NASA’s Kennedy Space Center is studying the process of building a space rocket to better understand and reduce its complexity. The SLS rocket, designed to be evolvable, allows for more types of missions, including human ones. Purdue University researchers are exploring patented techniques to control burn rate and improve overall performance of modern solid propellants.
Reusable space systems can be developed using various design strategies and skills, with a focus on materials science. The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) has recently commissioned three private companies, Blue Origin, Lockheed Martin, and General Atomics, to explore reusable space systems. Staging is a useful technique, as it allows for high efficiency, low-weight engines, especially for upper stages. Off-loading propellant for easier missions and making minor adjustments can improve efficiency.
Developing a hydrocarbon first stage engine can save money by building a reusable first stage. Densifying propellants, such as SpaceX’s, can also be used to achieve greater range. Tsiolkovsky suggested using liquid propellants for rockets in 1903 to achieve greater range.
To increase the number of reusable parts in a shuttle’s design, increasing the number of reusable parts can help cut expenses dramatically. For example, creating reusable components can reduce thrust and vibrations early in flight. Modern railguns can achieve fuel efficiencies almost as good as rockets, but space-race era rail guns were less efficient.
📹 The Evolution of Space Rockets
What factors made the greatest impact on the development of modern space rockets? Was it our irrepressible human urge to …
What makes a rocket better?
The mass of a rocket significantly impacts its success in flight. The basic principle of rocket flight states that the engine must produce a thrust greater than the vehicle’s weight for it to leave the ground. The first rockets, the Chinese fire-arrows, were not reliable and often exploded during launch or flew on erratic courses, making it an exciting but also dangerous activity. The history of rockets, rocket principles, and practical rocketry knowledge game are essential for understanding the history of rockets.
How to improve model rocket performance?
To maintain rocket stability, experiment with different fin shapes and placements to find the best fit for your model. Maintaining symmetry is crucial for flight stability. Test your model rocket’s stability before launch using methods like swing tests, wind tunnel tests, and simulation software. If the rocket points away from the center of gravity, it’s likely stable. Additionally, blowing air past the rocket can observe its aerodynamic properties. Simulation software can provide insights into how design changes impact stability.
What is the most advanced rocket technology?
NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) is a powerful and advanced rocket designed for human exploration beyond Earth’s orbit. It is the only rocket capable of sending the Orion spacecraft, four astronauts, and large cargo directly to the Moon on a single mission. The SLS’s core stage, the tallest ever built, is the foundation for this new era of human exploration. Its unprecedented capabilities make it a crucial tool for space exploration.
How to improve a rocket?
To determine the stability of a model rocket, tie a string around the body tube at the center of gravity, ensure the parachute and engine are installed, and swing the rocket in a circle around you. If the nose points in the direction of rotation and the center of pressure is below the center of gravity, the rocket is stable. If the rocket wobbles or the tail points in the direction of rotation, it is unstable.
To increase stability, lower the center of pressure, increase the fin area, or raise the center of gravity. Modern full-scale rockets pivot their exhaust nozzles for stability and control, unlike Delta, Titan, or Atlas boosters.
How do you make a good rocket design?
Designing a rocket involves six easy steps: 1) Knowing what your rocket needs to do, 2) Establishing mission parameters, 3) Calling in experts, 4) Starting drawing, 5) Whinting down possibilities, and 6) Picking the best design. All rockets are not created equal, and the world is full of a variety of rockets designed for different purposes. To determine the type of rocket you’re going to build, first, understand its requirements. This will help you select the best design for your rocket.
What is the best aerodynamic design for a rocket?
The optimal nose cone shape for a rocket at speeds less than the speed of sound is a rounded curve, while at speeds faster than the speed of sound, a narrower and sharper point is preferred.
What is the best shape for a model rocket?
The elliptical fin shape, commonly used for small competition rockets, has the lowest induced drag. This is due to the fin’s “Reynolds Number”, which is a technical term that refers to the fin’s ability to create lift. Induced drag occurs when the fin creates lift, and if the rocket is flying along smoothly, the fins don’t need to create lift forces to straighten out the flight path. This means that the induced drag on the rocket may be near zero.
Therefore, it is highly likely that the rocket will have the same induced drag forces regardless of the fin shape used, as typically a model flies straight and true, and the induced drag in the rocket is very small. This information is crucial for young modelers to understand and make informed decisions about the best fin shape for their rockets.
