SpaceX plans to send two people around the Moon in late 2018

NovemberEcho said:
Maybe it's Tom Cruise sponsored by the Churxh of Scientology to try and find L. Ron Hubbard and the Eton spaceship.

Seriously though, would the be considered astronauts or just passengers? A License won't mean jack on a fully automated flight.
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Be perfectly alright with me if he was given a little too much delta-V.
 
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RDoug said:
Not if you include pre-Mercury. :stir:
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Bwahahaha. Indeed. Many BIG explosions. But that's rocket science.

The more I learn about the Apollo program, the more amazed I am that they didn't lose anyone in flight. Apollo 8 was probably the riskiest, balls-out mission NASA's ever flown, and the decision to engage in all-up testing to meet Kennedy's deadline was also tremendously hazardous. I sort of discard the non-crewed failures when considering the history of the American space program; a booster blowing up with a satellite on top is scientifically interesting but socially unremarkable.

The fact that, post-CSM-012, they got almost everything "right" is amazing.

mshunter said:
Yeah, because they didn't kill anyone, or have any accidents prior to the shuttle program.
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I presume you're mostly referring to Apollo 1.

Block I was a POS.
 
I wouldn't get on that rocket if you paid me what it cost to design, build and deploy it. I know there are people that would but I'm not one of them. I'm all for pushing boundaries, but this whole thing is a bit too rushed and commercialized for me. I honestly doubt it'll get off of the ground before 2020, and if it does it'll be an unmanned proving run. Anyone that would sign up to go to outer space in unproven technology should have their head examined.
 
knot4u said:
I wouldn't get on that rocket if you paid me what it cost to design, build and deploy it. I know there are people that would but I'm not one of them. I'm all for pushing boundaries, but this whole thing is a bit too rushed and commercialized for me. I honestly doubt it'll get off of the ground before 2020, and if it does it'll be an unmanned proving run. Anyone that would sign up to go to outer space in unproven technology should have their head examined.
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Well, that's sort of how progress is made. "We've never tried this before."

I'd go. I won't pay for it, but I'd fly it. It's a somewhat crazy idea and it's a risky approach, but I'll go.

That said, the level of seriousness that the Apollo program put into flight termination options was staggering—probably because of how adversely the program was seen during the time it was running and as a result of the Apollo I fire. I just read a paper about abort option planning, and how each phase of the flight was meticulously planned to have some sort of alternative course of action to prevent the loss of the crew. Of course, some phases just don't have any redundancy (initial boost, ascent from the Lunar surface and trans-earth injection), but almost everything else had very strong, redundant contingency planning.

(I still think an Abort Mode 1-Alpha during the first thirty seconds of powered flight would have killed the crew as booster engine cutoff was inhibited due to not wanting to rain angry bits of RP-1 and hot metal on the launchpad, but at least there was an option; basically anything wrong with the Shuttle while the SRBs were operating related to control or propulsion was a loss-of-crew-and-vehicle scenario even post-Challenger.)

trafficinsight said:
And their record with shuttle was, well, better than SpaceX so far.

But hey if you're rich enough to take the chance, go for it :)
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That too.

The politics of the Shuttle program were terrible, though. Let's have the incredibly intelligent, wonderfully well-read and amazingly attractive Vintage Space gal summarize it—
 
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Autothrust Blue said:
(I still think an Abort Mode 1-Alpha during the first thirty seconds of powered flight would have killed the crew as booster engine cutoff was inhibited due to not wanting to rain angry bits of RP-1 and hot metal on the launchpad, but at least there was an option; basically anything wrong with the Shuttle while the SRBs were operating related to control or propulsion was a loss-of-crew-and-vehicle scenario even post-Challenger.)
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I wish I knew what all that meant cause it sounds awesome. (I mean, I get the gist of it, I need to find the details)
 
NovemberEcho said:
I wish I knew what all that meant cause it sounds awesome. (I mean, I get the gist of it, I need to find the details)
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Abort Mode 1 generally referred to an abort where the thrust was provided by the launch escape system tower; 1-A was the low altitude mode, from a height of 0 feet to something like 10,000'. Range safety mandated no engine cutoff during the first 30 seconds of flight (it is rude to rain propellant on the heads of visiting dignitaries). The LES tower had a primary motor for "forward" thrust plus a pitch-control motor that was used to turn the capsule blunt-end-forward for splashdown; both motors would fire for a 1A abort.
 
Autothrust Blue said:
Well, that's sort of how progress is made. "We've never tried this before."

I'd go. I won't pay for it, but I'd fly it. It's a somewhat crazy idea and it's a risky approach, but I'll go.

