Tom Mueller was indeed head of several Pintle engine projects at TRW, but he was also working on a personal project in his garage when Elon came to talk to him. He was working on a project for a rocketry enthusiast club called Reaction Research Society. More details at this link: http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/space/rockets/4328638
The Vacuum optimized Merlin 1C is both regenerative and radiatively cooled. The main copper chamber is regen, and the columbium extension is radiative.
In general, the Merlin as a booster engine is far lighter and much cheaper than hydrolox booster engines (but much more inneficient). They are slightly lighter and much cheaper than typical russian kerolox booster engines (and slightly less efficient than them).
I wouldn't say the Merlin is horribly inefficient, more that it's focused on optimizing cost and thrust to weight ratio rather than ISP. There really hasn't been much in the way of American development of kerolox engines lately. Most people focus on hydrolox development or buy Russian kerolox.
It was the smaller portion of constellation. SLS is roughly in the same class as the Ares V, the larger half the constellation fleet, which would undoubtedly have been far more expensive than the Ares I platform.
Senator Hutchison (R-TX)'s statement following the inaugural flight of Falcon 9 in 2010: "This first successful test flight of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket is a belated sign that efforts to develop modest commercial space cargo capabilities are showing some promising signs. While this test flight was important, the program to demonstrate commercial cargo and crew transport capabilities, which I support, was intended to enhance not replace NASA’s own proven abilities to deliver critical cargo and humans to low Earth orbit. Make no mistake, even this modest success is more than a year behind schedule, and the project deadlines of other private space companies continue to slip as well."
Senator Shelby (R-AL): Republican Sen. Richard Shelby, whose state of Alabama is also a NASA stronghold, further decried the launch as a display merely replicating what “NASA accomplished in 1964.”
“Belated progress for one so-called commercial provider must not be confused with progress for our nation’s human space flight program,” Shelby said. “As a nation, we cannot place our future space flight on one fledgling company’s definition of success.”
They're primarily talking about finding resources for use in space, not on earth. Sure water is easy to find on earth, but getting that water to the ISS costs a heck of a lot more.
According to Wikipedia: "In 1969, the cost of a Saturn V including launch was US $ 185 million (inflation adjusted US$ 1.11 billion in 2011)." According to SpaceX (projections, since obviously FH hasn't flown yet): "With Falcon Heavy priced at $80-125M per launch SpaceX has the potential to provide the US government significant value"
So 1/2 the performance at 1/10th the cost.
Falcon 1 Flight 3 definitely did not make orbit. As you noted though, that still puts SpaceX on even footing in terms of 'vehicles lost' vs 'vehicles that made orbit'. And since they're 3 for 3 on the last 3 launches, and 1 for 1 on the newest design, I'd say that throwing around "50% success rate" is a little bit misleading.
But casting him as an intellectual and a history buff? Have they ever even watched his program?
I wouldn't jump to conclusions about Beck as a person just based on how he acts on his program. It's fairly plausible that he hams it up a bit to play the 'everyman who loves his country' role that he's carved out. I haven't watched his program, but from what I hear it's a bit more over the top in comparison to his show back on CNN. He could very well be an intellectual and history buff, who happens to become an emotional demagogue once he's in front of the camera. Stewart and Colbert (as you noted) aren't the only ones playing up the entertainment angle.
The ISS would be absolutely worthless as a tether for a space elevator, not enough mass to be useful. Not to mention the fact that the anchor for a theoretical space elevator would have to be well past Geosynchronous orbit. The CG of the elevator needs to be at GEO, not the end of it.
ISO 9000 and ISO 9001 are not limited to the government. There are many industry standards regarding record keeping and paper trails of critical hardware.
SpaceX has developed their own engines. 4 at last count: Merlin, Merlin Vac, Kestrel, and Draco. They are using common dome tanks, which NASA (as far as I know) is not using in their current programs.
SpaceX started as little more than an assembler of outsourced and off the shelf parts, but these days they pretty much design and build as much in house as they can. They may be relying on a lot of NASA's theoretical research of years past, but they are definitely designing their own rocket rather than just slapping NASA parts together.
The Falcon 9 and the Ares I are both scheduled for their first test flights in 2009.
It's a bit misleading to state that the Ares I-x is the first flight of the Ares I. It's a test flight of the first stage, and it's not even a full length first stage. The true dates to compare are the dates that people fly on both rockets. For NASA, the stated goal is 2015. Elon Musk has stated that he could do it by 2012 if COTS-D was funded. Even allowing for the fact that SpaceX generally takes longer than Elon originally estimates, Falcon 9/Dragon could debut at the same time that Ares I/Orion does, at a fraction of the cost and manpower.
