Trololzilla wrote:

Speculation seems to be increasing that SpaceX and Tesla may merge in the future.

Will they have a road-legal Falcon 9 anytime in the future? Or what is the synergy effect?

David

flyingturtle wrote:

Trololzilla wrote:

Speculation seems to be increasing that SpaceX and Tesla may merge in the future.

Will they have a road-legal Falcon 9 anytime in the future? Or what is the synergy effect?

David

It mainly just allows for greater integration, IMO. If they were to merge, then Elon wouldn't have to dedicate his time between two different companies (and The Boring Company); he'd only have to spend it at 'one'. A rather large, complicated one at that, but a single entity nonetheless.

Since Tesla owns SolarCity as well, it'd essentially be merging three companies that together could do a lot of the things necessary for interplanetary colonization: one part covers the space transportation/infrastructure aspect (SpaceX), one part covers vehicular transportation and energy storage (Tesla, who could spin off a division that focuses on extraplanetary vehicles i.e. manned/unmanned rovers and their ilk, and Powerpack/Powerwall), and one part covers renewable energy production (SolarCity).

Expanding upon this idea, Elon could even merge this "supercompany" with The Boring Company to help build underground infrastructure, vital to initial colonization efforts. Expanding on this concept even further, Elon could either start his own Hyperloop company or absorb one of the leading companies in that field, gaining a foothold in "mass transportation" (however contentious that designation may be for the Hyperloop concept). Finally, for the actual structures, he could either set up a division of this supercompany that focuses on building planetary habitats, etc., or even purchase an existing company (i.e. Bigelow Aerospace) and expand their purview.

I highly doubt all this would happen (or even some of it), but it honestly does make a whole lot of sense from one point of view (maybe not from an antitrust or realism POV, however).

Trololzilla wrote:

flyingturtle wrote:

Trololzilla wrote:

Speculation seems to be increasing that SpaceX and Tesla may merge in the future.

Will they have a road-legal Falcon 9 anytime in the future? Or what is the synergy effect?

David

It mainly just allows for greater integration, IMO. If they were to merge, then Elon wouldn't have to dedicate his time between two different companies (and The Boring Company); he'd only have to spend it at 'one'. A rather large, complicated one at that, but a single entity nonetheless.

Since Tesla owns SolarCity as well, it'd essentially be merging three companies that together could do a lot of the things necessary for interplanetary colonization: one part covers the space transportation/infrastructure aspect (SpaceX), one part covers vehicular transportation and energy storage (Tesla, who could spin off a division that focuses on extraplanetary vehicles i.e. manned/unmanned rovers and their ilk, and Powerpack/Powerwall), and one part covers renewable energy production (SolarCity).

Expanding upon this idea, Elon could even merge this "supercompany" with The Boring Company to help build underground infrastructure, vital to initial colonization efforts. Expanding on this concept even further, Elon could either start his own Hyperloop company or absorb one of the leading companies in that field, gaining a foothold in "mass transportation" (however contentious that designation may be for the Hyperloop concept). Finally, for the actual structures, he could either set up a division of this supercompany that focuses on building planetary habitats, etc., or even purchase an existing company (i.e. Bigelow Aerospace) and expand their purview.

I highly doubt all this would happen (or even some of it), but it honestly does make a whole lot of sense from one point of view (maybe not from an antitrust or realism POV, however).

The main issue is that Tesla is a black hole in terms of profitability right now, whereas SpaceX is doing OK.

The Boring Company isn't doing anything new with tech, as Musk just bought his tunnelling machines from another established boring company - I don't think this endeavour will end up doing something, it will probably close down quietly in a year or two.

Tesla does own SolarCity, and that's the real interesting part of all this - the battery production and solar generation tech. It wouldn't surprise me if Musk started work on an orbital solar generator system, with microwave transmission to ground - think of that as a renewable resource... 100,000km squared of generation capacity in orbit. Now that would be a statement.

Well it's one way of financing Tesla I suppose.He can't sell it as the shares are too expensive.But in many ways his job is done.Electric cars are now here to stay it might be better for an automotive company with real manufacturing experience to run it now.
Boring? Yup the first machine is a standard (snail) boring machine,nothing special at all.But the new one is supposed to be 10 times faster.One rumour is that it might use 'fracking' techniques to break up the rock layer in the hole face prior to 'drilling' it out.But who knows.

As for Spacex.He needs the 'Heavy' launch to go well.
Whilst he may talk a lot about his BFR truth is his money will be made on the Facon 9 and Heavy.And he could make a lot I believe.

Still more speculation on a merger:

http://www.businessinsider.com/a-tesla- ... de-2017-12

We also have the inklings of a new space race between SpaceX and Boeing (via ULA):

https://www.space.com/39014-will-boeing ... -mars.html

That is precisely what Musk has wanted all along. Good to see that he's really upped the ante in the space industry and is starting to force his competitors to respond in earnest.

