Elon's Rocket

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Elon's Rocket

Post by NewcastleFalcon »

Yes almost my FCF moniker Falcon Heavy blasts off :-D



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Re: Elon's Rocket

Post by bobins »

I liked the 'Don't Panic' on the car's display screen :)
Mr Musk has a good sense of humour - there's a setting on some of his cars that allows you to turn up the radio to '11' :lol:
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Re: Elon's Rocket

Post by myglaren »

And the "Insane" mode :)
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Re: Elon's Rocket

Post by Hell Razor5543 »

One of the Mods on another forum I am a member of did a bit of tweaking;

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthrea ... rr-Houston
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Re: Elon's Rocket

Post by Mandrake »

I have to say the Starman in the Tesla in orbit put a big smile on my face. :-D As did watching the two side boosters perform a choreographed and flawless landing! =D> Pity about the middle section crashing into the ocean at 300 mph and missing the landing pad by 300 feet though. :lol: Apparently it ran out of "igniter" fuel so was only able to light one of the three boosters required to land...whoops... #-o

As people will know I'm a Tesla watcher so keep an eye on Musk there but I can't say I have ever kept a close eye on what SpaceX are up to, and boy do I wish I had... Apart from the flight a couple of days ago I came across this video from last September and wondered why have I not heard about the BFR before ??



Incredibly inspirational if they pull it off. Already the Falcon Heavy is obsolete and once they are finished fine tuning that and churning them out like sausages for commercial payloads they say they are going to focus fully on engineering the BFR. The Falcon Heavy is mainly to "pay the bills" by launching commercial and government payloads, allowing them to focus on their true plans of manned missions to the Moon and Mars. :)

The design of the BFR is really, really clever. In one swoop it replaces the Falcon Heavy for launching earth orbit satellites, replaces the space shuttle for manned trips to earth orbit and back, and also allows manned return trips to the moon and mars.

Unlike the shuttle which can only land on earth since it lands using wings like a plane, the BFR is designed to do powered vertical landings - basically like the side boosters landing we saw a couple of days ago. So it can land on the Moon or Mars without requiring an atmosphere or even a landing pad, as long as there is a large enough piece of flat stable ground for a vertical landing.

Even more incredible, once it has landed on the moon it can take off again and fly all the way back to earth orbit with the fuel it still has on board. :shock: To take off from Mars it will need refuelling but he has a plan for that too. Unlike most rockets (including Falcon Heavy) that run on a Kerosene based fuel called RP-1 (and liquid oxygen) it will be designed to run on Methane and liquid oxygen - CH4 + O2.

The idea is to harvest the CO2 from the Martian atmosphere and frozen ice and use the power from solar panels to convert that to Methane and Oxygen using the Sabatier process. Sounds far fetched unless you can find sufficient quantities of water/ice but that's the plan!

They're aiming for two unmanned BFR's full of supplies going to Mars in 2022 and in 2024 two more unmanned and two manned ones going. Being Elon Musk these timelines are probably hopelessly optimistic (!) but the fact that they are seriously trying is amazing. They were a few years late getting the Falcon Heavy finished but they did it, and it's now the most powerful rocket currently operating in the world - only bested by the Saturn 5 used in the Apollo missions, and unlike the Saturn 5 and most modern rockets designed to be reusable to dramatically cut costs.

As someone born just after the manned lunar missions ended and growing up in that post Apollo era the excitement and hope of further space exploration, manned bases on the moon etc was strong when I was young and it slowly but surely faded away over the next 42 years as it became clear that once the US government had "beat the ruskies" that nobody was interested in going back to the moon! Terribly, terribly disappointing for someone interested in space. :(

At least we had the space shuttle, although it was only being used for satellite deployments and taxi rides to the ISS - but then that also ended a few years ago.....with no replacement vehicle even on the drawing board....and now the US government hitches rides on Russian Soyuz rockets to get to the ISS. How did we come to this ? [-X

I honestly though I'd never see manned missions to the moon or Mars in my lifetime, not because we couldn't do it, but because no government had the will or interest to do it. I'd given up hope. :?

And then I watched the video above and a few others and realised that in the background SpaceX has been quietly working towards that goal all along, and not only are they serious about doing it, the design of the BFR and it's capabilities is pretty revolutionary. I'm sure it will be a few years later than they say but I now have confidence that unless they go broke we will see manned missions to mars and maybe the moon, and probably bases being set up there well within my lifetime.

