Is the SpaceX BFR actually going to happen or is it a meme?

That doesn't even make sense. I think you've drank too much /pol/.

The BFR is "just" engineering.
Probably work.
Indefinitely reusable? Maybe. Claims likely somewhat exaggerated.
Mars colony? Doubtful. Big difference between throwing people into orbit (even assuming NO bad-for-PR failures and deaths) and keeping them alive between here and Mars.

>BFR
not Science or Math

>caring about anything thunderf00t says
He's an asspained popsci crank.

Holy fuck, this guy is retarded. How can anyone take such an idiot seriously?

Did he suicided when FH launched successfully?

it's definitely going to happen, SpaceX is currently diverting immense amounts of resources towards the project
this combined with the fact that the overall plan of SpaceX relies entirely on the BFR becoming a thing suggests that they're going to go balls to the wall to get it done

people who are like him and dedicate their entire existence to being ass ravaged at everyone that achieves more than they do

considering they just posted a fuckton of job openings, I'd say yes.

spacex.com/careers/list

>you can become a SpaceX barista

>or a deburring expert

They have a good shot. They have already shown they can build a rocket with a fuckton of engines. This was seen as the main obstacle, and they done it with the FH. Now simply do the same with Raptor instead of Merlin engines, and basically you have the BFR.

>Thunderf00t
>An asspained popsci crank

The same guy the debunked the BFR, HyperLoop and Solar Roadways is a popsci crank?

9539326
>was proven wrong on the first two multiple times
>the last was fruit hanging so fucking low even a blind, deaf retard could have debunked it
go home thunderf00t

>disproved BFR
he literally said BFR won't work because BFR can't work
he never provided evidence to prove his case, just it's impossible to make a large rocket
>A man with a degree in fucking nuclear chemistry thinks he understands rocket engineering
HyperLoop is a little beyond crazy, but an interesting concept, and Solar Roadways isn't popsci, it's a scam

SpaceX is a scam. Don't buy it.

>he thinks the hyperloop is happening
jesus christ

that wasn't what he said at all though. i don't even like thunderfoot but the video was linked in this thread. he never said it was impossible, i don't even think he said the hyperloop was impossible, the point is that it's an incredibly dumb and pointless idea

he needs to stick to what he's good at aka business while he lets the big boys make his rockets for him

>The same guy the debunked the BFR, HyperLoop and Solar Roadways is a popsci crank?
Yes. That's exactly what he is on youtube.

>Solar Roadways
He gets confused between the ridiculous Solar Roadways company in particular, and the concept of putting solar collectors on roads in general. So on the one hand, he's putting a huge effort into "debunking" obvious inept engineering (amateurs cobbling together roads made of hollow glass-topped boxes), and on the other hand, he's making terrible arguments that a fairly simple and achievable concept with obvious advantages will be unfeasible forever, no matter how technology advances (basically, he thinks that the main cost of solar power will always be the cost of the panels, despite nature covering surfaces with solar collectors from nothing but the materials on hand basically everywhere, with no input of human labor).

So even when he picks the easiest possible target, he shows himself to be unreasonable, lacking imagination, and arrogant. He's a popsci poser who overstates his case to impress midwits.

Yes, just look through any thread here about the SLS or about space in general. Even better, go on the Kerbal Space Program forums and look through the SpaceX thread. Retards are everywhere.

I said to myself 12 years ago, they would never get the rockets to land without a parachute. They did.

BFR is happening.

Then you're retarded.

>suborbital

>I said to myself 12 years ago, they would never get the rockets to land without a parachute. They did. BFR is happening.

They also said we'd have the 2000 Olympics on the Moon.

