A Very Different Take On Experiencing Space Travel
The Next Expedition To The Moon Will Be Filled With Artists
“SpaceX exceeded everyone’s expectations tonight by announcing that Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa bought not just one but all of the seats in a BFR mission to fly by the Moon. Stating “I choose to go to the Moon”, Maezawa, who made his money in the entertainment and clothing business, explained that he had been fascinated by the Moon since he was a kid. Maezawa said that he did not want to go alone. So, in Elvis Presley fashion, he bought out the venue and is going to invite a number of artists to go along on the Moon trip with him.”
They’ve also enlarged the “venue”.
(…) = IAC 2017
Stack: 118m (106m)
BFS: 55m (48m)
Pressurized volume: 1,100 m3 (825 m3) (ISS = 916 m3)
and
Cargo bins around the engine bay, all the easier to drop them on the surface of wherever you’re going.
Actually those so call bins can be replaced with something else. Musk in the Q&A session later stated a pair of cargo bins and a Raptor SL engine can be swapped out for a Raptor Vac engine.
My wild and wacky idea is to replaced all those cargo bins with electric ion propulsion modules for your tiny fractional G constant acceleration flight to Mars. They already have the solar arrays as part of the BFS.
That’s actually a very cool idea, if you can generate enough G-force to be more than just a subtle pen-dropper.
Unless you want a really long trip, I think you’ll need about 10 to 20 watts of power for the electric propulsion, per kilo of spacecraft mass. For a BFR with payload, that’s a few megawatts. BFR would have solar arrays, but nothing like that.
That’s a clever use of otherwise empty space caused by switching the initial BFS to use the same (shorter) nozzles as the first stage engines. This is a good compromise for a V1.0 vehicle that doesn’t really need to eek out every last bit of performance. The V1.0 payload of BFS is still quite high.
I inferred from his comments the possibility that version 2 BFS will have a combination of vacuum and pressure nozzles, at least that’s what I read into his comment that you would lose two cargo modules for each vacuum nozzle. The diagram shows twelve cargo modules so if all seven engines had vacuum nozzles (assuming version 2 will still have seven engines) then that would mean no cargo modules, and thus no need for his two-to-one comment.
Although he later said that “version 2 would have the vacuum engines most likely in place of those cargo racks” which sounds like seven vacuum engines and no cargo racks.
All vacuum engines only works if they can solve the flow separation issues during landing (which happens at sea level pressure). That’s not an easy thing to solve. My guess is you’d see a mix of sea level and vacuum engines on a “version 2” BFS.
I still say, this is putting the cart WAY in front of the horse. Musk wants it that way, because he loves the publicity. But I am really skeptical. Everybody is just assuming that SpaceX will have no problems whatsoever, that they will be able to manufacture a large-scale composite structure with no defects in only 3 years. I can see a thousand ways this thing fails.
Is it wrong to want this to succeed?
Nope — not wrong at all!
They’ve been working with Janicki, who helped qualify a 5.5m hydrolox tank with Boeing and NASA back in 2014/15. They also built tooling for many DoD composite airframes; B2, F-22, and the upcoming B-21 Raider. Janicki will come to your location with the tooling and do the work.
As the stream documented, they’ve built a barrel section and will soon start the tank domes and engine bay.
Edited tech part with images and Raptor engine footage (200 ton, 1993 kN, 448,000 lbf)
https://youtu.be/y6vYaBZB1u0
Everybody except Elon Musk that is. Along with his obvious enthusiasm he also included a dose of reality in his predictions, as he has in the past with other projects. Last night he was asked how he can be so sure that he can meet the 2023 deadline considering previous missed deadlines such as Falcon Heavy. Musk replied that they are definitely not sure. He also pointed out that they have been pretty unsure about prior dates also. He said “You have to set some kind of date that is kind of like the things go right date. And then of course we have reality and things do not always go right in reality. Usually there are many setbacks and issues”.
He pointed out that “this is a ridiculously big rocket, it’s got so much advanced technology, it’s not 100% certain that we succeed in getting this to flight. I think it’s pretty likely but it’s not certain.”
I’ve noticed in the past that these type of comments from Musk rarely get reported. I guess it’s more interesting to portray him as a wild-eyed dreamer.
Musk has done something that plenty of folks around here bitch about- he’s put the excitement back into the rocket business.
Great! The interview with artist MZ and Musk gives me hope for the future. It may or may not turn out, but at least it is a serious plan.