I urge anyone who has any interest in space travel to watch the video above, if you haven't heard about the BFR before you will be gobsmacked as I was. :)
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Re: Elon's Rocket

Post by Michel »

"and now the US government hitches rides on Russian Soyuz rockets to get to the ISS. How did we come to this ? [-X "

Soyuz is cheap and it works. Only 4 deaths on it too, last one in 1971! It's not pretty or modern but it does the job. It seems that even when things do go awry on It, the crew still make it home safely.
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Re: Elon's Rocket

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I'm not saying anything is wrong with the Soyuz rockets as such, just the fact that the US has let itself get into the position of having no astronaut capable flight system of its own, such that it has to borrow rides on rockets belonging to their ex-arch nemesis. :lol:

I bet Putin is grinning every time a Soyuz with an American on board launches. :twisted:
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Re: Elon's Rocket

Post by Michel »

Mandrake wrote: 08 Feb 2018, 13:19 I'm not saying anything is wrong with the Soyuz rockets as such, just the fact that the US has let itself get into the position of having no astronaut capable flight system of its own, such that it has to borrow rides on rockets belonging to their ex-arch nemesis. :lol:

I bet Putin is grinning every time a Soyuz with an American on board launches. :twisted:


I think the septics spent all their spare cash fighting nonsensical illegal wars, and didn't have any left to continue a decent space programme. Their replacement for the shuttle isn't scheduled to fly until 2019 but those in the know reckon 2020 at the earliest now.

I'm sure Donald doesn't mind giving Vlad $80 million every time a US astronaut hitches a ride on a Soyuz...
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Re: Elon's Rocket

Post by Hell Razor5543 »

The thing about the Russian rocket motors is that they are a simple, basic design. Rather than design another motor for a heavy lift application they just scale the motor up. The simplicity concept works well.
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Re: Elon's Rocket

Post by Michel »

Hell Razor5543 wrote: 08 Feb 2018, 15:39 The thing about the Russian rocket motors is that they are a simple, basic design. Rather than design another motor for a heavy lift application they just scale the motor up. The simplicity concept works well.


Well, it did until the N1...
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Re: Elon's Rocket

Post by Hell Razor5543 »

I shall have to lend you "Space Race", by Deborah Cadbury. It accompanied the BBC program of the same name, and documents the work of Wernher von Braun and Sergei Korolev.
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Re: Elon's Rocket

Post by Gibbo2286 »

I've been in and climbed all over a Russian space shuttle, it had the mechanical and electrical qualities of a 1938 Ford 8.
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Re: Elon's Rocket

Post by Michel »

Gibbo2286 wrote: 08 Feb 2018, 16:39 I've been in and climbed all over a Russian space shuttle, it had the mechanical and electrical qualities of a 1938 Ford 8.


It's a shame the Buran never flew as intended. It might not have had the tech of the NASA shuttle but it might not have been such a worrisome vehicle to ride. It also was the first reusable spacecraft to complete a fully automated unmanned mission, and even had the capability to automatically decide to go-around when a bad landing was imminent - something the NASA shuttle couldn't do as it was essentially a heavy glider once back in the atmosphere.
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Re: Elon's Rocket

Post by bobins »

Wonder how many environmentally friendly electric vehicles Mr Musk has to sell in order to counter the pollution he's chucking out with each of his rockets ?
And before anyone gets annoyed - it's a serious question ! Just how polluting are rockets ???? It can't be that difficult to work out, I mean - it's not rocket science :lol:
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Re: Elon's Rocket

Post by Richard_C »

Mandrake wrote: 08 Feb 2018, 13:19 I'm not saying anything is wrong with the Soyuz rockets as such, just the fact that the US has let itself get into the position of having no astronaut capable flight system of its own, such that it has to borrow rides on rockets belonging to their ex-arch nemesis. :lol:

I bet Putin is grinning every time a Soyuz with an American on board launches. :twisted:


And I grin every time I think about the aircraft that NASA uses (or at least used up to 2016, not sure now) as a fast, stable high altitude instrument platform. First flew in 1949. I remember seeing one in flight years and years ago but don't recall where.

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