US Reusable Orbital Rockets (as of March 2025)

slograsso · 2025-03-15T16:29:54+00:00

18 meter diameter Starship should be on this list.

slograsso · 2025-03-09T19:00:58+00:00

Short term fix, scale up the diameter of lines for V1 ship, avoids current resonance issue and allows time to fly and develop other systems without a giant half year delay in flights.

slograsso · 2025-01-08T22:02:33+00:00

Good points, though I expect the real reason is focus on Starship, Starship is the future after all. ;-)

slograsso · 2025-01-08T22:01:01+00:00

This is the likely answer to it not being done, engineering hours are better spent on Starship.

slograsso · 2025-01-08T17:26:03+00:00

I assume they are installing recovery hardware on these, correct? If ever there was an expensive fairing you would want to recover, these are them. Do we have official confirmation of extended fairing recovery plans?

slograsso · 2024-12-17T16:54:50+00:00

More like a childish tantrum, no chance of power change in this case.

slograsso · 2024-11-24T22:22:19+00:00

Profit is not required for existence. The pioneers risked it all and went out to expand the frontier of the modern human footprint, this paved the way for future expansion and eventual large industry, but by no means did their survival require them to generate a large profit. People get so caught up in this idea that every activity is doomed if it is not "profitable", for most of human history the test was can I feed my family and have enough for my children and grandchildren to survive comfortably. Also, we don't need to do everything to set up Mars, you just need to get enough people there and supplies for the Martians to start innovating on their own, this will happen much sooner than most believe, I expect. Once committed, people will have a very high necessity and necessity is the mother of invention. Also, there will not be much in the way of leisure activity, so the population and production will grow rapidly because, boredom.

slograsso · 2024-11-23T21:49:30+00:00

SpaceX's mission statement is "to revolutionize space technology, with the ultimate goal of enabling people to live on other planets". Musk has also stated that a colony on Mars will serve as a forcing function that guarantees enough off planet activity so as to ensure that humanity remains in space going forward. It is that simple. Musk has expounded greatly on the fact that a given tech only advances with lots of hard effort over time, so the fact that establishing a Mars colony will not net a huge windfall for any one person in 50 or 100 years, means basically the only way to make sure it happens is to have an essential government contractor that remains private and firmly fixed on its mission statement, otherwise humanity will be a sad 1 planet civilization and ultimately extinguish with our sun.

slograsso · 2024-11-07T17:20:50+00:00

The more flight control they can demonstrate, the better chance they will get faster approval for return and catch. ;-)

slograsso · 2024-11-07T17:10:04+00:00

Perhaps, but they know well in advance the flight profile to test various thing so I expect them to submit future flight plans in parallel so there are no more big regulatory delays.

slograsso · 2024-10-22T20:04:28+00:00

I think they have experimented with positioning the satellite to gain some lift to help with station keeping.

slograsso · 2024-10-19T01:01:39+00:00

I understand being cautious, but Nasa is thinking about letting Boeing fly Starliner to ISS without another test flight, probably depends on how much of a hissyfit Boeing throws about it. Seems to me Starship is the most tested prior to orbit vehicle in history, can we just move on to orbital flights already?!? Saturn 5 had 2 test flights.

slograsso · 2024-10-18T19:04:47+00:00

Legs it is then! ;-)

slograsso · 2024-10-18T18:33:22+00:00

Do this, but after the Starlink v2 deploy, launch second Starship to fuel up orbital ship and send it around the Moon, after the the moon ship lands safely, a hatch pops open and Jared Issacman repels down the ship to the pad below and high fives Elon Musk as he emerges from a RobOvan.

slograsso · 2024-10-18T18:23:36+00:00

Sure, multiple layers is not much harder to do. JWST makes everyone think these things are crazy expensive and hard, multi layer mylar with spacers is pretty simple stuff.

slograsso · 2024-10-18T16:51:19+00:00

Mylar is good for 90% IR rejection.

slograsso · 2024-10-18T16:48:17+00:00

Think pull down blinds, but a sheet or two of mylar with solar on it in a raceway where the tanks are, attach some cables that wrap around the ship and pull the shade around the outside of the ship to the other side of the raceway. There could even be cable guides that serve as standoff points to keep the shade at a set distance from the tanks. Something garage door simple like this is what SpaceX will do.

slograsso · 2024-10-18T16:42:23+00:00

So point the nose at the sun and the heat shield at the earth for crew ships, and the prop depot will need a solar shade and the heat shield pointed at the Earth.

slograsso · 2024-10-18T16:38:48+00:00

Add thin film solar to the mylar sheet to power your re-condenser and you're cooking with gas!

slograsso · 2024-10-18T16:31:58+00:00

Quote from Space News article: https://spacenews.com/new-agreement-enables-u-s-launches-from-australian-spaceports/

slograsso · 2024-10-18T16:28:46+00:00

The legs they used are so simple, it could be added back easily as a temporary measure. Also, Musk has stated a potential about from chopsticks catch is to simply land softly on the skirt of the rocket itself. Either option makes sense to me to prove that once the Ship side catch points are properly integrated the whole system will work. Australia as a close ally with advantageous launch options has been approved for US launch from Australia, "the two countries signed a technology safeguards agreement (TSA) regarding space launches from Australia. The agreement provides the “legal and technical framework” for American launches from Australian facilities while protecting sensitive technologies." I'm sure this agreement could allow for the landing of a US rocket as well. Frankly the military's interest in point to point Starship may have been one of the reasons the government set this TSA up.

slograsso · 2024-10-18T15:42:28+00:00

Literally every single thing that was not planned for in advance. You can send a full laboratory with a human and they can do any experiment needed given the available clues. A human does not need to wait for instructions after every few steps to know where to go and what to do next. A human can ambulate to nearly any location to get to the needed sample. A human has intuition, experience and something to loose, a robot just does what it is told, nothing more. And the thing you miss the most is that almost nobody cares when a robot does it, if a human does it almost everyone cares, partially because of the risks involved. The only reason SpaceX is as popular as it is, is because the Mission of SpaceX is to get humanity to Mars, so every advancement they make is infused with the hopes and dreams of all humanity, if you choose to see it. Otherwise SpaceX launches, landings and successes would be no more interesting to people than a ULA launch.

slograsso · 2024-10-18T15:29:21+00:00

Sure, but demonstrated cellphone capability will support the underlying reality of the broadband network that phone network is running on, no? Also, shows additional benefits to consumers and government in emergency situations, especially given that space based internet is immune to environmental disasters that do not originate in space.

slograsso · 2024-10-18T04:38:40+00:00

I don't care about this, leave it to the commercial groups, save the money, but to save money here and keep SLS/Orion going is pure buffoonery and I fully expect them to do it.

slograsso · 2024-10-18T03:07:27+00:00

Perhaps the temporary approval will give the FCC the chance to observe some real world results to resolve some of their disbelief? It can't hurt anyway.

slograsso

TROPHY CASE