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Blue Moon

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Re: Blue Moon

#161

Post by nickik »

godelski wrote: post #139
avmich wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But SpaceX still moves faster than Blue Origin, even though SpaceX promises to move much faster and then fails to do that.

They're going about it very different ways so I think from a typical bystander it is hard to see. We won't really know how accurate your statement is until we see New Glenn and if BFR ever becomes a reality. But historically BO has been right on the mark with their timelines while SpaceX (and a lot of other Musk stuff) is at least a year behind schedule.

Wrong. SpaceX is objectively faster. The New Glenn is about the size of the Falcon Heavy in terms of payload.

The BFR is a whole different class that is gone be more in line with the hidden BO project the New Armstrong, but we don't really know what that is gone be.

That said, SpaceX is ahead in rockets but this moon lander is something SpaceX doesn't have or is even working on.

Re: Blue Moon

#162

Post by nickik »

muricula wrote: post #42

Blue origin can't build a moon rocket by 2024, so maybe they can settle for the lander. Here's the vision I bet they're aiming for: a Spacex rocket, a United Launch Alliance capsule, a Blue Origin lander, and a round of pork barrel in every Congressional district.

ULA has not capsule. What are you even talking about? ULA is pure launch business.

Boeing has capsule that can't go to the moon, and Lockheed Martin is a contractor on Orion.

Re: Blue Moon

#163

Post by nickik »

_Microft wrote: post #5

Welp, then I am going to say it: it looks underwhelming, both in capability and looks. 6.5t of soft-landed payload to surface of moon and 2.5kW of power via fuel cells if Twitter can be trusted. A grand vision of O'Neill cylinders and whatever in space is nice but how? How? Less gradatim and more ferociter would be nice.

You are underwhelming by a privately funded moon lander? You realize how absurd this is?

NASA has been shit for 40 years in terms of manned flight and that's why this stuff is happening. And its not a budget issue, NASA had and has quite a budget.

They could fund way more interesting stuff, but they don't, so this is the best your gone get.

Re: Blue Moon

#164

Post by nickik »

icelancer wrote: post #150
username223 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RIP. Allen doesn't seem to have been going for the moon (yet), but I wish the billionaires would not spend their hoards on private rocket companies. It's a bit gross that the article you linked calls them "philanthropists" for doing it. Andrew Carnegie was a real bastard, but he funded many wonderful small-town libraries, which remain valuable community centers over 100 years later. Bill Gates took his shot at world…

>> Andrew Carnegie was a real bastard, but he funded many wonderful small-town libraries, which remain valuable community centers over 100 years later. That's a bit of an understatement of one of the worst monopolists and union-busters (even locking out employees and bringing in non-union immigrants to operate his factories) in America's history, but alright. [0] Why didn't you mention Elon Musk and the Flint, Michig…

> even locking out employees and bringing in non-union immigrants to operate his factories

Giving work to immigrants. What a bastard. Everybody knows that Americans are better and more important then those dirty immigrants. They should only be allowed to get work if all white Americans already have jobs.

Re: Blue Moon

#165

Post by grey-area »

nradov wrote: post #71
marstomorrow wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elon's stated goal re: astronauts and training is that the technology should be sufficiently simplified to let anyone go up with minimal training. The idea of a heavily-trained astronaut is old, and the new thinking is that the people going to space should be able to spend their time up their doing whatever it is they are good at - even if just vacationing - rather than learning how to fly spacecraft etc. I know this…

Someone has to fly and troubleshoot the spacecraft when the inevitable failures occur. Most of the astronauts can be basically passengers but there has to be at least one pilot who knows how to switch SCE to AUX without a moment's hesitation.

Space ships are computer controlled nowadays. You can't fly them in any meaningful sense, and they don't have manual toggle switches like the old moon landers. There will be no pilot except the autopilot.

Re: Blue Moon

#166

Post by grey-area »

azernik wrote: post #144
sandworm101 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think people underestimate the rocket equation. In the last fifty years very little progress has been made on the basic ratios between rocket fuel, size and payload. If you want to land on the moon, in 1960 or 2026, you are still going to need the same amounts of fuel and supplies. Your landers will by necessity be similar too.

