Well now that Space X has failed again, can we all agree that serious business should be left to governments ?

>Elon only promises to kill astronauts
gtfo fgt pls

SpaceX has been built around government grants, anyway.

no. Why would we not allow individuals and their organizations try to push technology forward? If they fail who cares, not taxpayer money.

>failed
It got its payload into space, that's usually called a success in t he rocketry business.

Governments don't do serious business for shit unless they're actively comparing dicks with another government, faggots in my state can't even fix the fucking roads we pay them to maintain, the goddamn potholes sit around for literally years.
SpaceX may not have actually fixed all of the problems with their rockets yet, but at least they're trying. Let's quit lying to ourselves and say that the government would pull off this or any other innovation efficiently and cheaply.

They're pushing the hardware to the absolute bleeding edge by trying to land after these high-performance missions. They're not kidding when they call these "landing experiments" and talk about being pleased with getting the data even when they fail.

Their fully-reusable rocket will only need to try landings as tight as these in scenarios where there was a failure of the main landing system. See, Falcon 9 is an expendable-to-reusable incremental development platform. Because they couldn't be certain of recovering it for reuse, they need it to be affordable even if it only works once. That means they couldn't engineer in generous margins and backup options.

Furthermore, the upper stage is not reusable, so putting more of the work (delta-v) on the upper stage would mean less value in recovering the lower stage and a high cost to the upper stage.

The next-generation fully-reusable rocket will have a lower stage which provides less delta-v to the upper stage and always fly back to land near the launchpad, rather than landing on a barge. It will achieve large payloads by being roughly an order of magnitude larger than Falcon 9, and by using a more efficient staged-combustion cycle. The propellant will be oxygen and cheap methane, and it will use self-pressurization (boiling the oxygen and methane) rather than helium, so despite being far larger and more capable, the fuel cost won't be significantly higher per launch. The mechanical complexity will also not be significantly higher, things will just be physically larger.

The upper stage will have a heat shield good for ten or more uses without refurbishment and land in a similar way to the Dragon capsule.

Based on what they've done so far, I'm convinced they will succeed in developing their fully reusable vehicle, and that, after no more than a dozen failures, the typical one built will work for a hundred or more flights.

>throwaway airplanes
compare velocities of airplanes and rockets. then realize the stupid shit comparison you just made.
"why don't we all just run to where we wanna go at 40 times the speed people normally run instead of using technical means of transportation?"

>always fly back to land near the launchpad, rather than landing on a barge
The reason they're trying to make barge landing work is to minimize payload losses by minimizing the fuel expenditure for landing. The barge can be put into the natural path of the rocket. Land landings require more fuel, thereby cutting into the payload capacity. With barge landing they lose about 15% payload capacity vs a similar expendable rocket, with land landing about 30%, which means a land landing saves almost no money as the lost payload capacity is about the same as the cost saving from reusability.

>using a more efficient staged-combustion cycle
More technology increases risk of failure and development costs. It also increases the cost of reusability as there's more parts and more complex systems to check after landing.
The technically more sophisticated rockets aren't the more cost-effective in $/kg to orbit. For example: compare the Japanese H-IIA-202 with the European Ariane 5 ECA rocket. Both use 2 solid rocket boosters and LOX/LH2 in main stage and upper stage. Ariane 5 ECA can lift 10 tonnes to GTO and weighs about 777 tonnes. H-IIA-202 can lift 4.1 tonnes to GTO and weighs 285 tonnes. So the Japanese rocket needs lass gross mass per kg to GTO, as it's the more efficient rocket, using staged combution in its main stage and expander bleed cycle in the upper stage. Ariane 5's main and upper stage use simple gas generators, hence the worse payload/gross mass fraction. Yet in all the years the Japanese rocket only ever won a single commercial contract whereas Arianespace is market leader with a 60% share of the GTO launch market.
Commercial decisions shouldn't be taken by engineers, as they often just want to realize some pipe dream. There's a reason the whole private sector uses accountants.

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS OUTER SPACE.
GET IT IN TO YOUR THICK HEADS.

