There are people on Veeky Forums RIGHT NOW who think that SpaceX can build this in 6 years

Question.

Just how much money Elon Musk has and how much is he gaining compared to his investment on these advances?

spacex alone has about 10 billion, whihc is about the aproximate cost of the ITS development

of courese they arent gonna just dump all their money in this but with some funding they can surely get it done

>Just how much money Elon Musk has
none
his companies make no profit and they spend every penny they can get

By implementing a eugenics program
pic related

>eugenics
>not the blackman being castrated

top lel

>I don't see why falcon heavy should be impossible for them
>they already have the engines and the second stage built, it should fly by 2013

it was not a priority
when this is a priority

The Falcon Heavy was definitely delayed in development, but it's also completely ready to go right now. The reason it isn't is because they're booked solid with Falcon 9 flights.

And I suppose "we have more payloads to launch than we do pad time" is the best kind of problem a space agency can have.

It's merely a schematic, to illustrate the concept

they have 3 used boosters that aren't booked.

and which can't be used for the falcon heavy, because the falcon heavy needs different boosters

they are literally turning two of the landed boosters into fh boosters right now, you tard

show me a source saying that it hasn't flown yet because it "was not a priority"

cnbc.com/2016/10/26/tesla-reports-third-quarter-earnings.html

>what is reading comprehension

reading comprehension is the ability to comprehend text, which has nothing to do with the fact that you said something and he proved you wrong.

any other questions? :)

It's always eugenics with you /pol/tards, isn't it?

back to

>illustrating the concept of eugencis by having a blackman castrating a white boy

go back to the ghetto tryone

its not good that theyre letting monkeys play with keyboards in jail now :(

what are you on about person who was clearly been demonstrated to be wrong?

holy shit loser, do you post every fucking day? You're very easy to pick out because /pol/ is a slow board and you reuse the same idioms over and over.

Get a job you no-life /pol/tard

I don't see why it's a problem. Everyone were shitting on them about lading reusable main stages and they did it. If you want to stick with the walking dead that is NASA right now, you're welcome but don't shit on other people.

No, it's illustrating the concept of racking shitposters in the nuts

we need some posting hygiene

Monkey rage : the post
Please stop shitting out assumptions about people, you terribly suck at it.

Can start by stop posting it?

>How do we stop
What do you mean by "we", Peasant?

After the rooftop solar panels presentation I changed my opinion on Musk and his workings.
What a wanker

Why are you a naysayer? What is your problem?

SpaceX can't even get a rocket into orbit without it exploding

Meanwhile, China is about to launch the world's largest rocket and there's nothing you can do to stop it.

What did he do? Piss in your cornflakes and fuck your father?

You cant get rid of the Muskovites, they are here to stay until the man goes bald and bankrupt

what is the largest rocket in the world carrying up there?

He's hit and miss.

The high commonality between Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy has meant both that Falcon Heavy has been largely a matter of making the choice to launch, and that it makes no sense to launch it until the bugs are worked out from Falcon 9 or they run out of waiting Falcon 9 customers.

Falcon Heavy is not a separate vehicle, but a configuration of Falcon 9, and one which costs triple the factory time but commands a price only 45% higher. It will not help them clear most of their commercial backlog, and is not the priority for their most important customers: NASA (which needs them launching Dragons on time, and wants the Crew Dragon) and the Department of Defense (which wants vertical payload integration and other preparations).

They could have foregone 2-4 Falcon 9 launches and done a Falcon Heavy launch at the end of almost any timespan in which they did 2-4 launches, but their flight rate has not been adequate to focus their efforts on it, rather than on improving their Falcon 9 flight rate. Furthermore, each time they find a reason to upgrade the Falcon 9 hardware through flight or test experience, any Falcon Heavy hardware they've built is made obsolete, and they don't want to launch it anymore.

For a recent example, recovering boosters has enabled them to discover things they should change for them to be reusable. At the same time, they've learned a way to get a little more thrust out of the engines, which will allows them more margin for reuse. The benefits for Falcon Heavy reusability are larger than for Falcon 9, so they absolutely don't want to proceed with a Falcon Heavy launch without making those upgrades.

>150 tonnes heavier
>still less load to LEO than Delta Heavy

why would they use boosters if they are designing a rocket from the ground up?

>reading comprehension is the ability to comprehend text
which "he" lacks and therefor "proved" no point that was made

Saturn V took only 5 years from finalized concept to first flight, with 1960s technology and only a few years of prior orbital spaceflight experience.

