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2019-09-22 Science & Technology

A good backgrounder on the impending Musk speech on Starship at Boca Chica TX

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Posted by 3dc 2019-09-22 00:34|| || Front Page|| [5 views ] Top

#1 How soon do we discover NASA's incompetence and donor fatigue has led to Intelligence Community quietly funding commercial space ventures ?

Posted by Besoeker 2019-09-22 02:11|| 2019-09-22 02:11|| Front Page Top

#2 It is all private funding with SpaceX a PRIVATE not a PUBLIC corporation. That being the case, it is doubtful that one will ever see who the real investors and shares actually are.

Posted by 3dc 2019-09-22 10:26|| 2019-09-22 10:26|| Front Page Top

#3 Only similar large company is Bechtel.

Posted by 3dc 2019-09-22 10:26|| 2019-09-22 10:26|| Front Page Top

#4 Besoeker, About this point in a discussion of possible copycats is where you might find interest

Posted by 3dc 2019-09-22 11:44|| 2019-09-22 11:44|| Front Page Top

#5 This is the real problem with the 'copy' idea. The concept can be replicated with very old tech. (with higher liftoff mass).

But, if you have anything resembling a 'conventional' space program, you've basically got to throw it all away.

Most of those that have the capability to do this easily from a technical POV are utterly incapable from a political/managerial POV.

Posted by 3dc 2019-09-22 11:46|| 2019-09-22 11:46|| Front Page Top

#6 Thanks, very interesting thread. Walked over to the 'Borshtch n Tears' last week, but they were closed on the morning I visited...too early. Looked like an interesting place but the lads I was with were 'stuck on shushi.' Perhaps next time.

Posted by Besoeker 2019-09-22 11:55|| 2019-09-22 11:55|| Front Page Top

#7 OKAY, LISTEN UP. i'M ONLY GOING TO POST THIS ONCE.

In response to 3dc's statement,

Most of those that have the capability to do this easily from a technical POV are utterly incapable from a political/managerial POV.:

McDonnell Douglas was doing it, when:

a) the SDI program they were working with was shut down. Bill Fucking "I Got My Dick Sucked In The Oral Office!" Clintoral USED THE LINE ITEM VETO ON IT, AS IF HE'D FOUND THE ONLY DAMN PIECE OF WASTE IN A THREE TRILLION DOLLAR FEDERAL BUDGET.

b) Their program was transferred to NASA, which managed to blow up their only test vehicle.

c) After the loss of their only test vehicle they shut down MacDac's program and started over with Lockheed, which a) had a design that wasn't an incrementally testable vehicle, and b) was implicitly lying about a lot of their supposed expertise with composite materials. Eventually they discovered they couldn't build the fuel tank they had continuously hinted that they had already built some of for Aurora, which was a major factor in that program being cancelled when the replacement for their delaminating multilobe tank made the vehicle not work for center of gravity reasons.

d) In the aftermath, McDonnell Douglas was shut down and the whole company, including the team that built DC-X, were transferred to over to management by Boeing, which hadn't come up with a design because their Official Corporate Position was that it was impossible.

The analogy I'd use to describe all this is the one I've seen elsewhere and used back in the day myself, and am going to use again now:

(I don't want to go on about the analogy, because I want to go to lunch, but look up about cats and vegan diets and Taurine.)

(And about losing test vehicles: Also note that SpaceX lost a lot of vehicles in the early years, but it didn't matter as much because they were mostly doing their experimenting after the staging process and they had an assembly line for their stages.)

Required reading: G. Harry Stine's _Halfway To Anywhere_ if you can find it, plus (I forget his current rank and status) Mitchell Burnside Clapp's paper on launch vehicle design and fuel selection. You can find an sscii-fied version of the latter (_after_ some discussion by Henry Spencer, who was posting to usenet after listening to a talk on the paper) here: https://yarchive.net/space/rocket/fuels/hydrogen_deltav.html.

And that's it for now, I'm off to lunch.

Posted by Thing From Snowy Mountain 2019-09-22 12:37|| 2019-09-22 12:37|| Front Page Top

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