How are rockets designed?
Rockets are a fascinating subject for students to learn about forces and their response to external forces. They are subjected to forces of weight, thrust, and aerodynamics in flight. Engineers group parts with the same function into four major systems: the structural system, payload system, guidance system, and propulsion system.
The structural system, or frame, is similar to an airplane fuselage and is made from strong but lightweight materials like titanium or aluminum. It typically employs long stringers and hoops connected by a “skin” that may be coated with a thermal protection system to keep out air friction heat and maintain cold temperatures for fuels and oxidizers. Fins are attached to some rockets at the bottom for stability during flight.
The payload system of a rocket depends on its mission. The earliest payloads were fireworks for holidays, while guided ballistic missiles armed with nuclear warheads were developed for various missions. These rockets have been modified to launch satellites for communications, weather monitoring, spying, planetary exploration, and observatories like the Hubble Space Telescope. Special rockets have also been developed to launch people into Earth orbit and onto the Moon’s surface.
How to improve aerodynamics of a rocket?
Larger diameter rockets have more drag due to more air being pushed out of the way. To reduce drag, make the rocket as narrow as possible. The speed of a rocket increases drag, with doubled speed causing four times more drag. Fins control direction and stability, ensuring the rocket maintains flight without wobbling or tumbling. Smaller rockets use fins to provide stability and control direction, similar to placing feathers at the tail of an arrow. The greater drag on the feathers keeps the tail at the back, allowing the arrow to travel straight into the wind.
Does NASA still design rockets?
NASA has a long-standing history of collaboration with prominent aerospace companies, including Lockheed and Boeing, in the design and construction of rockets.
What is the most efficient model rocket design?
The elliptical fin is regarded as the most efficient shape due to its reduced induced drag force, which enables the rocket to reach greater altitudes with less deceleration.
📹 The Old Rocket Designs That Make Starship Look Small
While many people look at the size of the rockets being built and tested for SpaceX’s Starship and Superheavy project, fans of …
I don’t get this. Rockets are also bad for the climate. They release a lot of carbon dioxide. So we should pause the rocket industry, until we have electrical rockets. That releases 0% carbon dioxide. (If electrical batterys, is the future. Beacuse batterys is bad for the climate, too. In their way.) Just my thoughts on rockets.
@1:40, nice shout out to the reusable Saturn S1 concept from Convair! What’s funny is that it was literally about a paragraph in the entire “NEXUS” study even though it had been worked on (after NASA asked it be included 🙂 ) just about as much as the actual “NEXUS” itself. Not sure if the proposed recoverable version of the SII stage was given the same treatment, (only illustrations are essentially a slightly smaller S1 re-drawn) but it’s interesting that the actual ‘question’ NASA asked Convair was about a NEXUS-like vehicle that could mount heavier upper stages (such as a larger NERVA or large self-deploying space station) AND still fit in the VAB. Hence the ‘squashed’ S1 and SII which would lower the overall height (and still fit on the MLP 🙂 ) enough for those upper stages to clear the top of the VAB doors. Think you might address the Goodyear METEOR (2,500ft long and 1500ft in diameter “Space Station” made by disassembling the third stage of a fully reusable, fully manned three stage to orbit vehicle, ya gotta love the esthetic 🙂 ) and METEOR LV and it’s successor METEOR Jr?
I don’t know why, but it seems most people either worship Elon, or dispute him and everything he does. The fact that people were saying, making a larger rocket is stupid, is ridiculous. I’m not going to grovel at elons feet and pretend he’s the real life tony stark, but I’m not going to snob at the things his company gets right. It boggles my mind how people don’t realize the reason space x is successful, is because elon hires good engineer. You can think he’s personally an idiot, but there’s no denying his companies have made some very impressive things, whether he personally designed them or not.
13:45 Yeah, I understand that ratio.. but fuel tanks should not be pressurized? When we scale a pressurized tank, for the same pressure the dry mass of the tank increase exactly at the same rate than the volume, so I dont see benefits on that regard, I hear that we can save on avionics, but that is NOTHING in comparison to the over all dry mass. I always wanted to know how scale benefit the rocket performance and why.. But never read nothing detailed on that topic.