People complain about 'teaching for the test' because you end up with students who cram for two nights learning how to take a derivative, without ever knowing why they're doing it. Calculus isn't just about knowing the mechanics of taking a derivative or integral, it's about knowing when and why you should. It's about knowing that you can use derivatives to find minimums and maximums. About using integral to find out how much power that PV curve is actually outputting. Yes, much of that is buried in our physics and chemistry classes, but it shouldn't be.
Calculus is a tool, and the current method of teaching it is typically equivalent to handing kids a hammer and some nails and saying 'do this 50 times in a row.' Wouldn't you learn more about woodworking if the teacher briefly showed you the tools, and then showed you how to build something? You would learn the tools as needed to build better and better projects, rather than sitting around wondering what good a bandsaw is because all you've done is cut a board 100 times.
Apollo 11 was miles off target. That was corrected by the time Apollo 12 landed. They successfully landed within walking distance of the earlier Surveyor lander. In a powered lander with a bit of cross range capability (like the LM) you can get pretty accurate landings.
It's a regen engine, which has different shutdown properties than an ablative engine. It would have been difficult to see this on the first two flight given the fact that they were different engines.
What exactly from the Apollo stack was so environmentally damaging that it is now illegal? The worst chemicals I can think of were the hypergols in the lunar lander, but hypergolic propellants are still used on many satellites to this day.
Saying "The world is too complicated" sounds like a cop-out. Sure there's more information available than ever before, but there's also far more effective methods of accessing it than ever before. Knowing how to use google and wikipedia (and evaluate the credibility of the resultant sources) can give you answers to just about any question you can think of.
If people are sitting at home watching 20 hours of reality TV a week, then they have no excuse for being ill-informed.
The money for developing Ares comes in large part from the money currently allocated for shuttle operations. Barring an increase in NASA's budget, any prolonging of shuttle ops will primarily postpone the gap, not shrink it.
How much of Ohio's 11-19 billion is spent on processing paperwork to receive the ~700 million in federal money? Approximately 9 years ago, one of the national high school debate topics was how to improve education in the US. A surprising number of teams advocated abolishing the national Dept. of education. Many of them cited situation where districts had to hire extra personnel in order to process all the paperwork ensuring that they were in compliance with federal regulations and requirements. The paperwork ate up a pretty good chunk of that federal money in most cases.
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Tom Mueller was indeed head of several Pintle engine projects at TRW, but he was also working on a personal project in his garage when Elon came to talk to him. He was working on a project for a rocketry enthusiast club called Reaction Research Society. More details at this link: http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/space/rockets/4328638
The Vacuum optimized Merlin 1C is both regenerative and radiatively cooled. The main copper chamber is regen, and the columbium extension is radiative.
In general, the Merlin as a booster engine is far lighter and much cheaper than hydrolox booster engines (but much more inneficient). They are slightly lighter and much cheaper than typical russian kerolox booster engines (and slightly less efficient than them).
I wouldn't say the Merlin is horribly inefficient, more that it's focused on optimizing cost and thrust to weight ratio rather than ISP. There really hasn't been much in the way of American development of kerolox engines lately. Most people focus on hydrolox development or buy Russian kerolox.
Kennedy Space Center's souvenier shop sells some SpaceX gear (which I assume is authorized)
I believe he's actually referring to the $500m Ares I Mobile Launch Tower
It was the smaller portion of constellation. SLS is roughly in the same class as the Ares V, the larger half the constellation fleet, which would undoubtedly have been far more expensive than the Ares I platform.
Senator Hutchison (R-TX)'s statement following the inaugural flight of Falcon 9 in 2010: "This first successful test flight of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket is a belated sign that efforts to develop modest commercial space cargo capabilities are showing some promising signs. While this test flight was important, the program to demonstrate commercial cargo and crew transport capabilities, which I support, was intended to enhance not replace NASA’s own proven abilities to deliver critical cargo and humans to low Earth orbit. Make no mistake, even this modest success is more than a year behind schedule, and the project deadlines of other private space companies continue to slip as well."
Senator Shelby (R-AL): Republican Sen. Richard Shelby, whose state of Alabama is also a NASA stronghold, further decried the launch as a display merely replicating what “NASA accomplished in 1964.”
“Belated progress for one so-called commercial provider must not be confused with progress for our nation’s human space flight program,” Shelby said. “As a nation, we cannot place our future space flight on one fledgling company’s definition of success.”
Source: SpacePolitics.com
They're primarily talking about finding resources for use in space, not on earth. Sure water is easy to find on earth, but getting that water to the ISS costs a heck of a lot more.
SuperDraco is in the 10-20 thousand pound range. You likely heard a Merlin engine (100k+)
According to Wikipedia: "In 1969, the cost of a Saturn V including launch was US $ 185 million (inflation adjusted US$ 1.11 billion in 2011)." According to SpaceX (projections, since obviously FH hasn't flown yet): "With Falcon Heavy priced at $80-125M per launch SpaceX has the potential to provide the US government significant value" So 1/2 the performance at 1/10th the cost.