Falcon 9 and Dragon flew just four years after finalized concept, and then served as testbeds for development of the foundational technologies for ITS. Only four years after first equipping a Falcon 9 body with a throttleable engine, flyback recovery is in the early stages of practical usefulness. SpaceX moves as fast as the early space program did, because the people are working in the same spirit.

ITS isn't really more complicated than Falcon 9 with a Dragon on top. It's just bigger. In many ways, a larger rocket is easier. You can afford more elaborate surface treatments, such as anti-corrosion and insulating layers. The tank walls and fuselage are thicker and therefore simpler to fabricate and more tolerant of small flaws.

Parallel staging at lift-off is a very reasonable design choice. You need lots of thrust to get off the ground, then much less after you get to supersonic speed in the stratosphere, then much less again to get from low km/s speed in a vacuum to orbit.

Three-stages, with the first two operating in parallel at lift off is generally regarded as optimal for an expendable vehicle.

I dno't think its too reasonable from a cost point of view if you are building the rocket from the ground up.

Plus then you end up with a rocket that has no growth potential.

And a lot of the problems you've addressed will be resolved in two years when SpaceX has their own exclusive launch facility in Texas instead of leasing old NASA real estate, right?

>It is capable of delivering up to 25 tons of payload into LEO and up to 14 tons into GTO.

Those are some cool dildos

Boosters are totally reasonable for cost. They're very common, and make the system less dry mass sensitive, which means simpler fabrication techniques can be used.

Anyway, LM5 was supposed to have a variable number of boosters, but LM7 is taking that role, so only the maxed-out version of LM5 will be used. It's like China's answer to Delta IV Heavy.

Not really. It's mostly about getting Falcon 9 operationally mature.

25 tons to LEO is quite an impressive heavy-lift rocket, it's just not in the super-heavy class.

>Delta IV Heavy
>payloads to LEO
good meme

There are no rockets that will fly before 2018 that can exceed that.

>ITS isn't really more complicated than Falcon 9 with a Dragon on top

Literally quote your sources faggot

The engine they tested had 1/3 the thrust of the full size version, and the specs they posted were "design goals" not "we have this engine ready to go"

The tank is not the full size (it is shorter) and they haven't tested shit with it, it hasn't even been loaded with subcooled oxygen yet

also pic related

and here's the source for the tank

A lot of the changes they're making are for the sake of simplicity.

No separate upper stage and capsule. Two-fluid propulsion system (methane, oxygen) rather than 7-fluid system (RP-1, oxygen, helium, nitrogen, TEA/TEB, MMO, NTO). One engine type rather than both SuperDraco and the Merlin.

The production version of Raptor will likely be mechanically simpler than Merlin 1D. They're using fluid bearings instead of ball bearings, the full-flow staged combustion will mean no seals between lox and RP-1 being pumped on the same shaft, no separate vent for gas generator exhaust, spark ignition rather than shots of hypergolic starter fluid.

The engine count is about the only thing that would make it more complex, and that's better described as "big" than "complicated".

oh, and here's the source for the engine
nasaspaceflight.com/2016/10/its-propulsion-evolution-raptor-engine/

Any more questions, reddit tard?

Reentry using a building-sized ship at 35,000mph using a tps never tested outside of LEO, laid out in an asymmetrical aerodynamically unstable shape rather than a round blunt body is "not more complicated" than falcon 9 and dragon? (this of course being only one of the multitude of problems making it substantially more difficult)

You are honestly delusional.

(I'm not the guy you're replying to)

"Ready" was overstating it, but what they have is a convincing proof of concept, consistent with their goal of launching the complete system in 6 years.

Nobody really disputes that they can scale Raptor up 3 times. The claims about the problems they'd have with Raptor were all about things like the high pressure and oxygen-rich turbine. And if they can build tanks of that diameter, they can build them longer.

Raptor and the tanks should both be good enough to start atmospheric/suborbital "spaceship" test flights in 2 or 3 years.

>aerodynamically unstable shape
It's another simple blunt body shape, just cylindrical rather than spherical (which has also been done). I doubt very much it's going to be aerodynamically unstable when they're done with it (Musk has stated they're going to add some aerodynamic features such as actuated control surfaces). If you haven't noticed, they've got some people who are pretty good at fluid mechanics at SpaceX.

right, but how does that make any of it simpler than falcon 9?

Not overall simpler than Falcon 9, just "isn't really more complicated than Falcon 9 with a Dragon on top".

As for the parts of it that are simpler than Falcon 9, I already gave some examples.

>gradual infiltration

Dude, I was on this board when it started. From day 1 there were Space X fanboys.

