SpaceX and CCiCap Rumour
Marc’s note: There is a rumour circulating that SpaceX had pulled itself out of the running for CCiCap funding. I have confirmed with SpaceX that this rumour is false.
Marc’s note: There is a rumour circulating that SpaceX had pulled itself out of the running for CCiCap funding. I have confirmed with SpaceX that this rumour is false.
Marc,
Who did you confirm this with? Not many people at SpaceX would be aware of this.
A senior executive.
Things are getting nervous in CCDEV camps (or should I say CCDEV “wanna be’s”).
So … lets say one of them talks up to certain congressmen … they they need to be considered … because you can’t trust that SpaceX won’t at the last minute bail out because of an over control / “micro management” … indirectly by Congress.
This has the effect to try and bootstrap the made up “crisis” into the potential to manufacture the environment for said crisis. An old DC beltway trick.
Meant to say to certain members of Congress … please attempt to P.O. SpaceX so they’ll act the “disgruntled” part.
Sometimes this has the opposite effect. It scares congressmen … into enhancing legislation for someone like SpaceX … because they take the meme too far, and the fear is that by omitting SpaceX it looks too pat for certain lobbyists.
Ah K street. I’m so glad I’m no having to deal with you …
Mr. Consequence
I have been asking this question here a while with no answer from anyone. I think it is very important to a possible near term space economy. I sure hope I didn’t miss an answer in some dam nested loop earlier!!!
Spacex is about to do the recoverable reusable launch thing. This will be great!!!! This will be amazing! But will it be enough!!
What’s wrong with it!!! To much fuel!!!! I know, I know from the point we are at now, the tiny cost of fuel seems like nothing. But right now with throw away boosters only about five percent of vehicle mass makes it to space as payload. With a recoverable system like Spacex’s system you are now down to less than 3 percent?? Right???
I know some of you dream of getting fuel from the moon and others from mars. But that can’t be done right away.
So the fact is to do the space depot thing, you have to drag your fuel up from Leo and burn up 97 % of it!!!!
Well you can’t build a space economy on that!!!
NASA Where is the R and D for horizontal launch???
You know the systems we were working on in the sixties before Kennedy said let’s go to the moon.
Don’t we have no choice but to figure a way now to use wings jets and rockets to greatly reduce the size of our first stage fly back booster.
Old post same question
NASA doing R and D for commercial ?
A while back when I was flying one of my thought rockets to give y’all a little target practice. lol I was flying a 747 jet engine and a throttleable Merlin engine. Since Steve said that jets and rockets don’t fly in the same environments and that the jet engines crapped out do to lack of air pressure in front of the engine. I was wondering how much R and D testing has been done on how much fuel can be saved if you can gently throttle a rocket engine at just the right amount as you fly higher(staying in your jet engines pressure sweet spot).
How much benefit can you get?
What are you limiting factors?
Has much testing been done on this?
Aren’t throttlable rocket engines kinda new?
Or did this kind of work stop when Kennedy said let’s fly to the moon on SLS
Anyway it seems to me just like you advance/vary the timing on a car engine to get a wider torque range.
That you can fly your jet engine much longer and maybe save tons of rocket fuel.
Making a horizontal winged launch and fly back booster that has it’s jet engines still on board for controlled runway landing, an affordable idea.
Looking for a rocket scientist
DTARS
Mr. C, Tinker, Steve, Paul?
Some body please help!!!!
To me
The only solution is a two stage to orbit system like Stratolaunch that has it’s drone jet first stage supped up with rocket power to get a similar performance as a falcon first stage!!
I have even suggested using rail launchers/tracks to get such a thing in the air!!!
Help!!!!!!!!!
After Spacex does it grass hopper landing thing. I sure wish they would bolt on a few wings and jets to their hopper. Jump that sucker up to 4000 or 5000 miles per hour and figure this stuff out!!!
Lol NEWS FLASH
Spacex adds wings to its famous Grasshopper
first vertical launch jet engine/rocket plane test vehicle sets air speed and rocket fuel efficiency records in upper edges of the atmosphere while crossing the Atlantic and vertically landing in Europe lolol
PS the vertical landing part is not part of my question.
The goal is to fly two staged controlled runway to runway system that uses the air to save more fuel.
Haven’t we had some success with ram and scram jets that could be applied to first stage boosters.
There is an answer!!!!
Do I have to wait for Elon to figure it out!!!!
Note to the press. If Spacex or other new space guys crash a lot of test rockets in the next decade, that is a GOOD thing.
Testing Testing out!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Well I hope we have someone working on the ramjet-scramjet-space problem even if practical use is a long way off.
I wonder?
Mike
Shouldnt Spacex type companys and NASA being making this happen sooner not later. Much better than the SLS BEO joke
http://articles.baltimoresu…
Hi George,
The root issue isn’t technology / energy. It’s functional application of space, such that the enormous investment can have a long term, reliable payout to justify it.
