If Red Dragon is off the table, and propulsive landings of Dragon 2 on Earth are no longer a thing, is it possible some unexpected problem came up with the concept of landing on Super Dracos? It has been a long time since seeing tether tests and no flights have been reported. Is there some sort of unimagined stumbling block in the way? Matthew
Quote from: jpo234 on 07/17/2017 02:21 pmQuote from: envy887 on 07/17/2017 02:15 pmRed Dragon seems to be off the table in order to focus now on Dragon 2 and Falcon Heavy, and then move asap to BFR/BFS. I suspect they will try hard to hit the 2020 window with BFS to Mars.It's really hard to see how they can build a complete Mars stack in a little bit more than 2 years. Simply building the launch pad will take longer.The 2020 window is mid July to late August of 2020, which is 36 to 37 months from now. They could do it if they go sub-scale with a less than 12 meter diameter, use a lot of existing infrastructure, drop a few of the long-pole technologies (carbon fiber LOX tanks, launch mount landing) and are a little further along with Raptor than we think.Coincidentally, if they launch in August and use a high-energy ~90-day transfer, they would attempt a landing only a few days before the 2020 election in the US.
Quote from: envy887 on 07/17/2017 02:15 pmRed Dragon seems to be off the table in order to focus now on Dragon 2 and Falcon Heavy, and then move asap to BFR/BFS. I suspect they will try hard to hit the 2020 window with BFS to Mars.It's really hard to see how they can build a complete Mars stack in a little bit more than 2 years. Simply building the launch pad will take longer.
Red Dragon seems to be off the table in order to focus now on Dragon 2 and Falcon Heavy, and then move asap to BFR/BFS. I suspect they will try hard to hit the 2020 window with BFS to Mars.
Safe to say, ITS isn't happening without lots of government support and money.
Quote from: envy887 on 07/17/2017 02:34 pmQuote from: jpo234 on 07/17/2017 02:21 pmQuote from: envy887 on 07/17/2017 02:15 pmRed Dragon seems to be off the table in order to focus now on Dragon 2 and Falcon Heavy, and then move asap to BFR/BFS. I suspect they will try hard to hit the 2020 window with BFS to Mars.It's really hard to see how they can build a complete Mars stack in a little bit more than 2 years. Simply building the launch pad will take longer.The 2020 window is mid July to late August of 2020, which is 36 to 37 months from now. They could do it if they go sub-scale with a less than 12 meter diameter, use a lot of existing infrastructure, drop a few of the long-pole technologies (carbon fiber LOX tanks, launch mount landing) and are a little further along with Raptor than we think.Coincidentally, if they launch in August and use a high-energy ~90-day transfer, they would attempt a landing only a few days before the 2020 election in the US.Yeah, all they have to do is quit working on fairing reuse, Falcon Heavy, Crew Dragon, and especially not get sidetracked in trying to reuse a second stage. That might allow them to free up the resources needed to develop a subscale ITS a few years faster. Otherwise, most of 2018 is already packed with maturing these systems. The design you guys seem to fancy, wouldn't fly before 2025, and the full scale won't fly before the late 2020's. And if it flies any later, it will be no longer resemble the current design. Because they will run into the same issues as they have with FH, propulsive landing of Dragon, and Red Dragon: the context changes over time, so what was once a good idea is no longer optimal. Which is a good evolution most of the time.
Quote from: high road on 07/17/2017 09:36 pmQuote from: envy887 on 07/17/2017 02:34 pmQuote from: jpo234 on 07/17/2017 02:21 pmQuote from: envy887 on 07/17/2017 02:15 pmRed Dragon seems to be off the table in order to focus now on Dragon 2 and Falcon Heavy, and then move asap to BFR/BFS. I suspect they will try hard to hit the 2020 window with BFS to Mars.It's really hard to see how they can build a complete Mars stack in a little bit more than 2 years. Simply building the launch pad will take longer.The 2020 window is mid July to late August of 2020, which is 36 to 37 months from now. They could do it if they go sub-scale with a less than 12 meter diameter, use a lot of existing infrastructure, drop a few of the long-pole technologies (carbon fiber LOX tanks, launch mount landing) and are a little further along with Raptor than we think.Coincidentally, if they launch in August and use a high-energy ~90-day transfer, they would attempt a landing only a few days before the 2020 election in the US.Yeah, all they have to do is quit working on fairing reuse, Falcon Heavy, Crew Dragon, and especially not get sidetracked in trying to reuse a second stage. That might allow them to free up the resources needed to develop a subscale ITS a few years faster. Otherwise, most of 2018 is already packed with maturing these systems. The design you guys seem to fancy, wouldn't fly before 2025, and the full scale won't fly before the late 2020's. And if it flies any later, it will be no longer resemble the current design. Because they will run into the same issues as they have with FH, propulsive landing of Dragon, and Red Dragon: the context changes over time, so what was once a good idea is no longer optimal. Which is a good evolution most of the time.You know that SpaceX went from 6 guys and a mariachi band to launching Falcon 9 and Dragon in as much time as between now and 2025, right?Certainly 2020 is a highly optimistic date. That doesn't make it impossible, if everything goes right. 2022 is probably much more realistic, and 2024 if they have a few major setbacks which is certainly possible.