How much will this thing cost to build, excluding R&D? If the first one explodes, can they afford to build another?

I honestly dont get how a Delta IV Heavy is more meme than something that has yet to actually fly

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interplanetary_Transport_System#Fabrication_cost_projections
>Booster $230 million
>Tanker $130 million
>Spaceship $200 million

So: around eight times as much as comparable Falcon 9/Dragon stuff.

>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interplanetary_Transport_System#Fabrication_cost_projections
I would be reticent to believe the number of relaunches they expect. Seems like the stresses on the materials would illuminate even the smallest imprecision in manufacturing over time. I can't imagine they would be giving it detailed and thorough QA after each use, if they expect rapid turn around.

I think that's their end goal, not their initial expectation.

For their first unmanned ITS Mars landing, they'll probably be ecstatic if the booster and tanker last long enough launch and fuel the first spaceship, and that ship lands on Mars once.

Bear in mind that airliners which routinely fly in rough weather and through turbulence and go to a low-pressure environment can have lives of over 100,000 cycles.

1,000 cycles might seem very long for a rocket, but it's very short for an aircraft.

>Bear in mind
theres no bear in my mind

>fly in rough weather and through turbulence and go to a low-pressure environmen
this to the maxy maxy max maxum, yeah shure, reentry is dangerous

but most of the trip is in the safe still space of space which is 100% empty

having 98% of your trip in a place where it is fucking guaranteed taht nothing will happen to materials is a godblesssent

Remember that pop sci is important, It helps people get interested in sci as a whole.

ITS will be capable of lifting several chinese "space stations" at once.

muh paper rocket

its not the 25 tons to LEO variant that'll be launching soon.

what?

BFR is a paper rocket
CZ-5 should be launching in a matter of hours

they get 25 tons to LEO by taking off the second stage
2nd stage is for sending shit to GTO

they can put up 25 with the version with the second stage, but it's just a waste of a stage

>Saturn V took only 5 years from finalized concept to first flight, with 1960s technology and only a few years of prior orbital spaceflight experience
also had the biggest budget any project ever had along with all kinfs of tax legal, and military support from HALF of the world, THE RICHEST half

Saturn V cost about $40 billion total ($6 billion at the time), including 13 launches. A modest part of the $180 billion (25 at the time) Apollo program.

SpaceX is estimating about a $10 billion development cost.

That's a fairly small factor of improvement when you consider that there's been half a century of technological progress, and the difference between public and private efficiency.

>The production version of Raptor will likely be mechanically simpler than Merlin 1D. They're using fluid bearings instead of ball bearings, the full-flow staged combustion will mean no seals between lox and RP-1 being pumped on the same shaft, no separate vent for gas generator exhaust, spark ignition rather than shots of hype
comparing saturn V to ITS makes no sense

thats like comparing a bike to.. well, the saturn rocket

a ginormous craft, with mroe than two digits of meters of width. that has to reach orbital heights, exploding the fuels, corrode trough the van allen belt, and all that without recylcing the engine pumps??? maybe possible one time

MAYBE, but more than 2, it will self implode by the shear pressure for surey, just apply the bernoulli principle to realize how rong you are

You seem far too stupid to converse with.

why are you replying to a shitposter

Some of my best friends are shitposters.

Shitposters make the world go around

Shitposters are 4ever. Everything else is ephemeral.

based musk

>That's a fairly small factor of improvement when you consider that there's been half a century of technological progress

Not in rocketry. Most tech progress in the last 50 years has been in computers, there's no Moore's Law for chemical rockets.

I'm not talking about rocket-specific technology. I'm talking about things like material science, 3d printing, production robotics, computer-aided design, computer simulation, and computer guidance.

It's all much easier now, if you use these things correctly.

Stop projecting so much. This is Veeky Forums, not /movietheater/.

*IF* they deliver the ITS for approximately the same price or slightly lower than the Saturn V it's still a feat because the ITS is a much more capable rocket than the Saturn V. It's like if you managed to build a 747 for the same price as a Cessna.

If they're operating in parallel, they really don't count as separate stages.

Kill yourself.

In what way are they separate stages? Would you consider the Space Shuttle SRBs to count as two stages because they're physically separate boosters?

There won't be $30 billion for ITS development. $10 billion is what they've said.

Reason it would be comparable is that they need similar-scale facilities. Reasons it would be cheaper are that now they can do things with much less labor, and this isn't a government project.

Parallel staging is still staging because the boosters drop off first, while the core keeps going.

The SRBs are a stage (boost stage), and the orbiter is a stage (sustainer).