McTurkeyArs Praetorianreplya day agoReader Favignore user
dr_lha wrote:

"Should we only allow billionaires and formal aerospace engineers to lead our way into space? "

Forget the billionaires part, I read like like "should we only allow formal doctors to perform surgeries?"

I completely agree that we don't need to have only billionaires leading the way. We don't even need to have exclusively people who've graduated college be the ones doing it, as there are self-taught engineers capable of delivering great results. But to denigrate the value of knowledge and education in one of the most complex fields of engineering, which has the capacity for considerable death and destruction if done poorly, seems like the kind of hubris that's going to be worthy of a group Darwin Award. //

ColdWetDogArs Tribunus Angusticlaviuset Subscriptorreplya day agoReader Favignore user
stdaro wrote:
I wonder if high volume megarocket launches are better off all happening from off-shore platforms.

mega-rockets and their required infrastructure are highly disruptive to their surroundings. Also, ideally, they're launched near open water to avoid overflying populated areas (ahem China), and the sea shore is environmentally sensitive. The shore areas that aren't under conservation of some kind are usually populated, and the sound and shock wave of launches isn't great to live near.

Once you're good at getting all the stuff on a barge and getting it out to a platform, you're not so limited by geography and you can launch from wherever is most advantageous for orbital mechanics. We could stop doing all our crewed LEO stuff in the weird inclinations that are easiest to get to, and just do stuff in equatorial orbits.

You could do all the polar orbits from the north pole once the ice caps are done melting :(

Ask anyone in the offshore oil business about how expensive it is. Sure, we can do lots of things on off shore platforms / repurposed boats but it is hella expensive. So you need sufficient volume to justify the capex and opex. We don't have that yet.

Now, Elon thinks, at some level, this is a good idea and has purchased (at fire sale prices) two slightly used semi submersible oil drilling rigs. Work is not proceeding as rapidly as is SpaceX's norm so it seems like their isn't the pressure to get this part of the Starship/SH system working isn't all that high.

So stay tuned to this space (umm).

And you don't need to go to the north pole for polar launches. You can do two things, move out of the way of land to the north of your launch site via boat or barge or just do a dogleg. With Falcon 9 and presumably Starship/SH they have enough delta v to do that.

Having a direct line of sight to the poles made sense in the early days when you were scrapping for every bit of deltaV. Now we have a bit more power so we can use it to make life easier. //

McTurkeyArs Praetorianreplya day agoReader Favignore user
etxdm wrote:

Having spent a good portion of my career as an engineer helping to start up new petrochemical plants, I sympathize with the SLS teams. I will say though, that although our facilities were every bit as complex as the SLS fueling and launch systems, we were expected to work through the gremlins and get things working well as soon as each section of equipment was built and transferred to operations. I'm puzzled about why valves and fans weren't completely debugged and commissioned before there was a rocket mated to the launch assembly. Anyone who has put together a critical path diagram tries to use as many parallel steps as possible.

That's not an efficient way to make more money. See, you're thinking like an engineer. SLS was not conceived by, managed by, or designed by engineers. Oh sure, the finer points were done by actual trained engineers. But the big picture? The order of tasks? The checklists? That all went through people whose sole professional purpose is the extraction of taxpayer wealth in order to preserve ongoing employment in specific organizations and locations. You don't maximize the plus in cost-plus contracting by being efficient with your engineering and processes, but rather the opposite. Technical problems? That sounds like justification to keep people working longer without having to actually.. you know.. expend physical hardware or deliver a functioning product (both of which would reduce the available options and excuses for arbitrary ongoing delays).

I wish I were being sarcastic.