Things like fully reusable LV/SC just allow you to increase your financial “runway” to get economics of an industrial base underway. People don’t really question that it can be done, what they really don’t buy off on is … will it make enough difference to have been worthwhile.
We now take for granted technology that was “sci-fi” in the 60’s. We ignore that it took 40 years to change mindset, for its use to become widespread. Because it was to audacious to have thought so, in the prior mindset.
You can’t tell the kooks from the prophets until after success. But then, everyone accepts it as given. “Omni ignotum, pro magnifico”.
Two mindsets tend to wreck things – one is the simplistic solution fallacy, and the other is the fast fail fallacy. CxP was the first, the ISS haters the second. Neither are real true conservative thought that they masquerade as. They are variations actually on the liberal “build it and they will come and good things will happen”. Unfortunately the right is dominated by too much “faith based” nonsense … they are the real liberals ironically.
Conservative thought that works – “OK, you want a space national lab – how long it the others take for results, what does it require to run all up … do it for that long with those resources and show me if it worked like the others”. Or “OK, you want a lunar energy industrial development, how long, what does it take like before, … do it and what did I get”.
Staying disciplined and atomically reasoned. Straight up.
Ironically again, some on the left that win over the current right … do so by doing this.
Doesn’t happen because of all the “liars poker” from right and left that blurs things to hide costs/risks/reality, favour interests, confuse public, play marketing games … and get people to fool themselves into impossible “greedy” positions that can’t happen. Like the pointless types who think that a moon base with two people in a shack stakes out holding the Moon as resource means anything. Take a look at the real costs of any earthbound “settlement”, and the total cost here will surprise you with what it takes to do real stuff. Harder there.
The Musks of the world are a little more realistic “kooks”.
Listen to them, when they work. Need more too.
Add:
Von Braun was a sucessfull “kook” too. But there are many. many others unfortunately less successful. Like Maxwell Hunter. Could list dozens.
We don’t as a society tolerate them well.
add:
Disney and von Braun (Bonestel too) imagine a trip to Mars:
http://www.youtube.com/watc…
Watch this and deny von Braun as a kook, I dare you!
Look
Just because I wonder about things like how to build a model truss that could be light enough to support a skin on a volume you can suck all the air out of to make a vacuum dirigible, doesn’t mean you can go around calling me a Kook worshiper!!!
Thanks for insight!!! Mr. C
Seems I’m on the right path.
3
2
1
Hopper test flight 32 jumps off the pad.
Throttle up the Merlin. Easy now. Jet intake pressure reading looks good. Flaps up. check the altitude. Faster higher, what’s your rate of fuel consumption? Drag on airframe, heating up! Take this sucker up till she explodes! Getting all that data??
KA BLAMMMM!!!!!
Great flight gang, we fly again next week
Kooks!
Lololol
Ps the skin on a cylinder 1/4 mile diameter and mile long could weight about 26 pounds if I did my math right given air weighs .08 pounds a cubic foot lolol
Kooks indeed
Just as well go back to a light weight concrete sphere.
Humm 4ft by 4 ft by 4 ft cube That only displaces 5.12 pounds of air. Dam! 🙁
How many tooth picks is that plus weight of Elmer’s glue and skin.
Nope
Don’t know any Kooks lol
I just made up a rumor that SpaceX and others are working on a new rocket engine that runs on rumor and uses political innuendo as an oxidizer. In order to simplify supply line logistics, they’ll be launching from Washington, D.C., where both of these propellants are most abundant.
Steve
I thought it was ATK that ran on K Street Rumor and Power-Point rocketry?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wik…
Seems Spacex is smart to stay with 2 stages to orbit, which is why I just think about making a souped Stratolaunch is the way to go. let the second stage be conventional at first.
Add from Spacex thread
Humm I wonder if you could trap helium in your adigret to make your concrete walls lighter.
Humm how long till helium leaks through the walls off ping pong balls. Lol air helium entrained concrete lol
Nano helium spheres to be used as sand in a concrete mix.
Lol you don’t need to keep the helium molecules in. Just the air molecules out. Vacuum nano spheres lol
Maybe you use helium to make your vacuum spheres/sand lol
Image if you had a concrete like material pretty good in compression that was almost as light as air.
Build your giant dirigible out that.
Dare taken Mr. C looks like Von Braun and buzz could have gotten their ideas together and used the steam system to guide the Von Braun space station on recycler orbit using Tinkers Spacex methane lifter to build the dam thing !!
What’s so kooky about that!!! Lolol
As I told tinker before to find a good idea you need to be willing to look at the strange and unbelievable.
Like Musk says I would think “who says I can’t go to mars, I’m going to try and you can’t stop me.” Seems to me a big reason NASA doesn’t do S$&@ is they sit around debating whether they should or not!!!!
Just dam go for it. Look at Virgin here. They are just going for it. Dam the torpedoes as Tinker said.
Guess not.