Trololzilla wrote:

We also have the inklings of a new space race between SpaceX and Boeing (via ULA):

https://www.space.com/39014-will-boeing ... -mars.html

That is precisely what Musk has wanted all along. Good to see that he's really upped the ante in the space industry and is starting to force his competitors to respond in earnest.

ULA has nothing to do with Boeing's SLS program.

Building Real-time Systems with Bazel w/ SpaceX
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_3bckhV_YI
This certainly belongs on a tech/ops forum.

Beautiful CRS-13 landing at LZ-1 today. What a time to be alive.

Leslieville wrote:

Beautiful CRS-13 landing at LZ-1 today. What a time to be alive.

I surely hope CRS-13 hasn't landed!

But yes, I read "Spaceport U.S.A." by Martin Caidin, and anybody telling the 1950ies engineers of Falcon 9's capabilities would have been met with derision.


David

Quite apart from the technological and space exploration strides, it's a relaxing way to get back from work, check You Tube and settle down for a nice webcast of the launch!
Though it will be rather more tense when Falcon Heavy goes, still another success today, 2nd use of both 1st stage and Dragon.

Fantastic watching the separation of stages, attitude adjustment, and boostback burn. That must be one humongous lens. Perfect landing too.
The Dragon capsule will be joining up with the ISS on Sunday.
Well done SpaceX! Rinse* and repeat!

*They did say the soot only gets washed off returned rockets where it's necessary.

I don't remember a past launch where we got to see the whole MECO, seperation, second stage start, first stage flip, and boostback burn start all in one view. That was truly amazing.

Anyways, big props to the SpaceX team for making this basically normal. A true sign of knowing what you're doing, it starts to look simple.

flyingturtle wrote:

zanl188 wrote:

Forum member HeloDriver mentioned it on nasaspaceflight.com in September 2012. Is Musk lurking on spaceflight forums? HeloDriver has asked Musk for a tour of the payload on twitter.

Well, I've read the suggestion that the first FH payload could be a Tesla months before. In a comment on youtube. It's not that ill-logical.


David

A Tea Cattle would add a nice touch, but perhaps he is keeping that one until the first Jupiter mission.

Best regards
Thomas

tommy1808 wrote:

A Tea Cattle

Is that the race of bovines that you cut the T-Bone Steaks from?
SCNR.

WIederling wrote:

tommy1808 wrote:

A Tea Cattle

Is that the race of bovines that you cut the T-Bone Steaks from?
SCNR.

Yup


The tea is how they get their colour.

Best regards
Thomas

Congrats SpaceX on another successful mission! Launch, landing and payload delivery went 100% as planned. The video feed was really great on this launch as well, was spectacular to watch the stage seperation and boostback from the ground camera.. and then the landing of the first stage. Just amazing.

tommy1808 wrote:

Yup
https://abload.de/thumb/space-cowcmq5o.jpg[/url]
The tea is how they get their colour.
s

A beaut in contrast to those square pigs from the "Space Trucker" movie : https://www.propmasters.net/images/spac ... nshotb.jpg

JetBuddy wrote:

Congrats SpaceX on another successful mission! Launch, landing and payload delivery went 100% as planned. The video feed was really great on this launch as well, was spectacular to watch the stage seperation and boostback from the ground camera.. and then the landing of the first stage. Just amazing.

I had a beautiful view of the ISS with the Dragon capsule chasing last night as they passed overhead in the late evening. I am hoping now to see the same with the Soyuz carrying the additional crew tomorrow!

Tugg

Tugger wrote:

JetBuddy wrote:

Congrats SpaceX on another successful mission! Launch, landing and payload delivery went 100% as planned. The video feed was really great on this launch as well, was spectacular to watch the stage seperation and boostback from the ground camera.. and then the landing of the first stage. Just amazing.

I had a beautiful view of the ISS with the Dragon capsule chasing last night as they passed overhead in the late evening. I am hoping now to see the same with the Soyuz carrying the additional crew tomorrow!

Tugg

That is awesome! I believe I saw the upper stage from the Ariane 5 a few days ago flying from southwest to northeast over Northern Europe. Most people aren't aware that these things often can be spotted from the ground, even without any magnification.

Here it is: the first Falcon Heavy.

KarelXWB wrote:

Here it is: the first Falcon Heavy.

Oh wow...

I'll get FURIOUS if I can't watch the launch live. They could fuel the next Falcon 9 purely with my anger.


David

KarelXWB wrote:

Here it is: the first Falcon Heavy.

That's a whole lotta thrust!

Tugg

What a beauty! This thing is a technological marvel. Looking forward to the launch!

Looks like they are fueling it from the right side. Wonder if that piece makes it to the pad or not?

3 fewer engines than the Soviet N-1. All of which failed. :p

This is going to be a beast to see launch.