Scott, thank you so much for using the term “plug nozzle” engine rather than the much-abused “aerospike” when what you;re talking about actually is a plug-nozzle engine! Any chance of an update on detonation engines? I only heard of Oblique Wave Detonation Engines the other day – interesting idea. I’m curious as to what kind of ISP RDE’s and OWDE’s might get though.
OMG!!! @ 14:46 that picture is SOOO AMAZING!!! not only does it say “Today I ate John” (wtf lol) but it compares his rocket to the “eyeful tower” and the “bird kalifa” LMFAO!!!! it is SOOOO ADORABLE!!! How does this kid know about the Eiffel Tower and the Burj Khalifa??? (a.k.a. The Burj Dubai) – THAT WOULD BE ONE HELL OF A RIDE TO SPACE!!!!!! hahaaaa
The concerns of instability for the Sea Dragon main engine are overblown and rooted in it’s very low operating pressure. Combustion instability scales linearly with volume but not pressure which is why most rocket engines operate at several orders of magnitude higher pressure. However as you scale up the motor there’s no need to lengthen the combustion chamber as the optimal length is the same no matter how wide or large it’s volume is being driven by the characteristic burn length of the fuel mix. This means it’s actually extremely easy to prevent any instabilities from reaching the chamber walls before the mass flow of the exhaust has already swept it out of the nozzle completely. Obviously this only works for rocket motors that are fifty feet wide or so. That’s how the motors, the single most expensive rocket component per pound were to be made in a ship yard and out of welded diamond plate.
I have an odd question Mr. Manley, Because the starship is so tall and the thrust will be immense, will there be a chance of it breaking in half? As in the Archer’s Paradox arrows flex, but this rocket is doing so much more like vibrations and forces too numerous to think of. Just being curious. Merry Christmas to you.
hey question for technical people. With carbide bits and what not we have now. Would you possibly mass produce engine bells using an induction system and almost like carbide friction drills. To heat up a stock piece of say TZM, then you place it inbetween two of these drills matching the wanted ID of both sides of the bell. As well as some outside shapers to help direct and stabilize the stock. As the drills close in and shape the bell. Because the size of the machinery needed is very realistic. But I don’t know how well alloys like TZM form. Because if this worked, and you did it for a very reliable engine design. You could make manufacturing of engines cheaper and use the “just attach more rockets” method of soviet designs. It’s not perfect, but doesn’t sound unrealistic.
I always wondered how and if we could design and build a rocket bigger and more powerful than the Saturn V. But I also believe that Von Buran would want the Saturn V record to be beaten. I think he would be advocating for us to go back to the moon and beyond. He would be proud of Elon Musk & Peter Beck.
Speaking of massive rockets, I wonder if it would be possible to make the Earthport (Instrumentality of Mankind by Cordwainer Smith) in KSP, or any other game or program. “Earthport stood like an enormous wineglass, reaching from the magma to the high atmosphere. Earthport had been built during mankind’s biggest mechanical splurge. Though men had had nuclear rockets since the beginning of consecutive history, they had used chemical rockets to load the interplanetary ion-drive and nuclear-drive vehicles or to assemble the photonic sail-ships for interstellar cruises. Impatient with the troubles of taking things bit by bit into the sky, they had worked out a billion-ton rocket, only to find that it ruined whatever countryside it touched in landing. The Daimoni-people of Earth extraction, who came back from somewhere beyond the stars-had helped men build (Earthport) of weatherproof, rustproof, timeproof, stressproof material.” Assuming the figure “billion-ton rocket” means payload and extrapolating from Saturn V with similar proportions, Earthport would be approximately 21 kilometers tall and about 2 kilometers wide.
While I can see some of the advantages of scale, I can also see some of the disadvantages. The behemoths not only require more time and cost to develop, but they also put all your eggs in one basket economically, politically, and human life. It still seems to me to have value to put the precious stuff (humans and equipment to assemble something larger) into very low Earth orbit using smaller more expensive rocketry which can then receive “in-flight-refuelling”. Since most of the fuel is used to carry all the other fuel up there, couldn’t this be done separately using cheaper rough-and-ready technology that nobody much cares about if one of them is lost? Rather like how the space station is built and serviced today. In the past, perhaps docking and assembly were considered more difficult than today, but they’ve shown that they can effectively assemble and maintain complex structures in orbit. Returning something downwards essentially only requires a heat shield, doesn’t it? Sure, there is an economic cost to this approach. But if you don’t know what funding Congress, Private Investors, or International partners will make available at any one time, then doing it in a modular fashion appears more attractive. By analogy, I bet most poor underdeveloped nations in Africa are building cell-phone networks, but not so much of the traditional land-lines. The older technology just requires too much political and economic stability for investors to take the risk, even if they could get the larger funds needed to do it.
