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Live: SpaceX to launch four civilians to orbit in mission known as Inspiration4

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Re: Live: SpaceX to launch four civilians to orbit in mission known as Inspiration4

#41

Post by avhon1 »

cma wrote: post #31
marcodiego wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First successful powered heavier-than-air experiments happened in early 1900s, by the 1960s flying many common people inside a jet was affordable. First human in space was in 1961. We are some decades behind this time.

>We are some decades behind this time. Well, launching these 4 people does take over a ~~million gallons of kerosene~~ (edit: million lbs of CO2 emissions), so for the environment it is probably good that it isn't as common as jet travel yet. It will probably take fusion energy or mass solar, plus hydrogen rockets (emit only water).

Where did you get the "over a million gallons of kerosene" figure? The figure I found [1] is 260,760 lbs in the first stage, which works out to almost exactly 25,000 US gallons in the first stage, which uses the large majority of the propellant.

The Wikipedia article [2] says 38,570 US gallons of RP-1 in the first stage and 4,500 US gallons in the second.

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20170201135344/http://www.nmfs.n...

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_9

Re: Live: SpaceX to launch four civilians to orbit in mission known as Inspiration4

#43

Post by cma »

avhon1 wrote: post #41
cma wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We are some decades behind this time. Well, launching these 4 people does take over a ~~million gallons of kerosene~~ (edit: million lbs of CO2 emissions), so for the environment it is probably good that it isn't as common as jet travel yet. It will probably take fusion energy or mass solar, plus hydrogen rockets (emit only water).

Where did you get the "over a million gallons of kerosene" figure? The figure I found [1] is 260,760 lbs in the first stage, which works out to almost exactly 25,000 US gallons in the first stage, which uses the large majority of the propellant. The Wikipedia article [2] says 38,570 US gallons of RP-1 in the first stage and 4,500 US gallons in the second. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20170201135344/http://www.nmfs…

I thought I heard that in their stream. Must have been a million lbs of fuel+oxygen and not a million gallons of fuel. Sounds like close to ~125,000lbs of CO2 emissions per passenger then.

With Starship being methane based (higher H to C ratio) and at bigger scale hopefully it gets that number down a lot.

This lists it at 1.1 million lbs fuel+oxygen and shows it being used with Dragon (did they use this or similar?): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_9_Full_Thrust#Block_3

Re: Live: SpaceX to launch four civilians to orbit in mission known as Inspiration4

#44

Post by adventured »

pininja wrote: post #4

They’re in orbit! Will be an exciting 3 days for them. For those wanting the back story, there’s an excellent Netflix series on this mission: https://www.netflix.com/us/title/81441273?s=i&trkid=13747225... Also Scott Manley summarizes it well on YouTube https://youtu.be/ATxOQCDeL3Y

Thanks for linking that Netflix series, I was unaware of it. It's pretty decent.

Re: Live: SpaceX to launch four civilians to orbit in mission known as Inspiration4

#47

Post by zlsa »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #28
sen wrote: post #16

Considering the Bezos/Branson debacle, I think it's easy for people to get lost in the "This is just another billionaire paying to go to space" thing... and it is, but that's a small part of it. The passengers themselves are basically unimportant compared to the bigger picture. Who cares if the passengers are some random billionaire and a group of people carefully chosen purely as a publicity stunt, let him have his…

Agree. The challenges are still real in that with enough of these you'll lose people (just like you do in airplanes occasionally) but this is a pretty significant moment. I haven't seen any mention of any "science" they are going to do which was a late add to the qualification list for astronaut, and it was really apparent the difference between having access to the NASA deep space network vs not having that access.…

We don't know the public price of Inspiration4, but the $62m list price of Falcon 9 does not include Crew Dragon, which is a substantially more expensive vehicle to operate.

Re: Live: SpaceX to launch four civilians to orbit in mission known as Inspiration4

#48

Post by blendergeek »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #28
sen wrote: post #16

Considering the Bezos/Branson debacle, I think it's easy for people to get lost in the "This is just another billionaire paying to go to space" thing... and it is, but that's a small part of it. The passengers themselves are basically unimportant compared to the bigger picture. Who cares if the passengers are some random billionaire and a group of people carefully chosen purely as a publicity stunt, let him have his…

Agree. The challenges are still real in that with enough of these you'll lose people (just like you do in airplanes occasionally) but this is a pretty significant moment. I haven't seen any mention of any "science" they are going to do which was a late add to the qualification list for astronaut, and it was really apparent the difference between having access to the NASA deep space network vs not having that access.…

> I haven't seen any mention of any "science" they are going to do

Apparently they will be researching human body fluid distribution in microgravity using ultrasound.

I learned this from the Livestream.

Re: Live: SpaceX to launch four civilians to orbit in mission known as Inspiration4

#49

Post by ctdonath »

Pulcinella wrote: post #14

I posted this in a duplicate thread, but I don’t think this is the first “all civilian” space flight? E.g. Here is a space flight where no crew members were in the military: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_MS-09

It’s the first “I’d like to buy 3 days in orbit for 4” flight.

Re: Live: SpaceX to launch four civilians to orbit in mission known as Inspiration4

#50

Post by elil17 »

randallsquared wrote: post #37
cma wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We are some decades behind this time. Well, launching these 4 people does take over a ~~million gallons of kerosene~~ (edit: million lbs of CO2 emissions), so for the environment it is probably good that it isn't as common as jet travel yet. It will probably take fusion energy or mass solar, plus hydrogen rockets (emit only water).

There probably aren't going to be even 300 kerosene-burning Falcon 9 flights ever (this was number 127 or 128), because Starship is likely to start lifting commercial payloads by 2023 or 2024, and it burns methane, which could more easily than kerosene be part of a solar-power-to-rocket-fuel pipeline, recycling environmental CO2.

>could

Yeah but will it be? As it stands no rocket fuel is made in a clean way. As someone who very much intends to stay on Earth for the rest of my life, I feel well within my rights to be concerned that unneeded space travel is making stuff worse for us down here. Going into orbit is environmentally expensive, and society should use this technology judiciously.

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