ZaphodHarkonnen wrote:

3 fewer engines than the Soviet N-1. All of which failed. :p

This is going to be a beast to see launch.

Gotta love Elon's quote:

“I hope it makes it far enough away from the pad that it does not cause pad damage,” said Musk in July. “I would consider even that a win, to be honest.”

https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/20/168 ... avy-rocket

Tugg

What a majestic sight. Can't wait for the launch.

Oh my oh my... What an awesome sight, thanks for posting that

What is the 'bar' that goes across all 3 boosters just above the grid fins.The right hand one has a vertices part running down the length of the booster the other 2 seem to have smaller versions.It this fuelling or relief valves?

parapente wrote:

What is the 'bar' that goes across all 3 boosters just above the grid fins.The right hand one has a vertices part running down the length of the booster the other 2 seem to have smaller versions.It this fuelling or relief valves?

Cutting charges for emergecy abort?

some plumbing?

No first stage landing for the upcoming Iridium launch:

https://www.space.com/39172-spacex-to-s ... aunch.html

Always a bit disappointing whenever there isn't a landing, but I can see why they might not want to land another F9 FT (non B4). Oh well - the main mission is the priority anyway.

Does anyone have any insight as to why the outer ring of 8 engines on the boosters seems to be rotated a few degrees clockwise?

meecrob wrote:

Does anyone have any insight as to why the outer ring of 8 engines on the boosters seems to be rotated a few degrees clockwise?

I'd imagine is a shockwave issue - they don't want any shockwave being reflected back upward where the boosters shockwaves meet.

Oh, so if I understand you correctly, if they lined up the engines "square" to the booster body, the thrust of the engines adjacent to eachother on different boosters would add up to produce a force that pushes the bottom of the left and right boosters away from the center booster? Or is it interference with the boosters aerodynamic shockwave?

parapente wrote:

What is the 'bar' that goes across all 3 boosters just above the grid fins.The right hand one has a vertices part running down the length of the booster the other 2 seem to have smaller versions.It this fuelling or relief valves?

Cross feed from the outer boosters? All 3 cores burn the fuel in the outer 2 boosters first, jettison the outer boosters, then you have a fully fueled falcon 9 way up high.

Oroka wrote:

parapente wrote:

What is the 'bar' that goes across all 3 boosters just above the grid fins.The right hand one has a vertices part running down the length of the booster the other 2 seem to have smaller versions.It this fuelling or relief valves?

Cross feed from the outer boosters? All 3 cores burn the fuel in the outer 2 boosters first, jettison the outer boosters, then you have a fully fueled falcon 9 way up high.

I cant check this until I get back home, but I am pretty sure that cross fuelling was abandoned as a concept a couple of years ago - instead, the FH launches with the two outer boosters at full thrust and the core is severely throttled back early on, then throttling back up after the outer boosters separate.

Edit: yup, its not been developed (yet) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_He ... _crossfeed

What are the benefits of cross fueling?

KarelXWB wrote:

What are the benefits of cross fueling?

As Oroka says, you end up with a fully fuelled core stage at altitude.

Even with the plan of throttling down the core stage in the current FH plan, and even with the deep throttling they have developed into the Merlin 1D engine, its still producing 30-40% thrust, meaning its still burning fuel, so you only have a core stage which is 60-70% fuelled at booster separation.

Now, you could throttle back the boosters as well, and separate at a higher altitude, but thats not always possible within the parameters of a mission - meanwhile, having a fully fuelled core stage at altitude would open up a lot more missions than a partially fuelled one.

60-70% is still a huge amount of power from what is a large rocket.Clearly it can push a dragon capsule to a moon orbit and back and it was pencilled in for a mars orbit at one time (red dragon).
I wonder whether it could be used to take a craft into Moon orbit (ie a back burn for lunar orbit).That would leave the second stage for a return to earth and reentry.Sadly not enough for a lander as well -need a Saturn for that sort of work.

Given how routine in orbit rendezvous is these days two launches makes total sense for capsule and lander.

moo wrote:

Now, you could throttle back the boosters as well, and separate at a higher altitude, but thats not always possible within the parameters of a mission - meanwhile, having a fully fuelled core stage at altitude would open up a lot more missions than a partially fuelled one.

That's the part I'm not fully understanding. If the boosters have enough fuel left to feed the center core, why not burning the booster a little bit longer to reach higher heights?

parapente wrote:

60-70% is still a huge amount of power from what is a large rocket.Clearly it can push a dragon capsule to a moon orbit and back and it was pencilled in for a mars orbit at one time (red dragon).
I wonder whether it could be used to take a craft into Moon orbit (ie a back burn for lunar orbit).That would leave the second stage for a return to earth and reentry.Sadly not enough for a lander as well -need a Saturn for that sort of work.