1:07, most (if not all) are refering to the economical side of it (also the reason why others never built insanely huge rockets). There is no market for it (what is kind of “proven” by the Falcon Heavy aswell, since it had just a couple launches in all these years). So the only market for it, will be Musk his own projects, which also don’t seem really economically viable. Professionals think about all details before they build a rocket. Amateurs think about things as they go, get confronted with the details and then realize they have to do things different again and again in attempt to make it somewhat work. That’s exactly how Musk is running his businesses.
I know that someone sat down and designed the ISS and decided it was a good idea, but the space stations designed in the 70s look so much safer. If you’re in the ISS and there’s a leak in the middle you have to hope there’s an escape capsule attached to the half you’re in, or you may need to travel through the leaking part? The big wheel space stations had multiple ways out if there was a leak the section that was loosing air can be sealed off and people can still get from A to B while someone repairs the station. The next space station should be a wheel or a cube ( just the edges) it’ll be safer, and it should have more cup holders. 😀👍
I am very sure the Sea Dragon first stage engine would have bizarre instability issues. It’s not surprising that “The SpaceX Pintle Guy” thinks pintles are magical and not subject to combustion instability. I have worked with pintles as well as other injector designs, the reality is that each injector flavor has it’s own issues. Pintles can be great, but they absolutely have multiple known issues, and to my knowledge there is no experience with super duper big pintles to know if any of those issues would become insurmountable as you scale up to that ridiculous size. The “few big engines vs. many smaller engines” question is always an interesting one to me, and really the answer should always be “it depends” instead of having a straightforward clear winner. That said, once you get up to a single gargantuan pintle, where you could probably swim through the pintle injector holes, I am willing to bet that you’d run into some absolutely bizarre instability issues and just generally weird fluid dynamics. Super high Reynolds number + multiphase flow + turbulent flow is always gonna be complicated, add to that the inevitable combustion instability issues associated with having your flame too spread apart to behave cohesively and you’re always gonna have issues with big engines. Possibly surmountable issues, but with an engine that large there is an engineering diminishing returns calculation you have to make, i.e. how much engineering person hours + simulation time + testing time is it worth to have a single engine?
There was a film project based in Sydney, Australia called Man Conquers Space. This used the Chesley Bonestell vehicles. Sadly the film was never completed. There are trailers on you tube. They are brilliant, a vision of what might have been. As for launch vehicle designs, there is Space Shuttle by Dennis R Jenkins. I bought a copy on eBay from a guy in California called Rick Berman. It is a good read.
Scott, could you look at any possibility of a Concord – type low orbit capability? Concord flew higher and faster than most other planes have achieved since; if you used up some of the passenger space with an additional rocket booster, and didn’t have to fly right across the Atlantic, but instead just gain the max height and speed, then light up the rockets when air is no longer thick enough to be used – how far off possible is that?
I think it is kinda funny when people point out that ALL of Elon Musk’s concepts have been thought of or tried before. Maybe when this Raptor problem works itself out he will start making claims that are at least a little closer to reality. Where is the Hyper loop? Self driving cars? Electric semi trucks? Global high speed internet? and the list goes on and on. History will record his as being the best snake oil salesman in history rather than the smartest person in the room anywhere as he claims.
The main issue is you need ~250 tons to high orbit for the required tunnel boring machines needed for creating settlements on the Moon and Mars. This is just for the main cutting heads and assemblies. You need about as much in support equipment and also a way to power them. 40-50 tons simply won’t cut it (bad pun, I know). And at least 2-3 of them, plus spares (100-200 tons in just spare teeth). Basically 1000-1200 tons at the site and then you can fairly quickly start making tunnels and chambers. Starship, since it is designed to re-fuel in orbit, could do this in as little as 3-4 launches. So within a decade we could actually see construction start on a base on either the Moon or Mars if all goes well.
