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Elon Musk and the future of spaceflight

newscientist.com

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Re: Elon Musk and the future of spaceflight

#11

Post by Tuna-Fish »

Smerity wrote: post #3
mbenjaminsmith wrote: post #2

"Our engine has the highest thrust to weight ratio of any engine in the world, our airframe has the best mass fraction of any rocket in the world - and our electronics are the lightest and have have the most computing power over that of any other rocket." "The escape system's motors will allow the capsule to land anywhere in the solar system, whether it has an atmosphere or not - and that's pretty cool. These motors…

I was born on the edges of the 80s and 90s. I missed the entirety of the space race. I never even knew the enthusiasm towards space flight. Suddenly SpaceX appears and in only 10 years looks in place to eclipse NASA. They're poised to achieve far greater things than merely following NASA's footsteps. I knew they were looking forward but I didn't expect them to be considering things so far in advance. I'm genuinely ex…

> I knew they were looking forward but I didn't expect them to be considering things so far in advance.

The stated, immediate goal of SpaceX is to "Make the human race a multi-planetary species." They want to put a self-sufficient colony of people on Mars. Everything else they do before that is a stepping stone to make it happen.

Re: Elon Musk and the future of spaceflight

#12

Post by jamesflorentino »

The way mr. Musk voices his mind reminds me heavily of Steve jobs. Both wanting to change the world for the better. The only difference is that Elon is an engineer as well as an entrepreneur which makes him hard to dislike.

On a side note, I'm quite glad that this is getting a lot of press. Hopefully this buzz will create a demand for jobs related to space technology. I'm 27 but I wouldn't mind working for something related to that field once there is of high demand.

Re: Elon Musk and the future of spaceflight

#14

Post by pawmar »

iwwr wrote: post #7

Musk says Merlin-1C has the highest thrust-to-weight ratio of any (liquid fuel) rocket today. Well: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merlin_(rocket_engine) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NK-33 Merlin 1C is 96:1, while NK-33 is 133:1 Obviously Musk knows what he's talking about, so where's the discrepancy?

Maybe he was talking about Merlin 1D, which will be used (starting from 2013?) in Falcon 9 v1.1 and Falcon Heavy. Merlin 1D according to wiki has thrust-to-weight ratio 160:1

Re: Elon Musk and the future of spaceflight

#15

Post by [deleted] »

dsrguru wrote: post #6

After Elon Musk explained that it would be too dangerous to outsource the production to China because "rocket technology is [...] considered an advanced weapons technology," I'm surprised the interviewer didn't ask about potential dangers in the privatization of advanced weapons.

[deleted]

Re: Elon Musk and the future of spaceflight

#16

Post by Gravityloss »

mbenjaminsmith wrote: post #9
iwwr wrote: post #7

Musk says Merlin-1C has the highest thrust-to-weight ratio of any (liquid fuel) rocket today. Well: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merlin_(rocket_engine) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NK-33 Merlin 1C is 96:1, while NK-33 is 133:1 Obviously Musk knows what he's talking about, so where's the discrepancy?

Is the latter still in production? Maybe he meant among currently produced engines. [Edit] "About 150 engines survived, and in the mid-1990s, Russia sold 36 engines to Aerojet General for $1.1 million each. This company also acquired a license for the production of new engines. Aerojet has modified and renamed the updated NK-33 and NK-43 the AJ26-58 and AJ26-59, respectively." But that doesn't mean they are in produc…

The Soviet NK-33 engines will be used for SpaceX's competitor's, Orbital Sciences' Antares rocket.

If NASA doesn't kill that program.

SpaceX has gotten so much publicity that killing commercial ISS supply is getting harder though.

But they can still downselect. You should fight against this politically.

SpaceX isn't doing very high performance rocketry if you look at their engines. It's a liquid oxygen - kerosene gas generator engine, similar to first big rocket engines everywhere in the fifties.

The NK-33 for example is a much higher pressure staged combustion engine meaning it gets a much better exhaust velocity and you get more payload. So are the RD-170 and RD-180 used on Zenit and Atlas respectively.

In gas generator engines, a small amount of fuel and oxidizer is burnt in the gas generator to drive a turbine which drives the pump for all propellants. After the turbine the gas generator gas is exhausted. In staged combustion, you put the gas generator gas into the chamber so it is not wasted and its volume can be much higher.