Yes, and I also know that SpaceX is getting close to having spent again as much time maturing F9 and working on that other thing they designed it for beside getting to orbit: being reusable. I'm assuming they didn't stop doing all that development completely during RTF, and they'll probably have some issues in the future as well. So I'm ignoring downtime in my estimate. The fact that they spent this long maturing F9's capabilities should be an indicator that they are going to need some time to work through issues with FH, and later on with the BFR booster stage, before starting work on anything that resembles the ITS upper stage in anything more than the mold line.
Quote from: high road on 07/18/2017 06:55 amYes, and I also know that SpaceX is getting close to having spent again as much time maturing F9 and working on that other thing they designed it for beside getting to orbit: being reusable. I'm assuming they didn't stop doing all that development completely during RTF, and they'll probably have some issues in the future as well. So I'm ignoring downtime in my estimate. The fact that they spent this long maturing F9's capabilities should be an indicator that they are going to need some time to work through issues with FH, and later on with the BFR booster stage, before starting work on anything that resembles the ITS upper stage in anything more than the mold line.You are overlooking the fact that SpaceX learning how to succesfully launch a rocket and get a payload into orbit was actually the easy part. It had already been done before by multiple others. All SpaceX had to do was re-learn that trick from a knowledge-base extending 5+ decades back in time.The difficult part came when SpaceX started development of stage 1 re-use. SpaceX basically had to start at square 1 for everything. The only available prior knowledge-base was DC-X. It provided SpaceX with a starting point, but not nearly as extensive as the starting point for launch & orbit.The fact that this more difficult part took as long as the easy part clearly indicates that the pace of development and the tempo of innovation at SpaceX accelerated over the years.Because, logically speaking, had the pace been constant the more difficult part would have taken longer than the easy part. But it didn't.
Quote from: envy887 on 07/18/2017 03:21 amQuote from: high road on 07/17/2017 09:36 pmQuote from: envy887 on 07/17/2017 02:34 pmQuote from: jpo234 on 07/17/2017 02:21 pmQuote from: envy887 on 07/17/2017 02:15 pmRed Dragon seems to be off the table in order to focus now on Dragon 2 and Falcon Heavy, and then move asap to BFR/BFS. I suspect they will try hard to hit the 2020 window with BFS to Mars.It's really hard to see how they can build a complete Mars stack in a little bit more than 2 years. Simply building the launch pad will take longer.The 2020 window is mid July to late August of 2020, which is 36 to 37 months from now. They could do it if they go sub-scale with a less than 12 meter diameter, use a lot of existing infrastructure, drop a few of the long-pole technologies (carbon fiber LOX tanks, launch mount landing) and are a little further along with Raptor than we think.Coincidentally, if they launch in August and use a high-energy ~90-day transfer, they would attempt a landing only a few days before the 2020 election in the US.Yeah, all they have to do is quit working on fairing reuse, Falcon Heavy, Crew Dragon, and especially not get sidetracked in trying to reuse a second stage. That might allow them to free up the resources needed to develop a subscale ITS a few years faster. Otherwise, most of 2018 is already packed with maturing these systems. The design you guys seem to fancy, wouldn't fly before 2025, and the full scale won't fly before the late 2020's. And if it flies any later, it will be no longer resemble the current design. Because they will run into the same issues as they have with FH, propulsive landing of Dragon, and Red Dragon: the context changes over time, so what was once a good idea is no longer optimal. Which is a good evolution most of the time.You know that SpaceX went from 6 guys and a mariachi band to launching Falcon 9 and Dragon in as much time as between now and 2025, right?Certainly 2020 is a highly optimistic date. That doesn't make it impossible, if everything goes right. 2022 is probably much more realistic, and 2024 if they have a few major setbacks which is certainly possible.Yes, and I also know that SpaceX is getting close to having spent again as much time maturing F9 and working on that other thing they designed it for beside getting to orbit: being reusable. I'm assuming they didn't stop doing all that development completely during RTF, and they'll probably have some issues in the future as well. So I'm ignoring downtime in my estimate. The fact that they spent this long maturing F9's capabilities should be an indicator that they are going to need some time to work through issues with FH, and later on with the BFR booster stage, before starting work on anything that resembles the ITS upper stage in anything more than the mold line.The more complexity you add from the get-go, the longer it takes to work through the issues and end up with a system that can be used to, say, launch that constellation. Which will require its own resources to build and maintain, and will require some time for enough money to start coming in to help SpaceX on the way to Mars.So while I tend to agree that scrapping Red Dragon, and even Dragon propulsive landing for that matter, is likely to turn out to be a good decision because it will probably result in a subscale BFR in the same timeframe, and that will go on to the development of a subscale ITS much more capable than Red Dragon. For the record: I already estimated that Red Dragon would not launch before 2022 at the time of the poll.
Who said full scale ITS?Also, you were talking about doing the booster first, which is the opposite of their plan.