I was wondering if you were going to mention the Orion nuclear thing. I remember perusal a documentary that was talking about it and they were saying they needed to make it heavy and huge to be able to reduce its speed to a more controlled level or something like that. It stuck out to me because it went against everything I had learned (through documentaries) about how you build a rocket as light as possible. I remember thinking wow that’s different.
This may be repetition of something I posted elsewhere about Sea Dragon. In the summer of 1962, after my 2nd year of college, I was privileged to work for Robert C. Truax at Aerojet-General’s Advanced Propulsion Laboratory in Sacramento, California. Among the things I was involved in was doing calculations for 20, 40, 60, 80 and 100 million pound thrust first stage Sea Dragon designs! How did I happen to get the job? Well, back in 4th grade, 1954, I had this crazy idea about using “controlled” atomic explosions to power rocket ships. My uncle, who had been in the Navy in WWII, suggested I send the idea to the Bureau of Aeronautics, which I did. I got a very nice letter from a, then, Cdr. R.C. Truax, encouraging me. (I still have the letter!) In 1962, when the Air Force announced Project Orion, with a similar concept (with some actual testing with high explosives), I wrote to Truax to see if my kid’s dream had sparked an idea. His reply was that he didn’t think so, but how would I like to work for him at Aerojet, which I did. Another idea he played with was using some propellants that would self-pressurize because they boiled at room temperature. So long as they were under pressure, they remained liquid. He would walk around with a clear bottle of Freon, so you could see it in its liquid form, until he squeezed a valve release, whereupon the vapor would spray out of the nozzle. He used the similar concept with supersaturated steam in Evil Kineavals’ motor cycle that was attempted to fly across the Snake River canyon.
Interesting strawman you build, the critique isn’t necessarily the scale more the usability and concepts proposed. Also, there are major problems with private space programs. The last issue most people have isn’t the rocket but Musk as a person and the cult of personality he cultivated. I really like your articles but like other content creators you have pink glasses on when talking about spaced and Musk
Hey man! Been binge perusal 👀 u for awhile now. And I just want to say … Thank you mister Manley. Your free education is greatly appreciated by this one. Your disposition is great. Your attitude towards life seems very appreciated and genuine . We need a few more of folks with your ilk. I’ll keep perusal you and I really, really like your Content.
I wish you’d look into a VentureStar design that went nowhere. I only saw a picture of it once and can’t find that drawing anymore. It consisted of two VentureStar-like vehicles mounted belly to belly. One vehicle was much larger as it served like the Shuttle’s external tank but flew back for reuse. I recall there was a caption that referred to the larger VentureStar as the F1 Flyback first stage. I’ve seen one StarShip proposal that had two additional boosters (I guess) for heavy payloads. I’ve wondered if the StarShip concept might be extended to consist of four boosters wrapped around the Ship and all vehicles ignite to gain orbit but the four boosters also refuel the ship during launch to orbit. Would that eliminate the ten-plus launches to refuel the Starship lunar lander? One possible advantage of this concept is the elimination of extra stiffening to support the Ship during launch that the current booster requires.
Human thinking has the flaw of wanting one-size-fits-all solutions so we’re left with building only the biggest size. The Falcon Heavy was a good step up from Falcon, but Starship is a huge leap up from that and with scale comes unforeseen problems. Too many unforeseen problems at the same time are the project killers. The Space Shuttle suffered from that as well. It never lived up to its original hype of 40 to 50 flights a year. Somewhere I should still have a NASA promotional booklet from the 1970s I got as a kid.
So….sea dragon… correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t it’s launch similar to, but not quite like submarine launched ICBMs….? Next question, seeing how submarine launched ICBMs have a ‘silo’ to launch from…and sea dragon apparently sat on a submerged platform….is it the water displacement, pressure, lack of anything to “push” against that was the ‘death’ of the idea that sea dragon would work….or was it jus simply too damn big…?
There was that comment about the Soviet UR rockets, “very communist meaning toxic fuels and no funding” (or something like that). Getting back to big rockets which 1950s, 60s, early 70s talked about but along comes automated systems and microelectronics meaning there is no requirement for big rockets unless sending people to the moon and Mars.
I’m genuinely curious but has SpaceX actually made any money? I mean like outside of investors like if this was a coffee shop and they were selling a product would they have made any money from their product? Are they considered to be in the red or black? Something like that. My knowledge on business is very limited and I’m just now learning.
