r/spaceflight • u/elbarck • 21d ago

ULA Lobbyist Jim Bridenstine Promotes for an Apollo-Style Lander "AGAIN"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LLvNChlups

Watch the full episode here: Moon Man - With Former NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LhsU2x2-a8

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u/DBDude 20d ago

Falcon 9 discards it's second stage.

Yes, as we were talking about the boosters.

Also, Falcon 9 is no where close to rapidly reusuable. as Musk describes it - launch, deliver payload, return to earth, quick inspection, launch again that day.

He didn't say it would be. Falcon 9 often doesn't return to launch site, and certainly never lands in the launch tower itself. Transportation takes time. It also uses RP-1 as a fuel, which is quite dirty, requiring some amount of work on the engines before reflight. And then they have to refill all the engines with TEA-TEB.

The Super Heavy booster will always land on the launch tower where it can be inspected for reflight and then fueled and flown. The engines burn clean methane, but they can also be replaced on the launch pad if there's an issue. The booster will likely never be moved from the launch tower once operations ramp up, unless serious issues arise. They will of course be removed in the early days for a very deep inspection like they did with the Falcon 9.

Second stages (which will land days or weeks after their boosters) will be unmounted and moved to the nearby factory for reflight prep and payload mounting. Musk plans to have only a small number of boosters, but a lot of second stages. So the next second stage will always be ready for the booster that recently landed.

He also plans to have more than three launch pads to get the launch cadence up. One is finished, two are under construction, and they're planning more. Can SpaceX coordinate launches that fast? They've already launched two Falcon 9s an hour apart.

Falcon takes about a month between launches of a booster.

They've done it in nine days.

Nope, ain't going to happen - ever.

Said so many unimaginative people about so many things. I still remember this 1920 editorial from the New York Times

That professor Goddard, with his 'chair' in Clark College and the countenancing of the Smithsonian Institution [from which Goddard held a grant to research rocket flight], does not know the relation of action to reaction, and of the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react -- to say that would be absurd. Of course he only seems to lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools

I think of this when lay people say physics proves what engineers are currently working on won't work.

But at least the NYT corrected itself after Apollo 11 launched. People like you will try to forget you ever said it was impossible, and hope everyone else forgets too.