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  #31  
Old 02-07-2018, 09:03 AM
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I'm so looking forward to the BFR. I hope it flies before I'm too blind and senile (or dead) to enjoy it. The F9H, while considerably more powerful than the Saturn 1B, isn't quite as cool, but it's still a great piece of hardware. The BFR will finally give us something to build at 1/100 scale and display beside our Estes and Centuri Saturn 1B's and Saturn V's without looking pitiful in comparison!
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  #32  
Old 02-07-2018, 09:08 AM
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  #33  
Old 02-07-2018, 09:20 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Royatl
This is the only one I've seen so far (attachment)

Those 27 Merlins are only eclipsed by 8 H-1's and 5 F-1's in cool factor! One could even argue for the 27 over the 8, but there's something about 4 surrounded by 4 that really looks good to me. Too bad we never had high quality imagery like that for the business end of the N-1.
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  #34  
Old 02-07-2018, 09:21 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Ltvscout

Schrödingers rocket!

I love the description too.

Free shipping is going to hurt his profit margin.
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  #35  
Old 02-07-2018, 11:58 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Royatl
This is the only one I've seen so far (attachment)


Nice shot, but that's not really a "pad camera"... that's shot from one of the telescopic tracking theodolite cameras, probably at least a few hundred yards away (remotely), by the looks of it.

I was talking about the cameras like on the Apollos, on the tower looking down at the rocket or across the surface of the pad toward the hold-downs, etc.

Later! OL J R
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  #36  
Old 02-07-2018, 01:45 PM
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Ol' J R said............

"As it is Falcon Heavy can lift as much cargo mass as SLS block 1, and SLS block 2 will take YEARS more development and many billions of dollars for new advanced boosters and ascent stages, plus a new "in space propulsion stage".

With a hydrogen-burning upper stage, Falcon Heavy could easily put SLS in the shade."


In my opinion, SLS is dead in the water. The Falcon Heavy can lift 69 Te to LEO............how much more can the Block 2 lift? More, sure, but Falcon Heavy costs 90 million for a launch. When you figure that in, no way SLS is ever going to compete on a cost basis. And that doesn't even speak to the fact that it is still BILLIONS away from final development.


If the government doesn't pull the plug on the funding of this overweight dinosaur I will be greatly surprised.............
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  #37  
Old 02-07-2018, 03:12 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Ltvscout
I've heard of vaporware, but this could be called fragmentware! :-) That listing definitely cries out for inclusion of the disclaimer, "Product's appearance may vary from that shown..." More seriously, many people would gladly pay (reasonable amounts) to buy fragments of that booster, perhaps mounted in a frame or on a small stand ("no two exactly alike!'), as is done with small pieces--often from the heat shields--of flown Mercury and Apollo capsules, and:

There is a market for this. I have business cards that were flown into space aboard UP Aerospace SpaceLoft XL sounding rockets (see: http://www.google.com/search?source...0.9p HcHpnpywk ), and I also did this for friends of mine. For $25 each, I got them back affixed to ornate, framed certificates of authenticity, along with payload loading and flight photographs; other people flew promotional golf balls and other such imprinted items. (I just wish Estes would update their SpaceLoft scale kit's plastic fin unit to depict the four-finned tail assembly that has been used ever since the vehicle's "squirrely" first flight with the three-finned tail assembly [or Estes could offer it as one of their 3D printed rocket part files...].)
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  #38  
Old 02-07-2018, 06:35 PM
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Triethylborane (TEB) is the same hypergolic chemical that was used to ignite the afterburners on the SR-71. That is responsible for the brief but detectable green flash of the SR-71 starting the burners.
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  #39  
Old 02-07-2018, 07:34 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by mojo1986
Ol' J R said............

"As it is Falcon Heavy can lift as much cargo mass as SLS block 1, and SLS block 2 will take YEARS more development and many billions of dollars for new advanced boosters and ascent stages, plus a new "in space propulsion stage".

With a hydrogen-burning upper stage, Falcon Heavy could easily put SLS in the shade."


In my opinion, SLS is dead in the water. The Falcon Heavy can lift 69 Te to LEO............how much more can the Block 2 lift? More, sure, but Falcon Heavy costs 90 million for a launch. When you figure that in, no way SLS is ever going to compete on a cost basis. And that doesn't even speak to the fact that it is still BILLIONS away from final development.


If the government doesn't pull the plug on the funding of this overweight dinosaur I will be greatly surprised.............


Yes, I think the same thing, but I find that when I put that "too bluntly" it upsets a lot of a certain segment of the rocketry crowd, so I was trying to "put it more delicately".