At least for launch, I doubt we'll improve those mass ratios for a long time to come - chemical rockets hit theoretical limits at exhaust velocities/specific impulses of e.g. ~5.5km/s for hydrolox, and SSME already got within 10-20% of that theoretical maximum. All of the systems that can get better specific impulse, like thermal rockets or electric thrusters, have thrust:mass ratios waaaaay too low to get off of Ear…

If you reuse vehicles and refuel in orbit, you don't need to be more efficient.

Re: Blue Moon

#167

Post by agent008t »

peterlk wrote: post #129
azernik wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course it's less capable than Apollo - we don't have anywhere near the lift capability of Saturn V anymore, and this program's budget is a rounding error in the $200B (inflation-adjusted) that went into Apollo. I think people underestimate just how insane the investment was in that program: in the neighborhood of 0.25% of GDP for a decade.

I think most people (myself included) do not understand how much technological improvement costs. Anecdote: I once had a conversation with a guy who worked at ITER, and he was pretty bullish (and he had no reason to bullshit me) on the prospect of fusion as a viable energy source, but frustrated with the internal politics of ITER. So I asked, "well, what would it take? If I could call up a bunch of rich people to get…

Can anyone actually make an estimate with any reasonable degree of accuracy if the sum they need to estimate is in the trillions of dollars?

For example, it seems that in research usually when people say that something is a decade away what they really mean is that they have no idea. Is there a good reason why that is not the case here and the 1.5 trillion would be well spent?

Re: Blue Moon

#168

Post by lmm »

BronSteeDiam wrote: post #132
peterlk wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think most people (myself included) do not understand how much technological improvement costs. Anecdote: I once had a conversation with a guy who worked at ITER, and he was pretty bullish (and he had no reason to bullshit me) on the prospect of fusion as a viable energy source, but frustrated with the internal politics of ITER. So I asked, "well, what would it take? If I could call up a bunch of rich people to get…

Isn’t that just another way of saying the ITER approach is infeasible? So it’s basically a jobs program

Compared to the world's energy costs, it's small potatoes. Fusion will be ready when the world needs it.

Re: Blue Moon

#169

Post by _0w8t »

azernik wrote: post #143
maccam94 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but rocket launch costs are orders of magnitude higher than the cost of fuel to launch payloads. Once we nail down reusability, then we'll see space access become much more affordable. And once we have ships that only operate in space, we'll be able to carry much more fuel along (aerodynamics and structural strength are much less important).

The problem is that, no matter how cheap your fuel is, you have to build a launcher that can lift off while carrying all that fuel. It's expensive to make a pressure vessel that strong and light and large, engines that powerful, etc. If launch gets cheap enough given current launcher sizes, you can get into in-orbit assembly, but that requires immense investment into robotics or a lot of spending to support (machine-…

Most of the weight of Apollo package at the low earth orbit was fuel. Fueling in space was not considered I suppose as this was too difficult with technologies from sixties. These days it is considered possible, so launching Apollo-size package to the Moon should be possible with much smaller rockets and refueling in the orbit.

Re: Blue Moon

#170

Post by sumedh »

tracer4201 wrote: post #136
mlindner wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unlike Bezos, Elon Musk actually gets things done. Bezos still hasn't done anything that SpaceShipOne didn't do in 2004 (and that carried people, unlike their current rocket). Their little hopper rocket is leagues away from a proper orbital vehicle. Bezos hasn't given any timelines for New Glenn (their first orbital rocket). People give way too much praise to Bezos. That's not to mention all the blatant patent trolli…

>Unlike Bezos, Elon Musk actually gets things done. As a betting gal, I disagree. source: $2MM investment in Amazon from back in 2014 has performed extremely well. Stock price isn’t exactly a golden metric, but Bezos knows how and what to prioritize and when to deliver. I would trust Bezos over Elon Musk with real money any day. Your post makes it appear as if Bezos is devoting the majority of his time to one specifi…

Not sure if you are serious or just trolling, there is really no reason to bring up Amazon or Tesla in this conversation.
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