Space X announces 42-engine reusable rocket

[Ed Anger]

Musk is a fag

[Eddie Teach]

Speaking of Musk, how's the giant vacuum train project going?

[Ed Anger]

I'm planning a trip to orbit Katmai. Orbits last 72 hours.

[Neil]

It's not going to happen in 2018, Tim.  This is just Musk selling more hype.  They're not ready. 

Those are nine-figure tickets.  Not too many guys who can drop that on a vacation, especially one that dangerous.

[jimmy olsen]

It's not going to happen in 2018, Tim.  This is just Musk selling more hype.  They're not ready. 

Those are nine-figure tickets.  Not too many guys who can drop that on a vacation, especially one that dangerous.

Well yeah, a 12-18 month delay is just asumed I think. Still, that's quite soon and plausible.

[Neil]

We'll see.  We're talking about a booster that still hasn't even had a test flight, launching a very large payload, with a living cargo.  If this happens before the end of the decade I'd be somewhat surprised.

[jimmy olsen]

Jeff Bezos and Blue Origin get in on the action!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2017/03/02/an-exclusive-look-at-jeff-bezos-plan-to-set-up-amazon-like-delivery-for-future-human-settlement-of-the-moon/?utm_term=.6da1360b7e07

An exclusive look at Jeff Bezos's plan to set up Amazon-like delivery for 'future human settlement' of the moon

By Christian Davenport March 2

More than four decades after the last man walked on the lunar surface, several upstart space entrepreneurs are looking to capitalize on NASA's renewed interest in returning to the moon, offering a variety of proposals with the ultimate goal of establishing a lasting human presence there.

The commercial sector's interest comes as many anticipate support from the Trump administration, which is eager for a first-term triumph to rally the nation the way the Apollo flights did in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

The latest to offer a proposal is Jeffrey P. Bezos, whose space company Blue Origin has been circulating a seven-page white paper to NASA leadership and President Trump's transition team about the company's interest in developing a lunar spacecraft with a lander that would touch down near a crater at the south pole where there is water and nearly continuous sunlight for solar energy. The memo urges the space agency to back an Amazon-like shipment service for the moon that would deliver gear for experiments, cargo and habitats by mid-2020, helping to enable "future human settlement" of the moon. (Bezos, the founder of Amazon.com, owns The Washington Post.)

"It is time for America to return to the Moon — this time to stay," Bezos said in response to emailed questions from The Post. "A permanently inhabited lunar settlement is a difficult and worthy objective. I sense a lot of people are excited about this."

The Post obtained a copy of the white paper, marked "proprietary and confidential," and the company then confirmed its authenticity and agreed to answer questions about it.

Bezos's proposal comes as SpaceX founder Elon Musk made a stunning announcement this week that his company planned to fly two unnamed, private citizens on a tourist trip around the moon by next year — an ambitious timeline that, if met, could beat a similar mission by NASA.

[SpaceX plans to fly two private citizens around the moon by late next year.]

Anticipating that the Trump administration is focusing on the moon, the space agency recently announced it is considering adding astronauts to the first flight of its Space Launch System rocket and Orion crew capsule. That flight, originally scheduled to fly without humans in 2018, would also circle the moon. But as the space agency seeks to move faster under the Trump administration, it is now studying the feasibility of adding crew for a mission that would then occur by 2019.

Obama killed plans for a lunar mission, saying in 2010 that "we've been there before." But the administration's Mars plan was still far from actually delivering humans there, and critics grew frustrated that NASA has not been able to fly humans out of low Earth orbit since the 1970s. A shot around the moon, however, could be feasible, even within a few years.

Blue Origin's proposal, dated Jan. 4, doesn't involve flying humans, but rather is focused on a series of cargo missions. Those could deliver the equipment necessary to help establish a human colony on the moon — unlike the Apollo missions, in which the astronauts left "flags and footprints" and then came home.