>The propellant will be oxygen and cheap methane, and it will use self-pressurization (boiling the oxygen and methane) rather than helium, so despite being far larger and more capable, the fuel cost won't be significantly higher per launch.
The fuel is the cheapest part of a rocket. Trying to save launch costs by choosing a cheaper fuel is like trying to decrease airplane costs by using steel instead of aluminum. The cheapest rockets are solid fuel rockets, whose fuel is more expensive than any of the common liquid bipropellant combinations. The most expensive part is development costs which grow with the size and complexity of the rocket. A new propellant combination with which people have no experience is a good thing to drive costs up.

>The mechanical complexity will also not be significantly higher, things will just be physically larger.
What are Reynolds numbers? What is the square-cube law? What is common sense?

First challenger and now this? I hope trump does something about the giant space wasp menace

>The fuel is the cheapest part of a rocket. Trying to save launch costs by choosing a cheaper fuel is like trying to decrease airplane costs by using steel instead of aluminum.
Are you a complete idiot, then? We're talking about developing fully-reusable, airliner-like rockets which can mostly just be filled up and reflown, with only occasional maintenance needed. The cost of the fuel starts to matter a lot. It's the hard floor on the cost of flying the rocket.

>The cheapest rockets are solid fuel rockets, whose fuel is more expensive than any of the common liquid bipropellant combinations.
No they aren't, not for orbital performance. If they were, every cost-conscious provider would be using all-solid designs.

>What are Reynolds numbers? What is the square-cube law?
What the fuck have either of those things got to do with mechanical complexity? You're just throwing terms around you don't understand instead of making an argument.

>no one is going to mention that 300 foot wasp

What the fuck

>>always fly back to land near the launchpad, rather than landing on a barge
>The reason they're trying to make barge landing work is to minimize payload losses by minimizing the fuel expenditure for landing.
Thank you for repeating what I just explained back to me.

>land landing about 30%, which means a land landing saves almost no money as the lost payload capacity is about the same as the cost saving from reusability.
30% is not "the cost saving from reusability". It's just the initial price reduction SpaceX is trying for reflights of recovered stages, relative to their prices for launching payloads small enough to allow reusability anyway. It's an arbitrary, negotiated figure.

Mature first-stage reuse, in combination with streamlining of pad operations and payload integration, would allow them to increase Falcon 9 launch rates at least five-fold without significantly increasing total expenditures, and the benefits would be larger for Falcon Heavy. It also makes development of a reusable upper stage a worthwhile option.

>>using a more efficient staged-combustion cycle
>More technology increases risk of failure and development costs.
>More technology
There's no such thing as "more technology", there's only different technology.

Do you suppose that a modern car would break down less and cost less to run if you put a Model T engine in it?

Raptor's being designed, above all else, to be a reusable engine, to not need refurbishment or complex inspection between flights. Full-flow staged combustion with fluid bearings means no complicated seals or mechanical wear during operation: the fuel and oxidizer are pumped separately, with separate preburners, separate one piece, gearless turbopumps, and no physical contact between fast-moving solid parts during operation.

They're not total idiots. They wouldn't set out to design a new engine for their fully-reusable vehicle in a way that could be expected to increase the costs of reusability.

>300 foot wasp
>only 300 feet
It's so far in the background that it's out of focus and hazy.

This guy's right; how can our Lord and Saviour Elon Musk kill astronauts if reality is just a simulation designed to send humans to Mars?

but only if the goverment is run by leftist so that we can be sure that they are using our money and not an actual business money from rich corporations, and only if they can make us sure that thay are not using technology made by everyone else than our country.

But even at an infinite distance in an image focused a mile away there shouldn't be that much blur. The only logical conclusion is that the lanchpad is very tiny compared to the normal-sized wasp in the background because once again the lie of humans in space is being fabricated in a film studio.

Maybe it's just moving that fast.

>serious business
>governments

pick one commie

>Do you suppose that a modern car would break down less and cost less to run if you put a Model T engine in it?
I burst out laughing when I read this, but then I imagined that there is some dumb motherfucker(s) out there who would answer yes.