Respect to landing on Mars, this trip around the Moon it seems to me it is much easier and feasible. Supposed that Raptor will performance as promised and will be able to lift all that weight from the Earth to the Moon, I am really wondering how Spacex will solve the heating problems of the re-entering for that huge structure. From this interview, I would have had wished to know what is changed in our knowledge regarding materials from ’70 years to be able now to create shield and surfaces able to resist to the heat of re-entree. This was the Achille’s heel of the Space Shuttle.
The problem with the Thermal Protection System (TPS) on the Shuttle was that the main structure was made of aluminum, which had a large coefficient of expansion compared with the tiles. Technology has/is advanced/advancing since then, so the Shuttle system of TPS won’t be necessary, and the potential for loss of pieces reduced or eliminated.
With respect to going to Mars, let alone landing there, is the lack of data on the effects of REDUCEDg’s on the human body over long periods of time. Until we have that info, sending anybody to Mars is going to be extremely risky. The Moon is the place to do some of the research in that area (among a lot of other things, of course). Interestingly Musk did say that the BFS would be able to land on the Lunar surface!
This whole BFR/BFS thing sounds fantastic and impossible. But so did the idea of recovering Falcon 9 and F9H boosters (especially the latter side-by-side!!!) just a few years ago. The only images of rockets backing down on their own exhaust to landing was something we used to see on “Tom Corbett, Space Cadet” back in the 1950’s!)
GO SPACEX!
Ad LEO! Ad Luna! Ad Ares! AD ASTRA!
Don’t forget the DC-X. I was able to view one of the flights and it was amazing to see it take off, hover and then land. A number of the engineers went to work for Blue Origin.
https://www.youtube.com/wat…
I expect he is also realizing the Planetary Protection is doing to be a barrier in going to Mars and so it will be easier to work on the Moon first.
It was a cool project. Just a pity it was tangled up in the SSTO fad.
One of the amazing (and awful) things about the Shuttle orbiters was that between flights, someone had to pluck out the felt stuffed between each of the tiles and then carefully replace it with new felt, by hand using delicate hooks and probes, without bumping against the tiles.
Every flight.
Keep in mind that the friction is a function of the speed. If you have the fuel to slow down it will be less. If anything the BFR will have, unlike the Shuttle and Apollo capsule, is the ability for reducing its re-entry speed.
More specifically, heating rates from drag go as the cube of speed. A 20% reduction in speed is about a factor of two in heating rates. (To be fair, air density and entry profile also matters, so it isn’t that simple, but speed is a big deal.) But I’m also curious how SpaceX’s patented form of PICA compares with Shuttle-era tiles.
I agree, the entry burn used to decellerate the F9 on higher energy trajectories apparently is critical. Also entry heating is distributed over the heat shield area and if the area can be made larger without increasing the mass (as appears to be the case with the BFR with its largely empty tanks at entry) the peak temperature will be reduced, potentially to the point where the carbon composite skin would be able to tolerate it without an additional heat shield.
Reducing its entry speed…
That’s what the Shuttle did during the deorbit burn and entry. BFR will be doing EXACTLY what Shuttle did: using aerodynamic drag to slow down, before it uses it’s landing rockets.
Yes, but the BFR has much more fuel and in theory the ability to slow down much more before starting to use aerodynamic drag to position itself for the vertical landing.
So in theory, because its able to do a longer burn, it could enter the atmosphere at a lower speed then the Shuttle even when returning from the Moon. Time will tell if it actually does so.
Also there is density to consider. I expect it has a much lower density then the Shuttle with all those empty fuel tanks and interior crew areas and so should slow down much faster with less cumulative heating once it enters the atmosphere.
No, the Shuttle slowed down just enough to enter the atmosphere and used drag for essentially all of the deceleration. The Falcon 9 (and presumably BFR) use rockets to slow down much more and enter the atmosphere at a significantly lower speed. Am curious exactly how much lower; that doesn’t seem to be a number SpaceX has released. But the entry profile makes it clear that it is significantly less than orbital speed.
Certainly works in KSP!
The main advantage of BFS is how light it is relative to its effective aerodynamic surface (this is called the ballistic coefficient). This is because BFS has a huge fuel tank inside (unlike the shuttle), which is going to be empty at the time BFS re-enters the atmosphere. The result is that deceleration occurs at higher altitudes (lower atmospheric densities). Since heating rates, apart from velocity also depend on both the square root of air density (exponential function with altitude), peak surface temperatures during entry can then be made significantly lower, which makes lighter vehicles (per unit area) far more resistant to repeated use. In fact, a sufficiently low ballistic coefficient (typical of inflatable TPS), allows peak temperatures to be as low as 200C (as per the IRVE capsule), enabling the use of lower-temp materials, or even no TPS at all. This further decreases the vehicle weight and improves its’ durability.
