Posted on 06/06/2024 10:40:53 AM PDT by Red Badger
The first Vulcan/Centaur rocket was successfully launched on 08JAN2024. Six additional launches are scheduled for 2024, five of them for USSF. The Sierra Nevada Corporation has scheduled the sixth launch for an unmanned test flight of their “Dream Chaser” spacecraft.
ROFL!!!
There is no "fuel issue". You and your buddies just make stuff up with no regard for physics, and hope nobody sees through your nonsense.
They used an Atlas V. It was a legacy series rocket going back to the Gemini days according to one article. Obviously there have been improvements since then.It is good old American tech and it was powerful enough to get starliner to the ISS. They went with what they knew that would work! Atlas V is mature tech!
There’s a certain sort of person who thinks that the Saturn V couldn’t carry enough fuel to run its engines all the way to the Moon, therefore it couldn’t get there.
That sort of person likes to blather vaguely about a “fuel issue”, in the vain hope of fooling people. They’re akin to flat-earthers who obfuscate the difference between “flat” and “level” ...
I measure “safer” by how many times a capsule series gets their people back and forth from space without a mishap and or death!
I’m sure Dragon will be upgraded and made safer the more data comes in.
But hey...the more the merrier! Time to remote land and strap on ion engines to promising mineral rich asteroids and bring them into Earth Orbit. We can send rockets to mine them, asteroids could also be fashioned into cheap space bases...hollow them out a bit...put a spin on them for centripetal force artificial gravity. Set up agreements with other capable nations to join in. Yeah yeah...I know about the high costs concerning thrust to weight ratios and stuff like that. The more we learn to do it, the cheaper it will get.
Atlas V is mature tech!
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So mature that the Russians are not going to send any more - when the stock of engines is used up, time to more on - like to Bezos, if he ever gets his awkward contraption to work.
Wasn’t it reported not long ago that Biden awarded the Mars government contracts to Bezos, who isn’t even in Musk’s ballpark as far as developing a viable rocket?
No barge. Starship is considerably heavier than Falcon 9, not sure if they CAN do a barge landing
thx...
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OK ... seriously ... that stuff is flexible for all the wrong reasons. It’s composed of carbon chain molecules. Expose it to a hot plasma, and it will burn up. What’s needed here is a flexible refractory material.
Perhaps a mat, several layers of fused quartz fiberglass? Melting point is 2200C, reentry temperatures get into that range.
I’m not a materials scientist, and I don’t play one on FR.
You obviously have better materials knowledge than I. I merely suggested that a flexible yet plasma resistant material be used so that exposed joints be better protected but I suppose SpaceX has already or IS already exploring this.
We built the Atlas V, we can make more. Don’t need the Russians. Heck...Boeing could make them...don’t know why they didn’t make their own booster.
oNLY UNTIL vULCAN IS IN WORKING ORDER. tHE aTLAS ROCKETS ARE DONE.
It doesn’t need to be flexible. It just needs to move, extend and overlap, so as to maintain protection, something armorers had managed since Roman times.
My thanks go out to you, or to whomever posted the live feed, and luckily I’ve waking up early of late. :^) I had the stream on the Roku and when the announcement got down to t minus a minute or so, I left this room and went to watch.
Those youngish kids at SpaceX have one of the best jobs in the world, and the enthusiasm to show for it.
Unless Biden puts up more roadblocks, I suspect the BFR will be man-rated before the end of this calendar year. I expect the next two launches will be somewhat close together, haven’t seen even an Elon-time estimate of when though.
China space watchers hail SpaceX Starship’s ‘breathtaking’ test flight
State-owned media and industry employees praise the massive US rocket’s successful and record-breaking landing
Ling Xin in Ohio
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3265714/china-space-watchers-hail-spacex-starships-breathtaking-test-flight
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