Cargo Rockets

 awesomeness, history, Hmm..., news, projects, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Oct 092020
 

Back in the 50’s the idea of lobbing troops and cargo around the world with rockets seemed not altogether unreasonable. US Transport Projects #1 illustrated a battlefield troop transport based on the Redstone missile; US Transport Projects #2 illustrated a scaled-up project for the same sort of thing using a Jupiter missile. In the 1960’s, Douglas scaled up the idea to use a ROMBUS SSTO to launch 1,200 fully equipped Marines halfway across the world (as seen in USTP#4), and Convair studied a similar idea at the same time based on work done on their NEXUS/Post Saturn designs (as seen in Aerospace Projects Review issue V3N3). In the early 21st century, “HOT EAGLE” was a spaceplane concept for hypersonic rocket-launched troop transport (seen in USTP#5 and USTP#6).

It turns out that the idea is still alive, thanks  in no small part to SpaceX.

Pentagon wants SpaceX delivering cargo around the globe — and a live test could come next year

The goal isn’t small… 80 tons delivered anywhere in the globe inside of an hour. Falcon 9 could not do this; this would seem to be a job for Starship/Superheavy. *If* SpaceX can get that system running for their hoped-for cost of only $2 million per flight for an orbital launch, then this would seem entirely practical. $2 million to transport 80 tons seems a bit steep, but given that it would be used for special operations, it might be a bargain. It’s quite possible that the Starship to be used would have to be quite different from the standard Starship, even from a Starship used for point-to-point commercial cargo and passenger service. The landing gear would need to be improved, so the craft could land on uneven and unimproved terrain; it would need defensive systems from ECM to flares to chaff and perhaps even powerful defensive lasers.  Given the likelihood that the Starship would not be recovered, it might make sense to split it into two parts: a stripped down propulsion section and a cargo lander that is basically just a low L/D payload shroud that comes screaming in and lands with chutes and braking rockets, splits apart and spills out all the goodies. Nothing of value left for the enemy to scrounge up, just sheet metal.

 Posted by at 7:05 am

The Cost of Falcon 9

 awesomeness, Hmm..., rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Oct 052020
 

How Much Cheaper Are SpaceX Reusable Rockets? Now We Know

A direct price list apparently isn’t available, but the authors attempt to put together what the cost of the reusable Falcon 9 will be once all the government contracting is figured out: originally $62 million, now potentially $36 million. With a payload to LEO (with a reusable booster) of 34,400 pounds that works out to $1,047 per pound. Still a tad high to horse my dead ass into orbit for a weekend jaunt, but a substantial improvement over anything else out there, save perhaps boosters that are massively subsidized by governments. SLS will reportedly cost $2 *BILLION* or so per launch (not counting development cost) in order to plop 290,000 pounds into LEO… a cost of $6896 per pound.

Starship/Super Heavy is hoped to be able to put 100,000 pounds in LEO for $2,000,000. This optimistic goal works out to 20 dollars per pound… cheap enough to dream of any of us seeing space (or, perhaps, at least our still-warm corpses, having keeled over from heart failure or a stroke on the way up as the vibration and G-forces crush our bodies as badly as 2020 has crushed out spirits). But it will be quite a while before people are buying steerage class tickets to LEO.

 Posted by at 6:47 pm

Razor Crest

 art, awesomeness, news, science fiction, spacecraft  No Responses »
Sep 252020
 

I don’t have Disney+ and haven’t seen “The Mandalorian” and don’t have $350 to throw around on a toy. And yet….
GIMME GIMME GIMME WANT WANT WANT

Star Wars The Vintage Collection Razor Crest

Hasbro is crowdfunding the development of a thirty-inch long 1/18 scale replica of the Razor Crest. It seems to currently exist only as a computer model, but even so it looks friggen spectacular. They want 6,000 backers by November 9; as of this writing they have 3,257. I have little doubt that they’ll blow right past that goal, since the crowdfunding effort seems to have started just a few hours ago.

There’s a better version of this video at the Hasbro link above, but this seems to be the best embeddable YouTube version currently available:

 

 Posted by at 7:01 pm

Colossal Guppy art

 aircraft, art, history, projects, spacecraft  No Responses »
Sep 232020
 

Recently sold on eBay (but not to me, I got beat out) was a piece of concept art of the “Colossal Guppy,” a proposal by Aero Spacelines to convert a B-52 into a Saturn S-II carrier. All of the artwork I’ve seen before has shown a 12-engine design; this eBay art shows only the original 8 engines that were fitted to the B-52. I would assume that this is an earlier iteration of the concept, but can’t say for certain.