BFS having the lowest possible ballistic coefficient is crucial to the success of the BFR system.
What struck me were the bits about funding and the role the money from Yusaku Maezawa would play. Particularly how emotional Musk got when talking about it. It makes me think that Musk really didn’t have a good plan to pay for BFR (or at least not on this short time scale). Well, I wish them luck, it’ll be an extraordinary moment in history if they pull this off.
If this works, it’ll be terrific.
And if it fails with loss of life, the Usual Suspects will be shaking their heads and trying to regulate it so that only Official Gummint Spaceships can take people into space.
(C’mon — y’all know that’s how a flight disaster would play out.)
Well my guess was 60 – 80 million a seat .. looks like that was close to the price .. sounds like he is helping with development. 6-8 people at 60 million should pay for the rocket ..
I wonder what percentage of the cost of the mission his payment covered? 100%? 50%? 1%?
That would depend on the accounting assumptions and the amortization schedule being used for the R&D and for the BFR itself. Remember you are not talking about throwaway systems like on Apollo.
I have not found the quote yet, but I recall this was something that Arthur C. Clarke recommended in the 1980’s with the Space Shuttle as a way of making space available to the world.
I think the Shuttle will be looked at favorably in history in this regard, even though it didn’t fully succeed. Prior to the Shuttle space was pretty much the exclusive domain of military pilots, at least in the U.S. although it was pretty much the same in the Soviet Union. This put a real limitation as far as gender, race, nationality and career experience. A couple of the Apollo astronaut groups included the classification scientist-astronaut, but even they had to go through military flight training after selection.
It wasn’t until 1978 with astronaut group eight for the Shuttle that things really began to open up with the new classification Mission Specialist. Group eight included the first female, African-American and Asian astronauts for the U.S. Also beginning with group eight non-pilot astronauts were no longer required to go through flight training.
Starting in 1983 the Shuttle began carrying non-astronauts for the first time as Payload Specialists, including non-U.S. citizens. A total of fifty-two people flew as Payload Specialists on the Shuttle. Sadly the Payload Specialist program was ended after Columbia.
Finally after many years it seems we are getting closer to the dream of spaceflight being open to everyone. I realize the cynics will say yes open to anyone with a large bank account, but that was true in the early days of aviation also. It took decades before people of ordinary income could afford to fly.
Shuttle would have been even better if it were improved upon, and the politics would have gotten out of the way.
Sadly, there will always be those in this forum who will always look at Shuttle as a mistake. But history will look favorably on the Shuttle Program and its accomplishments.
There were improvements being considered for the Shuttle that would have made it safer and increased its capability somewhat. But it still would have remained a high risk, high cost vehicle. I think retiring it after thirty years was probably the right decision. Yes it did lead to this unpleasant multi-year gap in U.S. launched human spaceflight, but that was a separate problem caused by wrong choices that were made when attempting to replace the Shuttle. So while I don’t think politics played a role in ending the Shuttle program, it almost certainly played a role in what happened afterwards.
Not sure if this is what you had in mind, but apparently in 1977 Clarke said (when asked whether he ever would make it into space): “I have a sporting chance. The space shuttle will be taking passengers to justify the payload within five years.”
https://www.csmonitor.com/B…
Yes, close, but I am thinking it was in one of his essay collections, “View from Serendip” published about the same time.
“The Shuttle is to space flight what Lindbergh was to commercial aviation.” – Arthur C. Clarke
Only one I could find, There was one close but about rockets ..
Sort of like NASA saying a space mission will be 10% of it’s final cost?
Did Musk refer to the first manned commercial flight in the “2nd quarter” of 2019?
A mistake (it is scheduled for the 1st.quarter) or a hint of a delay announcement to come?
Most media scribblers — I won’t call them even reporters — have memories about 10 minutes long. I’m exaggerating of course, but anything that happened before they were born is… “ancient history,” and, like, who cares, man?
(So, Mr. Cowing, what’s your view regarding the historical knowledge of most “journalists” today?)
Actually that seems to be true of most folks these days. Its why I developed a course on the history of American Entrepreneurship, so my students are able to understand those wonderful inventions they depend on came from.
One reality is that the reusable FH is available today and could do just about everything NASA wants the SLS to do for 10% of the price, 20% if you want to break the payload into 2 FH launches.
10%?
That’s a bs number if I ever saw any.
