The Astronomy Thread

That's great but that's so cart-before-the-horse it's really irrelevant at this point. It's Musky, that's all, he wants to run before he crawls.

Palum_sl said:

That's great but that's so cart-before-the-horse it's really irrelevant at this point. It's Musky, that's all, he wants to run before he crawls.

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How is it irrelevant? Musk wants to go to Mars in 10-12 years and landing there is the hardest part. Once they figure out how to do that with big loads the rest is much easier. I'd say they are working on exactly the right things right now. You are right that he is thinking Big and ahead of everyone else but that is what has made him a billionaire.

Yea, dumb NASA, they only landed on the moonandmars. They forgot to just make it like Flash Gordon!

The point is he can collect data all he wants but it's all kind of hilarious when no heavy lift vehicle exists for the mission, there's been few engine tests on engines capable of making a mars transit in a reasonable time for a larger payload and there's so many other massive problems completing a transit that learning to land with a huge chance of failure due to basic physics (long skinny thing on small legs) is abstract advancement at best. If Musk's priority was to get to Mars he'd spend money to develop the tech he'd be pouring money into new propulsion instead of trying to reuse tin cans. He isn't stupid and SpaceX has been crafted to become viable and profit generating which is why not exploring less difficult methods of recovery that are more reliable first is a questionable decision.

This isn't exactly rocket science.

You act as though all breakthroughs intrinsically build on one another. That isn't necessarily the case. What kind of other methods of recovery are you suggesting exactly that would lead them to truly reusable rockets that you can quite literally fuel and refire. A virtually impactless touchdown is the only way you can guarantee rapid relaunch. It can't bounce, it can't slap anything with any amount of force. It has to be slowed down. Parachutes don't stop things outright, they don't have infinite deceleration. Only with some kind of counter force (such as rockets firing) can you have this touchdown. The landing gear has to be light and efficient because it is rocket science.

How does say some parachute technology solve this impactless landing. This is really a problem with a limited number of solutions. Musk understands this, if you can't reuse a lighter lift vehicle, how the will you ever have the falcon 9 heavy with any kind of reusability. This reusability is paramount for back and forth transit to any location not on Earth. Moon, Asteroids, Mars, Space Stations, Ship yards in space etc.

Who cares, the point is that landing like a dainty butterfly is not reliable enough to not need a backup. Didn't you see the martian? Rockets tip over there in fake sandstorms.

Can someone explain what landing on a barge in 13 foot swells had to do with developing mars tech?

Kedwyn_sl said:

Can someone explain what landing on a barge in 13 foot swells had to do with developing mars tech?

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Why does SpaceX keep trying to land rockets on floating barges? - CSMonitor.com

It doesn't but SpaceX is trying to develop many technologies in Tandem. (The barge part specifically)

Palum_sl said:

Who cares, the point is that landing like a dainty butterfly is not reliable enough to not need a backup. Didn't you see the martian? Rockets tip over there in fake sandstorms.

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Your right, it is not reliable. Hence why they are spending 10+ years developing the technology for Mars. Until it has the same Failure rate as the LEM from the lunar missions you can assume we wont be sending anyone to Mars.

Also please dont quote the Martian, The storm was complete bullshit and The Mars atmosphere is not thick enough to even remotely hurt a rocket or form storms like that.

Dandain_sl said:

You act as though all breakthroughs intrinsically build on one another. That isn't necessarily the case. What kind of other methods of recovery are you suggesting exactly that would lead them to truly reusable rockets that you can quite literally fuel and refire. A virtually impactless touchdown is the only way you can guarantee rapid relaunch. It can't bounce, it can't slap anything with any amount of force. It has to be slowed down. Parachutes don't stop things outright, they don't have infinite deceleration. Only with some kind of counter force (such as rockets firing) can you have this touchdown. The landing gear has to be light and efficient because it is rocket science.

How does say some parachute technology solve this impactless landing. This is really a problem with a limited number of solutions. Musk understands this, if you can't reuse a lighter lift vehicle, how the will you ever have the falcon 9 heavy with any kind of reusability. This reusability is paramount for back and forth transit to any location not on Earth. Moon, Asteroids, Mars, Space Stations, Ship yards in space etc.

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Exactly. Musk wants a 24hour turn around on Rockets, dropping them in the Ocean or on Land won't allow anything like that.

Neither will crashing them on a barge.

You seem to be arguing against something that no one is claiming because not everyone believes crashing rockets into ships is the next pivotal moment in human spaceflight.

Palum_sl said:

Neither will crashing them on a barge.

You seem to be arguing against something that no one is claiming because not everyone believes crashing rockets into ships is the next pivotal moment in human spaceflight.