SLS Block 1 is supposed be 70 tonnes (metric) to LEO. Block 2 is "supposed" to be 130 tonnes. Of course that's ASSUMING that block 2 even gets built. Block 2 will REQUIRE a billion dollar, years-long development program for advanced boosters (almost certainly the ATK "black knight" composite-cased advanced solid booster, though the F-1B "Pyrios" liquid propellant boosters would be a much better choice IMHO because it is a "technology enabler" and gives flexibility for the future). It will also REQUIRE the development of a large ascent propulsion second stage, presumably powered by a cluster of J-2X engines. J-2X was shelved after the Ares I debacle, which redesigned the original J-2S into a higher-thrust but heavier and less efficient second stage engine. For the large "in space propulsion stage" an all new engine will be required because J-2X is now too heavy and inefficient to work well in that role.

That is another several BILLION dollars in development alone. SO I SEVERELY doubt that Block 2 will ever be anything other than a paper rocket. I don't see SLS doing anything more than perhaps a test flight or two, and MAYBE the "lunar flyby" test mission, *IF THAT*.

NASA has basically "eaten their seed corn" anyway... with even the most optimistic flight rates of SLS have ONE flight every 2-3 years, all from Pad 39B (since Pad A was scrapped and is "leased to SpaceX" for commercial flights) given the turnaround on the SLS architecture, SLS isn't even suitable for Mars missions anyway, at least not the 4-6 flights of SLS required to assemble a Mars spacecraft in orbit, which is the NASA design reference mission (plans). That's why I've NEVER taken SLS seriously-- *IF* it could launch about once every 6 months (similar to Saturn V during Apollo, which incidentally the infrastructure (VAB and pads) were designed to support a much HIGHER flight rate than that!) then it would be possible to assemble a Mars spacecraft in orbit in basically 2.5-3 years... but even then, that means you're hard pressed to even meet the "every 24 month" launch windows to Mars... especially if your architecture takes over four "block 2" flights to assemble in orbit and be ready for departure.

If you have to assemble the spacecraft in orbit to go to Mars, and you have to do propellant transfer, you might as well do it with a less expensive rocket. Using the known costs of shuttle missions, which were basically "said to cost" (by NASA) about $400 million per launch, which we now know that the 'final drive-out price' of the shuttle program divided by its 135 flights, actually made per-flight costs over a $1 billion dollars each, and that was reusing the orbiter and boosters), and considering that SLS is designed to use "reusable" shuttle hardware in "expendable mode" by dropping the boosters into the ocean to sink along with the SSME/RS-25's and the huge core, combined with the overhead to keep the SLS vehicle 'alive' and in production and supported technically as an operational vehicle, and considering the dismally low flight rate of about 1/2-1/3 launch per year (compared to even the shuttle's rather anemic ending flight rate of about 2 per year) the overhead to sustain SLS is going to be ENORMOUS. Shuttle could amortize the costs of the supporting engineers, managers, and technicians necessary to operate the program over 2 or more flights per year... SLS, flying only once every 2-3 years, will have to carry the burden of SEVERAL YEARS of overhead and program costs on EVERY launch, which essentially makes the overhead costs per annum double or triple due to the low flight rate. It costs just as much to keep the lights on and the doors open whether you're not flying at all, or flying as many as you can possibly handle with the people and facilities you have. SLS will have a "much smaller" (according to NASA-- how much smaller remains to be seen) "standing army" to operate it, compared to the shuttle, but if you're having to pay those people 2-3 years wages to keep them around "polishing wrenches" between your single launch every 2-3 years, then it's the same difference-- you *could* pay twice as many people and fly twice as often for the same money (program costs, excluding hardware). I've seen projections of costs of upwards of a billion dollars per launch for SLS block 1, and that's probably conservative, and block 2 would certainly be considerably more than that...

I hope that Elon can pull off his "commercial lunar mission" with the Dragon and Falcon Heavy... it would be just the thing to really make the point that there needs to be a MAJOR rethinking about how and why the space program does what it does...

Later! OL J R
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  #40  
Old 02-07-2018, 11:53 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ghrocketman
Triethylborane (TEB) is the same hypergolic chemical that was used to ignite the afterburners on the SR-71. That is responsible for the brief but detectable green flash of the SR-71 starting the burners.
*Tosses head and neck in assent* The Nike-Smoke sounding rockets also used triethylaluminum (TEA) to generate the smoke trails that were photographed by two cameras to "map" the winds aloft.
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