
RAC: 56792

RE: RE: By adding even

Quote:
Quote:
By adding even more potential for corruption and financial scandals.

Well they seem to think not David, but then again that's Russian propaganda for you which is mainly aimed at the home market anyway. But if the West upsets them we don't get lifts to and from the ISS.


It may change a political officer getting the corruption payment into one of Putin's oligarch buddies getting the corruption payment. Only Russia knows if that is an improvement.

David S
David S
Joined: 6 Dec 05
Posts: 2473
Credit: 22936222
RAC: 0

Basic rocketry.

Basic rocketry.

David

Miserable old git
Patiently waiting for the asteroid with my name on it.

Mike Hewson
Mike Hewson
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LOL ! It's good to see the

LOL ! It's good to see the bubbly makers contributing here, especially with precision guidance. Do my eyes deceive me or is there evidence of several attempts ? I bet my carport he couldn't do that twice .... :-)

Advanced Rocketry at 500 FPS so ~ 30 seconds real time. Those F1 engines are outstanding engineering. They go from zero to hero real nice ( although some initial versions were unstable, like all-over-the-neighborhood type of unstable ). I just love the way the exhaust draft sucks back down ....

Cheers, Mike.

I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...

... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal

Anonymous

Next SpaceX launch 1/17/16 at

Next SpaceX launch 1/17/16 at 1342 Pacific time from Vandenburg. Nothing said about recovery. Stay tuned.

[EDIT] Mike, cool Saturn footage. I do pity the camera man though. Anything for that "special" picture. :>)

archae86
archae86
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RE: Next SpaceX launch

Quote:
Next SpaceX launch 1/17/16 at 1342 Pacific time from Vandenburg.

A Jason-3 satellite, discussed in this NASA blog

Mike Hewson
Mike Hewson
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Well it's good to see them

Well it's good to see them getting on with it. I guess there is commercial pressure to up the tempo with the backlog after July, plus they had quite a packed order book before then anyway. The Jason-3 is only about 500kg so that implies plenty spare fuel to return etc. Should be good, though the range safety officer is going to be a tad on edge I reckon.

@robl : the narration indicates it was a view through a quartz window, presumably of the kiln door variety. There are a number of fascinating books and docos on the engineering aspects of Apollo. The Saturn system was already in development prior to Kennedy's historic speech ( land on the Moon by the end of the decade ). They were chuffed when he gave the speech but soon thought 'crap, how are we gunna do that ?' I use the Saturn Five as the benchmark because no human has yet gone beyond low Earth orbit without one.

My back-of-the-envelope calculations indicate the Falcon Heavy will likely match at least the earlier F-1 x 5 combos ( performance did mildly improve by Apollo 17 ). While total power matters of course, it is notable that SpaceX's Merlin 1D has power-to-weight in excess of 500 while the Saturn F-1 is about half that. This was Elon's goal of making light ( hopefully reliable and durable ) engines so that most of the launch weight is fuel. I think he is achieving that aim admirably and it seems there is the capacity then to do the obvious thing : put more fuel in for desired effect by lengthening the barrel. I hadn't quite realised the scale of the Falcon 9 until I saw those shots from LZ-1. I would guess that we will see alot more variants of the Falcon 9 yet, to suit different needs.

The Russians could have gone to the Moon in the sense that they had a slightly more powerful engine - a single turbo pump feeding four nozzles, an interesting solution - but it probably came down to economics. Apollo was chewing up ~ 5% of GNP at peak.

Cheers, Mike.

( edit ) Another neat one is the inside of the kero tank with a Saturn-1 launch. Note the detail of the baffle structure to tame any sloshing, and the speed of the emptying. It's important to understand that there are really no 'minor' issues in rocketry. Nature is highly intolerant of our pretensions to produce 'controlled' explosions. :-)

I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...

... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal

Anonymous

RE: Well it's good to see

Quote:
Well it's good to see them getting on with it. I guess there is commercial pressure to up the tempo with the backlog after July, plus they had quite a packed order book before then anyway. The Jason-3 is only about 500kg so that implies plenty spare fuel to return etc. Should be good, though the range safety officer is going to be a tad on edge I reckon.
Cheers, Mike.

Not sure of the state of the "return pad". It is done? I have not seen anything mentioned about a return to pad attempt. I am thinking that until they can successfully demonstrate multiple returns at one location and a positive turnaround with a return to flight that they will attempt "land recovery" only at one site. No need to build multiple refurbish facilities until you have a proven track record at one location.

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