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No one is implying landing on the barge is pivotal to a Mars landing, and dont be obtuse "Crashing" them is of course not the idea. But if your read the article on why they do it you'll realize it is pivotal for them sending up larger loads/rockets to be returned to earth and if they can do it with enough accuracy/reliability it might be viable or it might be a big waste and they have to restard. We won't know until they try. The only other option I see is having them land in foreign territories which I dont really think is an option.

Few things that help me understand why barges. Depending on what you want your payload in space to do - there are only so many viable trajectories to place things how you want in the first place (Geosync, Polar, Equatorial etc.). Second, a failed launch leaves you with a potentially very explosive pressure vessel with quite a few randomly bad places it could cause damage. If your launch trajectory goes over land, you better be sure the success rate is that of airliners taking off at commercial airports over subdivisions. If 1 in 200 747's broke up and dumped a debris field on take off you'd have to rethink our current urban planning which takes into account that 747's don't really break up at all.

Second - The oceans are huge. If you can recover a rocket anywhere in the oceans of the world, many kinds of trajectories are available. The barge can be sent to where the rocket must be recovered from. So the one they landed on land, the first stage only went around 6000 km/h before separation that is slow enough that it can reverse burn to return to its own launch site. Bigger payloads and bigger rockets can mean faster first stage speeds towards 9000 km/h. At such a speed it is basically impossible to return the first stage to its launch site. Its speed around the sphere of the earth is such that the only recovery available is at a secondary site. Its quite clear that for both safety reasons and flexibility, the barge technology has huge and wide sweeping perks.

The SpaceX Barges likely are being made to be more stable - with less movement from the gps coordinate of choice. Now why - is this kind of pinpoint landing technology NOT relevant to landing a vehicle anywhere outside earth. Seems like a pretty universal solution that scales into the solar system.

So the question here was nothing more than should they have a contingency plan like ditching in the ocean and recovering and if so should they test that first instead of almost assuredly losing the vehicle to bad sea swells. The original answer given by Khalan was no "because Mars" and mine was yes. This is because they need to prove cost reliability ASAP which means proving reusability to seed the industry for growth and investment which will provide far more meaningful long-term dividends.

But you know, barges for Mars I guess.

Palum_sl said:

So the question here was nothing more than should they have a contingency plan like ditching in the ocean and recovering and if so should they test that first instead of almost assuredly losing the vehicle to bad sea swells. The original answer given by Khalan was no "because Mars" and mine was yes. This is because they need to prove cost reliability ASAP which means proving reusability to seed the industry for growth and investment which will provide far more meaningful long-term dividends.

But you know, barges for Mars I guess.

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I never said the barges are for Mars. You made the point that they should use the Ocean as a body to catch the rockets but that defeats ONE of the key technologies Musk is trying to develop; reusable rockets that can vertically land.

The Barge landings are a completely different issue and not needed for mars, but they do help by allowing them to create more efficiency in the rockets (Read the article).

Stop making this about the barges they have nothing to do with Mars.

Working in space is extremely difficult and I'm not sure robotics is going to catch up quickly enough for that. Probably the best we can do near term is split up fully built modules, basic supplies and perhaps fuel.

To be clear Musk is trying to In TANDEM develop multiple technologies into one rocket:

1) Vertical Take Off and Landing
2) Reusable for Earth/Future Missions elsewhere
3) High Efficiency (Which means Barges)

Im sure you could make reusable rockets that land in the Ocean but that wouldn't help with Point 1, he is trying to do 3 things at once. And High Efficiency is not needed for Mars, but it IS needed if your going to be launching and landing rockets to LEO and back

Palum_sl said:

So the question here was nothing more than should they have a contingency plan like ditching in the ocean and recovering and if so should they test that first instead of almost assuredly losing the vehicle to bad sea swells. The original answer given by Khalan was no "because Mars" and mine was yes. This is because they need to prove cost reliability ASAP which means proving reusability to seed the industry for growth and investment which will provide far more meaningful long-term dividends.

But you know, barges for Mars I guess.

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Two things, ditching a rocket into a bath of salt water is probably as bad as it is for a combustion engine in your car. Perhaps a giant water tight rocket condom would do the trick along with something to slow the fucker down so the impact with the water doesn't hurt anything. Unbuilding/rebuilding such a rocket is probably more of a waste of time than building a new one. Because when you build one from scratch there are built in safeties and quality at every single step, nothing has been used. Every water logged rocket would clearly have different problems, but how complicated is the cleaning process?

Second, "Assuredly losing the vehicle to bad sea swells" is clearly not the case. Did you watch the last landing? That thing was dead center, which means the barge and the rocket were both in precisely the right place. Stabilizing the barge to absorb the impact, making the barge capable of having a near motionless deck in obscene seas, these are all possible solutions that you seem to think are impossible to solve. Just because there are 13 foot seas, doesn't mean the barge deck is pitching like a crab boat.