>They also said we'd have the 2000 Olympics on the Moon.
Did they though.

lol this thing never even left the stratosphere

>Scale model doesn't reach orbit.
wow

and they said we'd be one mars by the 1980s when the last few moon landings were still being conducted

That was before they cut 80% of their budget.

it's definitely going to fly...eventually..
spacex always gets "there" they just delay things a lot before arriving
musk was saying something about end of 2019? yeah right, 2021 at the earliest

however they WILL get there and it's going to make things really interesting once it's available, in terms of opening up space infrastructure

actually it was long after

between the peaked in the 60s then mid60s and 70s it went slowly down and stayed the same, went back up in the 90s and took a nose dive in the mid2000s

actually NASA is working on Orion which will take people to Mars in in 2024

wow a bunch of lesser flat Earth fucks on here can sit around dogging Elon musk that haven't achieved anything but running there mouths what a fucking joke you fucks weigh down the human race Veeky Forums won't go far with you fucks

The lowest year of funding for NASA after the Apollo Program was 55% of the average NASA funding during the Apollo Program. For the last decade, they've been at about 70%. The average has been around 60-65%.

During the Apollo Program, they were also running Project Mercury, Project Gemini, and various unmanned probe programs. They developed from relying on the original Atlas rocket (that didn't even have a real upper stage, and could put less than 1.4 tonnes in LEO). They invented practically every useful method that they've used since the end of that program.

The problem since then has definitely not been that NASA has been underfunded. The problem is that NASA has been as big scam for stealing taxpayer money, where things cost ten or even hundreds of times more than they should.

that's why they are building Orion now and planning on a trip to Mars around 2024

Orion has no useful role in a Mars mission, and NASA has no plan at all to go to Mars, ever.

It's SpaceX that's talking about putting a man on Mars around 2024.

If you used an SLS and an Orion to send a crew to Mars (and boy, imagine spending half a year minimum in this tin can with two other people)

How is it going to get back to earth?

Orion is a joke of a capsule that is only run as a too big to kill jobs program
It serves no purpose, it'll never actually be used for anything, they are inventing fantasies about putting a manned orion in lunar orbit a decade from now just to keep justifying the 2 billion a year that is spent on it

It's a meme and anyone who thinks it will happen in 2 years is fucking retarded.

kys

falcon 9 is suborbital

9539897
>he's still here
>he's still making up bullshit that was never said and spouting reddit memes to use as an argument

...

the 1st stage can get to orbit if there wasn't a payload on top. Either way, stop being retarded. There is a clear difference between a F9 and things like new Shepard

>There is a clear difference between a F9 and things like new Shepard
Yeah..
One of them gets refurbished for 6 months and then thrown into the ocean
The other one gets reused 5 times in a row and then put on display after a test it wasn't supposed to survive.

ITS was definitely a meme, 550 tons to LEO, people actually defended this, wow. BFR seems doable though, after all Saturn V was 140 tons to LEO.

fucking wrong

...

>hurr durr the first stage is the whole rocket
Never mind the second stage regularly reaching orbit and deploying sattelites

Does the second stage land? No? Cool argument.

>Is the SpaceX BFR actually going to happen or is it a meme?
a meme going to happen

goalposts: moved

I can see the first stage of BFR being reasonable, as it's essentially just a scaled up version of something they've already done. Sure there may be difficulties but that should be achievable, probably not in the time frame Elon claims, but eventually.

The upper stage giant space shuttle without wings that can reenter from orbital speeds and land vertically seems like absolute fantasy though, and I literally won't believe that until I see it.

We are talking about things that land. Only the first stage of falcon 9 lands, and it's suborbital.

Stop being a piece of dumb reddit shit with slippery indecisive arguments and learn to admit when you're wrong.

And only the first stage of New Shepard lands, and it's suborbital. And can't even launch a second stage to orbit.

>And can't even launch a second stage to orbit.
It could if the stage 2 was small enough.

The Japs launched a bottle rocket into orbit just a few weeks ago. It's literally nothing nowadays.

It could but it doesn't. Falcon 9 can and it does.

No. SLS and Orion are only two pieces of a (SLS and Orion based) Mars architecture that requires many more pieces, the other pieces of which aren't being worked on and have been put off to some hypothetical theoretical time in the future and are expensive themselves.

SLS and Orion will just be taking trips around the moon in that timeframe.

>It could but it doesn't.
So you admit that they can go orbital, but aren't doing it yet out of choice. So, why is your only argument "it's not orbital!" when it really doesn't matter?

I'm still waiting for the second reuse of any Falcon 9 booster.