I recently got a new perspective on vehicle size. Now the Starship is made of steel, I thought of comparing to other common existing steel structures, such as commercial seagoing vessels. Perhaps the best comparison would be to bulk oil carriers, the largest of which was the Seawise Giant at 1504 feet (458 meters) long and gross tonnage of 260,000 tons. Of relevance is the ratio between the thickness of the steel and the size/length of this ship.A typical ship might have a bottom plate thickness of 20 mm (about 0.8 inches), but that is supported by a complex box beam system. Nevertheless, that is analogous to a 150 foot ship with a hull thickness of 2mm, substantially thinner than Starship if I recall correctly. So while we still think of Starship as being an unprecedentedly large structure, it’s simply comparable to smallish buildings and smallish vehicles, so perhaps the transition to launch vessels 8 or 10 times as large is now simply finance, markets, and engineering. And certainly space structures built using robotic extraction and 3D printing of materials from asteroids could be arbitrarily large. Sending a robotic system to grind up a nickel iron asteroid and use solar powered laser sintering to construct large scale triangular truss beams is now entirely feasible, with every component of the process having been accomplished in tests.
– Enough with the Sea Dragon already! The submerged giant bell shaped thrust chamber’s pressure on ignition explosion would be so great trying to expell thousand tons of nearly unmovable inside sea water ( Principle of Hydraulics) & super heated steam in a downward direction into the surrounding sea that the whole thing would blow up like a Soviet N-1 moon rocket on the launching pad. It would be like packing it full of dynamite. – And submerged in corrosive salty sea water? Come on. Even Disney’s Goofy knows better than to propose something so dumb. – The main reason why nothing gets bigger beyond a certain point is because of the limiting physics of the “Exponential Scaling Facter” Even Nature knows that. You don’t see 50 pound pumpkins hanging from tree branches like apples. Do you? – And, have you seen a truck sized ant lately?
QUESTION: What do you think about overlapping Thermal tiles for the Starhip’s ThermalProtectionSystem? Visualize it from the side using a hexagonal “H” shaped tile(rotated 90°) alternating, and loosely interlocking, with a hexagonal “+” shaped tile. Spacing and the temperature resistant blanket material should make a durable TPS with no burn-thrus. WHY is a TPS not used to make an orbital-capable, returnable booster.
Am glad Project Orion got a quick shout-out at the end, but if you are talking about big spacecraft, that is the Big Daddy of them all. The “mid-range” Orion was 4,000 tons (so still bigger than the Saturn V), but the “Super Orion” clocked in at 8 MILLION tons (3 million of which was cargo) and was 400m wide and 450m tall.
All those huge rockets never built reminds me of the first science fiction space war movie I ever saw at the Uptown Theater Napa CA. early 60’s – I was 12 … ” The Battle for Outer Space” A cheesy cheap black and white, terrible effects with wires supporting the rocket ships occasionally visible….and I loved it!
Many many ways to use far less fuel with greater size crafts. One way, is a runway to kamen peak with a winged rocket air carrier first stage sequal, a super savior of fuel, as the burden of the strongest gravity, air, weather countdown waste of T-minus time is below it. Above the kamen, is a FRIEND to canister stage chem thrust engines. Under kamen, an alley to wings, ramjet/afterburn/blade proplusions. Keep in mind, if yer need a massive station up in a day, use MASSIVE vhigh ballons, At the near peak, compress and use small-to-full fuel swap of the ballon hanging on those canister, then FULL rocket booster blast off after to catch park in orbit velocity. 🛫✈🚀🛰🛬 🎈🛸🚢🛸🎈
People after my own heart, these rocket engineers. 🙂 The Sea Dragon designer especially; “Just make it bigger and dumber.” 😀 I wonder why all that space propaganda and engineering… coverage I read in my school days never mentioned it? But it wasn’t the only thing curiously omitted. Maybe it had been forgotten by whatever references those publications used. Most of the others were, but not enough of Peter Bono’s designs. 🙂 Star Raker! 😀 Some day, I will build one in KSP! 😀 But first, I want to either figure out what magic you need to make a properly-functioning end-opening cargo bay, or to get or maybe even make a mod to do it.
