SpaceX’s Big [bleep] Rocket - The Full Story

Wait But Why ^ | September 28, 2016 | Tim Urban

[PIF]

This is a mutipart post with links to:

Part 1: The Story of Humans and Space

Part 2: Musk’s Mission

Part 3: How to Colonize Mars

  Phase 1: Figure out how to put things into space

  Phase 2: Revolutionize the cost of space travel

  Phase 3: Colonize Mars

The Big [bleep] Rocket is [bleep] big. At 400 feet tall, it’s the height of a 40-story skyscraper. At 40 feet in diameter, a school bus could fit entirely underneath its footprint. It’s more than three times the mass and generates over three times the thrust of the gargantuan Saturn V-the rocket used in the Apollo mission-which currently stands as by far the biggest rocket humanity has made.

The Plan in short:
Upcoming Mars Oppositions - and what SpaceX is planning for each

July, 2018: Send a Dragon spacecraft (the Falcon 9’s SUV-size spacecraft) to Mars with cargo

October, 2020: Send multiple Dragons with more cargo

December, 2022: Maiden BFS voyage to Mars. Carrying only cargo. This is the spaceship Elon wants to call Heart of Gold. (with 100 people, the first installment on 1,000,000 people)

January, 2025: First people-carrying BFS voyage to Mars.

Let’s all go back and read that last line again.

January, 2025: First people-carrying BFS voyage to Mars.

SpaceX Interplanetary Transport System (summary video short)

[PIF]

Hope I'm still around to see this happen!

[rktman]

Paging gary johnson, paging gary johnson. Please report the the launch tower.

[NonValueAdded]

“Get your arse to Mars”

Love, Hauser

[MV=PY]

Me too! I want to go, but I’ll bet they don’t allow fossils on board.

[jerod]

Elon Musk believes that the thoughts and actions of every human on earth is controlled by a super intelligent alien race.... Seriously! The man is a lunatic and the only trip he will be going on in the future will be to either an insane asylum or a jail for being a shyster.

[Gaffer]

This is the guy that says they have to get a ticket price to Mars down to $200K per person to be profitable (?)

Is that WITH or WITHOUT all the government subsidies you might be looking for?

[InABunkerUnderSF]

The first stage has 42 rocket engines burning at the same time. The Soviets tried getting 30 to operate simultaneously on their N1 booster but had harmonics problems.

I have a feeling this isn't going to be as easy as the animation suggests.

[logi_cal869]

The emotional support for expending billions of dollars to colonize a planet being blasted with cosmic radiation flummoxes me (Mars has no magnetic field to protect humans on the surface, to say nothing of any other life).

I support a space program, but not this Mars BS, and certainly not Musk’s grand fleecing of the taxpayers...

[SunTzuWu]

Bookmark.

[Paleo Pete]

I’ll give him credit for trying, but I don’t think it will happen until a new form of propulsion is figured out. Modern rockets are heavy and don’t provide the thrust necessary for what he wants to do, hence 40 rockets in a bundle...

Gotta come up with a different way to push the thing.

[arthurus]

I suspect practical space travel will depend on developing something other than chemically fueled rockets.To make it an everyday thing will require something like figuring out how to access that dark energy we are told is all around.

[Shark24]

Isn’t colonizing Mars from Earth kinda like leaving the Pacific NW to go live in the “greener pastures” of Death Valley?

[BMATR003]

To avoid the “POGO” effect with multi-engine rockets it was found that having each engine run at a different frequency from all the other engines will solved this problem. NASA used accumulators on the Saturn V F1 engines to do this.

[daniel1212]

Anyone who cannot refrain from constantly using F-bombs to get his point across and who purposely uses them has his own problems, and is not worth reading.

[Jack Hydrazine]

[Jack Hydrazine]

Accumulators? I thought that was only for assembly language!

[urtax$@work]

the muskateers are talking about a fast trip to Mars. what kind of engine are they thinking about. The Chang Diaz ?? or other to avoid monthS long journey..?

[jdsteel]

All Musk nonsense aside, the idea of sending people up to a space station or moon base prior to the long Mars journey makes MUCH more sense than trying to escape earth’s gravity with a huge ship carrying lots of people and stuff.

[urtax$@work]

bttt