No, it might go orbital if they developed the correct second stage. Which they aren't doing.
To quote you, they >aren't doing it
So it's not orbital. And BO aren't planning on doing it either.

...

america literally fucking landed on the moon

Did you reply to the wrong post or something?

america literally fucking landed on the moon

>ULA shill is assblasted
what's new?

muh Vulcan
muh ACES

don't forget,
>muh SMART recovery

it's the dumbest thing. "Oh, we can't throttle down our engines far enough, so let's spend 2x the money making a convoluted, retarded recovery system"

Look, what New Shepard does isn't remotely comparable to what the Falcon 9 first stage does.

New Shepard carries a capsule that weighs a few tonnes, straight up, just barely reaching an altitude that is technically considered space (but is well below suitable altitude for a satellite), then it falls straight back down

The F9 first stage carries 120+ tonnes, not just into space, but into space with about 2 km/s lateral speed. It doesn't just come straight back down, it boosts back many kilometers to land, and then coasts to an altitude of hundreds of kilometers before it comes back in a high supersonic, bordering on hypersonic, re-entry.

In theory, Blue Origin could put an upper stage on top of New Shepard that would go to orbit (though merely getting to space isn't much better than being air launched in the stratosphere, and nobody seems to consider air launch to make multiple stages unnecessary), but they've never demonstrated the ability to build a vehicle that meets the stringent mass ratio requirements to get to orbit, which is far harder that just being able to kiss the edge of space. By the same token, the F9 first stage could simply fly to orbit on its own, without an upper stage, if it were launched with a sufficiently small payload. New Shepard comes nowhere near that.

In fact, even when unloaded New Shepard couldn't fly through the trajectory F9 flies with 120+ tonnes of upper stage and payload on it during the ascent phase. They're not in the same class at all. New Shepard's not a significant first at anything, it's no better than SpaceShipOne.

Falcon 9 has larger fuel tanks. That doesn't make it impressive.

good reply, but you're just talking to a Bezos/Tory troll. No sane individual puts NS in the same class as a F9.

Blue Origin has never sent a payload to orbit. That doesn't make it impressive.

see

>I'm still waiting for a falcon 9 to launch
>I'm still waiting for a falcon 9 to land
>I'm still waiting for a falcon 9 to be re-used
>I'm still waiting for falcon heavy to fly
I have personally seen all of these statements made over the years.
I suppose that I'll add
>I'm still waiting for a falcon 9 to be re-used twice
to the list. Wew, Bezos sure is salty today

They've still never done it lmao

>we're going to launch ballistic missile "airliners" at the world's largest cities and don't think there's anything implicitly wrong with the idea :)
Holy shit lmao...

I can't wait for the day BFR launches, is a massive success and I can come smugpost here.

Yeah that part is a stupid meme, but mostly because launch conditions around the world are simply not consistent enough for any kind of regular flights.

Same. I bet the same naysayers were shit talking FH before 3 weeks ago. There's so many SpaceX haters on Veeky Forums that are jealous as fuck, and Musk keeps destroying them every new launch.

I look at it this way

>BFR built and launches successfully
>Fukken sweet look at that thing nigger

>BFR fails catastrophically and kills hundreds of people
>Haha Elon is a fag and his rocket is gay

Nobody cared because it still took 8 years for them to get FH working, and it's going to be the same for BFR so nobody will care then either.

>launch conditions around the world are simply not consistent enough
Rockets are naturally less sensitive to weather conditions than winged aircraft.

They only wait for perfect conditions when they've got low flight rates and the flights aren't urgent. Each brand new shiny rocket has enough chance of going wrong on its first flight without adding bad weather.

Elon's gonna need the BFR if he wants to compete with the New Glenn.

Bezos's gonna need the New Glenn if he wants to compete with the BFR.

NG is a FH / F9 competitor. New Armstrong will be the BFR competitor.

No, New Glenn won't really be competitive with Falcon Heavy. This is not leapfrog, this is catchup.

Blue Origin engineers are much more conservative than SpaceX ones. They're doing recovery by adding a lot of cost and dry mass. They're trying to make up for it with higher energy propellants. They need a much bigger upper stage because the booster can't go to the same speed, even though they're always doing downrange landing, and because they've got a big, heavy upper stage, they need a costly hydrogen-fuelled third stage to take a decent payload beyond LEO.