No. Even with a full core at separation, it's doubtful the core could make orbit, let alone lunar orbit - people underestimate the job of the stages, especially the role of the second stage.

The F9 first stage weighs a *lot*. The reason it's dumped is to get rid of that weight - the second stage then does a lot of the job. The recent CRS-13 staged at just under 6000km/h at a height of 70km, and the second stage cut off at 27,000km/h at a height of over 200km. The reason the second stage can do that is because a huge amount of the weight is gone.

What is possible is getting a larger second stage into orbit - which would then be used for the trans lunar injection.

moo wrote:

What is possible is getting a larger second stage into orbit - which would then be used for the trans lunar injection.

Then that's likely to happen. We know SpaceX wants to fly Dragon 2 around the moon.

KarelXWB wrote:

moo wrote:

Now, you could throttle back the boosters as well, and separate at a higher altitude, but thats not always possible within the parameters of a mission - meanwhile, having a fully fuelled core stage at altitude would open up a lot more missions than a partially fuelled one.

That's the part I'm not fully understanding. If the boosters have enough fuel left to feed the center core, why not burning the booster a little bit longer to reach higher heights?

I'm not understanding you.

With the cross feed plan, the goal is to fuel all three cores from the fuel tanks of the two outer boosters until booster separation - this would leave the centre core with a full fuel load at a higher altitude, where the thrust does more for less due to less drag.

It's all a trade off - with cross feeding, you get to burn the boosters for a shorter time, but you also get to dump the weight of the boosters earlier and gain height quicker.

Without cross feeding, you do get to burn the boosters for longer (as they aren't sharing their fuel) but you carry their weight for longer. And you end up with less fuel in the core after separation if you throttle the core down - but this also means you lack the extra thrust to get you through the denser air quicker...

Remember, it's all about weight - you want to shed more of it quicker, and once the fuel is gone an empty tank is just dead weight.

ZaphodHarkonnen wrote:

Given how routine in orbit rendezvous is these days two launches makes total sense for capsule and lander.

Pretty sure SpaceX ran into an issue recently trying to do multiple launches in quick succession - the NASA ranges apparently take time (days) to reset after a launch to support a second launch, so SpaceX would need to solve that issue too.

Tesla Roadster and launch adapter for upcoming Falcon Heavy launch:

zanl188 wrote:

Tesla Roadster and launch adapter for upcoming Falcon Heavy launch:

While I don't have any personal experience I can say for a fact that: It is awesome to be a billionaire....
(especially one that owns a successful rocket company)


Today's Iridium launch window starts at 5:27 p.m. PST Friday, December 22 (1:27 UTC Saturday, December 23). As noted by others,somewhat disappointingly the booster will not be recovered (amazing how used to it we are now).

Tugg

KarelXWB wrote:

What are the benefits of cross fueling?

I'm sure cross-feed will never happen...The 1st stage and boosters are highly pressurized and would require heavy pumps to move fuel and LOX between cores in feed lines -- having both weight and aerodynamic penalties Or the engine turbo-pumps could be used to move some of the fuel between cores but that would be complicated. Either way the gain from dropping off the boosters faster is likely lost by the weight and aero penalties..

Also more possibilities of failure modes would be introduced....keep it simple.

KarelXWB wrote:

moo wrote:

Now, you could throttle back the boosters as well, and separate at a higher altitude, but thats not always possible within the parameters of a mission - meanwhile, having a fully fuelled core stage at altitude would open up a lot more missions than a partially fuelled one.

That's the part I'm not fully understanding. If the boosters have enough fuel left to feed the center core, why not burning the booster a little bit longer to reach higher heights?

For simplicity lets say booster and centre core have fuel for 150 seconds each. You throttle the centre engine to 40% without crossfeed. The boosters separate at t=150 with the centre stage having 60% fuel, 90 seconds of flight until 2nd stage separation. With crossfeed your boosters fall away from a fully fueled core after 100 seconds, which then burns for 150 seconds.
Without the crossfeed the two boosters empty weight is basically dead weight that could have been discarded 50 seconds earlier with it. Of course you have to subtract the weight of the crossfeed system.
This "saved" weight can be invested in fuel, allowing higher payload and/or allow soft landing after more demanding missions.

QuarkFly wrote:

KarelXWB wrote:

What are the benefits of cross fueling?

I'm sure cross-feed will never happen...The 1st stage and boosters are highly pressurized and would require heavy pumps to move fuel and LOX between cores in feed lines -- having both weight and aerodynamic penalties Or the engine turbo-pumps could be used to move some of the fuel between cores but that would be complicated.

The SSME's seem to have been fine sucking their fuel out of the external tank. But i would think launch vehicles would need to grow quite a bit before all that extra plumbing becomes weight efficient.

Best regards
Thomas

The picture of the Roadster on top of the launch adapter is awesome. Where did you find that?