351–360 of 513 posts
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Hurray for progress! We're able to repeat what was done in 1972!
For a fraction of the cost.
Just imagine how economical space flight would be if all of that 1960s technology had been incrementally improved on for efficiency, manufacturing ease, and scale instead of a lot of it being almost literallly mothballed.
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Plus they've had 2 rockets go explody over the last two years. This is really premature. I'd be surprised if they do this by 2020.
One was a ground incident that wouldn't have had people nearby even with a manned mission, and the other would have saved its passengers with the abort system. And if people are willing to pay the money and take the risk, why not?
Not sure how that would mitigate the risk of explody Space-X rockets?
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It's not a greater achievement than the Apollo moon landings (it's basically the mission flown on Apollo 13, swinging around the moon without going into orbit and then coming back), but it's still something that hasn't been done since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972.
Hurray for progress! We're able to repeat what was done in 1972!
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Jet fighters routinely use so much fuel taking off that the first thing they do after gaining altitude is refuel. Rockets can use the same idea.
Yes but as the ULA whitepaper pointed out there are some challenges to doing so in orbit. For one, the lack of gravity makes it hard to pump fuel. You can spin the tanker to achieve fuel settling but now you are both spinning bodies. Then there is handling cryogenic propellants in space, you get nominal bleed off from warming and again ULA had a really interesting design of an internal combustion engine using the ble…
Evidently this problem is solved, because liquid fuel rockets have been working fine in space since the 60s. (Liquid fuel rockets have their propellants pumped into the chamber.)
> nominal bleed off from warming
Launch the tanker just beforehand. There won't be time for the fuel to bleed off.
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Why would a figure with so much PR fire power tarnish it? If anything it would put space exploration front and center for so many young and adolescence people.
Even if it was Justin Bieber? Instead of "One small step for the man...", we'd have Justin singing "baby, baby, baby..." to promote his latest album.
Either the rocket would blow up on the pad or it would never come back. ;)
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Hurray for progress! We're able to repeat what was done in 1972!
Hurray for reproducability - we can still do what was last done in 1972 - this is something which eludes most scientists!
Look at SpaceX as an example of what happens when someone fumbles the ball so hard it takes over four decades to recover it. Virtually nothing happened in that time other than the shuttle program, and that was never intended for travel outside of Earth orbit.
Now we're finally back to innovating and engineering for actual space travel.
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One was a ground incident that wouldn't have had people nearby even with a manned mission, and the other would have saved its passengers with the abort system. And if people are willing to pay the money and take the risk, why not?
> One was a ground incident that wouldn't have had people nearby even with a manned mission, and the other would have saved its passengers with the abort system. Not sure how that would mitigate the risk of explody Space-X rockets?
e: I realize you are saying none of this reduces the risk of the rocket exploding but at some point that doesn't matter because there's never going to be an absolute guarantee. The mitigation of risk that the rocket explodes is the further test flights the new rocket will complete before a manned mission to the moon.
Two lost rockets in a year is a lot better than previous years.
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Hurray for progress! We're able to repeat what was done in 1972!
For a fraction of the cost.