NASA already has shown a willingness to work closely with the commercial sector, hiring companies to fly supplies and eventually astronauts to the International Space Station. It is providing technical expertise, but no funding, to SpaceX's plan to fly an uncrewed spacecraft to Mars by 2020.

The prospect of a lunar mission has several companies lining up to provide not just transportation, but also habitats, science experiments and even the ability to mine the moon for resources.

The United Launch Alliance, the joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin, has also been working on plans to create a transportation network to the area around the moon, known as cislunar space.

"I'm excited by the possibilities," said Tory Bruno, the alliance's chief executive. "This administration, near as we can tell, feels a sense of urgency to go out and make things happen, and to have high-profile demonstrations that are along the road map to accomplish these broad goals. ... There is an opportunity to begin building that infrastructure right now — within the next four years."

Robert Bigelow, the founder of Bigelow Aerospace, a maker of inflatable space habitats, said his company could create a depot that could orbit the moon by 2020, housing supplies and medial facilities, as well as humans. A smaller version of the possible habitats, known as the BEAM, is docked to the International Space Station, where astronauts have been testing it.


In an interview, Bigelow said he was glad the administration seems to be refocusing on the moon. "Mars is premature at this time. The moon is not," he said. "We have the technology. We have the ability, and the potential for a terrific business case."

At an Aviation Week awards ceremony Thursday evening, Bezos added that the moon could help propel humans even further into space, to destinations such as Mars: "I think that if you go to the moon first, and make the moon your home, then you can get to Mars more easily."

After remaining quiet and obsessively secretive for years, Blue Origin's attempt to partner with NASA is a huge coming out of sorts for the company, which has been funded almost exclusively by Bezos. The paper urges NASA to develop a program that provides "incentives to the private sector to demonstrate a commercial lunar cargo delivery service."

Blue Origin could perform the first lunar mission as early as July 2020, Bezos wrote, but stressed that it could "only be done in partnership with NASA. Our liquid hydrogen expertise and experience with precision vertical landing offer the fastest path to a lunar lander mission. I'm excited about this and am ready to invest my own money alongside NASA to make it happen."

Last year, Blue Origin successfully launched and landed its suborbital rocket, the New Shepard, five times within less than a year, flying just past the 62-mile edge of space and then landing vertically on a landing pad at the company's West Texas facility.

That same technology could be used to land the Blue Moon vehicle on the lunar surface, the company said. Its white paper shows what looks like a modified New Shepard rocket, standing on the moon with an American flag, a NASA logo and Blue Origin's feather symbol.

The company said it plans to land its Blue Moon lunar lander at Shackleton Crater on the moon's south pole. The site has nearly continuous sunlight to provide power through the spacecraft's solar arrays. The company also chose to land there because of the "water ice in the perpetual shadow of the crater's deep crevices."

Water is vital not just for human survival, but also because hydrogen and oxygen in water could be transformed into rocket fuel. The moon, then, is seen as a massive gas station in space.

The Blue Moon spacecraft could carry as much as 10,000 pounds of material and fly atop several different rockets, including NASA's Space Launch System, the United Launch Alliance's Atlas V or its own New Glenn rocket, which is under development and expected to fly by the end of the decade, the company said.

"Once on the surface, the lander's useful payload can be used to conduct science or deploy rovers," the company said. "A robotic arm attached to the lander will deploy to examine the lunar surface with an array of instruments."

The initial landing "is envisioned as the first in a series of increasingly capable missions," including flying samples of lunar ice back to Earth for study.

The company said it could also help deliver the cargo and supplies needed for human settlements.

"Blue Moon is all about cost-effective delivery of mass to the surface of the Moon," Bezos wrote. "Any credible first lunar settlement will require that capability."

[Neil]

So they'll bring the cargo, but nothing about the economic basis of said human habitation.

[jimmy olsen]

News on the New Glenn. The Two stage version will be able to lift 45 tons to LEO or 13 tons to geostationary transfer orbit.

Video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTEhohh6eYk

https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/03/blue-origin-releases-details-of-its-monster-orbital-rocket/?comments=1

Blue Origin releases details of its monster orbital rocket

The privately developed rocket will also be capable of 100 reuses, Jeff Bezos says.