Or a number with the correct number of significant figures. It looks like a Falcon Heavy (reusable) runs a bit over $100 million per flight. The estimated cost of an SLS is somewhere around $1 billion per flight. Both numbers are uncertain enough that the ratio is 10% and the next significant figure is anyone’s guess. You could dig up more precise estimates, and say 11%, but that wouldn’t be more accurate.
Agreed, in reality the price of FH would be well below 5% of SLS.
However, Thomas is ignoring the cost to NASA of the development of SLS, approx. $25-30 billion by the time it launches people. Amortise that over the first two decades of flights, at one every two years, ie, ten flights, and that’s around $2.5-3b per flight (plus the >$4b per flight in ongoing costs.)
Add another $15-20 billion for Orion development over the same period, assume half the flights are manned, so $3-4b per manned flight for Orion alone (plus $5b per flight in ongoing costs) and it’s closer to $5-7b amortised costs per manned flight (plus ~$9b in ongoing costs.)
Or looking at it another way, this year’s development budget for SLS and Orion is $3.5b (which doesn’t including SLS related costs like the badly managed facilities upgrade. Realistically that adds another $billion, but I’ll ignore that.) FH is priced at $100m for the 30t-LEO version, $150m for the $62t-LEO version. Add a $50m “NASA tax” for the added burden of working with NASA (which is typical for SpaceX prices).
Hence for just this single year’s SLS/Orion funding, you could buy 17 expendable FH’s. 23 reusable FH’s.
Or buy seven sets of missions consisting of two 30t FH launches plus an F9/Dragon-crew launch.
Or buy just one triple-launch mission and spend the left over $3b on mission hardware for that mission.
Per year.
Just to be really nasty about it, you aren’t amortizing the SLS development costs correctly. You’re simply dividing the cost of development by then number of missions expected in the first two decades of flight. It’s actually worse than that.
$25 to $30 billion, invested correctly, could produce an annual rate of return around $1 billion or so _per_year_. Even for a government agency, the equivalent is the cost of the things you could have done if that money had been invested in something more productive. Spending that much on development isn’t just sunk cost, it’s also the lost costs of what could have been done or could have been earned. That’s what amortized costs are really supposed to represent. Just for comparison, $25 billion in investments making a 5% return per year is an extra $25 billion over 20 years.
True, but I am trying to be kind to NASA. But any way you add it up SLS/Orion is probably the most space launch system in history
Sadly many folks only read about President Kennedy’s speech instead of listen to it.
Entre stack: BFR (Big Falcon Rocket)
Booster: BRB (Be Right Back)
Vehicle: BFS (Big Falcon Spaceship)
“Falcon” is a polite sub for the “F***ing” term used on the shop floor.
However, at the event Musk said the names may be changed.
Is any of that terminology used by SpaceX, or is it just something people outside the company made up? I haven’t seen SpaceX statements talking about BFS, but maybe I missed something.
All SpaceX. Musk used BFR and BFS in a GQ interview a few years ago, they caught on in the company, and more recently he posted BRB as a Booster name. Now used in news and social media.
Also; today Musk tweeted the Booster is upgradeable from 31 Raptor engines to <gulp!> 42 engines.
Here we go with Blocks again ?
https://twitter.com/elonmus…
People criticising Musk are claiming it can’t be done. People criticising SLS are claiming that it shouldn’t be done.
I would much rather those engineers working on SLS-related hardware be set actually useful work, and the billions being wasted in funding it be turned to useful development.
The whole thing is called BFR.
The BFR consists of two parts, the BFS “spaceship” which is launched atop the BFB “booster”.
People mainly talk about the BFS because it’s the interesting bit.
We may have our first artist crew applicant; dancer-violinist Lindsey Stirling
https://youtu.be/DGhPGH2YROA
https://twitter.com/Lindsey…
The BFR has the potential to be a low cost, fully reusable spacecraft capable of carrying both passengrs and cargo, exactly what the Space Shuttle was originally concieved to be.
I had the same thoughts whenever the potential for BFR is mentioned, echoes of the expectations for the planned Space Transportation System, which originally had a scope even beyond the Space Shuttle. But it became obvious pretty early in the Shuttle program that it would not be able to fly at anywhere near the frequency that was planned, and that it would never be low cost. There was still some outside pressure to do so, but that ended with Challenger when it was realized that pushing the program only made things worse. My impression is that the space industry saw all of this as proof that reducing costs through reusability was not possible. So they went back to business as usual, a situation that lasted for nearly three decades until someone came along who was convinced that the cost of space travel could be greatly reduced and that reusability was a key component in doing so.
Just make sure one of them is a poet.
I definitely caught that echo when I read it above. I’m sure many others have as well.