Falcon 1 Flight 3 definitely did not make orbit. As you noted though, that still puts SpaceX on even footing in terms of 'vehicles lost' vs 'vehicles that made orbit'. And since they're 3 for 3 on the last 3 launches, and 1 for 1 on the newest design, I'd say that throwing around "50% success rate" is a little bit misleading.
I wouldn't jump to conclusions about Beck as a person just based on how he acts on his program. It's fairly plausible that he hams it up a bit to play the 'everyman who loves his country' role that he's carved out. I haven't watched his program, but from what I hear it's a bit more over the top in comparison to his show back on CNN. He could very well be an intellectual and history buff, who happens to become an emotional demagogue once he's in front of the camera. Stewart and Colbert (as you noted) aren't the only ones playing up the entertainment angle.
The ISS would be absolutely worthless as a tether for a space elevator, not enough mass to be useful. Not to mention the fact that the anchor for a theoretical space elevator would have to be well past Geosynchronous orbit. The CG of the elevator needs to be at GEO, not the end of it.
Sending someone suborbital isn't quite the same as a multi-day orbital trip to the ISS.
ISO 9000 and ISO 9001 are not limited to the government. There are many industry standards regarding record keeping and paper trails of critical hardware.
SpaceX has developed their own engines. 4 at last count: Merlin, Merlin Vac, Kestrel, and Draco. They are using common dome tanks, which NASA (as far as I know) is not using in their current programs. SpaceX started as little more than an assembler of outsourced and off the shelf parts, but these days they pretty much design and build as much in house as they can. They may be relying on a lot of NASA's theoretical research of years past, but they are definitely designing their own rocket rather than just slapping NASA parts together.
The Falcon 9 and the Ares I are both scheduled for their first test flights in 2009.
It's a bit misleading to state that the Ares I-x is the first flight of the Ares I. It's a test flight of the first stage, and it's not even a full length first stage. The true dates to compare are the dates that people fly on both rockets. For NASA, the stated goal is 2015. Elon Musk has stated that he could do it by 2012 if COTS-D was funded. Even allowing for the fact that SpaceX generally takes longer than Elon originally estimates, Falcon 9/Dragon could debut at the same time that Ares I/Orion does, at a fraction of the cost and manpower.
People complain about 'teaching for the test' because you end up with students who cram for two nights learning how to take a derivative, without ever knowing why they're doing it. Calculus isn't just about knowing the mechanics of taking a derivative or integral, it's about knowing when and why you should. It's about knowing that you can use derivatives to find minimums and maximums. About using integral to find out how much power that PV curve is actually outputting. Yes, much of that is buried in our physics and chemistry classes, but it shouldn't be. Calculus is a tool, and the current method of teaching it is typically equivalent to handing kids a hammer and some nails and saying 'do this 50 times in a row.' Wouldn't you learn more about woodworking if the teacher briefly showed you the tools, and then showed you how to build something? You would learn the tools as needed to build better and better projects, rather than sitting around wondering what good a bandsaw is because all you've done is cut a board 100 times.
Apollo 11 was miles off target. That was corrected by the time Apollo 12 landed. They successfully landed within walking distance of the earlier Surveyor lander. In a powered lander with a bit of cross range capability (like the LM) you can get pretty accurate landings.
It's got more power than the XCOR engine, which is why RRL is switching to Armadillo as its primary engine manufacturer.
Don't forget the Martian winter. The lander is a short duration mission, it won't make it through. There is definitely a time limit in play.
It's a regen engine, which has different shutdown properties than an ablative engine. It would have been difficult to see this on the first two flight given the fact that they were different engines.
What exactly from the Apollo stack was so environmentally damaging that it is now illegal? The worst chemicals I can think of were the hypergols in the lunar lander, but hypergolic propellants are still used on many satellites to this day.
A gallon is 231 cubic inches, obviously.
Saying "The world is too complicated" sounds like a cop-out. Sure there's more information available than ever before, but there's also far more effective methods of accessing it than ever before. Knowing how to use google and wikipedia (and evaluate the credibility of the resultant sources) can give you answers to just about any question you can think of. If people are sitting at home watching 20 hours of reality TV a week, then they have no excuse for being ill-informed.
The money for developing Ares comes in large part from the money currently allocated for shuttle operations. Barring an increase in NASA's budget, any prolonging of shuttle ops will primarily postpone the gap, not shrink it.
How much of Ohio's 11-19 billion is spent on processing paperwork to receive the ~700 million in federal money? Approximately 9 years ago, one of the national high school debate topics was how to improve education in the US. A surprising number of teams advocated abolishing the national Dept. of education. Many of them cited situation where districts had to hire extra personnel in order to process all the paperwork ensuring that they were in compliance with federal regulations and requirements. The paperwork ate up a pretty good chunk of that federal money in most cases.