Eric Berger - 3/8/2017, 12:00 AM

After months of speculation, Blue Origin finally released more details about its New Glenn rocket on Tuesday. The 82-meter-tall rocket will have the capacity to lift 45 tons to low Earth orbit and an impressive 13 tons to geostationary transfer orbit. The two-stage rocket should be ready for its maiden flight by the end of 2019, company founder Jeff Bezos said.

New Glenn, named for the first US astronaut to orbit Earth, John Glenn, will also have a fully reusable first stage. In addition to remarks by Bezos at the Satellite 2017 conference in Washington, Blue Origin released a video showing the rocket's return to Earth. It will employ aerodynamic strakes for maneuvering during the return and will land on a barge. It is designed for up to 100 reuses. The rocket's return looks similar to that of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, but New Glenn is a larger and considerably more powerful booster.

Were it flying today, New Glenn would in fact be the most powerful rocket on Earth. However, other large boosters are also under development that will likely fly first. SpaceX is building the Falcon Heavy, which will have the capacity to deliver 53 tons to low Earth orbit, and NASA is developing the Space Launch System with a 70-ton capacity.

Today's announcement, therefore, marks the beginning of a golden era of heavy-lift booster development. During the next few years, these three rockets will be competing on performance, price, and reliability. In addition to large satellite launches, they will also potentially enable NASA's deep-space exploration plans—including lunar exploration—and potentially missions to Mars. Both Blue Origin and SpaceX anticipate much lower operating costs than the government rocket, and both will be pursuing reusability. But as ever in the rocket business, it's one thing to show a video rendering a future launch. It's another thing to reach the launch pad, fly, and reuse.

During his talk on Tuesday, Bezos expressed confidence in the prospects for New Glenn, saying the company has learned important lessons from the development of its New Shepard rocket and spacecraft, which has already demonstrated low-cost reusability and could begin suborbital tourism flights as early as next year. "This is what is making it possible for us to build an orbital vehicle," he said. "The orbital vehicle is 100 percent informed by all of the lessons that we learned in the course of the New Shepard program, so it's very directly relevant."

Some critics have dinged Blue Origin for its initial focus on space tourism, saying the company isn't really serious about space exploration. But such criticism is misguided, Bezos said, noting that in the past, entertainment has been a driver for important innovation. "There are historical cases where entertainment turns out to be a driver of technologies that then become very practical and utilitarian for other things," he said, citing the early use of aviation for barnstorming, and GPUs originally developed for PC gaming now employed in machine learning.

Whatever one thinks of New Shepard and its brief suborbital hops, however, there can be little question that New Glenn is a serious rocket. The booster already has a customer, too—Eutelsat has contracted with Blue Origin for a geostationary satellite launch. Moreover, New Glenn is also, as Bezos repeated Tuesday, "the smallest orbital rocket Blue Origin will ever build." In the future, even larger boosters are coming, such as the previously teased New Armstrong rocket. The tech mogul has recently said that lunar exploration is the next logical step for human activity in space.

[Ed Anger]

My plan to orbit Katmai has hit a snag. My Swastika shaped rocket exploded on the pad.

[Eddie Teach]

Not very aerodynamic. You should just go with the traditional penis shape.

[grumbler]

Not very aerodynamic. You should just go with the traditional penis shape.

More symbolic of the Nazis, to boot.

[Ed Anger]

I changed the design to a FN symbol.

MAXIMIUM TROLLING

[jimmy olsen]

Fuckin' incredible!

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/mar/30/spacex-falcon-9-elon-musk-reusable-rocket

SpaceX becomes first to re-fly used rocket

Partially recycled Falcon 9 rocket successfully launched and landed, a step toward vastly less expensive spaceflight

Alan Yuhas in San Francisco
     
Friday 31 March 2017 00.24 BST 

SpaceX launched its first "pre-flown" rocket on Thursday, marking the first time anyone has relaunched a booster into space in what CEO Elon Musk called "a milestone in the history of space".

