I have to admit that I'm pretty jealous of Elon. He grifts American investors and then uses their money to bomb America. Dude's living my dream.
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- Thread starter bd popeye
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Someone wake me up when these private US companies start making fly wing methane rockets, aerospike engines, detonation engines, closed circuit engines, nuclear reactor powered ion thrusters and possibly quantum engines if Roscosmos doesnt choose to ignore their physicists while Energomash gave attention to their concepts.
Subsidies? SpaceX got contracts. In fact they persistently get paid a lot less than Boeing or Lockheed Martin and yet deliver more.
The original Atlas rocket used steel construction not just in the upper stage. As for the Centaur stage you are so disparaging, it is probably one of the oldest upper stage designs still in use today. If it was that bad no one would still be using it. It achieves one of the lowest mass fractions of any upper stage.
The common bulkhead saves space and weight. It can be used because you can store Methane and LOX at roughly similar temperatures and pressures. This is not the case with Hydrogen and LOX. Or Kerosene and LOX.
What on earth is a quantum engine? Some "anti-gravity" sci-fi stuff or hoax?
But Centaur uses LH and LOX in their common bulkhead.
This is an indirect subsidy.
Did you even bother to read the article you linked to? ULA got separate money for facilities upgrades which SpaceX never got.
The money Boeing got for Starliner vs what SpaceX got for Crew Dragon is another good example.
You can make a common bulkhead for fuel with dissimilar temperatures and pressure but it requires extra insulation and is much more difficult. LOX/Methane in comparison is easy.
I did. They CLAIM all that is for facilities upgrade like... For a bigger payload fairing per her statement? Just so we're clear, the payload fairing is the metal shell around the payload at the top of the rocket. Seems to me like expense bloat to me.
Anyhow, this is about end proof of Starship viability. If it was so good it wouldn't be blowing up every time. It is typical trial and error engineering - that was phased out because prototypes are expensive and slow without pouring money into it.
It is not just the payload fairing. They are upgrading the launch pad facilities at Vandenberg. Including a facility for vertical integration of satellite payloads.
As for Starship, what they are trying to do is make a rocket with really low mass fraction. This means they need to use new materials and new construction techniques. Of course that is complicated. They already tried with composites and had to give up. The steel construction in my opinion will work even if they have to reduce the rocket performance a bit. Since it is a two stage rocket it will still have a huge payload.
There is no established method of doing what they are trying to do. So of course it will involve a lot of trial and error.
Even if for whatever reason they can't get it to work as a reusable, they can just use the same technology with a smaller rocket with the same engine types, just less of them, and make it an expendable.
As for Starship, what they are trying to do is make a rocket with really low mass fraction. This means they need to use new materials and new construction techniques. Of course that is complicated. They already tried with composites and had to give up. The steel construction in my opinion will work even if they have to reduce the rocket performance a bit. Since it is a two stage rocket it will still have a huge payload.
There is no established method of doing what they are trying to do. So of course it will involve a lot of trial and error.
Even if for whatever reason they can't get it to work as a reusable, they can just use the same technology with a smaller rocket with the same engine types, just less of them, and make it an expendable.
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You can spin this anyway you want. However, here is what you cannot deny. SpaceX takes the conventional wisdom (which evolved at a time of lesser technology) and then asks whether its accurate, develops their own hypothesis and tests it to destruction. They are not afraid to watch their rockets blow up, fail to perform, have accidents, just so they can learn. In the end, the fail fast approach leads to a better system, quicker and with a new way of doing that.
They do/did all of that on their own dime. Whatever they have been awarded has happened afterwards and because of that. ULA behaves in the opposite manner; they don't design, build, test anything without the subsidy up front. That willingness to spend their own money first is why SpaceX is ahead and will stay that way.
It always brings a chuckle to my head when I realize Elon Musk is African American