SpaceChampion Posted December 16, 2020 Author Share Posted December 16, 2020 That really isn't how thing are paid for with NASA. Blue Origin / Lockheed / etc. would say it costs $Y and then next year there will more than $Y but they're not sure how much more, and the year after it'll be much more, and the sunk costs will be used to justify the ever increasing budget. ISS was suppose to cost $8 billion to build while I couldn't tell you how much it actually cost but it was vastly more than that. NASA doesn't even know. Expendable systems makes it costs 100s of time more than reusable, at least as far as rockets and spacecraft go, which is what we're talking about. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Anti-Targ Posted December 16, 2020 Share Posted December 16, 2020 8 minutes ago, SpaceChampion said: That really isn't how thing are paid for with NASA. Blue Origin / Lockheed / etc. would say it costs $Y and then next year there will more than $Y but they're not sure how much more, and the year after it'll be much more, and the sunk costs will be used to justify the ever increasing budget. ISS was suppose to cost $8 billion to build while I couldn't tell you how much it actually cost but it was vastly more than that. NASA doesn't even know. Expendable systems makes it costs 100s of time more than reusable, at least as far as rockets and spacecraft go, which is what we're talking about. 100s of times? I doubt it, a $1 billion reusable lander programme isn't going to become a $100 billion programme because 2/3 of a lander is single use. The cost of those single use lander components as a proportion of the total cost of an Earth-Moon-Earth trip is not that much. But what I don't want to see is the moon becoming a junk yard, so one of the mission parameters for Artemis really should be recyclability even for single use components. So those components that don't leave the moon's surface need to have a plan in respect of use if / when some permanent structures are built on the moon. Even if it's permanent structures will be designed and constructed to have moon junk re-cycling facilities. Angry Astronaut is even accepting that the other lander proposal isn't going to have the same payload capacity as Blue Origin. That seems to suggest no one has yet come up with a better solution for large payload delivery to the moon. There may be a reason for that. maybe at a certain size you can't achieve full reusability for moon landers. So you have to compromise in some way: either smaller landers with 100% reusability; or large landers with lower reusability. Perhaps I'm missing an important component of the costs, but Angry Astronaut's rant did not give me enough information to come to the same conclusion as he has. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SpaceChampion Posted December 16, 2020 Author Share Posted December 16, 2020 Yes, 100s of times if you can reuse the vehicle 100s of times. Your lunar lander costing $1 billion would be priced at $10 million per landing. It ain't the fuel that costs so much. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Free Northman Reborn Posted December 16, 2020 Share Posted December 16, 2020 Angry Astronaut loves the Sierra Nevada company, who are heavily involved in the Dynetics lander. And he is therefore concerned that in a down select to 2 contenders, Dynetics may be dropped in favour of Blue Origin. The reality is that both Blue Origin and Dynetics offer expendable solutions that don’t really support large scale settlement of the moon. SpaceX is the only revolutionary game in town. Word on the street is that Blue Origin and SpaceX are the two providers likely to survive the down select, with Blue being the overall front runner. At the end of the day, this little project is a dead end, with SpaceX racing ahead to open the solar system for human colonisation whether they make the Artemis cut or not. It all comes down to cost/kg of mass to orbit. And Starship will bring it down to $100/kg - perhaps even $20/kg if they achieve their most ambitious goals. While everyone else will remain stuck at $2000-$10000/kg for decades to come. That is all that matters. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SpaceChampion Posted December 18, 2020 Author Share Posted December 18, 2020 Interesting. There is certainly a lot of room under Starship to add engines, since it is the same diameter as Super Heavy, which is expected to have 28 as is currently known about it's design. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SpaceChampion Posted December 18, 2020 Author Share Posted December 18, 2020 hmm Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SpaceChampion Posted December 19, 2020 Author Share Posted December 19, 2020 Last launch and landing of the year! This is the 26th, a new record. NROL-108 mission: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Altherion Posted December 19, 2020 Share Posted December 19, 2020 The landing for that NROL-108 launch is really cool because the NRO wouldn't let SpaceX show the second stage so all of the telemetry and cameras are from the first stage as it is coming down. I didn't realize the booster is falling at around 4500 km/h before the entry burn kicks in. It also lands back at the spaceport rather than at sea so you get a more stable camera shot of the landing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ithanos Posted December 23, 2020 Share Posted December 23, 2020 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Starkess Posted December 25, 2020 Share Posted December 25, 2020 I think the Guardians thing is pretty hokey but then again the entire way they've gone about the Space Force business has been...weird. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SpaceChampion Posted December 30, 2020 Author Share Posted December 30, 2020 ULA is going to try to catch Vulcan's engines mid-air with a helicopter, SpaceX is going to try to catch the whole Super Heavy booster stage with the launch tower arm. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SpaceChampion Posted December 31, 2020 Author Share Posted December 31, 2020 Temporary solution to the header pressure issue that was the ultimate cause of SN8 crashing the landing last time with Starship. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Free Northman Reborn Posted January 1, 2021 Share Posted January 1, 2021 I continue to wonder how many on this site understand the true significance of what SpaceX is doing. A precious few, I suspect. A species changing initiative is playing out before our eyes in Boca Chica. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SpaceChampion Posted January 8, 2021 Author Share Posted January 8, 2021 Turksat 5A on a Falcon 9: Starship SN9 hop test (repeated of SN8's 12.5km altitude) NET Sunday January 10th, 8AM Central time, backup dates on the 11th and 12th. Edit: Weather for this weekend looking crappy so launch window extended to January 20th. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SpaceChampion Posted January 9, 2021 Author Share Posted January 9, 2021 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SpaceChampion Posted January 15, 2021 Author Share Posted January 15, 2021 Blue Origin New Sheppard NS-14 test flight. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Altherion Posted January 17, 2021 Share Posted January 17, 2021 That's pretty neat, but it looks like it only goes to around 100km up and then back down (I don't understand why they measure altitude in feet -- if they really hate metric, they can at least use miles when the number of feet is in the hundreds of thousands). NASA conducted a test fire of the Space Launch System today. The test was supposed to last for 8 minutes and the engines fired correctly at first, but they were shut down after a little over a minute; from what I can tell, they were trying to pivot the engines and saw something they did not like. It's better than not firing at all or exploding, but that rocket is amazingly expensive and they failed to complete even a quarter of the test... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SpaceChampion Posted January 24, 2021 Author Share Posted January 24, 2021 From three days ago... Today's launch of a rideshare with multiple customers scrubbed until tomorrow. SN9 targeted for early next week. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SpaceChampion Posted January 25, 2021 Author Share Posted January 25, 2021 Transporter-1 launch of 143 satellites on Falcon 9 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yaya Posted January 26, 2021 Share Posted January 26, 2021 pop the 7.2 is in action now ! ok, not quite yet ... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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