That said, the level of seriousness that the Apollo program put into flight termination options was staggering—probably because of how adversely the program was seen during the time it was running and as a result of the Apollo I fire. I just read a paper about abort option planning, and how each phase of the flight was meticulously planned to have some sort of alternative course of action to prevent the loss of the crew. Of course, some phases just don't have any redundancy (initial boost, ascent from the Lunar surface and trans-earth injection), but almost everything else had very strong, redundant contingency planning.

(I still think an Abort Mode 1-Alpha during the first thirty seconds of powered flight would have killed the crew as booster engine cutoff was inhibited due to not wanting to rain angry bits of RP-1 and hot metal on the launchpad, but at least there was an option; basically anything wrong with the Shuttle while the SRBs were operating related to control or propulsion was a loss-of-crew-and-vehicle scenario even post-Challenger.)


That too.

The politics of the Shuttle program were terrible, though. Let's have the incredibly intelligent, wonderfully well-read and amazingly attractive Vintage Space gal summarize it—
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I recall reading somewhere that that is exactly the reason why they chose hyperglolic fuels for the CSM and the LM during the apollo program. "Sure, we don't have many abort modes - but this damn thing is going to fire off."
 
ppragman said:
I recall reading somewhere that that is exactly the reason why they chose hyperglolic fuels for the CSM and the LM during the apollo program. "Sure, we don't have many abort modes - but this damn thing is going to fire off."
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The Service Propulsion System, before the lunar orbit rendezvous mission mode was chosen, was going to land and takeoff a full spacecraft on the Moon, which explains a whole bunch of why it is the way it is, including its ridiculous amount of thrust and the fact that it had two of everything other than a bell and combustion chamber.
 
I'd still submit STS-1 was the riskiest space flight ever attempted. Granted it wasn't leaving LEO, but there was basically no survivable abort option ever, other than a short TAL window (feasibility of such abort will never be known), and nothing beyond high final in the orbiter had ever been legitimately tested outside of a computer. That's a lot of modeling and assumptions to bet your life on. Not to mention that the SSME's had a long history of disintegrating, long before the first flight, or when the SRB's started hinting that they might do the same on STS-51L. That and nobody actually had data to model flight anywhere in the atmosphere above mach 6, let alone 25 IMN, at least in anything other than a capsule/MIRV. Perhaps that data was more applicable, and I think it probably must have been, but still, STS-1 was an uncharacteristically bold flight for NASA to undertake, given it's historical penchant for flying several times unmanned to prove a concept in Mercury/Gemini/Apollo. Add the fact that the STS ultimately rode a failure rate (loss of crew/vehicle) about 10,000 times higher than predicted and sold to the Capitol, and one might start to question the modeling that the first flight was based upon.
 
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///AMG said:
I'd still submit STS-1 was the riskiest space flight ever attempted. Granted it wasn't leaving LEO, but there was basically no survivable abort option ever, other than a short TAL window (feasibility of such abort will never be known), and nothing beyond high final in the orbiter had ever been legitimately tested outside of a computer. That's a lot of modeling and assumptions to bet your life on. Not to mention that the SSME's had a long history of disintegrating, long before the first flight, or when the SRB's started hinting that they might do the same on STS-51L. That and nobody actually had data to model flight anywhere in the atmosphere above mach 6, let alone 25 IMN, at least in anything other than a capsule/MIRV. Perhaps that data was more applicable, and I think it probably must have been, but still, STS-1 was an uncharacteristically bold flight for NASA to undertake, given it's historical penchant for flying several times unmanned to prove a concept in Mercury/Gemini/Apollo. Add the fact that the STS ultimately rode a failure rate (loss of crew/vehicle) about 10,000 times higher than predicted and sold to the Capitol, and one might start to question the modeling that the first flight was based upon.
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I'll buy that. The Shuttle was cool simply because all of the technology was at limit, but that doesn't make for a safe or reliable vehicle, and there were no escape options as you pointed out.

I remember reading that Young (?) objected to making STS-1 a RTLS abort test, saying something like "let's not practice Russian roulette."

The myth of re-usability. If people would stop smoking Elon's junk so much, they'd realize the payload capacity sacrificed so that they can land a booster to "refurbish" it to LEO/GEO just isn't really worth it.
 
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Autothrust Blue said:
The myth of re-usability. If people would stop smoking Elon's junk so much, they'd realize the payload capacity sacrificed so that they can land a booster to "refurbish" it to LEO/GEO just isn't really worth it.
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:confused::confused::confused: Um....er.....Whach you talking about Willis??? :confused::confused::confused::confused:
 
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