Believe I heard a dig at Thunderfoot. Abrasive jerk who is regularly wrong in his figures, math, and expectations. He lacks a grasp of what a technology demonstrator is. Just because something is 1/4 scale doesn’t mean the thing is done and delivered and if invested, you lost money. No dude, it’s just the start. He has been wrong many times in equations. Not because he can’t add or subtract, but he has poor projection skills and pulls “averages” from guesstimates quite a bit, completely disregarding think-tank projections on say…food needs 10yrs from now. Or power needs 20 years from now. I like that he calls out the nasty people who are KNOWINGLY perpetuating fraud to enrich themselves. But his grudges against Musk have gotten so ridiculous I just don’t watch him anymore. A LOT of stuff he said musk would never do, well, musk did, and the articles were pulled. Luckily, I have about a dozen articles of him ranting and raving like an angry lunatic at Musk saying how a reuseable booster was a “fool’s folly of the embracing of vapor wares.” He loves the word vapor ware words. Anyways, seems like he has anger issues, has a terrible personality, is confrontational, condescending, pompous, arrogant, hateful, and just mean. Plus he talks like he has a mouthful of d____, so it’s hard to listen to him when you hear all that drool sloshing around in there. He has just turned meaner and meaner. All his other traits I can deal with. But being mean is just wrong, and you know what I mean when I say ‘mean.
He touched on it briefly, but some of the Project Orion proposals absolutely dwarf even the most insane chemical rocket designs. The so called “Super Orion” proposal was a whopping 8 million tons, and used nuclear weapons which weighed 8000 tons a piece. It was proposed as an interstellar ark, and was envisioned as being the size of a small city.
1:47 Wow, can you imagine if February of this year a little kid (naughty Concodroid) draws and labels a machine gun in California in class. LOL the parents and friends would get swatted while the kids gets electroshocked. Plus “I ate John” and the teacher is a monster who responds with “Wonderful! A+” Guess the pendulum is swinging back 🤣😅😂
Truax spoke with the author of “Great Mambo Chickens and the Transhuman Condition”. There was a lot of logic in it. He says he looked at other rockets and found that the cost of it has nothing to do with size. Cost is driven by parts count, design margins, and innovation. Lessen these, and you reduce the cost. Materials are a tiny fraction of cost, so making it large really doesn’t add that much, somewhat the same with production facilities and handling on the ground. SpaceX rediscovered this, with their in-house manufacturing of everything and simplifying it, using the same materials and tooling on upper and lower stages. NASA and the usual contractors still use parts designed for smaller lighter more delicate thigs, that require subsystems to be sent from all over. Note that they were underselling all launch services competitors before they’d landed a booster. Sea Dragon was to be steel, much like a submarine hull (but not as strong or costly). It was to be built at a shipyard and floated out to the ideal launch site before being fueled. Truax also spoke very strongly about designing different things for people, than for cargo. He said to never mix crew and cargo because the design requirements (and design margins and complexity) are entirely different. You can insure and duplicate a cargo, and you do not want to spend as much making a cargo booster as reliable as a crew vehicle. There’s still talk of putting people up in “Starship” and this is a mistake. I have serious doubts that NASA is entertaining this, despite the fact that they made all the worst mistakes with the Space Shuttle launch stack.
Those “larger than Starship” designs could not be powered as no suitable engines could be built. Engines ARE available for Starship. That said, NASA’s SLS is – or ought to be – “dead as last night’s dinner” as Scrooge said of Marley. Starship has killed it. NASA could save money by abandoning SLS and commissioning SpaceX to build a Starship variant that is entirely propellant tanks with heatshield and an interstage adapter to hold the current SLS final boost stage with the crew capsule and service module…
I think about all the tax-payers money spent for these “studies” with no real thought for going to the next step in the R&D process. DARPA is especially guilty of this. They are mandated to spend 100% of their annual budget or receive a smaller budget the following year — something which never happens.
I read science fiction and read, and looked forward to witnessing these rockets, all of the science technology predictions during the fifties and the sixties. NASA’s federal beaurocracy disappointed me immensely. American ingenuity and capitalism finally prevailed and at 70 years old, I now have a space hero in Elon Musk!