Watch, the expendable upper stage of New Glenn will cost as much as an expendable center core of Falcon Heavy, and the third stage will cost as much again. It'll be inferior performance at higher cost. And BFR will end up flying before New Glenn does.

pretty hard to play catchup when it's hard to be at an advantage when you don't just copy F9.

..."Rockets are, in general, over 90% propellant by mass. When you launch, you need enough engine thrust to counter all that weight and impart some acceleration on your vehicle. However, if you try to land your rocket after boosting the payload, you have expended most of your mass, and your launch thrust is wildly excessive - if applied fully, you will produce tens of g's of acceleration, destroying your precious vehicle. You need to somehow reduce it to a small fraction of design maximum - but rocket engines are, in general, really bad at deep throttling, as it can cause combustion instability, followed by flow separation, followed by a destroyed engine.
This is where SpaceX got lucky - initially, their plan was to launch small satellites on the Falcon 1, followed by parachute recovery of the first stage. To that end, they developed the Merlin 1 engine for the first stage, and Kestrel engine for the second stage. This plan failed, and nearly bankrupted the company. They were saved by NASA awarding them a contract to develop the Falcon 9 and Dragon. With only Merlin and Kestrel in their toolbox, the latter being far too small for the class of rockets they got contracted to work on, and limited funds, they opted to make the entire rocket work using their relatively small Merlin 1C engine, which, at that point, was rated for 42 tons of thrust at sea level and 48 tons of thrust in vacuum. For comparison, the RD-180 engine used on Atlas V is rated for 383 tons of sea level thrust. This meant using lots of small engines together - nine of them, in fact. At this point, they were still working on parachute recovery of the first stage. The decision to use nine engines on the first stage was controversial - many believed that this can produce uncontrolled vibrations that will destroy the rocket - but they didn't really have much of a choice."

..."However, when their initial plan to use parachutes for first stage recovery turned out to be a failure - the stage simply failed to survive re-entry - they figured out that they could use the center engine alone to produce sufficiently low thrust to make a controlled landing of a nearly-empty stage.
The second point where they got lucky is with the decision to use Merlin on the second stage. While Merlin is small for a first stage engine, it's hugely overpowered for a second stage. For comparison, the RL-10 engine used on Atlas V's Centaur produces just 11 tons of vacuum thrust, and HM7B on Ariane 5 produces only 6 tons. They are far better engines for upper stage use - Merlin's specific impulse is pathetic in comparison - but in the context of Falcon 9, using a Merlin to power the second stage resulted in staging very early in the flight, with a relatively small first stage and a huge, overpowered second stage. Whereas a Falcon 9's first stage burns for less than three minutes and stages at slightly over 2km/s, and then the second stage takes over, an Ariane 5's first stage burns for nine minutes and burns out at 7km/s of velocity. On its ballistic path, launching out of Kourou, it almost reaches Africa - you can appreciate how much harder it would be to decelerate and land it, even if its engine was capable of such a feat.
SpaceX engineers certainly wrung every last bit of performance out of their luck, but it's not like ULA or CNES engineers aren't landing their rockets simply because they don't want to."

then again, there is plenty of evidence to the contrary. Desch of iridium has said that "“Our technical teams really dug into it, it was clear that SpaceX has been designing for reusability all along,"

However you look at it, SpaceX did a pretty good job with F9.

>an Ariane 5's first stage
This not a proper comparison because Ariane 5 has solid boosters, nor could it lift itself off the pad without them.

>but it's not like ULA or CNES engineers aren't landing their rockets simply because they don't want to."
This is ofc wrong, they do not want to do reuse, and have published plenty of literature saying reuse would never work/be profitable.

That thing is only method of delivery humans to Deep Space Habitat, they didn't show lander yet.

There is no lander, altair was cancelled with Constellation
There is no rocket, there is no habitats, there is no lander, and orion will likely never actually fly

>actually NASA is working on Orion which will take people to Mars in in 2024
EM-11 is planned for 2033.