 Posted by at 10:47 pm

Venus Balloon

 art, history, projects, science, spacecraft  No Responses »
Sep 192020
 

With the recent news of the possible discovery of the signs of possible life in the upper atmosphere of Venus, there is renewed interest in some quarters in the idea of atmospheric probes to sample the air and clouds directly. The most practical way to do this in something resembling a long term is with a balloon. With Venus’ carbon dioxide atmosphere, something usually useless as a lifting gas like nitrogen or oxygen could be used, but hydrogen or helium would work even better there than above Earth.

Such probes have been proposed for a *long* time. Here is art of Martin Marietta design for a Venus balloon from more than fifty years ago.

Martin studied a Buoyant Venus Station as far back as 1967. Included in the study were the instruments to be carried, including “drop sondes,” expendable instrument packages that would be dropped from the station to radio back data from lower down:

 Posted by at 11:37 pm

Astra’s first launch failed

 history, Hmm..., news, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Sep 122020
 

As Elon Musk points out… “Rockets are hard.” Having their first vehicle shut down in flight and fall back to Earth is a shame, but it’s not shameful. They did a lot better than many… it didn’t kerblam on the pad.

Astra’s 1st orbital test launch fails during first-stage engine burn

 

 

 Posted by at 1:57 pm

This is why we can’t have anything nice

 dumbassery, Forward!, Hmm..., news, politics, science, spacecraft  No Responses »
Sep 112020
 

NASA has released an interesting Request for Quotes:

Purchase of Lunar Regolith and/or Rock Materials from Contractor

A.The Contractor shall:1.Collect from 50g up to 500g of Lunar regolith and/or rock materials (“Collected Material”) from the surface of the Moon (Luna).a.Be responsible for performing all activities necessary, including:1.Determining method(s), providing and or developing equipment, deployment/launch/landing, and operation of all systems the Contractor’s method(s) requires. (this purchase does not include development, production, or launch of space vehicles)2.Identify, negotiate, and conclude, all necessary agreements and approvals for the Contractor’s method and all associated systems, personnel, and operations.2.Provide imagery to NASA of the collection and the Collected Material, and data that identifies the collection location on the Lunar surface.3.Provide the Collected Material to NASA upon its collection from the Lunar surface by in-place ownership transfer from Contractor to NASA. After ownership transfer the collected material becomes the sole property of NASA for use as NASA may determine.

It seems what NASA wants is for someone to go to the moon and box up samples… and leave then there for later collection. Which seems odd… if NASA is going to send a mission of some kind to the moon to collect those samples, it seems that that mission could probably collect them itself. But perhaps by having one or more rovers trundling around picking up samples from various places and delivering them to a central “depot” for collection, things could work better.

Seems very likely that this sort of thing is in service of preparations for mining operations on the moon… digging up water to service a base, or industrial  elements for lunar or space-based industry, or perhaps even very rare elements for return to Earth. And this is not only fine, this is praiseworthy. Except, of course, to Certain People. You know the kind. The kind who live off Daddy’s Trust Fund and bitch about capitalism over their ten dollar lattes. Behold:

NASA Is Soliciting Bids to Bring Capitalism to the Moon

Article is what you’d expect: “hurr durr, capitalism bad.”

 Posted by at 3:31 pm

I prefer the way SpaceX does it

 AARRRGH, awesomeness, Crazy, Gah., news, rockets, spacecraft, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Sep 082020
 

So the Chinese launched a Long March 4B rocket and “recovered” the booster stage… to certain limits of the definition of “recover.” On its way down it looks a lot like a Falcon 9 booster coming down; it just kinda skipped the “landing burn” part. And the “don’t aim at a school” part. And the “don’t spread a cloud of nitrogen tetroxide over the plebs” part.

I’m sure the Chinese will steal what they need from SpaceX to fix this issue… eventually.

 Posted by at 8:04 pm

Another Starship hop

 awesomeness, news, rockets, science, spacecraft, youtube  No Responses »
Sep 042020
 

After a long string of flubs, SpaceX seems to be getting on the ball with Starship. SN#6 flew to 150 meters yesterday, transitioned sideways and landed itself, all seemingly without a hitch.

May SpaceX get Starship up and running soon. Sane people may need to flee this planet sooner than even I would have thought just a few short years ago.

 Posted by at 1:49 pm
 Older Entries  Newer Entries