Good article Scott, im no rocket scientist, but for many things bigger has always seems more efficient to me, i look at the manned missions over the years where they send 3 dudes up into space costing god knows how much, it seems like a huge waste, had they scaled things up a bit and sent 10 or more people up into space each time, we may have had proper moon bases decades ago ……. possibly and maybe even been to mars long ago, after all if you have more people to work, you can get more work done, and getting things done is more likely to have a return of funds when it opens up more opportunities.. I like Musks ambition to send way more people into space on huge rockets .
You said “a lot of communism and toxic propellant… Let me fix it.. “a lot of toxic communism and propellant”.. 😉 Thanks for another great article, amazes me all the various realistic and less so plans that we have had, and how long it have taken to get things going again.. Keep doing these enlightening vids, Scott!
What’s up with Amy Shira by the way? Her website is still seemingly healthy looking with an upload a month ago. I like her stuff and at the beginning she was more prevalent. I remember the article she did here with Scott and the stuff with Tim Dodd. Then kind of.. faded? Its ashame i thought she’d be up there with all the other rocket jockeys.
In my under educated opinion is the limitations of current physics. I understand the limitations our current understanding of science, and what it represents to our dreams. But I can’t give up on my delusional dreams of an ultimate power source, and faster than light travel. I was a child in the 1960s and “Star Trek” is fiction. But it is a dream I have, and I won’t let go of it. The beauty of being human and finite is, nothing really matters. Least of all delusional dreams we don’t let ruin our lives.
More impressive if they got past sketches and concept drawings to even the beginnings actual nuts and bolts engineering and infrastructure. Even one photo of a commitment to start building hardware would give credence to the design having been fleshed out fully. Engineering whether it is rockets, buildings or bridges is littered with granous concepts where the base line numbers might add up, but building it is another matter. It’s the Elon Musk’s and Howard Hughes of the world that make it happen.
Scott if you have not read this book maybe you could be interrested in reading it. Title : Selected by extra-terrestrials by William Tompkin. by reading this book you who seems to be an enthusiat with rockets might start connecting dots important dots to better understand life on this planet? Hope you will find the right curiosity and read it. Cheers take care
The sea dragon 🚀 only concept design that bean experiment by navy and nasa in small-scale program one of it is back 2001 it also succeed . There was one project called aquarius rocket design by DARPA and Boeing company same design as sea dragon rocket . I love the sea dragon it is the only pocket design for low cost and affordability . It can be build small medium and large concept . So simple design anyone with a small budget can build . It proved the old saying time is money and money cost time and time humanity don’t have
If you think about deployable tonnage. Here is an idea. Planning and engineering the rocket as the payload. Imagine launching a space station as the rocket. Launching hey moon base as the rocket. Launching a small rocket as a satellite. We spend all the fuel and all the money to put a pebble in space and then we let a giant boulder fall back to the earth.
I worked at the Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division in Solid Propulsion. I worked on the base for 16 years. The general public always looks at these design proposal documents wrong. There was very little (if any) actual engineering that went into this. The goal of these papers is to try and find some new emerging technology or buzz words that give an Admiral a hard on so he funds your project. These are boiler plate documents and mostly just a formality to show that you put some thought into the bullshit that’s in your powerpoint presentation. Each engineer in my branch was required to write 10-20 of these papers every year…the papers are completed and circulated just before the end of the fiscal year. When you’re in research and development there is very little direct funding from a major project because major projects are already passed the R&D phase and onto development, test and evaluation. Every single one of these papers claims you’re gonna make the best thing ever that goes farther, faster and costs less than anything else that’s ever been made. If it doesn’t do those things…..why tf would you be making it. The whole point of R&D is to improve upon existing technology, so you’re never going to see one of these papers that says “my rocket is slow and heavy, it basically has 100 lb cargo limit, and its gonna cost a shitload of money and assuredly be 4-5x over budget.” A crapload of these documents are written every year…..it’s one of the main ways folks in R&D get funding.
Funny, I always thought that all those designs were way under sized for the job in question. I was delighted when Elon Musk began his quest. I think they are still 70% too small. If you’re going to conquer space you need to think much bigger. Much more multistage and house not just humans but bots who would run the long haul while the humans slept in stasis.
Using the same craft to go into space then land back on earth is not only more expensive but ridiculous. We don’t use the shuttle for a reason. Why not put the SPACE SHIP in space and leave it there. Then bring the lander up to it and attach it there? Then you keep both in orbit to be fueled and used as needed ?