"This is going to be ultimately a huge revolution in spaceflight," Musk said on a SpaceX broadcast of the launch.

He said that accomplishment – to "fly and re-fly an orbital-class booster" – was like finally achieving reliable aircraft rather than throwing away an airplane after every flight.

"It's taken us a long time, a lot of difficult steps along the way," he said, "but I'm just incredibly proud of the spaceflight team."

The success is a step toward vastly less expensive spaceflight, which some hope can revolutionize travel in the solar system and take humans to Mars. While Nasa for decades used reusable spacecraft – its famous space shuttle fleet – the space agency has found that the intense maintenance the shuttles need makes them more expensive than rockets, at least with current technology.

"No one has ever done anything like this before," SpaceX CEO Gwynne Shotwell said in a company broadcast before the launch. "We're not one-way trip to Mars people. We want to make sure that whoever we take can come back."

Under clear skies at the Kennedy Space Center, near Cape Canaveral, Florida, SpaceX launched its partially recycled Falcon 9 rocket at 6.37pm local time. A few minutes later the booster separated from its payload, to raucous cheers from engineers at the space center.

Then the rocket sank downward back toward the earth, burning back through the shield of the atmosphere, on its way toward its destination: a drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean, called the Of Course I Still Love You.

The equivalent of a 14-story building, the rocket hurtled downward at nearly a mile a second, thrusters firing to slow down, until finally it landed, secure and upright on the ship, to a final burst of applause.

The rocket had already secured its place in SpaceX's history: in April 2016 it became the first rocket to successfully land on a droneship in the Atlantic, after a supply mission to the International Space Station. The booster – the nine-engine base of the rocket – was then taken back to the mainland and refurbished.

The booster carried a communications satellite for the Luxembourg company SES, which reportedly received a discount on the launch, which normally cost around $60m per launch. Reliable, reusable rockets could dramatically lower that cost, making it easier for space agencies and private companies to get satellites, telescopes, supplies and, eventually, people into space.

Analysis/ SpaceX mission could herald new era of reusable rockets

Plan for Falcon 9 rocket, due to launch on Tuesday, to land on giant floating platform in ocean will be 'like balancing a broomstick on your hand in a storm'
 
SpaceX first landed one of its Falcon 9 rockets in 2015, a month after another tech billionaire, Jeff Bezos, and his company Blue Origin landed. A smaller rocket has reached the lower edge of outer space – still far below the orbital zones reached by SpaceX missions. SpaceX has launched and landed eight of 13 attempted rocket launches, with several explosive failures over the years. Blue Origin has launched and landed four rockets, and this month Bezos unveiled a new, larger rocket booster as well as a planned tourist capsule.

Two would-be space tourists have already signed up to travel with SpaceX, Musk revealed last month, without any details about who the "private citizens" were or what "significant deposit" they paid to fly around the moon. He said they are aiming for a 2018 mission, even though SpaceX has yet to test the heavy rocket that would carry people, or to take any humans into space.

Musk's ambitions have costly risks. One of SpaceX's rockets exploded on its launch platform last September, destroying the booster, the spacecraft and its cargo – a multimillion-dollar satellite, in part owned by Facebook – setting back the company's plans to relaunch a used rocket. The explosion also underscored the dangers for human passengers on private spacecraft, and a government audit released this year questioned whether SpaceX could safely resolve rocket problems or realize some of its lofty goals.

Ever optimistic, Musk has said that he believes most rocket parts can be used dozens of times, and that even heat shields could survive more than 10 burning passages through the atmosphere.

Nasa is working on its own new rocket, called the Space Launch System, whose designs would make it the most powerful rocket yet devised. The agency hopes to use the SLS to send explorer spacecraft and robots into deep space, and humans to an asteroid and Mars.

[Jacob]

My plan to orbit Katmai has hit a snag. My Swastika shaped rocket exploded on the pad.

No problem. Just ask your wife for another pad.