>Are you a complete idiot, then? We're talking about developing fully-reusable, airliner-like rockets which can mostly just be filled up and reflown, with only occasional maintenance needed.
It appears you are the idiot in believing rockets can be like airplanes, even though airplanes fly only at 1/40 the speed, can operate their engines at conditions that allows them to have them running 60 times the operation time on a single flight and thousands of times the operation time between major maintenance inspections. To achieve this airplane engines are much more massive with a thrust-to-weight ratio about 1/20 that of rocket engines.

If it were possible to make rocket engines as reusable as airplane engines people wouldn't try to make them for some small and outlandish market like orbital launch services. They would've developed these engines for the airplane market decades ago. But they can't, because rocket engines operate at the very limits of the laws of physics, utilizing the most extreme chemicals and the materials with the highest melting points. Not because engineers are dumb to use those instead of more common things but because it is a necessity to get the job done. Airplane engines can use common fuels and materials that last thousands of hours of operation, not minutes, because compared to rockets their job is easy.

>No they aren't, not for orbital performance. If they were, every cost-conscious provider would be using all-solid designs.
Virtually every launch service provider is using solid rockets. Their drawback is that they can't be throttled or reignited. Injecting a payload into an orbit requires precision. Where this isn't a requirement, like in sounding rockets, they indeed are all solid. And modern designs like the European Vega are all solid except a liquid propellant top stage.

>What the fuck have either of those things got to do with mechanical complexity?
Boundary layers don't scale. Size matters. Volume/surface area ratios matter

I don't see any chance that Vega will exist after SpaceX increases their launch cadence

The drawbacks of solids are the fact they fucking suck, have to be moved loaded, lower Isp, and are more expensive.

>To achieve this airplane engines are much more massive with a thrust-to-weight ratio about 1/20 that of rocket engines.
No, airplane engines are much more massive relative to their thrust because they collect and accelerate atmospheric propellant. You can't build anything with the specific impulse of a turbofan engine and the thrust-to-weight of a rocket engine.

>>Are you a complete idiot, then?
>Absolutely, yes. For instance, I believe if it were possible to make rocket engines as reusable as airplane engines people wouldn't try to make them for some small and outlandish market like orbital launch services. They would've developed these engines for the airplane market decades ago.
The undesirability of liquid-fuelled rocket engines for aircraft has little to do with their maintenance requirements. The two main reasons bipropellant rockets have seen little use as the primary propulsion for planes are:
1) the low specific impulse (which means they would either be orbital or near-orbital spaceplanes, with all the difficulties of building spaceplanes, or have very short range in relation to their fuel consumption), and
2) the general handling difficulties of useful liquid oxidizers for rockets (all of which are some combination of dangerously reactive, cryogenic, toxic, corrosive, able to form sensitive explosive mixtures with things like greasy fingerprints or asphalt road, or capable of blowing up even without encountering a fuel).

>Virtually every launch service provider is using solid rockets.
...and yet, not "virtually every launch provider" is primarily using solid rockets.

>Their drawback is that they can't be throttled or reignited. Injecting a payload into an orbit requires precision.
How do you explain all-solid upper stages and kick stages? This isn't the reason they don't choose solids.

Solids have lower development costs and lower cost for thrust, but higher incremental costs for impulse.

Many businesses have.

I don't know about where you live, but that's how our trash get collected Every Monday.

Private space companies should be allowed to exist, just not to be fucking subsidized. Waste of money.

ULA shill you know this kind of shit is against FTC regulations, you can actually serve prison time for it. When doing this sort of 'public relations' you must identify yourself as a representative of the company even if you work directly for a sub contractor and not ULA or you can go to jail. There is a reason your employers are so secretive and that's because its illegal, sooner or later we will start to catch you and you will serve prison time for this shit. You really should quit and find employment in an honorable profession.

Governments are shit at dealing with anything that needs to be done right the first time.

The government is the least efficient use of capital vs result. They also had plenty of failures. As long as the government underfunds NASA we need an alternative.

The biggest problem with Space X is I don't think they have reflected failure rates/cost in their business plan.

Can you stop making these butthurt posts?
Denial isn't changing the fact that SpaceX is grabbing all the private satellite market.
I don't know which agency you shill for, but you may as well wave them goodbye while they're still alive.

Sad thing is, this will probably just fuel his shitposting