My understanding is that Spacex plans to produce and stockpile lots of Falcon-9, Falcon-Heavy, and Dragon hardware to cover business in-hand and for the near-term future. They plan to discontinue production of those items once the stockpiles are sufficient, so that resources can be devoted to making Starship/SuperHeavy into a flying vehicle.
You have to remember that Starship/SuperHeavy is first and foremost a transport to low Earth orbit. It does that job without any refilling. No tanker flights required. To go elsewhere, such as moon or Mars, requires something like half a dozen tanker flights for on-orbit refilling.
There may be other ways to go elsewhere that do not require such an effort refilling on-orbit, but nothing contemplated has the payload capacity of Starship. If you want the payload, you go with Starship and accept the cost of the tanker flights. Nothing very hard to understand about that, either.
Now, in the short term while Falcon-9 and Falcon-Heavy are available, there is nothing about short trips to orbit or to the moon that need any capability beyond Falcon-Heavy plus Crew Dragon. Such trips are shorter than 2-3 weeks, and crews can spend that time cooped up in a capsule. We've already shown that. Payload capacity is quite limited, though. And a lunar lander vehicle is needed (and apparently being developed by more than one entity).
To go deeper into space, trips are a lot longer, and you simply cannot coop a crew up for durations like that inside a space capsule. For one thing, they WILL go stir-crazy !!! For another, a solar flare will sooner or later kill them. Both of these effects have been known since Gemini-7 and the entire Apollo moon landing set of flights. Denying these truths means the denier really doesn't want to go. And we have known that for a long time.
For longer trips like that (months to years), the crew habitat is very much larger and must also have a radiation shelter. Supposedly, Starship, which really is much larger, will also have some sort of solar storm shelter, according to Musk, but no details are available. Nothing about the designs NASA seems to be funding addresses radiation sheltering at all.
As for launch vehicles, what I see with Spacex (the Falcons plus Super Heavy) and Blue Origin (New Glenn) looks rather promising. What I see with NASA (SLS) does not. But because congressional politics is running NASA management decisions, I don't see NASA cancelling SLS. I just don't see it getting used very much.
There, I've put my 2 cents' worth in.
GW
]]>Falcon Heavy is an enabling technology for heavy cargo delivery. There is no requirement written anywhere that says the people and cargo have to go somewhere at the same time on the same rocket. That was 1960's era thinking that was a function of the relative unreliability of the launch vehicles and the cost of one-shot-wonder rockets.
Fast forward to today, and we have rocket reusability and orbital rendezvous down to a science. We've practiced the techniques to the point to where we can't get it wrong. The launch prices for Falcon and Falcon Heavy are so low that we can affordably mount an exploration class mission to the moon or Mars. Even more affordable reusable mega rockets would be even better, if we had any of those. Unfortunately, right now we don't have one of those. It still doesn't matter. It's not a mission killer. The modularity of smaller payloads could even be thought of as a mission enabler, so long as we have backup hardware ready to launch. It makes infinitely good common sense to have two or more of everything we need when we start talking about mounting deep space missions.
There needs to be a paradigm shift in thinking about how we do things. We have rock solid workhorse rockets, like Atlas V / Falcon / Falcon Heavy, with the reusable New Glenn and Vulcan rockets to follow in the next few years here. They do everything they need to do as well as or better than anything else anyone has ever had, at comparative bargain prices. Obviously we would like more powerful rockets, but those are extremely hard to properly design / build / test and extremely expensive to put through the rigorous man-rating process.
I say we continue the reusable mega rocket development, but put that effort on the back-burner, and focus primary efforts on the "everything else" aspects of these deep space missions. Whenever our mega rockets are thoroughly tested and reliable, then our mission capabilities are just that much greater. A series of smaller heavy lift rockets can provide equivalent capability in the interim. We need to focus on launching at least once per week to develop the operational cadence required to support lunar proving ground missions. Keeping everyone current with the practice of launching heavy lift rockets will be of enormous benefit once more sophisticated super heavy lift rockets have to be supported.
]]>These folks hated earth so badly that they spent all there remaining money to get off from it.
SpaceX is about to launch 152 dead people's remains into orbit aboard a Falcon Heavy rocket
You appear to have been in a bad mood when you wrote that!
In fact, each and every one of those cremains was sponsored by an individual or family which knew of the desire to reach space, or to further the cause of human achievement in space. The space burial business has been in place for years, and some notable individuals (or their families) have supported the memorial services that go with the experience.
The evolution of the industry and some of its achievements are recorded in interviews on The Space Show. That's how I know about it, but there have been occasional reports in the press as well.
(th)
]]>SpaceX is about to launch 152 dead people's remains into orbit aboard a Falcon Heavy rocket
]]>I think he's jumping the gun big time....
]]>Blue Moon is intended to be developed from New Shepard, and yet will look rather LEM like. If I understand correctly it may be fully reusable, using BE3 engines, which are Hydrogen Oxygen I think.
New Glen is scheduled to show up, and they are working on New Armstrong, which I believe may be quite a significant device.
And Blue Origins is specifically focused on the Moon. Perhaps the South Pole of the Moon.
I think that this stuff could show up while Super Heavy-Starship are getting under way.
We are very fortunate in our potentials.
I even wonder if New Shepard (Updated/Modified), could work on Mars as a hopper. I don't think that a Hydrogen/Oxygen engine system is necessarily prohibited. I think one of the reasons to use Methane on Starship and other Blue Origin vehicles is to get away from the boil off, and also because I think the hydrogen tanks have to be so big??? So for a hopper for Mars based on New Shepard, I think Hydrogen/Oxygen would be OK. Very short term fueling situation. Boil off not a problem, and tank size not so much trouble on Mars per ~.38 gravity, and >1/100th dense atmosphere.
I believe that Blue Origins has now expressed some interest in Mars, but of course they are most interested in the Moon per presumed benefits it could give Earth, by allowing industry to move into space.
Done.
Back to Falcon heavy for the moon plan while it seems like its a good plan the capsule did have a serious problem and would have killed anyone that would have flown on it.
The cargo plans still work but the small capsule and trunk will not be large enough to get much to the moon or for mars with its current version.
Some of us were expecting a mid sized bfr as a stepping stone that would have been more capable but that is being skipped in favor of a rocket still not going anywhere.
It’s hard to believe that it’s already been nearly nine months since SpaceX launched its Falcon Heavy rocket, sending a test payload into Sun-centric orbit, but here we are. Now, the only passenger that took part in the adventure officially made his way past Mars, marking yet another milestone for the private spaceflight leader.
Direct launch from earth towards mars
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