Well it took me about an hour to upvote every comment on this page but it was worth it. ;-)
Next time, just spend 15 minutes to automate it. :)
Then 2 hours maintaining and improving it.
SES-10 Mission
311–320 of 368 posts
Re: SES-10 Mission
#312Amazing! I genuinely think that this is a bigger deal than the moon landings. The moon landings were pretty awesome in their own way, but at the end of the day, with the way they were done, it was basically a stunt. None of it put any infrastructure for the long-term access of space into place, or anything to make future moon landings easier. This paves the way for the costs of space flight to be cut in half, or even…
> None of it put any infrastructure for the long-term access of space into place, or anything to make future moon landings easier. This is not entirely fair. The actual landings (which did teach us a lot about the moon) were just the tip of an iceberg. Consider project Gemini [1] for example. A dozen missions and several astronaut-weeks of space time to get hang of such consepts as rendezvous and docking of two space…
We did learn a lot, but that's kind of the problem. All of the capital that was created was intellectual - knowledge and experience, mostly in the heads of the few hundred or however many people that were the core of the team. Very useful while you have it, but also very easy to dissolve as soon as the funding goes away and all of the people with that knowledge scatter.
That's also the problem with Government funding of things like this. You can accomplish some pretty awesome things with a blank check from the Government, but those only get created for political reasons, and are subject to disappearing for political reasons as well. Businesses have their own problems, but once they put together a system they can turn a profit with, they have the incentive to keep doing it and improving on it indefinitely.
Re: SES-10 Mission
#313I've noticed that during the webcast they talked much more about their planetary colonisation project than they usually do. I guess it makes sense since today is the first time they actually implement the re-usability plan they believe is the key to this colonisation. But frankly, is the cost of going to mars really that important for its colonisation? I mean, I wouldn't move to mars even if going there was free. For…
Its a reach. For comparison, lets start a city on top of Mt Everest? Better air, better weather, lots easier to get to, and help is only days away instead of months. Yet we haven't begun to do things even that ambitious yet.
I'd build an bioshpere 3 in Antarctica or deep sea rather than Everest. Build sustainable ecosystems on hostile places on Earth will help bootstrapping Mars. Colonising Mars is still an important goal for headlines (and funding), and to have something great for kids to aspire for.
Re: SES-10 Mission
#314You didn't actually watch it land.
Re: SES-10 Mission
#315Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just need a pissing contest between SpaceX and Blue Origin now and everyone will benefit
Blue origin isn't even in the same league. Their rockets go straight up, stay there for a bit and down again. Spacex achieves magnitudes higher velocity, altitude and actually delivers things to orbit. BlueOrigin is Bezos' pet project akin to taking a heli tour around the city while SpaceX is doing a transcontinental flight half way around the world.
That's true, but I'd still root for a pissing contest between them. IIRC, SpaceX started out like this as well. They're like a decade ahead or so, but maybe Blue Origin can catch up faster with SpaceX having shown that it's possible and economically feasible. The more companies that can do this, the better off we all are.
Re: SES-10 Mission
#316Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, if you go to the extreme case (the entire rocket is reusable with _no_ refurbishment) the cost of rocket fuel is $200,000 while the approximate cost of the hardware is in the range of $60M. So, in the extreme case it would be _massively_ cheaper. On the order of 99% savings. At the moment, SpaceX is only reusing a portion of the rocket (the first stage, not the second stage or the fairings ). And that re-used p…
It seems silly to not include recovery costs, refurbishment, testing, transport to launch, etc. Those significantly eat into the '99%' savings. I estimate those costs would be $20-25MM; still, a big savings on a brand-new rocket each time!
Apologies if I wasn't clear. When I said the "extreme case" I meant some kind of future scenario where rocket launches operate similarly to commercial aircraft flights (doing launching and landing to fixed infrastructure, minimal refurbishment and operations between flights, hundreds of launches per core, etc). So, the '99%' savings wasn't intended to be anything approximating where we are now, but more like the limits of the possible cost savings if everything else is nearly perfect.
As I mentioned, I think _today_ SpaceX is saving about 30% per launch by doing reusability (which, in my mind translates to ~20M). So I actually think we're probably in good agreement.
Re: SES-10 Mission
#317Earlier quoted context omitted.
While they probably use something much more serious, you could technically use something like Nikon P900, which is 2000mm equivalent, and is very affordable.
Could actually be one of those. SpaceX uses lots of off-the-shelf hardware. For example, the cameras mounted on the rocket are (at least mostly?) GoPros
Do you have a source for this? I own a GoPro and I love the little thing, but I had no idea they were able to withstand this kind of stress.
Re: SES-10 Mission
#318Earlier quoted context omitted.
Kudos for Doing Parenting Right. So many 'parents' dump their kids in front of Cartoon Network, and ignore them for 18 years.
Not shown in the photo: The twins watching Cartoon Network.
Heh, the dangers of an inside joke on a public forum...
For those downvoting, Stavros is a friend, and based on the number of kids songs videos I send him on IM, he is pretty well informed about what my kids watch ;)
Relatedly... Elmo and Ricky Gervais make a great comic pair:
Re: SES-10 Mission
#319The obvious question: how much cheaper will a reusable rocket make it, per pound, to put a payload in orbit?
Not much at first. 30%, perhaps. But as reuse is tweaked, more things are recovered, less refurbishment needed, things can get really cheap.
Ultimately, SpaceX wants to get the cost to orbit for propellant down to about $9/kg. From the current $10,000 to $2000 per kg. For propellant launches on ITS, which will be larger and will have the booster land on the launch cradle and have the upperstage be fully reusable: http://www.spacex.com/sites/spacex/files/mars_presentation.p... (based on figures given on page 36 and 41)
$9/kg is ridiculously cheap ($4/pound). 3 orders of magnitude cheaper than current costs. More general payloads will cost more (due to processing requirements), but that gives you an idea. The idea is you reduce the cost of the launch to about twice the cost of the propellant. The only way that's feasible is rapid reuse and by launching a lot.
Also, ITS will use the cheapest source of energy today: methane. Can also be synthesized from air, water, and sunlight as SpaceX is planning on Mars.
The energy costs of achieving orbit is about the same energy costs as flying around the world, for the same payload. So it's not, in principle, absurdly expensive (relative to current per-person energy usage) just from an energy point of view to fly stuff to orbit.
Re: SES-10 Mission
#320The obvious question: how much cheaper will a reusable rocket make it, per pound, to put a payload in orbit?
I've run through this calculation here before, but it's always interesting to rehash: Both LOX and kerosene are about the price of milk. If we assume that a gallon of either weighs about 7 lbs, then it takes, at 1% mass fraction, 99 lbs, or about 14 gallons, of fuel and oxidizer to put a pound of payload into orbit. At a 2% mass fraction, it's only 7 gallons. Call it $3.50 per gallon, so the fuel cost for a pound of…
Even less than that for ITS. The tanker version of ITS is supposed to (eventually) achieve about $9/kg to orbit, with $4 of that being the cost of the propellant. Or, about $2 per pound for the propellant (if you want to use barbarous units).