There doesn't exist US technology for oxygen rich kerosene staged combustion engines, so that's why either you use gas generators like SpaceX, or use Russian engines like Lockheed Martin (Nowadays United Launch Alliance) or Orbital Sciences. Boeing (Now ULA too) used an odd hydrogen gas generator for the Delta IV first stage engine.

The Space shuttle main engine (SSME) was a hydrogen staged combustion engine, a technological marvel with extreme performance but also complex and very expensive. It is a wonder of the world that they got it to work reliably.

EDIT: Which makes me think - Some Russian companies like NPO Energomash http://www.npoenergomash.ru/eng/ can perhaps be considered the Foxconns of rocketry. You can also buy propellant tanks and structures from Russian and Ukrainian companies.

Re: Elon Musk and the future of spaceflight

#17

Post by powertower »

saraid216 wrote: post #4
Smerity wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was born on the edges of the 80s and 90s. I missed the entirety of the space race. I never even knew the enthusiasm towards space flight. Suddenly SpaceX appears and in only 10 years looks in place to eclipse NASA. They're poised to achieve far greater things than merely following NASA's footsteps. I knew they were looking forward but I didn't expect them to be considering things so far in advance. I'm genuinely ex…

I trust you've heard of Planetary Resources and their asteroid mining plans? (Just surprised they didn't make your list.)

For now, they seem to be in the pie-in-the-sky type of stage, where all they have are "plans" and paper.

Comparing the two is a bit premature.

Re: Elon Musk and the future of spaceflight

#18

Post by johntb86 »

dsrguru wrote: post #6

After Elon Musk explained that it would be too dangerous to outsource the production to China because "rocket technology is [...] considered an advanced weapons technology," I'm surprised the interviewer didn't ask about potential dangers in the privatization of advanced weapons.

I doubt that Mr. Musk considers it to be advanced weapons technology (particularly given that China already has ICBMs), but the US government sure does: http://www.fas.org/news/ukraine/p5s1.htm .

Re: Elon Musk and the future of spaceflight

#19

Post by Gravityloss »

It is very good to finally see the newspace ethos being distributed in the media. The loose newspace community has been saying these things for decades.

To summarize, it goes something like that:

The aim is spacefaring.

1. We need reusable rockets 2. We should lower cost for space 3. Reliability follows automatically from above

4. We must iterate reasonable size projects to progress 5. We must tolerate failures 6. We must build many parallel and consecutive prototypes 7. Competition is good

Until now it's either been hobbyists or then NASA building something with billions of dollars and taking decades.

It is unlikely that a reliable, cheap and well working operational reusable rocket system will be built right on the first try, even with billions spent. Rather, you have to try different things at a reasonable scale, and then go back to design things differently. You can't know or analyze everything beforehand, what works and what doesn't. You must also be able to take risks in design. That has the potential of radical cost reductions.

All this is possible if you keep the projects small enough so that the failures don't destroy everything. With small enough steps, you enable progress.

I don't know if I write understandably. This is a perfectly sound concept but I find it very hard to make people understand that spacefaring progress is not reached by giving NASA more money and building the next big moon rocket. In fact, that would stagnate it.

Re: Elon Musk and the future of spaceflight

#20

Post by 3am »

Smerity wrote: post #3
mbenjaminsmith wrote: post #2

"Our engine has the highest thrust to weight ratio of any engine in the world, our airframe has the best mass fraction of any rocket in the world - and our electronics are the lightest and have have the most computing power over that of any other rocket." "The escape system's motors will allow the capsule to land anywhere in the solar system, whether it has an atmosphere or not - and that's pretty cool. These motors…

I was born on the edges of the 80s and 90s. I missed the entirety of the space race. I never even knew the enthusiasm towards space flight. Suddenly SpaceX appears and in only 10 years looks in place to eclipse NASA. They're poised to achieve far greater things than merely following NASA's footsteps. I knew they were looking forward but I didn't expect them to be considering things so far in advance. I'm genuinely ex…

You should probably look into Apollo 11 and Saturn V and learn more about the rockets that put man on the moon. I love Space-X and I'm genuinely inspired by them and Elon Musk, but they are not very close to reproducing what NASA did 40 years ago, yet. And they have unfathomable advantages in technology, software, material science, and existing body of knowledge.
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